HASTINGS.- Notorious contemporary art duo, Jake and Dinos Chapman, are returning to the town where they grew up for a major new show at the Jerwood Gallery. The exhibition, which has been crowd funded through the Art Fund’s new Art Happens platform, will feature previously unseen works plus pieces made exclusively for the exhibition.

Jake and Dinos Chapman are known for their provocative and confrontational art. In the Realm of the Unmentionable will continue the brothers’ exploration of issues surrounding consumer culture, Western identity and human mortality that have been central to their work.

Following their reworking of Goya etchings and Victorian paintings in their Family Portrait series, the brothers will be sourcing artworks from antique and junk shops in Hastings, which will then be ‘fixed’ for the exhibition.

Jake Chapman says: “Working on someone else’s work optimises the idea that making art is a destructive rather than a creative act, which is pretty much what we are about…. I think that Hastings will be interesting as a possible resource for source material because there’s lots of stuff that might have a certain melancholic aesthetic to it which we can mess around with.”

Nic Serpell-Rand Photography
The show will take over the entire ground floor of the gallery, making it the largest exhibition of contemporary art at the gallery to date.

Alongside the exhibition will be an unusual programme of events, including the opportunity for the public to get inked by the brothers in a live tattooing event.

Jerwood Gallery exceeded its crowd funding project target of £25,000, raising a total of £29,528. Donors were given special rewards for contributing to the project – ranging from Chapman Brother designed transfer tattoos for £25 to limited edition signed etchings for £450.

Art Happens was launched in June 2014 on the Art Fund website to help UK museums raise money for new, small-scale, achievable and highly creative projects. Jerwood Gallery’s Chapman Brothers exhibition is the second project to have been successfully funded through this crowd-funding initiative.

In the Realm of the Unmentionable will run from 25 October 2014 – 7 January 2015.