Art of Giving

By Lydia Mansi on October 5th 2010

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“People go absolutely bonkers for my bottoms,” says Boyarde Messenger. She’s referring to her art, of course. Messenger is making a name for herself with her Pop Art Bottoms – repetitive, playful, sensuous images of female nudes that combine her hand painting and photographic skills.

And this month, Messenger, a Chelsea girl born and bred, will be showcasing her bottoms at the Saatchi Gallery, when it plays host to a brand new charity art exhibition called The Art of Giving. Inspired by her best friend Charlotte Dellal (they shared a dorm at Bedales) Messenger will be creating a live installation of female nudes all wearing Dellal’s beautifully extravagant shoes.

“It’s really exciting,” says Messenger, “I’ve been given this great, ginormous space by the gallery and I really want to stand out.” Messenger will be showing alongside established names from the art world such as Gavin Turk and Steve Goddard and a number of celebrities like Vic Reeves and Noel Fielding. But she’ll have the advantage of naked models clad only in Dellal’s shoes and a G string, each handpainted by Messenger in her unique style to mirror the shoes they are wearing. It will be, says Messenger, “a stunning fusion of art and fashion”. Behind the models on their plinth, Messenger will hang some of her famous Pop Art Bottoms.

Ebullient and passionate about her work, Messenger is a winning interviewee. She explains she’s always been interested in the female form but had been a commercials director. It was a chance fun photo of a friend’s bottom on holiday in the South of France that morphed into her Pop Art Bottoms. She remembers that she played around with the initial bottom image “and went a bit Warhol” and suddenly everyone wanted one. Messenger has done a range of photographic work in the last few years, and shown widely with the Cynthia Corbett Gallery, “but nothing sells as well as my bottoms,” she laughs “and now I just embrace it”.

Bottoms have now led her to Belize. A few years ago, Messenger visited the Caribbean island and realised that she felt happier there both emotionally and creatively than she did in London. What she describes as her “flip flops and rice n’ beans side” is now half of her life as she splits her time between Belize and the Big Smoke. And in Belize her bottoms have become a more serious project. “I found a whole new world of women who are slightly dominated by the Alpha males out there,” she says. Little by little and in a “very humble” way, Messenger is trying to change perceptions on the island, working with local women, painting them – often using her own painstaking handcrafted stencils and photographing them. She recalls how one local girl had absolutely “zero” confidence but by working with her “I brought out this little inner goddess”. Messenger says none of her work is rewarding as this, “slowly but surely I’m changing the way they look at women, that’s my personal gratification.”

Not that Messenger has opted for a hippie existence, she’s quite happy to return to London, rinse the sand out of her hair, pop on one of her own beloved pairs of vertiginous Dellal shoes and take the city by storm. It was a chance meeting in London with the founder of the Art of Giving, Tracey Bambrough, that led to her being asked to take part.

“I feel very privileged to be involved” says Messenger. The simple premise behind Art of Giving is to combine the sale of original artwork by up-and-coming artists with raising money for charities. A number of charities will be involved at Saatchi where all art will be for sale, with 50 per cent of proceeds available to the artist and a substantial percentage being donated to the charity. 

On paper, one could assume that life has been handed to Messenger on a silver platter. The school, the friends, the opportunites but Messenger insists this is not the case. “Technically I am a Chelsea rah rah but I’m about as un-rah rah as you can get,” she insists. She went to Bedales on a scholarship, drives a battered old Golf and doesn’t assume life owes her anything. “I’m so proud of myself because I know I’ve done it all by myself.”  And no one is going to argue with that. 

The Art Of Giving: artofgiving.co.uk, 0845 224 1884
Gallery agent: thecynthiacorbettgallery.com, 020 89476782
Boyarde Messenger: boyarde.com, 07961 160472

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