Duncan Ward
This is the artist who inspired me out of my art block. He has done a series of 50 or so drawings from previous performances of his. His drawing is incredibly fresh and interesting with no pretentions. His performances are viseral which revisited as drawings become incredibly exciting and unusual depictions of himself. Here is a link to his show at the Whitstable Bianale
http://www.kentculturalbaton.com/artists/duncanwar..
also the best thing I’ve read for ages from Duncan –
Extracts from Ecstatic Notebook by Duncan Ward:
‘A scattering of caves towards the top of a mountain, the grottoes look out over the precipice, the sides of the mountain dropping sharply away beneath them; far below forests of holmoak descend right to the bottom of the valley in an impenetrable mass of leaf and shadow; concealing birds, rabbits, deer, and boar; up near the top the caves nestle between great wedges of grey rock stacked up steeply straining for the summit; silence at the mountaintop; and tangles of nettle, thickets of bush and bramble among the slanting rocks.
Here once the hermit saints would have mortified themselves, throwing their naked bodies down and rolling in the thorns. Splendid men, whatever you think of their spiritual views. It is ultimately a human gesture, rolling around like that, their blood leaking into the dirt. There was a nice thrashing of human limbs there, whatever it did or didn’t do for the soul.
Nowadays, that sort of thing is left to the video artists. They do it in a different spirit perhaps, but it is good that someone is continuing the work.
Those are the fun parts of Christianity, the crazy bits where it was interesting.
It would have been painful but it must have been fun: rolling around like that, like maniacs, in the thornbushes, under golden skies. No matter what your opinions about religion, faith cannot be all bad if it gives you courage to do things like that.
Those prickly bushes must have died back and regrown through a lot of generations since they last snagged human flesh on their thorns. They aren’t trampled down so much now.
Once upon a time they were beaten this way and that by the writhings of holy men. Their branches were twisted under arms and legs and they bit back with their prickles, carving up flesh, mopping up blood on their leaves until they were stained quite red. They were carnivorous plants back then; they had blood on their lips, they gorged themselves on meat.
Nobody rolls in the thornbushes these days. The bushes sit tight in their soil, their spikes are sharp as ever but no-one wants to utilise them in that way. They hold still, undisturbed, the same as any other bushes. The blood they once drew has long since seeped away.’
http://www.sanguinearts.org.uk/dunword.htm
