Sign of the times Melbourne Pop artist Christopher Langton exhibits none of the infamous star qualities of USA pop divas. In contrast he maintains a low profile, his art reflecting an the intellectual and emotional ambivalence about the values of art and popular culture. Langton's work addresses the social expectations of contemporary culture and the great normalising urges of consumption. The title is a reference to Melbourne's casino led recovery where gambling and deal-making feature heavily in the state government's great leap forward. Take for example, the recent statistics of Rio police stopping drivers talking on mobile phones only to discover that two out of every three were talking on toy phones.
Contemporary culture is all sign and no action.
The work is both compellingly seductive and nauseating in its sentimentality. The work's response to your presence involves you in the strange intimate game of being the object of and an object's affection. Kitsch as these works are, kitsch itself is hardly a transgressive act. However, these works confront the fact that sentimentality and romance have now come to denote a range of cultural responses considered embarrassing and out-moded. Their expressive affectations are rendered anachronistic by the ironic consciousness of contemporary disbelief.