Night Soil

“Here is described a common syndrome which most doctors have seen, but about which little has been written. Like the famous Baron von Munchausen, the persons affected have always travelled widely; and their stories, like those attributed to him, are both dramatic and untruthful. Accordingly the syndrome is respectfully dedicated to the Baron, and named after him.”
—British Medical Journal, R.A.J. Asher, M.D., F.R.C.P.[5]

http://www.artymagazine.com/pages/arty29.htm

I knew this would happen, without the facility to blog from my phone I would leave it too long and be faced with writing a novel to get up to date. I spend a great deal of my time on my phone. buying things from ebay and amazon and playing games while my beloved laughs at the strange noises emitted from both phone and myself. My current addiction is embarrassingly called INFINITY BLADE. it is extremely repetitive and silly and bores me to tears but if I can just get some adamantine armour I should be ok. Last night we watched Pumping Iron (amazon) in which Arnie philosophised about being a sculptor and the importance of pain. I can only agree but what shocked us both was to see the fresh faced Schwarzenegger psyche out an even younger pre-incredible Hulk Ferrigno. In a tiny workout room they were pumping themselves up for the final Mr Olympia pose off. Every time Ferrigno made a noise Arnold would complain until his acolyte looked completely unhinged. I suppose this wasn’t too extreme. In the amateur competition one contestant (the eventual winner) had hidden another’s tshirt. The victim, a gentle man, had just been telling us how he was bullied at school. The basement is beginning to look like a scene from Quatermass as I am preparing a large expanding foam disaster (ebay) for Monika Bobinska’s The Man Who Fell to Earth. In a fit of preparatory excellence I have made a form which matches the banister in the penthouse apartment in which the work is to be displayed, this done the finished blob should fit perfectly. As that sentence suggests, success seems unlikely.

Other things have been achieved, A visit to the very impressive Aid & Abet and to Darwin’s house in Downe, more of this later.

The Count of Monte Cristo II(Conspiracy) opens the day before the royal wedding at Rogue studios Manchester

Never ever EVER cold cold turkey from antidepressants, it isn’t clever. I have been stumbling around like the denizens of the Norwich road: eyes pointing in various directions, speech slurred, bowels uncertain. Indeed I have begun to feel a certain camaraderie with my neighbours from down the hill. I have to say my general appearance was not helped by the spayed cat haircut I had received from Annabel, if ever anyone looked like they had just been through a short course of ECT it was me. Anyway this has passed now and tomorrow I am to head to London to view a venue for a show in Haggerston. It is in a Penthouse apartment where Monika plans to let me loose with industrial amounts of expanding foam. I don’t think she realises just how sticky it is. I shall explain tomorrow.

The show at Exeter Phoenix went very well. We stayed in a lovely Thistle hotel near the gallery where we were very excited to hear that it had once been a women’s prison and that the unfortunate had been hung on the site of the flagpole in the carpark to the front. It was a hot day but the hotel, as is usual with all such eco friendly establishments, was far hotter. It was so hot indeed that, the next day, all the members of the Wilmore House group declared that they had spent the night “in the nud” with the blankets on the floor and the windows flung open to their maximum 9 inches. Poor Matt had far too much work to cram in and did a lovely job making it all look so balanced. He had been sponsored by a rum importer and so we were never far from stormy weather.

Next we head to Manchester for a short sharp show at Rogue.

Here in Ipswich I am thinking of opening a gallery. It will be called Sklep.