LOVE MEAT

Oil on linen

each 175cm x 175cm

Michael Croft 2016

Displayed at Building F, 110 Stoke Newington Church Street, London. N16.

Some have requested the removal of Mamma Pig from the window. It disturbs their children... or maybe the kids are just asking tricky questions. A few doors down at No.104 is a butcher's shop, simply called MEAT with a mouthwatering display of bits of dead-fresh animals.

I was thinking about the ram sacrificed in the place of Isaac, I was thinking about the Islamic idea that all animals submit to the will of God, I was thinking about the sanitised cellophaned barbarism of the pink-lit meaty-meat rack in the Supermarket, I was thinking about adverts in a language I don't understand, then I thought Michelin Man 'nunc est bibendum' 1898, ...and why fancy-font Latin tattoos? I was thinking why the squirrel eating a slice of toast in my garden was funny.

Ecce animot

- Derrida, L’Animal que donc je suis. 1997

And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.

- King James Bible, Genesis 9:2

◆

The painting style is a synthesis of kebab joint imagery and religious devotional art, butcher's shop super-saturated photographs, realist painting techniques and cartoon graphics. No expense has been spared, the finest quality pigments, Afghan lapis lazuli, lead white, cadmium, vermillion, cobalt, 24ct gold and finest Belgian linen.

Madonna Lactans. Stefano Sperano, Napoli

Bleeding Lamb of God

More sketches from the Farm...