Zach Toppin | Limited Edition Fine Art Print
Alongside the launch of Scary Boots Issue 2: DESIRE, Scary Boots is thrilled to collaborate with artist Zach Toppin to present his first ever release of fine art prints in a limited edition of 100. The limited edition print of Zach Toppin‘s oil painting ‘It’s Time III’ is available to pre-order now, for delivery after 21 April 2025.
IT’S TIME III (2023)
Archival Pigment Print on 310gsm cotton rag paper
Individually signed and numbered by the artist
Certificate of Authenticity included
Edition of 100
40cm x 40cm / 15.75inches x 15.75inches
Copyright Zach Toppin and Scary Boots
About the work:
It’s Time III examines the construction of masculinity and its codes, specifically the wristwatch, through a trans lens. The wristwatch is explored as a fetishized object representing masculine identity, historically used as a status symbol in advertising from the 1980s, a time marked by heightened machismo. Watches were portrayed as essential accessories that signified power, wealth, and masculinity. For a trans person, these symbols of masculinity are not just tools for building an external male identity but are also a means of seeking societal acceptance in a world that marginalizes them. The work reflects on the role of such symbols in both embodying a masculine ideal and navigating the complexities of gender and identity. It looks at the gendered heterosexual advertising of the past and how it influences the formation of butch, femme, and trans identities.
About the artist:
Zach Toppin (1987) is a London based multidisciplinary artist. His work is an investigation, celebration and an honouring of queerness and identity struggle, weaving together stories about emotion, gender, desire, longing, sex and love. A collaging of his own explorations, and an archiving of those of his queer community and ancestors, he finds through it a way to navigate the dichotomy of trans unease and euphoria.
Toppin makes work about the languages of masculinity and queer culture, the external signifiers we use to build our identity fantasies. The use of clothing as not just fabric, but opportunity; as a tool to transcend gender. The fetishization of items, possessions, symbols, relics, the ways we use them in our rituals of existence, in our presentations of who we are, in building internal strength through exterior armours.
It thinks about time travel, about secret messages, about building portraits and personal narratives through a series of scrupulously combined items, sends messages of care, communion, struggle, heartbreak. It gives intimate insights into a private trans life.
About Scary Boots:
“An arts zine with its feet in the slime.”
Scary Boots is an independent arts and literature zine, produced quarterly and risograph printed in limited edition. Each issue is themed around a singular prompt, inviting contributors to respond to the theme as they see fit. Scary Boots showcases the vital work of writers, artists and photographers. Issue 2: DESIRE is available for pre-order now.