A Nice Bottle of Red
This print is the work of Two Faced Twins; more about them later.
It's a great example of how an artwork can be colourful, decorative and (yes, dammit) fun, as well as being a serious piece of art.
This is one of a limited number of prints from an original artwork.
It's not a piece of computer-generated clip art, it's not a photocopy of an existing illustration. This has been imagined, and drawn, and coloured, and printed by an artist (or in this case, two artists). One of the joys of seeing this piece in the flesh is to stand up close and realise that you're seeing the work of someone's hand.
Two Faced Twins are Stella and Gem, twin sisters who create their work together. If you ask them, they can tell you who did what but my memory isn't what it was and anyway - this is a single work, not something created by a committee.
I want to say again how joyful this piece is. The print run is limited to 100 prints and I would be surprised if they have many left.
So ... forgive me if I digress for a moment into some of the serious stuff which justifies my existence.
If you've done any art history of the 1960s and 1970s you will look at this and say "Andy Warhol!", and "The Factory!". Andy Warhol and Co famously replicated mass-produced images (and mass-produced individual images) in ways which explored some of the strangeness about image reproduction. They also raised questions about how so much becomes a commodity in capitalist societies. Just like TFT's piece here, much of Warhol's output was a lot of fun as well as something a bit deeper.
I want to add that, for me, both Warhol and TFT raise the status of commonplace objects. Items to which we wouldn't give a second glance - Heinz Tomato Ketchup here, Campbell's Soup tins from AW - are presented for detailed attention.
Who knows? We might even find them beautiful.
All well and good, but does that mean this artwork is simply Warhol revival?
Not at all. It can still carry those questions and ambiguities which The Factory produced, but there's more.
This wasn't produced by a gay man in 1970's New York. This was produced by two women living in 2020 in the UK. That would be enough to establish a difference but consider this. These two artists (TFT) have for the whole of their lives had the adjective 'identical' applied to them. I can probably say with confidence that unless you are an identical twin, you have no idea what that experience entails. And here they are producing this work which, on the face of it, appears to be a collection of identical images. Except that it's not.
Each bottle is individual and different. What does that say to us?
Okay, enough serious stuff.
Art performs so many functions. It re-presents the world to us. It asks questions of us. And it can delight us too. Three out of three for this piece, I think.
Two Faced Twins exhibit their diverse work at the Montague Gallery in Worthing.
You can also find them here:
info@twofacedtwins.com
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