An art installation that takes its inspiration from the tomb and treasures of King Tutankhamen is showing at Southampton’s John Hansard Gallery until January 28 2005.
But whereas King Tutankhamen’s tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings contained a multitude of treasures to accompany the boy pharaoh safely into the afterlife, King Tat features funerary objects of a slightly different hue and value.
King Tat Installation Shot (The Burial Chamber), Shaun Doyle & Mally Mallinson. Courtesy the John Hansard Gallery.
A collaborative piece by Shaun Doyle and Mally Mallinson the installation was inspired by the 1924 display of King Tutankhamen’s tomb in the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, but given a modern, suburban twist.
The resulting tableau is a melange of decaying household possessions, dirty mattresses, a rusty Fiat Panda and other bits of…‘tat’.
Together they represent the artists’ response to what they see as western society’s fascination with reality culture and death together with the duo’s avowed interest in the shabby aesthetic.
King Tat Installation Shot (The Antechamber), Shaun Doyle & Mally Mallinson. Courtesy the John Hansard Gallery.
“We like lots of folk art and ice-cream vans and pub signs and stuff like that,” said Shaun Doyle, “and that’s more appealing and more immediate to a whole load more people.”
A pair of kitsch west highland terriers guard the breezeblock-covered burial chamber, whilst inside, gaudy wall murals – specially imported from a London housing estate – add to the sense of absurdity.
Murals, Collingwood Estate, Whitechapel, courtesy the artists.
Full of ambiguous moral messages, a chest freezer represents the sarcophagus and is a coded reference to cryogenic re-animation; the piece also plays fast and loose with modern concepts of death and religion. “We like ramming as many references into things as possible, just in case one works!” added Doyle.
Shaun Doyle and Mally Mallinson combined their artistic talents on a permanent basis in 2005 and King Tat represents their most ambitious work to date.
