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Do No Harm
Viewing room

Do No Harm

Miss Bugs

Jealous East

04 Jul 2019 — 21 Jul 2019

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Mixed Media artist Miss Bugs is to unveil a new installation, entitled Do No Harm at Jealous Gallery. The installation consists of 900 vibrant coloured resin ‘popsicles’, that in containing a range of pharmaceuticals, critique contemporary society's obsession and consumption of social media

Miss Bugs continues to draw on the theme of addiction to digital technology, and how over exposure to news reels and digital feeds can act as an anaesthetic and numb the sense of reality. Algorithms mean one becomes stuck in their own ‘echo chamber’, and can only gain access to content that has been externally chosen to be suitable for them.
This dark notion is ‘sugar coated’ in the aesthetics of the popsicles. Each lolly is made up of three layers of different coloured resin, in which a mix of surgical blades, Viagra, syringes and various painkillers are contained. In the gallery the pop art style lollies will be presented on mass in pharmaceutical orderliness. They will be sold in medical packaging, with instructions for application, how to store and a warning of the side effects. The installation’s title Do No Harm is pulled from the Hippocratic Oath, whereby doctors promise to abstain from any intentional wrong doing to a patient. The irony of the statement is evident in today’s networks and social dialogue where we continuously self-harm and cause harm to others, in an endless loop.
Miss Bugs says: “The ice lollies represent the churn of the social network; the posed selfies, the frothy coffee top photos and the cute animal videos side of the internet that we all like to binge on, but inside it’s rotten and sick. Digital technology whilst being a sweetener in our lives perpetually distracts us with a constant, addictive stream of information and temptation. The internet becomes a space where reason and logic are trumped by fake news, and people with extremes of opinion can shout each other down. The candy on the outside sugar coats the sickness within.” Miss Bugs individually hand craft each piece and their artistic process is time consuming with unpredictable results. The process of mixing media and styles have led to Miss Bugs being deemed ‘Visual DJs’, who like their influences such as Gary Hume, Hannah Höch and artists from the pop art movement, remix, resource and reimagine pop culture.

Miss Bugs

Miss Bugs was founded in the early part of 2007, originally coming from a background in photography and graphics. Working in partnership, they developed fast, spontaneous working methods, cutting and pasting existing images; ‘remixing and sampling classics’ in art to make new pieces with their own mark.

Miss Bugs began in the early days making small scale works on paper, using screen printing with hand painted elements. They then scaled the work up, making life size cut outs of characters to place in situ on the streets of London. These were left in place to become part of the cityscape and recorded through photography.

Their most recent work includes larger scale pieces, incorporating laser cut planes of wood, hundreds of small component objects and poured resin. These pieces are time consuming and labour intensive, and a long way from the quickly constructed art pieces of the early days. Miss Bugs has always taken a broad and varied approach to creating work. The combining of materials and objects, alongside the way contemporary imagery can be collaged together, either by hand, through photography, or using a digital process is important.

The focus of the work has always been the human form; as Miss Bugs’ interest lies in developing ‘characters’
to tell a story. Archetypal imagery from magazines, art history and films are used as a starting point, which are then cut, overlaid and distorted to produce character portraits with an arresting graphic look. The influence of collage artists like Hannah Höch can clearly be seen in the work. The layering and placing of colour and pattern is also intrinsic to the work, and is very much a hands on element for Miss Bugs in the construction of the final pieces.

Miss Bugs have exhibited in New York, San Francisco, LA, Paris and London. Their artwork is also in a number of significant private collections around the world.

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