Blondey McCoy Hosts "The Loved One" Art Exhibit in LA

Blondey McCoy Hosts "The Loved One" Art Exhibition in LA

5 years ago in DesignWords By Kyle Hodge

Former Palace skater, Blondey McCoy has opened a new exhibition "The Loved One" in Los Angeles with celebrated photographer Alasdair McLellan.

McLellan photographed McCoy at LA's iconic Griffith Park Observatory, standing in front of a sculpture of what looks like a crucified corpse. The spectacle in the background is, in fact, an uncannily lifelike sculpture, made by McCoy, which made from silicon and real human hair. The crucified figure is John ‘Plato’ Crawford, who was shot in the 1955 film Rebel without a Cause.

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"I find Los Angeles to be a fascinating place, McCoy tells us. "It feels to me like an environment with little social hierarchy, where the worlds of skateboarding and glitz and glamour and so on can collide and, almost without realizing it, become one and the same - weird and wonderful amalgams that couldn’t happen elsewhere. Given the inspiration behind it, it was always absolutely essential that the sculpture be photographed on Mount Hollywood and exhibited somewhere in Los Angeles."

Alongside the film, exhibition also takes the inspiration for it's title from from the Evelyn Waugh novel The Loved One. Blondey reveals, "The sculpture was actually already in motion by the time I got the book, and the inspiration behind it was more to do with fame than fortune as a means of cheating death, but there are infinite parallels to be drawn between the two approaches and the title was simply too perfect to pass up."

The crucifix was on full displayed at the 'The Loved One' exhibition but McLellan’s photographs will be on show alongside two of McCoy’s other works "Scandal" and "Face to Face". "Scandal" features Mandy Rice Davies and Christine Keeler leaving the Royal Courts of Justice after giving their testimonies regarding the Profumo affair. Lastly, "Face to Face" is a five bank pound note from 1961 featuring images of and a headline about Viv Nicholson.

The "Plato" capsule collection was also available for purchase at the pop-up.

The Loved One by Blondey McCoy is at 2270 Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, from May 10 – 13, 2019.