February has rolled around and it’s time for the The Sex Show at Gallery 1313 – a tradition that now spans decades. Call it the Saint Valentine special. As gallery director Phil Anderson often remarks, the show is a clebration of sex. As usual there were many submissions, around 27 artists represented this year. Its popularity, given the theme, is unsurprising. It is especially popular among younger artists, who are naturally more preoccupied with the subject that their older peers. Although, of course, older artists are represented as well.
Installation view of The Sex Show at Gallery 1313
We live in a society that is, comparatively speaking, relaxed about sex. Still, few of the images and sculptures on display could be called graphic, let alone pornographic. On the whole the material is restrained. There is a fair measure of eroticism, e.g., Amanda Claire’s painting titled “Striptease” featuring a hand delicately holding up ‘a piece of lingerie’, or Brad McDermott’s deftly rendered charcoal drawing of two naked men laying together, titled “Beach House”.
Amanda Claire, Striptease, acrylic on panel
Brad McDermott, Beach House, charcoal on paper, 27.5 x 37.5 inches
Some pieces are playful, even humorous. One image that stands out in particular is Joe Cata’s “Connor & Plant”. A naked young man stands, facing the camera, holding a strategically placed potted plant. Its strength is in large part due to its sheer simplicity. More overtly playful are Viz Saraby’s two delightful companion photographs titled “THRUST” and “Vibrator”. In these images, blurred by motion, the artist brandishes a safety cone! So much is suggested with minimal and the most unexpected props.
Joe Cata, Connor & Plant, 35mm print on Inkjet, 12 x 12 inches
Viz Saraby, Vibrator (left) and THRUST (right), both digital photograph, 12 x 12 inches
On the topic of props, these are central features in Kaya Comeau’s two photographs titled “Flesh & Silicone #17” and “Flesh & Silicone #21”. In the former, a semi clad woman sits nonchalantly on a bed, surrounded by various sex toys. Their arrangement is reminiscent of that of weapons and drugs that the police occasionally publish after a raid. Indeed, the image has a slightly menacing air, as if these pleasure tools could be mistaken for instruments of torture. The equally unsettling second image shows a woman seated behind a contraption with a silicone penis at the end. There is something eerily impersonal about these toys, heightened by the women’s detached demeanours. They illustrate the power of sexual pleasure by showing the lengths people go to find ways to obtain this pleasure.
Kaya Comeau, Flesh & Silicone #17 (left) and Flesh & Silicone #21 (right) both photographs
Sexual pleasure is banal. It is so commonplace that it is seen as unremarkable. But in the animal kingdom we humans seem to have an oversized appetite for such pleasure. Indeed, we even talk about it as being addictive no less. The lengths to which people heighten this pleasure is demonstrated in Sophia Poland Noetzel’s photograph titled “Shibari”. The title names the Japanese art of binding the body in various ways, especially during sex – what we call in common parlance ‘bondage’. A woman dressed in underwear, a tee shirt and socks is lightly strapped to a folding chair. Her neck arches backwards so that her head is hidden from view.
On one level this is a literal depiction of mildly kinky sex, but since art is vulnerable to the metaphorical, let me go there. The absence of a sexual partner in this image is disturbing. Is she struggling to escape after a burglary? Of course not. But, the image suggests to me the story of Odysseus, voluntarily strapped to the mast of his ship in order to stop him from making a dash to the deadly sirens on the shore, whose songs, he knows, will overwhelm him with their charm. Likewise, the woman’s pose in Noetzel’s picture suggests her own struggle to contain the draw of sexual pleasure, to regain herself. Because, as is commonly remarked, sex involves losing oneself in a crucial sense – becoming headless, figuratively speaking. Sex is dangerous.
Sophia Poland Noetzel, Shibari, photo based print, 22 x 25 inches
Much of the art on display is conceived from the personal perspective, that is, telling one’s story. But of course sex is a universal theme, that in a less secular society than ours is often filtered through a religious point of view. A few of the works do take this point of view. John Nobrega, for instance, plays on the familiar trope of the not-so-chaste nun in his two small paintings.
John Nobrega, Greater Than All My Sin, oil on linen, 9 x 12 inches (top) and How Sweet and Awful Is This Place, oil on canvas,16 x 20 inches (bottom)
On the other hand, Sandra Franke has chosen to take a more cosmic perspective on sex, leaving the world of flesh to enter the ethereal world of abstraction. Franke’s painting, titled “Sex is the Pivot of All Love” reminds us that to many sex is sacred. It is important to be reminded of this in our secular society, which tends to reduce sex to a bodily function circumscribed by sensual pleasure.
Sandra Franke, Sex Is the Pivot of All Love, mixed media, 24 x 36 inches
Finally, another more subtle treatment of the subject is offered by Shannon Wallace. Hanging quietly in a corner is her delectable collage titled “I’m so in”, which features images mined from historical archives of beads, shells and other artefacts that are combined to suggest penetration in some way. The subtlety lies in the fact that none of the imagery is literal, but rather is wonderfully suggestive. Again, it is a decidedly secular perspective, and if I lament anything about this show it is the predominance of it.
Shannon Wallace, I’m so in, Collage/Marker, 9 x 12 inches
What religion, and classical mythology in particular, offer is a means of communicating the universal stories that touch on the theme of sex that point to the heart of being human – our moral weaknesses, the limits of our autonomy, love and tragedy, as well as its direct relation to our ability to survive at all. Nonetheless, this show offers a rich selection of artworks that do indeed celebrate sex.
Hugh Alcock
Images are courtesy of Gallery 1313.
*Exhibition information: The Sex Show, February 5 – 16, 2025, Gallery 1313, 1313 Queen Street West, Toronto. Gallery hours: Wed – Sat 1 – 5 pm, Sun 1 – 4 pm.