Cockfight as artist accuses Fleabag of ripping off his 'wall of penises' sculpture

An artist has accused Fleabag’s producers of ripping off one of his ideas: a wall of penises.

Jamie McCartney insists the explicit artwork created by Olivia Colman’s character in the first season of the hit comedy is based on his own work, 4x4.

He says that since the storyline aired on the BBC comedy he has not been able to display his own work without being accused of plagiarism himself.

And he says production company Two Brothers Pictures had contacted him about using his work before filming started – but the correspondence ran dry, and they just ended up copying him instead.

Jamie McCartney unveiled 4x4, a gird of 16 fibreglass penises in a state of arousal, at an exhibition in 2012, four years before Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s comedy aired.

In the series, Fleabag’s hated godmother stages an explicit ‘sex-hibition’ of her art featuring the piece, made of casts of her lovers' penises.

Earlier this year Waller-Bridge revealed she had the piece in her home, with plans to move it to an office once lockdown was over.

‘I'm hoping it will eventually become a hat stand or something adorable like that,’ she told Graham Norton on his chat show. ‘But this is who welcomes people when they come to the door.’

McCartney  told Chortle that ever since the episode aired his authenticity had been questioned.

He said: ‘I don’t have a dispute with Fleabag and I love the show. It’s hilarious. It’s just irritating that the production company contacted me about using my work and then went quiet on me and mimicked what I do instead. I guess that was the cheaper option

‘The problem is that not only did they rip off my ideas and my work without giving credit where it is due, but now every time I show my original cock wall from 2012 I get accused of copying Fleabag, when the truth is quite the opposite. It’s a drag… 

‘It would be nice if they would acknowledge their actions and credit me as the originator.’

He added that when the show was remade in France – as Mouche, or ‘fly’ in 2018 – producers did do the right thing and credit him for being the influence behind the sequence.

McCartney, below, previously made a piece called The Great Work Of Vaginas in 2008,  featuring casts of more than 400 genitals.

The 4x4 work is currently on sale for just under £9,000, with McCartney’s description explaining that the intention was not sexual, but ‘actually quite comical, all waving about at jaunty angles’.

And he said the title was a pun ‘referring to the male ego being inextricable from their dicks and their cars’.

The original was also used in the 2014 French film Tristesse Club.

Representatives of Two Brothers Pictures have not responded to Chortle’s request for comment.

Last year Ricky Gervais changed a piece of artwork in After Life after a painting hanging in the living room of his character, Tony Johnson, was found to be an unauthorised copy of a celebrated Indigenous Australian artwork by Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri. Following the complaint, Gervais’s production company, Derek Productions, agreed to compensate the artist and display his work in the second series.

Published: 23 Dec 2020