It is an enormous pleasure for IFB to invite you to
Sense and Sensibility
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
featuring
Louis Backhouse
Tony Just
Christine Kirubi
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Alex Vivian
Mierle Laderman Ukeles
19th September - 22nd November 2026
Sense and Sensibility is a show about dirt - Mental dirt, physical dirt, imagined and projected dirt - and by whom and how is the dirt being dealt with.
Sense and Sensibility considers the notion that dirt, somehow obvious, produces implicit and explicit urges to clean.
Louis Backhouse, Men in Love (Farm), 2026, giclee prints on archival paper in 18 clip frames, 255cm x 84cm
‘Men in Love (Farm)’ consists of a collection of images of Piétrain pigs, taken from livestock breeding farm’s advertisement material. The work acts as a caricature illustration of society- simultaneously uttering the phrase that all men are pigs.
Louis Backhouse born 1992 and based in London. Recent Shows include No Losers , Jenny and Tenko Presents, New York and Men in Love, 243 Luz and Co London both 2026.
Tony Just, Untitled 1994 , Print on photo paper 26.5 x 34 cm
Excerpt from the legendary text “Ghosts of Public Sex, Utopian Longings, Queer Memories.” in Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity by José Esteban Muñoz (2009)
‘3. Ghosh and Utopia I tum now from the ghost of Oscar Wilde that haunts Bloch's thinking on utopia to the ghosts that circulate in the photography of Tony Just. In 1994 Just completed a project that attempted to capture precisely what I'm calling the ghosts of public sex. The project began with Just selecting run-down public men's rooms in New York City, the kind that were most certainly tea rooms before they, like the Prince Street toilets that Giorno describes, were shut down because of the AIDS/HIV public health crisis. Just then proceeded to do the labor of scrubbing and sanitizing sections of the public men's rooms. The preparation of the spaces is as central to the series as the photos I choose to fcx:us on themselves; the only evidence of this behind-the-scenes aspect of the larger project are the clean spaces themselves- Just's labor exists only as a ghostly trace in a sparkling men's room. He documented this project through color slides and photographs (see illustrations) that focused on the bathrooms' immaculate state and the details of such spaces. The urinals, tiles, toilets, and fixtures that are the objects of these photo images take on what can only be described as a ghostly aurn, an other-worldly glow. This aura, this circuit of luminous halos that surround the work, is one aspect of the ghosts of public sex that this essay is interested in describing’.
Tony Just (born 1969, Maryland, USA.) Lives and works in Berlin.
Christine Kirubi, The Recording, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT, 19.05.2018, Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, E1 7LS, 20.12.2026, Institut Funder Bakke, Æbeløvej 20, 8600 Silkeborg, 19.9.2026, 2026, Vaseline.
Christine Kirubi is an artist-poet based in London. She is the author of WILDPLASSEN published by the87press and Partures. published by Gong Farm.
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Pigsty (Italian: Porcile) 1969, 99 min
Pigsty (Italian: Porcile) is a 1969 Italian film written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Marco Ferreri, Ugo Tognazzi, Pierre Clémenti, Alberto Lionello, Franco Citti and Anne Wiazemsky.
The Criterion Collection's website states "Provocateur Pier Paolo Pasolini is at his most incendiary in this double-edged allegory on fascism, consumerism, and resistance. .... these stories of transgression form a scathing commentary on postwar European moral rot and the meaning of rebellion in the face of a corrupt world.
Pier Paolo Pasolini (born 1922 Bologna Italy, died 1975 Ostia, Italy) was an Italian poet, revolutionary, writer, film director, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist and a political figure.
Alex Vivian, Putridity studies, 2026 Used pillow cases, stretcher bars, MDF, PVA glue, lead pencil, hand cut printed paper
Pillowcases are overlooked as merely housing to soft inner fillings or a protective fabric liner. Said shells are accompanied by description… but of what exactly?
Pillow cases; skins, gutted; down/fluff filling removed, plucked; stitching removed.
Alex Vivian (born 1981, East Melbourne, Australia). He currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He co-founded the spaces Rubbish Bin in Berlin and the Guzzler in Melbourne.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles Touch Sanitation Performance, 1977-1980/ printed in 2017
archival pigment print, measuring 16" x 24" or 24” x 16”.
Email from Mierle -
"This very special image shows one of the many images shot during the citiwide TOUCH SANITATION PERFORMANCE (1979-1980). It shows a group discussion with me and many sanitation workers in the DSNY section office, which was in a former old jail in Harlem. We were at lunch with the sanitation workers, where one was yelling at me about their lousy conditions and how people treat them. An honest outburst!
I welcomed his honesty and the trust he placed in me to respect his outburst. Ron Feldman was sitting next to me (unfortunately hidden from that camera angle). He was very moved by this unexpected encounter and the large part of the day we had spent accompanying sanmen on their routes in the streets of their section. He was so moved that he offered me a show in the Feldman Gallery right after this!"
….Building on her work with maintenance workers, Ukeles met with over 8500 employees of the New York Sanitation Department for Touch Sanitation. She shook the hand of each employee, saying, "Thank you for keeping New York City alive". She documented these encounters on a map and meticulously recorded her conversations with the workers. In exhibitions of the project, she also presented documentation of some of the workers' private stories, in the hope of altering public perception and negative attitudes toward sanitation workers. In order to assist the artist, the sanitation department provided her with a driver and a guide for the entire year.
Ukeles referred to the (at that stage all male) sanitation workers as "the housekeepers of the city" and expressed a desire to shatter misconceptions about the importance, and intelligence of sanitation workers, through making their labor and their stories visible.
This artwork successfully challenged ideas about who is important enough to make art about; what art can be (performance, conversation, stories, transport); and also made possible a new kind of social art practice, which continues in contemporary art today.
Mierle Ladetmen Ukeles (born 1939 Denver, USA) Based in New York City, Mierle Laderman Ukeles is known for her groundbreaking feminist, service-oriented artwork and performances.
Institut Funder Bakke Æbeløvej 20 8600 Silkeborg Denmark www.institutfunderbakke.com
Open Saturdays and Sundays 12 - 4pm and by appointment
Louis Backhouse, Men in Love (Farm), 2026, giclee prints on archival paper in 18 clip frames, 255cm x 84cm
‘Men in Love (Farm)’ consists of a collection of images of Piétrain pigs, taken from livestock breeding farm’s advertisement material. The work acts as a caricature illustration of society- simultaneously uttering the phrase that all men are pigs.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles Touch Sanitation Performance, 1977-1980/ printed in 2017 archival pigment print, measuring 16" x 24" or 24” x 16”.
Tony Just, Untitled 1994 , Print on photo paper 26.5 x 34 cm
In the early 1990ies Tony Just produced a body of work that consisted of him meticulously cleaning New York public toilets known to be cruising spots. He then took photos of sensualised cleaned surfaces in these otherwise never much cared for public spaces. In this case the curvy wet white porcelain of the urinal.
The work has been in depth developed and immortalized in the the Text - “Ghosts of Public Sex, Utopian Longings, Queer Memories.”- by the late great art historian José Esteban Muñoz
This Photo is the only remaining work from this series, it exists in 2 copies. The rest of the series has been lost.
Tony Just (born 1969, Maryland, USA.) Lives and works in Berlin.
Excerpt from the legendary text “Ghosts of Public Sex, Utopian Longings, Queer Memories.” in Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity by José Esteban Muñoz (2009)
‘3. Ghosh and Utopia I tum now from the ghost of Oscar Wilde that haunts Bloch's thinking on utopia to the ghosts that circulate in the photography of Tony Just. In 1994 Just completed a project that attempted to capture precisely what I'm calling the ghosts of public sex. The project began with Just selecting run-down public men's rooms in New York City, the kind that were most certainly tea rooms before they, like the Prince Street toilets that Giorno describes, were shut down because of the AIDS/HIV public health crisis. Just then proceeded to do the labor of scrubbing and sanitizing sections of the public men's rooms. The preparation of the spaces is as central to the series as the photos I choose to fcx:us on themselves; the only evidence of this behind-the-scenes aspect of the larger project are the clean spaces themselves- Just's labor exists only as a ghostly trace in a sparkling men's room. He documented this project through color slides and photographs (see illustrations) that focused on the bathrooms' immaculate state and the details of such spaces. The urinals, tiles, toilets, and fixtures that are the objects of these photo images take on what can only be described as a ghostly aurn, an other-worldly glow. This aura, this circuit of luminous halos that surround the work, is one aspect of the ghosts of public sex that this essay is interested in describing’.
Alex Vivian, Putridity studies, 2026 Used pillow cases, stretcher bars, MDF, PVA glue, lead pencil, hand cut printed paper
Pillowcases are overlooked as merely housing to soft inner fillings or a protective fabric liner. Said shells are accompanied by description… but of what exactly?
Pillow cases; skins, gutted; down/fluff filling removed, plucked; stitching removed.
Christine Kirubi, The Recording, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT, 19.05.2018, Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, E1 7LS, 20.12.2026, Institut Funder Bakke, Æbeløvej 20, 8600 Silkeborg, 19.9.2026, 2026, Vaseline.
The show is kindly supported by:
The Danish Arts Foundation - The Augustinus Foundation - Loise-Hansen Fonden- Silkeborg Municipality
Institut Funder Bakke
Æbeløvej 20
8600 Silkeborg
Denmark
Institutfunderbakke.com
Open Saturdays and Sundays 12 - 4pm and by appointment
IFB has step-free access.
If you have questions please feel free to contact us institutfunderbakke@gmail.com