Soup presents the gallery’s tenth exhibition, ‘Welcome To The Island Of Misfit Toys’, featuring new artworks by DaddyBears, Dean JF Hoy and Ted Le Swer.

“Welcome to the island of misfit toys”, says Emma Watson in the 2012 Stephen Chbosky directed adaptation of his 1999 coming of age novel The Perks of Being A Wallflower, as she welcomes Logan Lerman’s Charlie to the fold of their particular pack of high-school outcasts. The greeting itself, often found online in the form of an inspirational quote set against the backdrop of a misty mountain or lake, isn’t actually evidenced in the original YA literature, however given Chbosky’s presence as the film’s screenwriter, we can take it as canon in his own island of introverted adolescence. 

Earlier reference to ‘An Island of Misfit Toys’ can be witnessed in the stop-motion animated world of 1964’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, as a location where unloved, unwanted or toys deemed defective are sent. The empathy felt towards such an island and its exiled inhabitants spawned a stand-alone spin-off TV special as well as much accompanying merchandise. In both pop-cultural cases, the phrase more metaphorically represents a space for those who feel left out, out of place or otherwise othered by society at large. It hints at a secret, safe haven where one can find counsel, consolation and community, where difference is celebrated and acceptance emphasised. Such sentiment can be recognised in the work and practices of artists DaddyBears, Dean JF Hoy and Ted Le Swer.

For this exhibition, DaddyBears presents a previously discarded doll’s house redecorated with bulbous, baby-pink upholstery and adorned with delicate, hand-sewn detailing and additional beaded embellishment. What was once considered to have served its playtime purpose is instead revived and ready to be made home to by the artist’s own unseen assembly of bestie bears and floppy bunnies. Alongside, in an ode to Polly Pocket-esque play-set expansion packs, a lush front lawn is already being enjoyed by Burger, the neighbours’ puckish pet rabbit runaway. Nearby, one of Hoy’s melancholic band of Bears Who Care has found itself mounted to the dismembered front bumper of a Dodge pick-up. Similarly sourced from local charity shops, city streets and online auction sites, the artist takes once abandoned soft toys and puts them through a compassionate repairing process. Invariably involving both the physical inversion of their plush form as well as a more figurative inversion of their capacity to offer care and comfort, Hoy’s pearl-teared teddies question the inherent loyalty lifespan of our once preferred playthings. 

Finally, Le Swer’s animated vignettes of a standard issue starched white shirt and common cotton vest at once expose and exalt the drudgery of daily life. Diligently recreated through 3D rendering, these seemingly box fresh articles of clothing appear to sprout pulsating patches of simulated spores or topographical constellations of artificial follicles. Resulting from the artist’s research into how ecological relations between human and nonhuman agents materialise and reveal themselves, each Not-Fresh short film serves as a voyeuristic insight into our unavoidable and at times uncompromising corporeality.