"This Should be enjoyable..."
The Artist, In light grey Shamanic T-shirt, attempting to levitate, (after Heckel/Bowie).
I am writing to outline my suitability for the post of ‘good artist’ in the minds of the public, and also, in the profoundly pernickety pea-brains of the arts professionals that have pooh-phoned me the length and breadth of cloud cuckoo land. Flower on you crazy spudnatos!
After studying painting at Surrey Institute of Art and Design, I moved to Acton Vale in West London with a view to being discovered as a vital new talent. The following couple of years were spent becoming increasingly flummoxed by the forces of big metropolitan bustle (No hustle was either taken or given at this time) and culminating in a sheepish return to my home county of Devonshire, where the lambs frolic unhindered, me among their number. My tail wasn’t even sheltering between my legs, it had darted up my arse and was hunkering down for the long haul.
Over the past few decades, I have been working as lecturer and artist, delivery driver and elite dishwasher. From 1998 I spent a six year period in Istanbul. In addition to exhibiting, I was employed as an instructor in the Visual Communications Design department of Istanbul Bilgi University, where I devised and taught two undergraduate programs aimed at investigating communications media through the lens of visual theory, and moreover, examining fine art practices in every which way but loose.
The evening before the flight to Turkey I had watched the film Roman Holiday, little did I know I’d encounter at least three avuncular Gregory Pecks kind enough to guide me through life in Istanbul.
In 2005, I completed a Master’s degree in time-based art practices at Dartington College of Arts (UK), where inter-departmental transparency was encouraged. As a result, working with musicians, writers and performers became a valuable insight into parallel art practices, and indeed, how engaging in these disciplines might inform alternative approaches to painting and drawing. Alas, I could never quite bring myself to initiate any collaborations with fellow students, so my own self-conscious form of transparency was conducted at a distance.
As a kind of bloated footnote to the photograph at the top of this page, I’d like to outline some thoughts and influences that led to the making of the image.
During his time in Berlin, Bowie attended the Brücke Museum and was influenced by Heckel’s painting Roquairol, a portrait of fellow German Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Bowie appears to borrow the persona of Roquairol in his pose for the Heroes album cover. Is the protagonist brushing crumbs off his jacket, practicing Tai Chi, or indeed, attempting to levitate (after Johns). Here is an example of the domino effect of influence, translation and recontextualization: Johns riffing off Bowie riffing off Heckel riffing off Tailors, Bakers and Martial Artists.
The Image on the right shows Bowie manipulating two Naan breads. During the height of his cocaine addiction Bowie notoriously sustained himself on a diet of red bell peppers and milk. He appears as gaunt and almost translucent in a documentary of the time, Cracked Actor.
Throughout his career, Bowie controlled his image as a key expressive element of his art. I’m fond of the notion that behind closed doors, post tour and between recording, Bowie would purge body and soul by eating very hot curries, probably Phall, twice a day for several months. A practice known within the music industry as doing “A Turbo Elvis.”
The idea of modifying established forms is fundamental to my art practice. Of significance is Marcel Duchamp’s concept of the Readymade: that an artist may simply select an existing object or image, change its context, negate its function, customize, ascribe a new thought for it, and therefore transform it into fresh art. Moreover, Asger Jorn’s détournement (detour) artworks set a precedent, that is, for example, existing paintings that have been altered by subsequent artistic intervention. Furthermore, talk of pastiche, parody and quotation play a critical role in opening up possible aesthetic strategies. Nicolas Bourriaud’s ideas of Post-Production and the Semionaut, navigating pathways through existing forms, to paraphrase, are also an extension of Duchamp, but to what end… an echo chamber of possible outcomes loop-the-loop… best wade in, free the forms and rework them to our own artistic purposes. And if that’s not enough, there’s a crisis of originality floating around in the void that just won’t flush.