Working in painting, drawing, and sculpture, Steven Claydon appropriates the styles and figures of history to draw provocative connotations between contemporary social concerns and obsolete ideologies. Primarily interested in the concept of veneration – both in the contexts in which past events are documented through modern museology, and in the physical forms by which they have been represented – Claydon exhumes the ‘veritas’ of artifacts, undermining their value and truth through his witty and complex material juxtapositions. 

Claydon’s The Author of Mishap (Them) takes its inspiration from J.G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough, an early 20th century dissertation on magic and ritual that was widely denounced for its questionable methodology – a comparative anthropology by ‘genre’ rather than linear science. Mirroring Frazer’s logic, Claydon’s portrait is a composite of three heroic busts of political figures from this time, each embodying radically opposing beliefs. Through this literal hybrid, Claydon incites the current revivals of genetic engineering and post-modern eclecticism as plausible validation of Frazer’s theories.

 Substituting the traditional hallowed material of bronze for cast copper powder and resin, Claydon defiles his subject’s monumentality; the aged patina has been created through urinating on the object, both an act of defamation and a reference to Warhol’s egalitarian pop. Set atop a burlap coated plinth reminiscent of 1950s gallery wall coverings, Claydon reinforces his sculpture’s historical stature while belying its association with outdated fashion. The peacock feather operates primarily as a formal device, adding a surreal and dilettantish air to the impoverished authoritarian relic.