ONETOUCH
Mathew Once Told Me
Elinor Morgan
...that when he was young he read in the Spice Girls annual that Posh Spice had peppermint tea for breakfast every morning. After discovering this he began to make himself tea using mint from the garden, which he realises now was not peppermint.
Now, this might sound ridiculous, but the more I think about the Spice Girls the more I see links between them and Mathew’s work. And I don’t think this is just because I recently saw Melanie B’s autobiography in his sitting room… It seems pretty clear to he’s shown iron-on transfers of smiley faces and cannabis leaves as well as bottles of WKD Vodka, he’s made playlists for galleries and the title of his exhibition at The Telfer Gallery, One Touch, is the names of the Sugababes’ debut album. The Spice Girls had a early teens. Really you could say that they helped to reshape the direction of fashion, pop and sexual attitudes from the more masculine, indie culture of Brit Pop and re-raised
The Spice Girls broke through as a pop group and brand in 1996 with their debut single Wannabe and the idea of Girl Power as a their marketing motif. Like all successful brands they were imitated. I was ten at the time they got really popular. I remember getting the T-shirt with the picture where they look naked (I read recently that they were actually wearing body stockings) for my tenth birthday and at that time it became very important to know which one of the Spice Girls you were. In my group of friends Posh Spice was pretty much recognised as top dog but because there were too many of us we had to elaborate on the set form and create additional characters. So I became Posh’s cousin, or perhaps sister- I can’t remember. A friend I met later confessed that at boarding school 25 ONETOUCH she cut holes in her pillowcase and painted it in red and blue to emulate Geri Halliwell’s Union Jack dress.
Like teenagers all over the world who copy and perfect their Nike ‘swoosh’ Mathew regularly emulates logos that are so ubiquitous that they have become more than or distinct from their brand. A Burberry wall painting, three-stripe curtains, a Kappa mug; all take an internationally recognisable logo and abstract it. Like juvenile brand imitations these works are not good copies- they just use the basic structure of the symbol to connote something. Some of Mathew’s work mimics merchandise: digitally printed mugs, mouse mats and t-shirts look like souvenirs that might be available at a gig. The images on this merch are sometimes his own and sometimes the bare-bones replica logos that wouldn’t get much kudos in the classroom.
Part of the Spice Girls’ brand was the aggressively sexual woman who knows her body, shapes her look and shows her pants to the world. Like other celebrities their highly controlled appeal changed with each appearance: in some videos and images they were playful, some assertive, some soft. Each time they attempted to be sexy. Their appeal was unsophisticated though, with set characters or types, easily digestible by their target audience: adolescent girls and boys.
Much of Mathew’s work is homoerotic. Two videos in particular utilise a rather lusty gay gaze. The objects of this gaze are men who present themselves as potent sexual objects. When Passive Aggressive Strategies Fail to Get Results shows a series of slow clip after clip of home movies of men dancing full on routines in formation, the main move in which is the jiggling crotch-thrust.
Like the magazine advertisements and the YouTube clips in Mathew’s work the Spice Girls’ sexual appeal was both elevated and stunted by the unreality of the illusion they created. Both are almost sensually appealing but too mediated and mass-marketed to layered with voices and intentions that make its sensuality slippery, ironic.
Recently Mathew has begun to use scents and hand made pots to break the smooth surface of his work. One work in particular shown in 2012 achieved a sense of intimacy. The work is a piece of clay that carries the mark of Mathew’s hand. The object has no function other than to bear the trace of the touch. This work is a sincere gesture that marks a material associated with the ancient and the organic. Sensual and intimate, it is the opposite of the Spice Girls’ polished surfaces, their PVC dresses, the surface distributed around the world. This piece is distinct from works that use footage of young men displaying their bodies for unknown others to consume.