The John Holmes prick parade

John Curtis Holmes (August 8, 1944 - March 13, 1988) better known as "Johnny Wadd" (after the lead character in a series of related films), was one of the most prolific male porn stars of all

time, appearing in about 2,500 adult loops, stag films, and pornographic feature movies in the 1970s and 1980s. Though he has passed on, the most famous part of Holmes is still present in the flesh (or thermal plastic elastomer, as it were). "The Original" is one of hundred of thousand mass-produced Holmes homages marketed all around the world and was molded directly from the legendary star. In response to this "toy", I became fascinated and somewhat disturbed by the implication of ownership and agency implied by the mass marketing and commercialization of an individual's actual body part. Further playing upon this co-opting of identity and commodification of the body, I placed an open call for artists to design their own piece for the John Holmes Prick Parade. The nude female form has long dominated as the artists' subject. The John Holmes Prick Parade hopes to give some visibility to the much neglected male apparatus. This is a move towards balancing gender equality within the anatomical object-ification of the art world. Before you is the grand culmination of this process, which began almost 70 years ago with the birth of a most "gifted" individual.