Performance at Verkligheten in Umeå, Sweden, 2024 and Hvitsten Salong, Norway, 2021

Three part performances dealing with the enduring myth of the male painter and the “sexiness” of abstract expressionist painting as well as the art world’s obsession with objects.

The Coral Trout had an existential crisis about mortality and her art career after being confronted by a skeleton. As a result, the Coral Trout realised she could achieve immortality and earn more money by changing sex and morphing into a male painter. Then, the Coral Trout male painter attempted to block out death by creating three abstract expressionist paintings with cock paintbrushes. The male painter, Coral Trout displayed the three paintings titled, “Landscape in Blue and Orange”, “Summer in Blue and Orange” and “My Five Children from Three Different Women in Blue and Orange”.

In the final part of “Painting is Sexy”, the Coral Trout transformed into an octopus inspired performative painting and became a painting painting a painting of a painting and added black ink markings from a “pussy” sea sponge to the earlier paintings which also were evocative of extinction and the climate crisis.

Images from Hvitsten Salong, 2021