Artist duo Phomohobes (SK/ON) appropriates elements from vintage lifestyle magazines—spanning interior décor, fashion, and porn—reworking them into erotically charged and surreal collages. Their project, Perverse Luxury, simultaneously highlights their capacity to worship and critique consumer culture.
Phomohobes
Phomohobes are a duo comprised of Colby Richardson (Toronto) and Jason Cawood (Regina.) Formed in 2012, they primarily create hand-made collages from pre-1990’s pop-culture and lifestyle magazines. These collages take shape as garish, ornate and perverse juxtapositions of mid-20th century interiors, fashion, consumer products, decontextualized body parts, and hypermasculinity.
The articles and projects in this issue stem from commissioned responses to the theme of “taste,” framed in part by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s text Distinction, which examines the relationship between taste and class.
Like cryptophasiac twins who speak a tongue that only they can understand, Jason Cawood and Colby Richardson, as the collective Phomohobes, have created a specific but ambiguous lexicon of images, arranged in adherence to the grammar of their shared visual language.