Sexy, erotic, and throbbing. That is the best way to describe Emily Davidson's 2017 magnum opus entitled Lasagnerie. Exhibited in the OUSA reception for all to see, entrenched within a gilded frame, is the portrait depicting a seductive cartoon of Garfield dressed in lingerie, stockings, and stilettos.
When stopping by the Radio One market earlier this year, Emily saw that Critic was selling A1 posters of her paw-nographic imagery (I guess sex sells, eh?). In a blast to the past, the Otago Polytechnic Sculpting Honours graduate came into the Critic office to reminisce about her final boss feud with OUSA. While expecting our conversations to remain purely nostalgic, our yaps expanded into some wider themes: using art as a protest, and how much society is willing to spend on art. Introspective topics, considering that it all revolves around a very erotic depiction of Garfield.
The story began in 2017 when Critic made a post on Instagram requesting centrefold artwork. Emily stood up to the plate. Inspired by a drawing she saw of a gangster SpongeBob wearing a pimp suit while holding a wad of cash, Emily aimed to take something nostalgic and “make it really weird”. Potentially due to his indulgent nature, she chose Garfield as her muse – later adopting the name ‘Lasagnerie’, coined by a friend. The centrefold proved to be popular, gracing the walls of countless flats across Ōtepoti. “The rest is history,” alluded Emily.
The artist wanted Sexy Garfied to leave a mark on Dunedin, and not just in the patches of crusty wall paint torn away by blu-tack at year’s end. Emily submitted Lasagnerie for OUSA’s Artweek exhibition in the Link. Each year, it’s a tradition that the OUSA president selects a piece from the collection to be bought on behalf of the association, proudly displayed on their walls. After some haggling, 2017 President Hugh Baird purchased the masterpiece for an astonishing 250 buckeroonies. Though her piece didn’t win the competition, Emily knew that she “won the hearts [of students]”.
It took a year of snide comments from the OUSA Exec and watercooler conversations about Sexy Garfield before Critic Te Ārohi picked up the story (breaking news). The article platformed a quarrel among OUSA elites about whether the piece was a good use of students’ money. 2018 OUSA President Catherine Barlow-Groome called the artwork “a fucking waste of money” (art is subjective, I guess).
Instead of fighting with words, Emily chose to clap back in the medium she knew best: art. Emily reimagined Sexy Garfield, this time bathing in a pool of money, representing the $250 price tag. This work was published in Critic with the text “‘Waste of Money’ By Emily – dedicated to Catherine Barlow-Groome”. Having never spoken to the media until now, Emily says that her work “spoke for itself”.
It was at this point that our kōrero took a righteous pivot. While Emily understands that art is a luxury that many students simply cannot afford, she didn’t believe the criticism was warranted in this case. “When you are a student, that is expensive,” she says. “But a student didn't buy it.” God forbid a student association supports local artists.
“People will call anything a waste of money,” Emily continues. She critiques this mindset, referencing the strutting sculptures outside the Staff Club café, the molecule structure on Mellor Labs, and even the see-saws on the recently re-developed George Street; each respectively condemned at one point for being an economic folly. Without this kind of art, she says, we would be “living in a white box” and our walk home from Carousel would be much less eventful. Emily believes that there needs to be a place for art to keep our environment beautiful.
Emily remains on the defensive, justifying the price of her piece. The haggled-down price tag accounted for the “costly process” of getting her work printed on metallic paper and professionally framed. It also considered the “cultural impact” of her work.
Not letting her opps get her down, Sexy Garfield made two more appearances in Critic Te Ārohi. The first depicted Garfield and Odie the dog as Kill Bill characters, dressed in a fur-tight acrobatic suit, gripping a katana. The final showing of Sexy Garfield arrived in the last edition of 2018. The kitten is found posing for a Snapchat selfie while wearing her finest matching set of lingerie, wielding a bong close to her crotch – a work of art made in response to the Proctor who was caught at the time removing several bongs from student flats while the residents were away. Kudos to this playful form of protest.
Accepting that she had created her “magnum opus” and having moved on since graduating, imagine Emily’s surprise at discovering how the legacy of Lasagnerie has lived on. One group of 2018 students admitted to Critic that they stole 140 copies of the magazine to spread across their flatmate's bedroom wall while he was out playing football. “We eventually had to take them down because he got night terrors,” the flat told Critic. Six years later, the 2024 OUSA referendum included the question, ‘Should OUSA make free prints of Sexy Garfield available for all students?’ 63.6% of respondents voted no, ruining the chance for OUSA to become a distributor of paw-nography, but Critic reprinted it as a centrefold anyway.
Even outside of the walls of OUSA and Critic’s obsession with reprinting the sultry pussycat, Lasagnerie has popped up. A recent reissue of Lasagnerie found its place in this year's Med Revue, Diagnosis of a Wimpy Kid, used in place of a Playboy magazine found hidden under one of the characters' beds. Emily has made a creature that is out of her control, finding it to be “inescapable” long since her Polytech days. She even saw Lasagnerie spread across the wall of a friend-of–a-friend’s house while at a Halloween party. Each time she sees Sexy Garfield pop up, Emily is reminded that she has made “an impact on the world.”