eeling Back The Paint is a 60 minute fake art forum, designed to be performed in art galleries. The show won the Best Comedy award at the 2002 Wellington Fringe Festival. The show will next be seen at the 2006 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

The show begins as Nelson-based ceramic artist, Shirley Baring (Jo Randerson,) and French multi-media provocateur Michelle Saint de Ville (Jackie van Beek), arrive to discuss their art and differing cultural perspectives. The forum is hosted by the noted John Caxton Smythe (Jeremy Randerson).

Smythe absconds briefly, and as the two artists try to conduct the forum themselves their diametrically opposed points of view spectacularly clash. Pottery is smashed, and the artists finally join together in song to celebrate the emancipatory power of Art.

Peeling Back The Paint is an entertaining and comic look at self-indulgent artspeak, political correctness and the place of ego in art.

The show has been performed in Nelson, Dunedin, Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland.

"Pricking artistic pretension is like shooting fish in a barrel with a shotgun. What lifts Peeling Back the Paint from being more than a clever sketch is the scarily accurate performances and great comic timing… We're left to wonder what is art and what isn't, what is acting and what is real."
Sunday Star Times, New Zealand, 2002

For further information about this show, please contact us.