‘Yay, To Have a Mouth!’: a London show explores our oral fixation, from Freud to fairytales

Mouths are one of our most complex body parts. They connect our insides with the outside world, drawing in food, air and fluids, while emitting bodily substances, words and ideas. Sensuality and disgust are both conjured by them. In Freudian psychoanalytic theory, mouths play a crucial role in infant development, allowing children to ingest nourishing milk or subject their caregivers to vengeful, biting attacks. Freud believed some people become fixed in the oral stage, remaining obsessed with activities such as gnawing, sucking and eating in adult life. It is perhaps to be expected that artists would find such rich ground in the mouth, with many exaggerating its form to create visceral pieces that speak to the body and its entangled relationship with the psyche.

‘Yay, to Have a Mouth!’ at Rose Easton

This is the starting point of a new group show at Rose Easton gallery in east London, which has been created in collaboration with Ginny on Frederick. ‘Yay, to Have a Mouth!’ playfully explores the complexity of the mouth, from infant psychological development to the dissemination of language and storytelling. Maggi Hambling’s Prelude (2000) shows a series of grinning teeth seeming to melt into the fiery flesh that surrounds them. Hannah Murray’s Miss Golden depicts a woman elegantly clutching a cigarette, which nods to a compelling yet destructive oral addiction – one that Freud himself was gripped by.

The show also features Jenkin van Zyl and Rebecca Ackroyd, two artists whose work teeters on a fine line between body horror and unbridled ecstasy, as well as Gabriella Boyd, Sylvie Fleury, Michael Ho, Phillip Gabriel, Sang Woo Kim, R.I.P. Germain, Hannah Murray, I.W. Payne, Mike Silva, and Barbara Wesołowska. ‘Rose and I have been friends and conspirators for a while,’ says Freddie Powell, founder of Ginny on Frederick. ‘We wanted to work on a group show featuring artists who are not usually part of either of our programmes. Some works are really bodily and others fall into the traditions of orality and storytelling. There is a good mix of younger and older artists who bridge both of these ideas.’

Easton began thinking about the many different roles of the mouth after speaking with Ho. ‘We were having these really interesting conversations about language and the way that histories are carried on the body,’ she says. ‘We were talking about how oral histories get disseminated. Along with much of the art world, my obsession with psychoanalysis was also recently reignited. I was listening to Jamieson Webster on Freud at the same time Freddie and I were having these discussions about a show to do with the mouth. It felt like there were lots of artists working in this realm.’

The exhibition presents many different approaches to oral history and storytelling. Powell notes that Fleury's make-up compact pieces channel a feeling of casual gossip, while Ho addresses the dissemination of cultural stories. Many pieces call the mouth to mind without actually showing it; Fleury's compacts, for example, are bodily in their connection with facial embellishment. There are moments of humour woven throughout the exhibition, which captures the at times surreal image of the mouth.

‘I think there is a campness to what Rose and I do generally. It’s definitely a place where we meet,’ says Powell. Easton agrees. ‘I think that both of us have a light touch sometimes and there is humour woven through parts of our programmes. We have three of Jenkin Van Zyl’s cake heads in fridges, which are more on the grotesque spectrum. But a new colour pencil drawing he’s done is more in this Ren & Stimpy-esque mode, which occupies a space between something humorous and grotesque.’

Like the mouth, these artists draw out a host of emotions and gut reactions, both celebrating and delving into a fixation that many of us retain into adulthood. ‘I don’t think we ever get past the oral stage in some way,’ says Easton. ‘It’s an ongoing obsession.’

A group show at Rose Easton gallery in East London, created in collaboration with Ginny on Frederick, ‘Yay, to Have a Mouth!’ runs until 29 March 2025

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