Now appearing at the Bedford Gallery, "The Skull Show", exhibiting work from 90 artists from around the world and across time. The show seeks to examine issues of mortality and how the skull has been and continues to be used as an image. From traditional memento mori to modern skateboard art the show looks as the skull as a metaphor for the underlying basis of humanity and as a symbol of the dark or subversive.Frodo Mikkelsen's sculptures use silver skulls as the base for dioramas of country life, showing that all things come from and end in death. While Anthony Santella shows us the face of a woman opened up to show the skull underneath, speaking to the fact that under our outward appearances we are all the same. Jim Skull's work is the most uncanny showing skulls that slowing drip into wandering tendrils. Often made of swirls of hempen rope they take on the appearance of shamanic artifacts with their ghostly forms. Mike Giant takes his inspiration from contemporary tattoo and skateboard culture creating vivid geometric forms that echo World War Two propaganda posters and the work of Shepard Fairy. These and many many more grace the walls of the Bedford Gallery creating a multivalent meditation on death, the eternal, and the power of life.
Photo Credit: Oakland Art Enthusiast
