The Pyre

Artists reference their lives all the time, Maybe it’s a desire to return to the past or getting trapped by an organising principle.

Being the manager of my own life and not wanting to let the inner Artist out without a purpose. I had an Art Pyre at the weekend.

After being ill for 8 months, turning 44 and now having to wear glasses for the first time in my life, a burning seemed appropriate.

Metaphorically my scribbles seem to take up more space than they should. But the catalyst was talking to a UK street artist who had just sold $50,000 of work.  

I had also noticed in Melbourne a candlelight vidual for a ‘Banksy’ It turned out that some people believed that a Chapel Street wall painted by somebody from Bristol in the UK to be of some supposed Australian cultural merit.

Every work created with a street artist seems to reference a screen printed 'Warhol’, he did it first.It’s really like trying to be the ‘Sex Pistols’ why bother.(yes I know its stencil Art, but the same principle applies)

While in London earlier this year I saw a ‘Grayson Perry’ installation. His new works alongside objects made by unknown men and women from the British Museum’s collection.

It wasn’t perfect screen prints or past ups but people having a decent stab at craft. Coming up with incredible beautiful but wonky objects.

Street and Non Street artists go through the same process it’s just that Graffiti art is just a bit me too at the moment, Makes me want to burn all my stuff. Oh I just did.....

The Portable Fist Pump

In my fluoro shirted locality. There are at this moment, seven apartment buildings scratching into the sky. The array of equipment brought in, by the builders to pull these erections skywards. Looks like a small war effort surrounded by traffic cones.

With the influx of workers comes the ever-present HSE requirements, Flags , Go and Slow signs, Whistles and the portaloo. The ability to port a toilet into any area is a relative new thing. But they arrive stacked on trucks, craned into position for use. Virtually self-cleaning they are able to store the expressed liquids in their self-contained polycarbonate shell.

Toilets, potable and public, have a history back to the mid 18thCentury the first modern, with a flush (in a Victorian sense) public lavatory, was opened in London during 1852, Constructed for the ‘The City of London Corporation’ by contractors George Jennings of Brighton. They were usually underground. Jennings calling them ‘Halting Stations.' charging 1d, a go. 

Initial Public use of these ‘Halting Stations' was difficult. As it was a topic which nobody mentioned. But by 1895 Jennings had his underground public conveniences in many British and Empire towns. With the modernisation of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods saw the construction of free public conveniences above ground plus a reform campaign also campaigned  for facilities for women, as the early Toilets were primarily for men. 

Now in the 21^st Century a Public convenience is available in shopping centres, public buildings, pubs and clubs, and motorway services areas. In Australia we have National Public Toilet Map this shows the location of more than 14,000 public and private toilet facilities across Australia for Public use

. These small public spaces are in fact used for all manner of shenagins .We all know this as condoms, are usually sold in toilets. Couples, and in fact as many as will fit in, have been engaged in the primary sexual activity of mankind in a small spaces, since we walked upright.

In Canada recently a couple was arrested for public lewdness in a pay toilet, but successfully argued that as it was a pay toilet , the couple  were basically in a form of hotel accommodation. Gay code for a public toilets in the UK during 1960s was a cottage, to go cottaging was to have anonymous sex in a cubical, It could involve all manor of signals and/or glory or Judas holes drilled in walls to view or perform acts .

In the present we have people using a phone to film themselves or others polishing the purple bishop in a cubical, Posting this on Websites to advertising services for those who want to get jiggy in small space. As we now don’t live in the era ‘self-polluted sin and all its frightful consequences’ (Dr. Balthazar Bekker) what I propose is the pay mobile ejaculation space.

A 2003 study in Australia found that men who ejaculated most (more than five times a week) in their 20s, 30s and 40s had about a third less instances prostate cancer. Research undertaken in Japan shows that men take 35 seconds to use a urinal, while women take a minimum of 60 seconds to use a loo. But the average time for intercourse is between 7 and 10 minutes. So there is a health benefit and a revenue earning potential in all this latent sexual energy.

In that suburb of mine, before work and at lunchtime. It’s a busy time for the ladies who operate outside as chippies, sparkies and plumbers seek some crotch attention before another shift starts.

Over 40 years after France's May 1968 revolution spawned the slogan "pleasure without obstruction,", Local authorities should now be looking into ways of making small public spaces more available.

In these times of austerity and cut backs, They could install automatic self-cleaning web friendly pay spaces, We could then all hire The Portable Fist Pump. In a small movable room that can store bodily fluids, We could communicate, defecate  and fornicate all at the same time. when nature called.

The WTO declared, 19 November, as World Toilet Day.

The Spark

Why would I not, you'll see what I mean

I want to paint like James Hunt

I want to paint like Malcom Mclaren

I want to paint like Jarvis Cocker

I want to paint like Bill Drummond

I want to paint like Ornet Coleman

I want to paint like Michael Curtiz

I want to paint like Douglas Adams

I want to paint like Brian Eno

I want to paint like R Bukminster Fuller

I want to paint like Robert Opron

I want to paint like Russ Meyer

I want to paint like Pancho Guedes

I want to paint like Eva Tanguay

I want to paint like Alan Watts

I want to paint like Pedro Rodríguez

I want to paint like Guy Debord

I want to paint like Geoffrey Pyke

I want to paint like Roald Dahl

I want to paint like Helen Mirren

I want to paint like Tazio Nouvalari

I want to paint like Steve McQueen

I want to paint like Douglas Bader

I want to paint like J.G Ballard

I want to paint like John Barry

I want to paint like David Attenbourgh

I want to paint like Fenella Fielding

I want to paint like Scott Walker

I want to paint like Christopher Hitchens

I want to paint like Henry Moore

I want to paint like Eric Morecombe

I want to paint like Mark Leckey

I want to paint like Ken Nordine

I want to paint like Isamu Noguchi

I want to paint like Rosa Luxemburg

I want to paint like Alighero Boetti

I want to paint like Carson McCullers

I want to paint like Debbie Harry

I want to paint like David Byrne

I want to paint like Basil Kirchin

I want to paint like Kenneth Williams

I want to paint like Vivienne Westwood

I want to paint like Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth

I want to paint like Gil Scott Heron

I want to paint like Brion Gysin

The Aesthetic Anaesthetist

I listened on Friday to somebody called “Drake’ stating that a comprehensive plan to arrest all corrupt global bankers and political elite existed, and was being put into action (2012-03-29). Although he wasn't quite sure if it's implementer was the American military, NATO or Disney. Frankly what I got from the interview, really, was his belief that the use of toilet paper made us civilized.

Now centrally located between a million rubbish TV channels and the insidious trap of being permanently on-line. I have put myself through the boredom of listening to this for three hours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjZgsRt8PBc&feature=share

You have to be a certain age to remember actually waiting patiently for the next TV programme to start. Between the school's programmes and just before the News but after a test card, being bored because the telly was rubbish was part of my day, if you don't remember the pre-channel hopping world; you can't help but feeling a little nostalgic for. Although I am getting concerned that boredom now ,is a sleeping bag with no zip. 

We all seem to be staring at a cultural dog’s breakfast. Everybody’s ideas are already concerned with nostalgia to the exclusion of everything else. The wistfull toothpaste tube is squeezed out every day to find a solution for the future, extending that nostalgia even to last week.

As human beings we have a maximum aural range that begins at 12Hz to 20,000Hz, the human eye has limits to its vision, the human tongue has approx, 10.000 taste buds and our olfactory range is limited. 

Even our brain is limited in size, allowing us to experience only these parameters:

• ·         11 Foods Groups, 5 Basic Tastes.
• ·         7 Colours in the Spectrum,14 basic Pantone Colours.
• ·         7 Basic musical notes.
• ·         750,000 Probable English words.
• ·         7 Basic Human story plots.

Or if you like 

• ·         80000 Chinese characters.

All of this is limiting, so we are close to looking into an abyss , but in this case the abyss is the sum of every human experience sent to you via Google. We are drowning in this data feed during our strange love affair with the difference engine.

With a cure close to Altzheimers maybe a drug can be created to treat these cognitive symptoms, memory problems could disappear with the application of this drug so that last week’s cultural life can be taken again. As at this moment, all I see is stuff I have seen before. All what I hear I have heard before.

I usually try to walk a line between a toddler and a conceptual artist but we have got to a point where the regurgitation of cultural output is all that is available.

I except that I am the sum of somebody else’s ideas, but sometimes I see my artistic job, is to mix and mash, where mixing hasn’t occurred before. But even that becoming a strain.

With 21^st Century Technology. Sensors are now able to record all of my bodies movements, cameras can record all what I see and recording equipment can listen to my day , People of the future will have J.G Ballards prediction waiting for them .

Fear of the Future J.G Ballard

I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: Boring. And that's my one fear:. That everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again... the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.

You have to question the Gorgons stare, when staring at a portal has the option of experiencing somebody else life, Its anaesthetising the us all.We could all become Buddhist.  

But let’s arrest 10,000 people across the globe in one go, that’s never been done before.Culturally it'll be great 

Racing Cars

On my Art CV it says Ex-Racing Driver, Here is the evidence . I raced Formula Ford between 1987 and 1995 when I completely ran out of money and took up ceramics to fill my time. I found some photos the other day after scanning them so I would not loose them. Thought they could go here too.

Out and About 2

Been out to Armadale

Magazine inserts are an effective way(to deface magazines ) for companies(people)  to distribute information ( pages from my note book) to a wide array of customers(people who don't know me). They can be used to introduce a new product(or publish semi naked women), publicize a special promotion or even kick off an advertising campaign.

I pinched the above from some marketing website, but nothing stops a resourceful artist from doing this themselves, as everybody likes free stuff.

Flaming Mass Market

Flaming an online argument that becomes nasty or derisive, where insulting a party to the discussion takes precedence over the objective merits of one side or another.

It now seems to be an inevitable part of the modern Anglo-Saxon cultural character to be negative and snide about virtually everything. Most of the idiots who post comments on the forums I read think they're some sort of George Orwell and hope to deliver some sort of withering put-down behind an anonymous tag when actually what they have written looks like it was written by a five year old .

These idiots have been duped into boredom, by the cheap gifts of ipads and narcissistic online access. We seem to be reaching a cultural conclusion when our world is ruled and rated on popularity while we all try to avoid the juggernaut that is becoming endlessly self-referential.

In 1967 just before the 1968 Paris riots Guy Debord wrote ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ which contains the quote

 ‘Nowadays we live in a world where capitalism (through television, computers, architecture, transport, and other forms of advanced technology), controls the very conditions of existence. This is the Society of the Spectacle. The world we see is not the real world, it is the world we have been conditioned to see; a world constructed from the black and white of tabloids, a world framed by the mahogany veneer of the television set, a world of carefully constructed illusions - about ourselves, about each other, about power, authority, justice and daily life. A view of life from the perspective of power’.

Debord was as a leading member of the Parisian based faction of the "Situationist International"

Situationist is a word that seems to have entered the English language through popular culture, especially with punks, Both ‘The Clash’ and the ‘Sex Pistols’ were managed by men intrigued by French Philosophers  and Situationist ideals, even during my teenage years the NME, always seemed to be banging on about it.  

But it’s at its heart is that the artistic revolutionary notion in a revolutionary sense is dead. That new practices of art needs to be found to change the world and the activity of high jacking art or stealing images is high on the list. I invite you to claim your life back, reclaim the adventure and place your name or image an image you have pinched and wreck my artworks, before we all manage to scrub the world clean of its magic.

Media life in our 21st century really doesn't look a whole lot different from that of 1967 except that I can scam my dodgy opinions off the internet and pass them off as my own much like anybody in a forum can do. 

Don’t live by proxy

I have show at Gas Works Coming Up(although its now been and gone)