Modern Toss: A Decade In The Shithouse - Review

Forge & Co, London

****

For the next two weeks at Forge, one of London's newest co-working and event spaces, the cultural anti-icons that are the Modern Toss stable of characters are on display. The exhibition also ties in with the launch of an impressively weighty tome, Modern Toss: A Decade In The Shithouse marking the first ten years of this phenomenon of the modern art world.

The exhibition is simply mounted reflecting the anarchic wit that Jon Link and Mick Bunnage have committed to both paper and animation over the years. Actually, anarchic flatters the pair, for whilst their work is gloriously crude and almost subversive, all of their material is fashioned from the words of Britain's everymen and women. Link and Bunnage take the ideas that many of us think but are forbidden from ever uttering because we lack the confidence, or it might cost us our job, or to say out loud what these guys create, might simply be the most outrageous breach of public decency.

Comprising artwork around the hall, a loop of some of Modern Toss' funniest filmed work and the chance to experience what it's actually like inside a Modern Toss cartoon with The Living Cartoon, the exhibition will lead to your crying with guilty laughter. And never has an exhibit been more interactive than the Periodic Table of Swearing' - a four-legged talking table you can operate like a demented organist piping out swear words based on the chemical elements.'

Best of all - the whole thing is free. There's the opportunity to buy stuff of course, including signed prints and on various dates Link and Bunnage will be there in person to sign books.

If the likes of Alan, Mr Tourette Master Signwriter or Business Mouse have ever tickled your funny bone then this exhibition is a must-see. Whilst the event is most definitely not for children, it appeals to the child in us all and as Link and Bunnage themselves comment: "Never in the field of human communication has so much, been said by so many, with so much of it being bollocks". They are not wrong. 

Modern Toss: A Decade In The Shithouse 

Celebrating Ten Years Of Modern Toss

at

Forge & Co

154 - 158 Shoreditch High Street

London E1 6HU

Until October 19th