In July 2013, at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, two naked gay Canadian artists performed a show called Hollywood Hen Pit, about the life of an aging starlet. It included several mayonnaise enemas and simulated fellatio; some audience members walked out of the theatre while others were left in shock. The performers were Ian Mozdzen from the Out Of Line Theatre company, and the multimedia artist Doug Melnyk, and Hollywood Hen Pit was just the latest of the edgy shows they had produced together. As Melnyk clarified, ‘We’re trying to show all the sides of the body and human actions that people are often embarrassed about or have conflicted feelings about. We want to explore the raw side of things, and we’re not going to protect people from such imagery. It’s often the best way to get at these issues of deep feeling and pain.’

Melnyk is a multidisciplinary artist who works in drawing, collage, video and performance. He grew up in Winnipeg, and studied advertising art at Red River Community College before graduating in 1974; in 1981 he gained his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of three books (Naked Croquet, Doctor Meist, and Doug Melnyk’s Fruits), and his video work can be found in a number of public collections including the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. His art projects situate queer sexuality within both Christian and evolutionary discourses, and include Adam and Steve (Forest City Gallery, London, Ontario, and AKA Gallery, Saskatoon) and the unfinished 2012 cartoon The Story of Roy.

Doug Melnyk often works in collaboration with other artists and performers. Since 2009 he has cooperated with Ian Mozdzen on performance works including Monopoly Man Pit, Dalnavert Copperfield, Hollywood Hen Pit, and Nippon Maru, an animated video derived from Melnyk’s drawings, silkscreens and cut-paper work, telling the story of a cruise ship that flounders and sinks in tropical waters. As he explains, ‘I have often worked with artists from differing disciplines. Along with other collaborators, Ian and I performed in the first Winnipeg Fringe Festival with Gorilla (Jack and Alexis Butler, John McCulloch, Maggie Nagle, Cathy Nosaty and Martha Little), subsequently performing at the Edinburgh Fringe, Covent Garden, London Ontario, and Regina among other places. Our creative group consisted of artists with backgrounds in visual art, writing, acting, photography, and. Our range of references was diverse and eclectic, as was the language we used to communicate with each other.’

Doug Melnyk’s website can be found here.

We are very grateful to our Russian friend Yuri for suggesting the inclusion of this artist, and for supplying most of the images.