We first worked with The Sucklord for group toy exhibition Choking Hazard in February 2017, then in December 2017 for Dune: A Sci-fi Art Show. The inspiration point for his solo show at Kult was the artist’s sleazy yet meaningful take on the medium of bootlegs and how he manages to blur the lines between fine art and consumer products. Bootleg Toy Supervillain opened on 5 October 2018 after a six-month work-in-progress. Read through for the behind-the-scenes.
DRAWING BOARD
BOOTLEGS! They’re everywhere. From Guccy T-shirts to Hike Sandals & of course, The Super Sucklord’s ingenious toys. For self-dubbed super villain The Super Sucklord’s first inaugural solo show in Singapore, our level of enthusiasm was gladly met by the artist churning out over 50 pieces of bootleg framed cardbacks. The intention of the show was to illustrate the expansive universe of bootlegs, and how they can be used to comment on anything - pornography, politics, religion, education, celebrities and the news.
Body parts suck.
WIP at The Sucklord’s studio in Chinatown, NYC.
ARTIST COLLABORATIONS
To give The Sucklord a big, bad welcome to Singapore, we rounded up established and up-and-coming toy makers and sculptors from the region to do an exclusive collab with the originator of the bootleg toy movement himself. Special shoutout to Jeffrey Koh for talking us through the process.
The Sucklord sent Daniel Yu (SG), Kabuki Master (TH), Mojoko (SG) and Quiccs (PH) a fat grab bag of weird and wonderful resin toy parts. The artists then took it from there, adding their own spin on the toys and creating individual packaging for them.
For Daniel Yu and Quiccs, the collab went both ways. Both these artists sent The Sucklord their own signature toys to mess around with. Some cool results came out of the collaborations.
Daniel Yu X The Sucklord (left), Quiccs x Sucklord (right)
Quiccs X The Sucklord
To top it all off, The Philippines Embassy & Philippines Airlines kindly flew Quiccs over to Kult for the show, where he worked with The Sucklord to customise the display area for their piece in the gallery. Shout out to San Miguel as well, for supplying us with booze for the night.
LOOK & FEEL + BONUS CONTENT
We knew we wanted to customise a bootleg mural and create video games in the gallery. We also knew we wanted to play up the Bootleg Chinatown feel. We worked with artist Cyntherea Tan, who used diarrhoea-cure ‘Po Chai Pills’ as a reference point. “DIY or die” was our motto. Everything flowed pretty smooth from hereon. Scroll through for WIP & bonus pix.
Our designer, Nasrul Haqqim did up the key visual. This formed the tonality of the show.
Cyntherea’s wall mural WIP.
Completed mural, splattered on by The Sucklord.
Smells like Chinatown spirit.
Like Han Solo frozen in Carbonite, but with cling wrap.
Bootleg artcade game by Issac Ashwin and Jenson Gabriel Tan.
Bootleg artcade game, ‘SUCKADELIC Bootleg Factory’ by icipiracy (Igor Hooverwoord).
Spending the week with The Sucklord added the finishing touches to the exhibition.
Conversations with him made their way onto the gallery walls.
Hand painted stormtroopers.
We nudged people to create their own supervillain personas with a name generator “Your Supervillain Name Sucks” complete with a mask station to complete the look.
Singapore’s bedroom toy makers came out of their shell to gather feedback on their works from The Sucklord.
Completed wall, brought to life with projection mapping.
CHILLIN’ WITH THE LORD
Our week went something like this:
Conversations were had with TOYSREVIL, MTV Asia, and Plural Art Mag.
Dinner with The Lord
Mojoko VS Steak
Chillin’ with The Lord