SITUATION #160

Men Only Tower combines 68 issues of the British softcore porn magazine Men Only, which was launched 1935 with the express aim of excluding a female readership. The chosen number is a reference to Donald Trump’s claim that his Trump Tower in New York has 68 floors, rather than the actual 58 floors, due to its 10-storey high atrium. This is emblematic of Clare Strand’s artistic approach, which weaves fact and fiction into a new narrative. She has subtly secreted 20 of her own photographs in black envelopes between the pages of the magazines – images of resistance against the text, with all the quiet subversiveness that such a satisfying act can wield against one-sided reporting. Subversion is wittily deployed here, tongue-in-cheek, as an artistic device. The interaction between the text as a semiotic category formulated between the content of the sign and that which it conveys, and the photographic image that is as truthful as it is invented, is deployed by Strand to create compellingly expressive works in the form of installations, photo series and publications.

More by Clare Strand: clarestrand.co.uk