Mortimer and Jenkins was first created in 2006 as a large scale hand carved woodblock print. The image is a dark and whimsical depiction of human nature; two skeletons, fashioned in ragtag battle armor pieced together from pots, pans, and other household wreckage, continue to battle, even in death.
The imagery is a direct reference to the James McNeill Ensor painting “Skeletons Fighting Over the Body of a Hanged Manâ€. It is currently the only piece by Swoon which is a direct adaptation of an historical work.
The piece’s title comes from the two re-engineered car motors that powered the seven rafts of the Miss Rockaway Armada down the Mississippi River from 2006- 2007.
Here, Mortimer and Jenkins has been translated into a richly toned steel plate etching and printed on archival Hahnemuhle paper in an edition of 45 printed in New York.
