Political junkies might have heard recently that the Tea Party Nation had to cancel its July convention in Las Vegas because it was too hot. Perhaps Beverly Hills might do as an alternative venue. Next Friday, on Beverly Boulevard, the right-wing group will have a chance to see their de facto in what might be her most revealing portrait to date.

On that day, as part of the "Porn in the U.S.A." exhibition at the London-based Lazarides Gallery's L.A. pop-up space, British artist Jonathan Yeo — who rose to international attention after making a collage of George W. Bush out of clippings of pornography in 2007 — will unveil another series of provocative collages. Among them you'll find Tiger Woods, Sigmund Freud, a wizened image of Sean Connery as James Bond, and the piece de resistance, Sarah Palin, wrapped in a moose head frame, no less. Instead of oil, the former Alaskan governor's face is rendered with images of pubic hair, lace panties, and engorged reproductive organs of both sexes. "They're not insults, per se," Yeo told ARTINFO. "They're just comments on people who trade off their morality and sexuality.

While these works are primed to spark a political uproar, and perhaps outshine his deftly rendered portraits and wallpaper, "it was important to do a couple of eye-catching ones where people would get the joke as a way of leading people into it," said Yeo, who's currently installing the show in Los Angeles. "But hopefully they'll come in and find there's all sorts of things they weren't expecting." He added, "There are two potential audiences: the knowing art world people — people who will come down because they have an idea of what's going on — and the people who come by because of the massive walk-by pedestrian traffic."

Those expectations have caused quite a similar stir on the market in recent years. Damien Hirst purchased Yeo's porn collage of Paris Hilton, which made its U.S. debut at the 2008 Lazarides "Outsiders" group show, where it was also handed out in the form of limited-edition posters. His collages have also previously immortalized the likes of Hugh Hefner, Lucian Freud, and British anti-porn campaigners Mary Whitehouse and Cliff Richards, and are all made via the same techniques he employs on his oil portraits of celebrities like Tony Blair, Dennis Hopper, Rupert Murdoch (currently in London's National Portrait Gallery), and British Prime Minister David Cameron, a work that recently fetched $300,000 at auction. (The Bush image is in the collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France.)

"I try to make collages that don't look like collages, and I think I'm really kind of painting with the porn," Yeo said. "I don't want to sound pretentious about it, but the process is more like painting in terms of the compositional decisions you make." As a result, Yeo's star seems to be on the rise outside of the studio as well. Last year he was tapped by Soho House owner Nick Jones to curate the art at his Hollywood outpost. The artist brought in 70 works from the likes of Ed Ruscha, Hirst, Raymond Pettibon, Shepard Fairey, and Tracey Emin, and is currently at work on Jones' New York and Miami properties. "I've become an accidental curator," he joked.

While Yeo expects the work in the new show to fool the eye, at least at first glance, he looks forward to the "interesting delayed reaction once people figure out what's going on," he said. "On past experiece most people enjoy it. One or two have been shocked. Bear in mind, we've always tended to show the pieces at places like the [Lazarides] gallery in Soho where people are expecting slightly provocative things. I don't know if that's the case in Beverly Hills, but that's the fun of it, really. It would be disingenuous to think we won't shock and offend people, but I hope we get a range of reactions."

Those reactions, at least for the second audience Yeo described, will have to wait until the day after the July 8 opening reception, which — like all Lazarides openings — is private.