Hot shots: horny hedonism, nudity and London’s queer underground

In a city that runs at 1,000 miles per hour with a pulse pumping at 160 bpm, it can be easy to get swept along with the ceaseless intensity of London life. Surviving a tumultuous existence as a young, flourishing queer being often involves an additional and nuanced set of hurdles you have to jump over to not get left behind. Jack Scollard’s new photography project The Horny of Plenty acts as the meditation amongst the madness, forcing the reader to stop, take a breath and look around at the abundant beauty of the people and places often taken for granted.

Dedicated to ​“anyone in London who showed me kindness… or their cock”, the 104-page zine captures the zeitgeist of the capital’s unrelenting pursuit of pleasure, while opening up conversations around queer people and our relationships with sex, stigma and addiction. Depicting intimate portraits of friendship, lovers and liaisons alike, Scollard creates a seductive sense of belonging in their photography, guiding the viewer to step inside club toilet cubicles with the promise of an unforgettable afterparty.

Yet among the arresting depictions of sculpted bodies, sweat-soaked pecs and hairy pits (as well as a handful of impressive erections), what permeates is the comfortable sense of belonging and sisterhood felt among queer support systems in typically extreme social terrains.

Post-immigration to London from their native Dublin, Scollard quickly immersed themselves in the fabric of the city’s thriving queer party scene and ended up creating a time capsule of the unadulterated, brief-yet-impactful connections they made along the way. In addition, whimsical undertones are amplified in Lisbon-based designer Graham Dow’s playful graphics, plastered across the NSFW photo book.

Documenting their own profoundly transitional exploits, plus the seminal characters that left an impression, Scollard additionally called upon friends and collaborators Shane Morgan and Sean King, as well as Berlin-based, Czech-born visual poet David Lindert to flesh-out the zine’s unfiltered narrative. Throughout, conversational transcripts and anecdotes pop up, as though confiding their weekend antics and escapades to close pals.

Released under Scollard and collaborator Jordan Hearns​’s print-publishing project, SMUT Press, the pair work on platforming and elevating the voices of fellow queer creatives, attributing their success to ​“the collaboration, mutual cooperation and the support of our wider community.”

The Horny Of Plenty is a bareback depiction of life at the margins. It maps hedonistic displays of flesh, fleeting sexual encounters, high octane queer euphoria and other traces of tender kinship hidden among the interstices of London’s stoic concrete exterior. The zine acts as a love letter to the flippant, seemingly insignificant and unsung moments, overlooked and often forgotten, which are still essential to our coming of age. Scollard’s zine is a reminder to pause and take in the beauty of a city moving too fast to remember who you were a year before.

Check out @smut_press for more information on The Horny of Plenty’s launch event, hosted at The Glory, 281 Kingsland Rd, E2 8AS, on April 27^th.