The Freak Family Roadshow Pop-Up at The Insect Asylum

The Freak Family Roadshow Pop-Up at The Insect Asylum on Sunday May 31st:

Donation Based Tickets for The Freak Family Roadshow PLUS get $2 off your General Admission Ticket to The Insect Asylum with every ticket donation to visit The Freak Family Roadshow located in the back parking space behind the museum. Upon check-in you will receive a $2 off discount to apply to General Admission to The Insect Asylum. Donation tickets will be available here and at the door.

About The Freak Family Roadshow:

The Freak Family Roadshow is a traveling sculptural art installation of a gorilla mother, an alien father and their strange hybrid baby, cruising the backroads of America, trapped in an eternal time loop, confined to a canned-ham-style 1950s era trailer. Outside the trailer there is a lurid sideshow banner and an animatronic paper-mache carnival barker promising an experience “that will make you grateful for your normal life.”

Once inside the fully-restored vintage trailer, one finds a family, with the child’s toys littering the trailer floor, tchotchkes adorning the shelves and tender family photos hanging on the walls, while pleasant tunes from the 1950s play over the radio.

The exhibit also mythologizes aspects of Cunningham’s own family: the art on the walls was made by the artist when she was a little girl and the baby’s school photo features Cunningham’s now deceased grandmother and uncle. Cunningham’s mother, a primatologist, and her artist father, who incorporates UFO and conspiracy theory into his work, are also reflected in the installation’s characters. The caged guinea pigs and newspaper clippings about Laika the dog, who shot into space, hint at the broader exploitation of animals.

The inner construction of the gorilla, alien and baby uses a combination of newspaper, tin foil, duct tape, bits of trash and paper mache. The carnival barker is made of welded wire and paper mache. The gorilla’s skin is tire inner tubes and her hair is sourced from an alpaca farm in New Mexico. The alien’s skin is encaustic wax. The child's skin is a combination of the two materials.

About the Artist:

Jo Cunningham is the creator of The Freak Family Roadshow and a self-taught sculptor. She works with paper mache, hot glue, encaustic wax, bubblegum and recycled/found objects. Some of her inspirations include: folk and outsider art, old-school Disney theme park rides, P.T. Barnum and Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. She loves animals and is interested in people.

You can follow her on instagram @the_freakfamily

Donation based tickets are non-refundable

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Host or Publisher Nina Salem