from 3pm to 6pm at Lisa Derrick Fine Arts. Feral runs through March 7.
Join Rick Castro and Stephen Holman for the opening of Feral at a Valentine’s Day aftermath tea party from 3pm to 6pm on Saturday, February 15, 2020 along Chung King Road. Elegant, Edwardian, Victorian, vintage, eclectic, cosplay, attire encouraged. Scones, fairy cakes, finger sandwiches, fruits, teas both hot cold, beverages for adults and children.
Feral combines new works from Stephen Holman and larger than life photographs of furries taken by Rick Castro at the ninth iteration of ConFURence. Images presented reveal our animal natures in a romanticized yearning return to a free and uninhibited state. Parallels are drawn to that time during Age of Enlightenment through the Industrial Age when feral children became all the rage, and our own era of technological advances which has facilitated news ways of discovering our true natures.
Rick Castro - FERAL
This collection of images was taken at ConFURence 9, in Buena Park, California, 1998.
The furry fandom owes its history to the original sci-fi conventions of the late 1940s. Inspired by the 1938 Orson Wells radio presentation of the HG Wells novel War of the Worlds, originally published in1897, a plethora of sci-fi, books, stories, comics and films flooded the market. This gave way to the monster, outer space genre of the 1950s, mushrooming into the Star Trek and Lost In Space phenomenon of the 1960s.
In the mid 1980s a smatter of people dressed in fur suits started to attend Trekkie Conventions. “Furries,” as they became to be known, took over one room in the burgeoning Comic Cons, then in 1989 ConFURence Zero was presented as an all furry convention.
With the advent of the internet, furry is, in my opinion, the first culture to create and organize online. Since my documentation in the late 90s, furry has indeed become mainstream morphing into other fandoms, raves, and conventions. In the 21st century monthly furry conventions are worldwide events.
A furry is someone who identifies with anthropomorphic culture, in this case animals. They usually have a “fursona,” which in new age terms was once called, “spirit animal.” Some furries enjoy the art, (the erotic art is amazing!) gaming and social gatherings only, others take it deeper and sexualize the fandom as their fetish.
My research of furry became a documentary film I directed for MTV premiering January, 2nd, 2001. Plushies & Furries scored # 2 in the ratings with heavy rotation for 6 months.
My doco can currently be viewed on WOWTV-
FERAL is part of 120 Days of Rick Castro, a project running throughout 2020 across the greater Los Angeles area, facilitated through a variety of venues, celebrating internationally renowned photographer Rick Castro.
Stephen Holman - FERAL
Stephen Holman presents twenty new works in Feral, and comments, “These works represent the bigger, bolder, wilder, and more magical side of my work, and I am THRILLED to be showing them all together in one amazing gallery location.”
Holman spent a happy childhood roaming through the rural idyll of the English countryside before being rudely thrust into the chaos of punk-era London in the late 70s, and New York City’s Lower East Side club scene in the early 1980s. He moved to California in 1987, and his subsequent four decade, multi-media career in the US has included co-founding and directing the notorious cabaret/performance art troupe Theatre Carnivale in Los Angeles in the late 80s, creating and directing surreal stop-motion animation series for Nickelodeon (Life with Loopy/Kablam!), Warner Bros (Phantom Investigators) and Disney (The Bite-Sized Adventures of Sam Sandwich), and discovering and managing outsider artist, William A. Hall from 2015-2019.
Holman's visionary paintings frequently relate to his surreal stage performances, combining eco-science and political satire with messy, outrageous comedy, utilizing props such as giant rabbits, dancing toilets and cheese propulsion devices. In recent years, however, magic, mythology, childhood, and man’s spiritual relationship with nature have also become deep inspirations. Holman’s work has been shown widely throughout the world in venues including MOCA, the American Visionary Art Museum, The Kitchen, Track 16 Gallery and the Tokyo International Theatre Festival. He resides in Alhambra, CA.
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