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- )