Review: Modern Toss @ Maverick Showrooms

Lindsey
By Lindsey Last edited 165 months ago
Review: Modern Toss @ Maverick Showrooms

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Buy it on Amazon £4.49
An invitation to a private view of The Modern Toss London Museum of Urban Shit-Naks pressed all our buttons. Who wouldn't want an evening perusing "a 200metre long communal cartoon, some live poetry reading from the Drive-by Abuser, a selection of superb 'Space Argument' prints and some highly collectible dirty pictures, hand-stitched in wool by enthusiastic mature ladies?" Sounds like an awesome first exhibition.

All your favourite Modern Toss characters and favourites are there, looking clean and beautiful in this airy double decker showroom space but it's a little underwhelming. The interactive pieces involving small pulley systems revealing some precision swearing or pun probably weren't worth the extra effort (when the straightforward posters are so good) and we expected more "hilarious paraphernalia from the Toss cabinet of shit-naks". We hoped for something a bit more subversive than a stuff-on-the-walls-selling-show.

Everything is for sale, even the 3 ton fly sculpture and a set of metal printing plates, stuck together in a frame (£2000). There's a shop too, where you can pick up Modern Toss greetings cards, books, shopping bags, rock sweets and more. In fact, you'll leave wondering if the boys have hit a financial crisis with this hearty commercial push. Seems a bit steep to splash out on these art prints (£65-£1800) when you can buy the posters on Amazon.

Still, who doesn't like wandering through a gallery taking in the Periodic Table of Swearing (tough competition for our own version), laughing at Mr Tourette or two eggs fighting and visualising your boss being fucked by a horse?

Until 4 July at Maverick Showroom, Redchurch Street, E2. Mon-Fri, 11am-7pm, weekends midday - 4pm. Free but you may be urged to buy more shit or we're all fucked, yeah.

Last Updated 23 June 2010