Fear, Loathing and… Sculpture? How a New Wave of British Talent Is Rejuvenating the Las Vegas Art Scene

Hannah Perry tells Aindrea Emelife about the Zabludowicz Collection’s inspiring residency

Las Vegas, Nevada, home of bright lights, shotgun weddings and bachelors doing things they regret before they tie the knot. The city that never sleeps – although admittedly, the world has a few of those – is known more for its reckless consumerism and being a backdrop for bad decisions… not so much as a cultural capital.

Above: Hannah Perry by Amber Filex

However, for the second time, the Zabludowicz Collection, Kentish Town’s own converted Methodist chapel that houses the apex of contemporary art, has flown a hotbed of British talent to the sparkling site with a pipedream of regenerating the city and engaging the community with the arts, as well as giving these precocious lot some pretty captivating inspiration to inform their works.

The Las Vegas residency, which ran in January for up to six weeks, featured Sarah Cwynar, Casey Jane Ellison, Matthew Day Jackson, Puppies Puppies and Hannah Perry, who I sat down with to hear all the gossip. “It was really fun, it was like a big holiday,” Perry beams. Indeed, a ‘work’ trip to Vegas sounds like slurred drunken promise, but the artists came to observe not to revel. Well, not too much at least.

Perry, who up until recently called a reused meat shop in Peckham home (her studio now sits in the Grade II listed building, Somerset House, no biggie) has become a household name when it comes to contemporary British artists. With so many of our homegrown talents switching continents in pursuit of the American Dream, it is interesting to consider what effect Vegas might have on their work, as Los Angeles and New York are the more usual cities of choice for nomadic creatives.

“With this body of work, I’m going to spend a good six to eight months collating everything and looking through the material,” Perry tells me. “I think a lot of physical work will come from this residency, but video and performance will naturally be a part of it too. I’m most excited about the idea of creating sculptural pieces in response, as the architecture of the city, the casinos in particular, was very interesting to me. Did you know casinos and hotels have ‘scripts’ out here?”

Above: Hannah Perry, Awkward Winner Stays On (2015)

It becomes clear that Vegas isn’t just about the glitz, but there is a dark side which thrives off the celebration of weirdness in exchange for money

It goes without saying that the Vegas aesthetic seems otherworldly in its narrative. Photographs and scenes from cult hit film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas paint the city as a place for lost souls, commodified by their freaky nature and celebrated for their unabashed extrovertism. From the stories Hannah Perry goes on to tell me, it also draws parallels with Mortville, the trashy town for outlaws and ne’er do wells from John Waters’ Desperate Living. “I became so interested in this one street full of performers,” she says. “There was an old lady in a wheelchair wearing a horrible mask with boobs down to the ground and a placard resting next to her saying ‘1$ for a photo’. But there was lots of this! After a while, it started to dawn on me that these aren’t performers, they are funding a drug habit. Seeing a guy, without even a costume to justify it, laid on the floor with a similar placard… it was quite dark.” And at once it becomes clear that Vegas isn’t just about the glitz, but there is a dark side which thrives off the celebration of weirdness in exchange for money.

And we are all part of it, myself included, by buying into and being intrigued by this twisted fantasy world, which is a harsh reality for many. “Vegas is just one big mirage, you know?” Perry sighs. “It’s like a façade. Nothing is built with real material, it’s all fake.” Indeed, this artifice is very much part of the American Dream, and it’s stage-set glitter still captivates. “They even pump scented oxygen into the air. Scented with, like, flowers.”

Above: Hannah Perry 100 Problems at CFA Berlin

So why bring artists to Vegas? The Zabludowicz Collection, I’ve heard, has a prominent presence in the area, and so though it might be unusual for an arts institution to foray to this strange city, it is completely in line with the aims of the Collection and the artists they support. “There’s no art spaces there, there’s no art initiatives,” Perry explains. “There were some art studios, but they got closed down recently. So I think what they’re trying to do is bring a wider audience there to generate that in the area. There’s a whole regeneration project in the downtown area. They’re trying to clean up.”

Perry inevitably ventured further than the casinos and street performers of the Vegas strip, finding herself in peculiar places. “I spoke to lots of performers, and went outside into the desert. There was this one woman, a hippie, and she set up this temple for femininity. It’s completely against patriarchy. She lived in a trailer park, and next to it she built this entire shrine with statues dedicated to femininity, and it was really amazing – but even this felt like a façade. It was really weird that you had this spiritual veneer alongside a glamorous, money veneer.”

It is interesting to discover that patriarchy is at the centre of Las Vegas, especially as Perry’s work continuously hones in on and magnifies gender issues, exploring how the world is navigating the non-binary movement. “I was very interested in how people performed their gender there,” she says. “For example, I came across some Chippendales guys, which is obviously a very stereotypical thing. In the performances the women were shown to be hysterical, which also feeds into the misogyny of the hysterical woman. The women were always screaming in the shows.”

However, the more obvious place that comes to mind when considering how gender roles come to play in Vegas is within the strip club. Perry’s experiences were surprising. “I went to some strip bars and found it quite a different experience. The men would come on their own rather than in groups as you’d expect. They sat quietly and it really felt like quite a complicated space. The performances were amazing though – with real acrobatics almost bordering on cabaret. But the cliché of the hysterical woman continued. I loved looking at the sets, the veneers and the idea of how illusory it all was. It really was like a mirage out of nowhere. Its easy to lose grasp with reality.”

Above: Hannah Perry 100 Problems at CFA Berlin

But natural landscapes also captivate Perry – a passion she was able to indulge at locations like the Grand Canyon and Death Valley. “I liked to consider the solid, permanent nature of these organic structures compared to the fake walls and industrial spaces with mad rules of inner Vegas where the history is short and it all felt temporary.”

Though art in Vegas seems like a misnomer, there are a number of museums and galleries in Sin City. The Las Vegas Art Museum closed its doors in 2009 and in its place emerged the Barrick Museum on the campus of the University of Nevada Las Vegas (yes, people actually study there) and the Centerpiece Gallery, both of which are dedicated to contemporary art. The Neon Museum draws in hordes of visitors with its outdoor Boneyard of dazzling signs dating back to 1930 and feels newly relevant; London is currently having its own neon moment through galleries such as Gods Own Junkyard and Lights of Soho.

I like to compare organic structures like the Grand Canyon with the fake walls and industrial spaces of inner Vegas, where the history is short and it all feels temporary.

As Perry gears up for her next show over the pond, which opens on May 3rd at the Arsenal in New York, I can’t help but note the pattern of London artists looking to the New World to make their mark. “It’s interesting, right?” Perry agrees. “I think it’s happened in music, too. There’s a mutual obsession, now. There’s a bit of a crossover. We are aware that the American Dream is not real, and it’s actually quite dark there. We kind of share a language and that’s it. The culture is very different. And each state is completely different.”

So will she be taking her Las Vegas inspirations to New York? “This is quite a different project, following on from an exhibition I did last year in their Montreal space. This show opens just in time for Frieze New York, but that’s all I can say at the moment. But nothing to do with Vegas. I have to mull over that experience for a while, I think.”

Unsurprising really – after all, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. For now.

Above: Hannah Perry 100 Problems at CFA Berlin