Double CHIN at Katharine Mulherin - N. Post , July 3, 2004

Taking its namesake from the big, messy and age-old picnic now sprawled across the CNE grounds this weekend, Double CHIN Picnic is another type of family event -- an exhibition of four gay and lesbian friends who are old hats at turning Value Village junk culture into crafty works of art.

Sad but funny photographs titled "Am I Becoming My Father?" show local writer-artist-poet R.M. Vaughan trying to squeeze his full-size body into the jackets of his recently deceased father who was, obviously, quite a bit leaner. Vaughan’s photos are as self-depricating as those Cary Leibowitz gay yarmulkes now on sale at Art Metropole, and as sadsack as any David Shrigley drawing.

Andrew Harwood’s thermos series titled "Picnic," includes a giant mobile of plastic lunch-box thermoses spinning in motorized circles; and Allyson Mitchell and Christina Zeidler’s "Oh, Lesbian Organic Shoppers" is a wall-mounted mandela with two Chatty Cathy dolls enshrined in blissful union at the centre, and surrounded in vintage plastic flowers and Astroturf. But Mitchell’s apple-head dolls (remember those?) stuffed into glass fish bowls are the true gems of this show, if only because these petrified beings have been futuristically titled "Gay Pride 2054." --co

Double CHIN Picnic runs until July 18 at Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects, 1080 Queen Street West. $2 - $2000