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.
Elsewhere There Have Been Protests
Monika has contacted me again for an exciting sounding show somewhere in the heart of the east end. Such “exciting” contacts tend to send me scurrying into my basement studio to look for things I can’t find, to look at things I don’t want and move them around until they look less depressing. In between such scurryings (and cups of tea) I am also being interviewed by Andrew Bryant. This is taking the form of a rally of emails which I am trying to answer as quickly as possible in the interests of freshness. He did suggest a phone call but that would have been far too fresh for my tastes. To the same end I am also trying to end my daughter’s phone contract without recourse to actually talking to anyone. Unfortunately this is proving impossible.
“Vivien Duffield, the philanthropist whose father once owned the Selfridge’s department store, said she is giving 8.2 million pounds ($13.3 million) to 11 U.K. arts institutions including Tate Britain and the National Theatre.” Well woop de do. I don’t wish to change the name of this blog to “The Daily Whinge” BUT I do find this news rather depressing. This sort of philanthropy is lovely (and just what the Tories wanted) but it highlights where philanthropic monies will go. To large prestigious institutions (already generously funded) while the rest of the art world scrabbles around in the dirt. It seems we may return to the sort of grand patronage of the middle ages where the rich ensure their place in heaven by building cathedrals while the rest of us suck each other buboes for nourishment. Hmph! right enough of that. I have been commissioned by the Earl of Wilmore to film his Golden pheasants.
Smiley’s People ends with such a powerful feeling of despair that overwhelms the success of his plans. In fiction, unlike real life, no one is happy once their arch enemy is defeated. Holmes repeatedly mourns Moriaty’s demise at the Reichenbach falls, Jerry feels pity for Tom and Tom for Jerry. I have never seen such a feeling of utter hopelessness portrayed so effectively as when Alec Guinness’s Droopy-like face, virtually immobile, witnesses the capture of Karla. It is the closest thing I have ever seen to that feeling I get when an exhibition is hung and ready for the public.
In two days Annabel and I travel to Southend to talk about our work to the degree students there. We haven’t really planned it yet beyond assembling various images of dead budgies, bingo callers, tumbleweed and tumbling spacemen. It will be like an autopsy.
