Taking The Piss

Taking The Piss is a new photographic series by artist Matto Lucas, developed for exhibition at XYZ Gallery as part of Midsumma 2026 group exhibition; “Present (Performance).”

Taking The Piss reclaims a private bodily act, reframing urination as a site of humour, eroticism, masculinity, and performance. What is usually relegated to the hidden, functional, or even abject becomes here a subject of spectacle, ritual, and portraiture. The act of urination oscillates between waste and purification, rejection and desire, shame and liberation—its contradictions becoming fertile ground for both play and provocation.

Within queer subcultures, this gesture also carries a charged erotic potential, complicating its position between the intimate and the transgressive. Taking The Piss aims to live between repulsion and attraction, earnestness and parody, the banal and the spectacular.

Exhibited at XYZ Photo Gallery as part of Midsumma 2026

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