Map12: Christopher Langton

In 2012 the McClelland achievement prize (MAP) was introduced as a third award of the McClelland sculpture survey and award. The inaugural MAP exhibition will focus on the work of Melbourne artist, Christopher Langton.

Langton is Australia’s master of plastic Pop. His metier of glitz, gloss and colour combined with humour that includes over-sized toys and cartoon icons embody the playfulness of the Pop Art aesthetic of the 20th century. His recent works however, have an unsettling edginess and sense of world-weariness that portends to a darker humour in the Post-Pop, Post-Human movements of the 21st century.

This survey exhibition includes installations of spinning gargantuan ersatz flowers, floating PVC inflatable toys and psychedelic wall bubbles that amass into exuberant colourful environments. The evolution of Langton’s art as featured in the exhibition also includes his menagerie of pixilated anime figures, and recent ‘action’ figures which have morphed through three dimensional printing from his earlier pop icons into menacing sci-fi clones, appearing as emissaries from the future.