Table Etiquette by Anthony Marrelli presents the art of manners with food and sex as sensually stimulating companions worth celebrating. Both are visceral animal pleasures, common to all; they are also frequently exploited for commercial ends and made to be available cheaply and quickly, whether by drive-through chain restaurants or Internet pornography.

Table Etiquette employs an atmosphere of irony, juxtaposing these fundamental elements of human life by depicting cultural cues from contradictory sources— using clipped photographs from the “Top rack at Jug City” and animals from the “Free Store” in Haliburton, to fill the seats in a hand-drawn fine dining setting. Table Etiquette is the fast food of art with its tongue-in-cheek gestural qualities and childish painting style; it elucidates the contemporary paradigm of sensual desires, contrasting the gritty realities of instant gratification with the visage of high-class environments contrasting the degradation of manners with the advance of ever-present technology.

The absurdity of the images serves to reflect the arbitrary distinction between high and low culture, serving as a sly commentary on how Western society has categorized and defined two similar carnal necessities.

Anthony Marrelli graduated from the Haliburton School of the Arts in 2011, granted with a Juror’s Choice Award for the conceptual development of the Table Etiquette series. He is currently engaged in a number of visual and musical art projects, favoring pen/ink and experimenting with watercolours on paper. He lives in the west end of Toronto through the winter and in the bushes of British Columbia through the summer.

Anthony’s mixed media watercolour collages mash high and low culture in a series of absurd scenarios now showing at Flying Pony Gallery 1481 Gerrard St E Toronto for the month of April