Exhibition opening - Wednesday the 11th of June 6 - 9pm

Strumpet, muse, harlot, glitter in the alleyway, sluts in heaven, dreams in the gutter.

Catherine Hourihan and Zoe Walford come together at M2 Gallery Surry Hills to present Pin up my Trash, an exhibition of photographic and mixed media art work, that explores the earthly divine and the reality of dreams.

Both artists re-contextualise elements of popular culture in their work.

Zoe Walford takes images from soft porn, popular cartoon characters, graphics and advertisements from various decades. This visual material is incorporated into paintings and drawings, creating mixed media art works. She gravitates toward fantasy themes, mythologic icons such as the angel, unicorn, pegasus, etc are used in contrast, (or harmony?) with the earthly things that are trash. Her work expresses sexuality as trash or divine. The works are humorous reinventions of mainstream ideas of sexy but also have an absurdist quality that can be disconcerting and implies a darker element in contemporary cultural representations of women and sex.

Catherine Hourihan’s photography draws on decades working as a dancer, choreographer and burlesque performer/producer in New York and Sydney. Hourihan's photographic works are fantastical portraits of musicians, burlesque and cabaret performers, including Madam Lash, Jeff Duff and New York burlesque legends Dirty Martini and Julie Atlas Muz. With make up and costume she transforms her subjects into mythical, archetypal characters, mermaids, angels, dolls, ghosts etc. Her subjects are placed in unlikely urban settings such as the NYC subway, a pile of garbage, or the entrance to a Kings X strip club, creating a pictorial space between fantasy and reality. Her work portrays beautiful ghosts, gods in the rubbish and the secret world of unconscious perception.