Grant Lingard
Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1961, d.1995
Hutch and lure
- 1993
- Cotton, soap
- Gift of the estates of Grant Lingard and Peter Lanini, 1998
- 99/42.1-19
Tags: eroticism, fruit, homosexuality, love, rugby, soap (organic material), sports, traps (trapping equipment), underwear
In this work, Grant Lingard recasts a sweaty huddle of rugby players – that iconic Kiwi image of sporting masculinity – as the focus of gay desire. Here, the bulge in these generic Jockey Y-fronts – made in Ōtautahi Christchurch by Lane Walker Rudkin – is replaced by something strange and unexpected: brightly coloured soaps hand-moulded to form apples, bananas, pears and even a bunch of grapes.
Grant’s startling and provocative image plays on the idea of forbidden fruit, and also the derogatory term ‘fruity’ directed at someone suspected of playing for the ‘wrong team’. His version becomes a sweet-smelling, freshly laundered trap, laid out to tempt the curious.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Exhibition History
Brought to light, November 2009- 22 February 2011
Personal spaces feature in this sculpture by Grant Lingard. ‘Hutch and Lure’ was part of a memorable 1993 exhibition called ‘Smells Like Team Spirit’. In a series of funny and punchy sculptures, Lingard collided New Zealand’s omnipresent rugby culture with its seldom acknowledged gay culture – and hinted that the two have more in common than they admit. Lingard was a committed social critic, but his favoured means of engaging viewers was through material play and seductive wit. In ‘Hutch and Lure’, he has laid a kind of trap, as if attempting to lure players – or at least a few gallery-goers – inside the circle of homoerotic desire.
(Brought to light, November 2009- 22 February 2011)
Related
Commentary
A Gathering Gravity
My encounters with Grant Lingard’s works have been few and fleeting. My information derives largely from the archive. The show has yet to open and I know only the title. But I am deep in speculation about what it will bring.