DUELING ARTISTS

Clayton Pettet, Performance Art Virgin, Faces Challenger In Long-Planned Public Deflowering

Bingham (left) and Pettet (right)

Remember Clayton Pettet, the gay 19-year-old art student from London who vowed to publicly lose his anal virginity in an act of performance art titled Art School Stole My Virginity? Well, a new art student has come forward to say Art School Stole My Virginity was actually his idea first.

John Bingham is a 24-year-old art student currently attending Wimbledon College of Art in London. He claims Pettet got the whole public deflowering idea for him years ago, and now he’s staging his own performance piece titled Art School Stole My Sexuality in response.

“I won’t go as far to say that Clayton stole my idea for a show,” Bingham says in a press release, “but I will say that he was aware of my plans (when I shared them with him in 2010) and did well to add that flamboyant ‘Clayton Twist’ to get tongues wagging about his new performance.”

Art School Stole My Sexuality will feature Bingham having a public threesome with a male art dealer and a female assistant.

Pettet, naturally, is outraged. On Thursday, he took to his Facebook page to express his anger: “My name is Clayton Pettet, as you all know I came up with an idea Art School Stole My Virginity after months of research into Virginity and sexuality and my own personal emotion with art and society.”

He continues: “Today I found out that a boy has replicated my piece called Art School Stole My Sexuality a complete replication and utter plagiarism of my idea.”

Pettet accusing Bingham of “ruining art” and not respecting “how much this piece means to me.”

“He wants to take everything from me,” Pettet writes, “this piece is everything to me and all of you know this.”

Fans of Pettet quickly jumped to his defense.

“Clayton we believe in you ignore this dickhead,” one person wrote on his wall.

“You are creating something entirely innovative and original, no one can take that away from you!” another person crowed.

Bingham, however, rejects Pettet’s accusations of plagiarism. “Mine is more to do with coming to terms with sexuality and how that links to my time at art schools and working in the art world,” he says.

Pettet’s deflowering was originally scheduled to happen in January, but was re-scheduled for April for unknown reasons. Both his and Bingham’s performances will occur on the same day at different venues.

“Please do not give this boy any of your attention,” Pettet is urging fans, “you are all to [sic] good for people like him.”

When asked why he thinks Pettet is so upset, Bingham replied: “I don’t think he wants any attention taken away from him.”

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