Consume or become an eccentric hermit

I have chosen to have a difficult life. You have opted to conform and to consume. 
I have chosen a job that does not pay any money, whose only purpose is to contribute thoughts, objects or images to humanity. Nobody asked me to. It means that I lay awake at nights, once the alcohol has worn off, panicking about how I will pay the bills for the things that I have bought to facilitate my integration into conventional society. These things, like food, heating, clothes, mobile phones, computers etc all help me to behave like a normal citizen. Without them I would be an eccentric hermit living in the woods. You have these things in abundance, according to the hours that you dedicate to your chosen employer. The employers' activities make them money, and filter things for us to buy or use into society.  

The pain of everyday life I have to anaesthetise with alcohol or solitude. Having seen through the cracks of reality that have begun to appear in the opiate veils of society, I am trapped by my awareness. It has robbed me of my freedom. I feel for my children sometimes. At better times I pin down the fears of midlife crisis with the thought that my achievement in this world can be measured by the individual thinking or questioning of convention that my offspring are beginning to display. Usually however the guilt and listlessness associated with constant self questioning erode my belief in the chosen path, and I find myself poring over Sainsbury's recruitment pages.

dirty banker

I'll have this whole awful cartoon thing out of my system soon, please bear with me...

The fact is... selfish

Day at the centre today. Somewhat under the influence of Taxali, have produced this little number for the phrase "The fact is you can't live for everyone else, sometimes be selfish just do what you want"

Revelations and revolutions

My mind was racing whilst cranking out my run this morning. I have had the wind up my arse since yesterday, all excited about the new location we have found, about how economical the timber is with which I am building the new floor in the loft, about the wind leaks I am plugging in our decrepit house like the rotten-caulked hulk from a Joseph Conrad novel. So the brilliant sunshine and crunching frost/hail underfoot only augmented my positive outlook, and ripened my mind for an hour of philosophical and creative exploration. I chewed concepts like delicious venison, blood dripping in rivulets of original thinking... I smiled to myself, even giggled out loud as conceptual obstacles were sliced like tragic blonde damsels on the tracks of my unstoppable train of thought. It was a good run.
The iPod chugged out LCD, its rhythms and changes of pace meshing sweetly with the terrain beneath my feet and across my cortex. The images I had been wrestling with over the last few days were tossed around and over each other, their new appearance being tested against and overcoming every challenging cliche I threw in their way. This  is going well, I thought. At last I arrived at the final crossroads, and drew up as with almost comical timing this came over the headphones. I drew in a lungful of sweet, iced morning air that bit at my intercostal muscles, made my ribs ache. Droplets of meltwater were now beginning to catch the low sunlight that precipitated their arrival from the frost on the bare branches. Stillness pervaded all. Silence, but for the Great Release, accompanied the distilled idea that swam to the front of my mind, and rested gently like a piece of burnt white paper at last coming to earth from the bonfire plume. It sat- confidently, quietly and complete.

Greed and Lust are the same thing.

Physical Graffiti

I returned to the C––––––– & S––––––––– site today, having spent a few hours during my insomniac early mornings this week reflecting on what we had found at the factory. The ideas that I had were fairly easy to transform from idle reflection into physical reality, I suppose because I was working within the physical constraints already discovered during our first recce of the location. It was quick to do, yet pretty much fulfilled my expectations of what it would actually look like. I could probably photograph it more effectively with tripods, but made use of broken chairs and girder supports in the walls in their absence.

It is always fatal to term an item 'The first in a series..." - especially if you count the amount of piss up's I have actually managed to get off the ground in various breweries I have come across- but the insomniac hours did present me with that notion. The idea is to create installations utilising the raw materials of a given site, or just paint, in a variety of run down or wasteland areas throughout the D––––––– valley. Once a series of 6-10 is complete. their locations will be publicised as an unofficial art trail, which people can dip in and out of as they see fit. As nearly all the locations will be prohibited or restricted, and health and safety nightmares in their own right, the trail will, like the graffiti itself, be an underground activity. Sniff out these artworks- like people used to sniff out baksy's or invader's back in the day- or don't. The artworks do not depend on an audience. I fucking sick of trying to rouse audiences anyway- if it takes off, then it will do so on its own merit. The stuff is out there, you just have to go see it.

Once a few more are complete, I will facebook a page dedicated to the underground trail with full GPS locations and access tips...


Enjoy!

 

"Portal" (2011) ©Nick Hersey

How to re-write your own history in 5 minutes

I have 5 minutes until the kettle boils. It's 6:40 ish, and my sinuses are grating like sandpaper. Lying awake at 4:23, I turned over a few things in my head- the usual... reflecting on the strange dream that preceded my awakening (it featured antique leather boots for women) and the task of rewriting my entire mythology in the context of youth culture and consumerism, as it was originally written back in 2005, but which I decided to abandon in favour of positivity and community spirit. I was relieved to be able to get back to sleep for once. Usually I just lie there until 6:25, when I drop off 5 minutes before the alarm goes off. Nobody is interested by positivity- as Tolkien said it makes for good times but lousy storytelling. Thus I am returning to something meatier, that people might actually notice. Radio 4 have made an entire career out of doom-saying.

Precision injection dinner party

 

These images were captured at a location that Ivan and I found today. It is a disused industrial facility that once plied a trade in precision injection moulding. While the ideas surrounding the possible uses that we may put the space to are vague, the excitement and inspiration that the space has provided is encouraging. Possibly a dinner party.

Feeling thungry or Hirsty? Hirst on the go

Damian Hirst's shop on London's New Bond Street

Haven't got time to pop into a gallery to buy contemporary art? Need that special something but only 30 mins for lunch break? Here's the solution: ultimate statement in valueless art-cum-consumerist trash, Damian Hirst ephemera and spin-crap-pop for the masses. OOOH me first!

Afghanistan bullet holes

Was lucky enough to see the opening of piers' new show at Aubin gallery- a lovely little space in Shoreditch that was revamped for the show. I believe the gallery has only been there a couple of years, but it seems to be surviving, like the rest of the area, with a kind of trendy momentum that supersedes recessions... I guess all the visiting trend-hunters need coffee and beer, and if you have restaurants and night clubs then your area can thrive. Certainly doesn't have artists studio's and design companies like it used to - but that's gentrification for you :)

Of particular note was this new piece- 'a painting of a chinese puzzle ball' - though piers wouldnt tell me how it was done! It consists of 6 heavily carved concentric spheres, originally mastered in Ivory by oriental master craftsmen.

The little school girl

Autumn has brought with it the inimitable heavy leaden skies the pre-empt wet cold winters. Their density is almost insufferable, their grey mass almost tangible over head. There is, as a result, a claustrophobic feeling to these cool early mornings. The sun barely makes an appearance and usually spends the brightest part of the morning veiled behind the greyness, issuing forth little more than a milky white circular silhouette assuming that we are lucky enough to see her at all. On one such morning, as I drove the regular morning commute, I was arrested by the vision of a small girl walking by herself at the side of the road. Her school uniform was well presented and more or less complete to a standard the school rarely had the pleasure of from the majority of its students. Her hair, nut brown and tied in a neat ponytail, looked shiny but modestly kept. She wore an expression of something between serenity and studious concentration as she unscrewed the cap from a small pink plastic milk bottle. Her satchel, strap across one shoulder, matched not only her hair colour but her eye colour too. I remember being struck by their roundness and their vulnerability- as if they had never been troubled by even the slightest unsavoury vision nor the blandest tedium of mass communication- their was an undeniable innocence to their gaze. Indeed her whole aspect issued a wholesome glow of just-rightness that somehow didn't seem Goldilocks-sickly or affected. Her being seemed impossibly wedged between the heaviness of the sky and the burdens of modern society, able to support both immense pressures of both without visibly bending or stressing at all. My gaze followed her as she walked in her simple way a few yards- I felt like I had been watching her for hours yet it could only have been a few short seconds as my car passed her stretch of pavement. She uncapped the milkshake and took the delicate swig of a mystic princess, with a deliberate yet gentle action that was the essence of economy. I was transfixed. As soon as her image had left my peripheral vision my eyes immediately leapt to the rear view mirror to confirm that she was not some small mirage. My focus readjusted to the small reversed image in the mirror just in time to see her tilt her head slightly away from the cap of the little bottle, and spew an enormous jet of pink liquid all over the pavement, where it formed an unnaturally large puddle of pinkness that persisted for a long time in my rear view mirror.

Watched by a spaniel, separated by a fence. They stand firm

Rural Postcard: Stanton Moor

My Public

The fundamental factor underlying my success here in Derbyshire as an artist is my public. My attitude has had a lot to do with it, my subtlety of presence and my ability to blend in surreptitiously- but the over arching detail that has dictated my creative impact on the midlands is my public. My public are generous, sophisticated, impartial, mildly ostentatious but suitably refined. My public have the individuality and iconoclastic artistic taste that my level of output requires. My public are dedicated, obsessive collectors of my work and followers of my various rambling expressions, be they photographic, written or other.

The only thing is my public do not know who they are yet. You see I havent told them- and they, bless them, are completely unaware that I even exist, let alone live in their rambling dale strewn county. I will of course tell them, but I am just waiting for the right moment. I don't want to scare them off you see, by being all Grayson Perry about it. I just want to- you know- saunter up to them, or near to them, and quietly nudge their consciousnesses into my general direction. A sort of existential 'ahem'. Then the rest of it, that whole first paragraph up there, that'll all just fall right into place.

I'm just waiting for the right moment.

Won't be long now, I can just feel it.



At least I think I can feel it. Yes. Maybe.

Saturdays are my favourite day of the week. My sons football match is usually around 9am, and has rapidly become the highlight of the footballing weekend fixtures. Screaming from the touchlines, and regularly witnessing them overturning a  deficit to win have been the order of the day over the last few weeks.
The dog, waiting patiently in the boot of the car throughout, is usually rewarded with a walk in the woods, which doubtless never feels long enough to her to justify the boredom and anticipation she endures beforehand. But then no walk under 15 miles would satisfy her springer enthisiasm, so we generally have a 20 minute whip round the woods before Ignacio moans us into submission and return.
Then there is usually some distraction to get us through to early evening, which can vary from mundane shopping excursion for kids shoes/wallpaper/going out tops to re-plastering the ceiling of the cellar etc etc. But then around 4pm the fun really starts, as I settle down to the Saturday papers and the children make preparations for the tele-fest that is Strictly and X-Factor. Neither really hold my attention, but as a family we have settled into a happy equilibrium of them no longer listening to my mundane anti-contrived-tv rants because I am allowed to check the fantasy football scores and read Tim Dowling's weekly sketch uninterrupted.
Beer flows freely and without critical sarchastic comments from either the wife or children, and a roaring fire usually accompanies the televisual feast. If I am lucky, everyone has fallen asleep by 10:30 so that Match of the Day is interrupted, but usually the free-flowing beer rule means that I am one of those who are utterly satisfied and dozing.

Rural postcard 12

Power of Typography

Saw this and smiled. Someone in the graphics dept at The Star, the local Sheffield newspaper, thought that using this typeface would probably cover most bases when it came to headline posters. Unfortunately the juxtaposition of the typeface with the logo somehow chimes with a breezy disrespect to the content of the headline itself...

Global crisis in a nutshell

John Ruskin Collection, Sheffield

 

Something about the set up of this bizarre diorama/installed exhibit really grabbed me. I think it may have been the banal inclusion of a beautiful period leathertop writing desk as part of the exhibition decor... as if the bland and inert semi circular mock-desk that housed a few bizarre relics (a slab of polished geological interest, a description on foam board, a desk-top stand holding nothing in particular) had elevated itself to prominence by proxy of the fine antique furniture. Its equally bland counterpart, a higher module that sat behind it but of smaller dimension, proudly displayed a bust of Ruskin (I suppose- wasn't interested enough to quantify the importance of it) but being isolated from any feature furniture itself looked merely like a poorly cast Ikea sideboard. The Ruskin bust could arguably have been left on top of it by accident- probably while curators deliberated on whether it should sit atop the leather topped feature piece, or would be perhaps better served in contrast to the formica surface of the display sideboard... anyway, by the time the hypothetical discussion was resolved, the installers had moved on anfd forgotten to place Mr Ruskin anywhere interesting, so he sat patiently atop the ikea feature, perhaps awaiting a higher calling at some later stage. The pine trees in the background seem nothing more than a surreal twist on an already bizarre accident. I would not be surprised to see the whole thing recreated to the letter by Fischli and Weiss in some biennal not long from now.

Kid Acne, Sheffield

 

There's a lot not to like about Kid Acne's work, if you're a cynic like me. Too polished, a lack of puritan graf roots, too graphic-design-student, too commercial... all wild and unfounded allegations that I have made against him and many other urban success stories without foundation and not without simmering jealousy. 

Having stumbled upon this mini retrospective at the winter garden in his hometown, I was expecting little, but discovered lots. The works on display actually diplayed an honesty, a diligence and a dedication to pure drawing that was both refreshing and alarming: this is not bog standard MTV/bandwagon/mobilecommunications advertising lapdog, this has a sincerity. The display of many many sketchbooks- not just the 'im a sketchbook but really he spent 3 days on me' crap that's blogged cockily, but genuine drawing, exploring, re-working to find an idea- was testament to the kid's craftsmanship. Sometimes it was indeed a bit clichéd, a bit slick- but one got the impression it was fairly genuine. 

The exhibition sadly waned towards the end, with the artist evidently beginning to believe his own hype- the installation of 6ft fibreglass catoon-o-ghosts around a wiegiboard as part of some new direction into ironic recasting of 80's fantasy was clumsy and a bit too earnest. Icing on the sugar coated cream that wasn't necessary. The work is just fine as it is- raw, simple, obvious and of  a high quality- no need to gild the lily.

All in all it was a pleasing little exhibition- a great insight into a working process of one of the mainstream success stories of crossover graf.

The fact isn't not without its faults...

The fact isn't any good

The Fact Isn't, as of sunday

World Collapsed

My wife made a very astute observation the other day whilst getting dressed. She proposed that the global economic meltdown was in fact the latest manifestation of sentient terror control ie governmental methods to keep the proletariat in fear. With eco-globowarmic tragedy a disporven myth and 9/11 reduced just a sentimental memorial t-shirt, those in power have ramped up the psychological warfare and introduced a banking crisis as the latest mechanism with which to beat freedom into submission. How would we ever actually know if Greece was bankrupt or if our local library really did need to close? Austerity measures have most likely made governments realise that people will actually tolerate a hell of a lot of sanctions in the name of 'saving the economy', which in itself is fucking ironic. You want to save your beloved consumerist society? Forgo the ability to consume and feed your family and instead put petrol on the dinner table, without it poor daddy will not be able to get to work and earn too little to actually clothe you in anything other than sweatmark or asda-world-gone-mad. Dark days, if you believe them. 

Justin Beiber reworked as Minotaur

Justin Beiber, the Minotaur.

Ass. Probably. Copyright:me, as if anyone wants to copy this shite.

The Fact Is...

"one day pigeons will take over the world"

I remind myself of Jamie Hewlett much to my own chagrin. The fact that there is an 'earth' reflected in the eye neither works nor is obvious. Just cliched. However, you may like it.

The Fact Is...

...we should all share more.

Gouache on Sanderson hand printed vintage wall paper. Framed.

The Fact Is... we are all going the wrong way.

Place a bid at the FACEBOOK gallery

http://www.thefactis.co.uk/  get on the bus...

Wirksworth

A little bit Puppet show and Spinal Tap, but the event is finally under way. Nailed the fucking hanging in record time thanks to my own special debbie macgee, and she patiently doled out nails, hammers and artwork exactly when needed to get the job done in time. Unfortunately, we discovered that the space for our exhibits was also to be shared by a makeshift cafe. A FUCKING CAFE. Ah well, will subvert in earnest tomorrow...

Mosely Folk Festival

It's been a long time since I graced the shores of beautiful suburban Mosely, just outside Birmingham. I had the pleasure of revisiting on account of the Folk Festival arranged by a couple of kind hearted entrepreneurs who seem intent on the outdated model of a quality event with great music at its heart. Perhaps most inspiring of them all were The Bees, who's awesome diverse wares (funk/ska tinged rock?) I have not been party to until this event. Apparently they, like ocean colour scene, are Mosely locals.
Late on Sunday, after packing the car and setting ourselves down in a tent once used for lost children, we settled down to the final act of the night, the legendary Billy Bragg. As the drizzle swept through the park near the lake, some festival goers pushed their sleeping children away in push chairs, while others made them endure the elements a little longer just to witness the People's Poet do his thing. Remarkably refreshing, amusing, and a better singer than my memory serves me, Billy Bragg was a joy to watch. Best of all, his interval monologues whose topics ranged from Mick Hucknall's crass confessions to the perils of cynicism, contained just enough political ire to make them relevant, without sounding preachy or naive. Like a fine wine he has matured well.

Notting Hill Carnival