The Michael Hoppen Gallery is very proud to unveil Samantha Roddick's first artistic project, Hidden Within. Best known as the original founder of the erotic boutique, Coco de Mer, Roddick has long been exploring our cultural relationship to sex. In this project, which has occupied her for the last couple of years, she turns her attention to the subject of the sexual objectification of women. Roddick takes as her creative muse the twentieth century Italian architect and designer Carlo Mollino, and in particular examines his erotic polaroids through which she seeks to explore the notion of the male gaze and those feelings of shame and anxiety that persist in relation to sex in our society.
An air of mystery surrounds Mollino and his legacy. Over a period of 13 years, he secretly and obsessively invited women to pose for him. He hoarded these polaroids, these moments of fabricated intimacy, and they...