Artists Space

A Night at the Shithole Opry with Derek McCormack
featuring Lynne Tillman

Thursday, May 14
7pm
Free, no RSVP required

Please join us for A Night at the Shithole Opry celebrating the publication of The Shithole Opry Collector’s Guide, Derek McCormack’s flashy new lookbook and devilish blend of art and fiction. The evening features a reading by McCormack, a conversation between the author/artist and Lynne Tillman, and a showcase of selected styles from the Haunted Hillbilly Collection of jewelry and junk.

A book with a bright yellow cover sits upright against a white background.
Cover of The Shithole Opry Collector’s Guide, Cushion Works, 2026 [A book with a bright yellow cover sits upright against a white background.]

Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren were the designers of punk’s most famous fashions—what if they were also vampires? The Guide documents Hillbilly Heaven, a 1950s collection created by Westwood and McLaren for hillbilly vampires to wear to the Grand Ole Opry, the mother church of country music. From safety pin fangs to punk Minnie Pearl pearl necklaces, the Guide showcases all manner of star-studded shit from the collection, accompanied by a foreword by McLaren and a reprint of a review from a long-lost issue of Vampire Vogue magazine. The book is a riff on Westwood and McLaren’s work of the 1970s, which reimagined American rockabilly and rocker gear; it’s also a perversion of the clean-cut Christian facade of much country music. Most of all, it’s a parody of the way fashion designers pirate the past for inspiration, as it poses the question: what if the past stole from fashion the way fashion steals from the past? The Shithole Opry Collector’s Guide combines McCormack’s original artwork with his most original writing to date: the result is spectacular and sinister, sidesplitting and spine-chilling.

Derek McCormack is a writer and artist who lives in Toronto. His work is characterized by its absurdity, obscenity, hilarity, brevity, and darkness. His 2004 novel The Haunted Hillbilly (Soft Skull) was named a “Best Book of the Year” by both The Village Voice and The Globe and Mail. Recent novels include The Well-Dressed Wound (2015) and Castle Faggot (2020), both published by Semiotext(e), and a collection of essays about fashion and death titled Judy Blame’s Obituary (Pilot Press, 2021).

Lynne Tillman is a novelist, short story writer, and cultural critic. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship; a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant; and The Katherine Anne Porter Prize awarded by The American Academy of Arts and Letters for contributions to literature. She is a professor and writer in residence in the Department of English at the University at Albany.

Artists Space Venue is generously supported by Stephen Cheng, Allan Schwartzman, and David Zwirner.

    Page 120-121 of The Shithole Opry Collector’s Guide, Cushion Works, 2026