NEON POSTCARD LOVE : ROB N NICK CARTER

Just lounging around in the bohemian garret-cum-jail cell in me Jamaican string vest, nonchalantly scratching the shingles scabs on valentines day and thought I may as well blog it up since the construction of my website is evidently taking longer than the making of the Stone Roses' second album. Ho hum.

So...I went to Rob and Nick Carter's bawdy show at the Fine Art Society on New Bond Street a few weeks ago now. Appropriating my favourite form of 'visual signifier' which co-incidentally, if I haven't mentioned a million times already is also officially having 'a moment' in London...the humble postcard...Rob and Nick Carter's vibrant works burst with a tacky, neon sexiness (apart from the atom bomb one, obviously).

Overlaying over-sized, iconic retro postcard images with gaudy, piercing, neon shapes...the connection between the Carters' selection of imagery and their electric signs remains obscure, aside form the playful irony of the atom bomb ice cream and the flashy extroversion of the flamingo stripper. One suspects there is no immediate meaning behind each piece, beyond the pleasing fusion of the simplified light forms and the composition and colours of the imagery beneath. Certainly the artists themselves - married since 1997 - insist the audience draw their own conclusions about the 14 works on display.

The interplay between the recognisable Vegas neon & vintage postcard elements - each distinct as individual signifiers - results in a show of contemporary, upbeat work. The kind of show-off art that wouldn't look out of place adorning the likes of Tamara Ecclestone or Chloe Green's trustafarian bedroom walls. Judging by the back room sales sheet I clocked suggesting over half of the series had 'dotted', there must be been loads of happy young ladies with rich daddies in the new year.