Exhibition: Fowl Play

Young Margate-based painter Jack Hirons uses an unusual medium. All the pigment in his debut London solo show comes from the charred and crushed bones of fried chicken, bought on a matchday on Tottenham High Road from the legendary Chick-King fast food restaurant. Hirons blackens the bones himself and grinds them into powder to make his deep black pigment. The resulting stark, monochromatic paintings are filled with nods to chicken as sporting and cultural icon, as matchday ritual, as political history, and – obviously – as greasy sustenance.

At the heart of the exhibition is a vast stained glass window that doubles as a chicken shop menu. The work joins the dots between football, food and religion, with Tottenham as its church, and the gleaming bronze cockerel atop its stadium as the deity worshipped by the fans. Just like Catholics eating the body of Christ at Sunday Mass, football supporters make their pre-match pilgrimage to Chick-King to feast on wings and fried thighs.

Hirons, who began the body of work in 2017, says, 'While the project might start to look like an unhealthy obsession with chicken, its recurring themes are universal; politics, power, religion and sexuality all relate to our own existence. Chicken even shapes our language because to call someone a chicken, or a chick, or a cock mean very different things'.

Fowl Play is an exhibition about rituals and beliefs, about the symbols we cling to and what unites us in our hour of need. Hirons’ work asks what really matters to all of us, regardless of background or inclination, and finds the answer is, invariably, chicken.

Note - to visit the gallery, use entrance for the Tottenham Experience at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.