What's On My Mind? Death / Biscuits as financial markers / Broken homes? /Punk (hair) roots / Vispo collage reconstruction

What's On Your Mind?, RTomens, 2025

On the bus the other day I thought 'In one-hundred-and-twenty years time everybody living now will be dead'. I played it safe, so I thought, only to discover that Jeanne Calment of France lived to 122. We're all supposedly living longer, so perhaps in 120 years time there will be quite a few people about to defy my prediction. Oh well.

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If, like us currently, you have three types of biscuit in your full-up tin, you really are doing well, aren't you? I know this isn't an official marker of financial wellbeing, but perhaps it should be. Put it this way:

nothing but crumbs in the tin (poverty)

one stale biscuit (very poor)

two broken Rich Tea (poor)

half-full of chocolate digestives, or a third full of posh biscuits, the kind where you only get 12 in a packet (doing OK)

a full tin of various types (doing well)

See?

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RTomens, 2025

Came across this sign at the Walthamstow Wetlands the other day. I wonder if it's ever encountered by someone undergoing divorce proceedings and fighting over childcare. If so, it would surely resonate...and probably prove to be quite upsetting.

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Next year we'll see a tsunami of Punk nostalgia (what do you mean, we have one every year now! - true). I think. So I told Jane the other day, as if I'm some kind of expert. Something in the dark, dusty recesses of my mind told me '76 was important...what was it? I had to look - oh yeah - the first Punk single was released in the UK (New Rose by The Damned). But Punk's history isn't that cut and dried, is it? Of course not, except that by any measure, considering what Punk was/is, proper, New Rose hits all the right notes (there aren't many, they come thick and fast and go before you know what's hit you).

Yeah, yeah, you can trace Punk's roots back to 60s Garage...but how about this, from 1957?

How Punk was Jerry Lee Lewis? The attack! The physicality! The hair! Punk Rock 'n' Roll, for sure. None were wilder. He seems to be on the verge of predating The Who's smashing up of equipment by the looks of it. As if, given a sledgehammer, he would have taken it to that piano, thus not only preempting The Who but also Auto-Destructive Art which, if I recall correctly, did influence Pete Townshend.

Talking of destruction, I'm in the process of destroying old vispo pieces by cutting them up and reassembling them. So they are 'born again', united with other pieces to form one. Perhaps they'll all be a mess, or I may make some that are a little tidier, I don't know yet since it's early days in the process. I had to reduce the amount of pieces I have. They were driving me mad, sitting in boxes, useless. I'm only working on 'lesser' pieces, of course, leaving those which I consider to be totally successful. 

The Panic Is On, RTomens, 2025

TTFN

Exhibition: Poet-Artists of the French Avant-Garde: 1946 - 79 curated by Frédéric Acquaviva

 

Shots from the opening night (can't you tell?). But where are the people? I avoided getting them in the shots. People just get in the way of art, don't they? These were taken at the end, when most folk had left. We were waited on by men in waistcoats carrying champagne bottles. Sothrans is hardcore old-school, established in London since 1815...I loved it, even though it's pricing of books was well out of my range. Instead, I just fondled first eds of Ballard. The exhibition is on until January. Highly recommended.

OK book fair / Vispo: Just Because / Exhibition: Poet-Artists of the French Avant-Garde: 1946 - 79 curated by Frédéric Acquaviva

 

RTomens, 2025

Well, the book fair went OK. I sold a few things, mostly books...and got the distinct impression that most visitors to the table looked at the array of books, collages and vispo and wondered what the hell it was all about...I wouldn't blame them because I ask myself the same question sometimes!

Here's one I made this morning. Just because...

Just Because, RTomens, 2025

Good news on the exhibition front. Poet-Artists of the French Avant-Garde: 1946 - 79 curated by Frédéric Acquaviva, opens this Thursday (Nov 6) at Sotheran’s Athenaeum, 22 Charing Cross Road, London, WC2H 0HS, 6 - 8 pm. It promises to be great. The brochure that accompanies it is available to view here.

The Wanstead Independent Book Fair / Too much artwork?

 

I'll be selling stuff at this book fair. 

Let me rephrase that: I'll have work on a table which people can buy, if they wanna. It's the first fair I've done so  don't know what to expect in terms of sales. We'll see.

More info here 

Along with original pieces of visual poetry and my books there will be collages. 

Here's a recent piece I made...

Unreal, RTomens, 2025

Preparing for the fair, choosing what to take, meant sorting through all the boxes and realising...oh shit...there's too much! I got sick of the sight of it all. Which made me think that less is more when it comes to a customer's eye and maybe I should take less than I intended, which was to maximise the space in folders and on the table because if I feel sick of seeing it perhaps they will too. There is such a thing as too much choice.

Then there's the other little voice inside saying 'No, take as much as you can because that maximises the chances of someone seeing the one they want.'

Could I have a bargain bin? You know, the kind of thing you see in charity shops filled with scarves and crumpled ties...a quid each. I'd put my...lesser (?) work in there...because I do know what's lesser amongst all the pieces I've created. By what criteria? It's an instinct, as well as looking objectively. That aside, there is a lot which could go either way; pieces I think are OK but someone else might love. 

I'm sure all prolific artists have contemplated either giving away their work or just chucking it out. I could put a boxful out the front of the house and let people help themselves. Looking at the mess of papers as I have this week, it's tempting. What would it matter to me? Someone might take it home and treasure it. Wouldn't that be better than just storing it in boxes? 

I'll let you know how it went.

TTFN

Be Kind (assholes) / Erasure drawing / Love letters/Poem collage

Two Kinds Of People, RTomens, 2025

Fans of John Waters will recognise the quote in the piece above - paraphrasing, to be precise. Come on, Robin, that's a bit harsh...just because someone doesn't think like you doesn't make them an 'asshole'! No, no, it doesn't, you're right. Be nice. Be tolerant. Be Zen. I'm only playing with the idea. It may be something we all think sometimes. Sometimes we think terrible things...unkind things. Social media is ablaze with disagreements and abusive comments...don't join in...even when you read a comment by someone and think 'You asshole!!!' (In the UK, it would be 'arsehole', of course.)

Why make art? Why argue? Why go for a walk? Why anything? Another erasure piece below. I like to 'draw' (although LJ challenges me when I say I'm 'drawing'. But I am, aren't I? I'm just not drawing anything other than lines and shapes. 

Why Anything, RTomens, 2025

Love letters...once upon a time we wrote them. I suppose newer generations write 'love emails'? It doesn't have the same romantic ring to it, does it? Actual letters on paper could be felt...the indentations of a pen on paper...a smell, perhaps, like some I received from a girl who doused the pages in perfume. Your lover handled the paper...perhaps they creased a top corner by mistake...their hand is evident...oh poor modern generation...you will never know the pleasure of a letter from a lover! When one affair ended, I burnt all her letters. I wish I hadn't but at the time I needed to perform that drastic action, that symbolic (?) torching of words she wrote. Our love affair was never destined to rise from those ashes!

Love Poem/Love Letters, RTomens, 2025

Jean-Francois Bory - Some Like It With Words exhibition

 

I hadn't heard of Jean-Francois Bory either (oh, you had? Good, well done. You are attuned to the outer fringes of the artworld!) but knowing the curator, Frédéric Acquaviva, I was aware of this one-day show on Saturday so I went along and I'm very glad I did because the works on display were amazing, from the visual poetry to the typewriter 'sculptures'. The man himself was present and it was good to have a chat with him. Frédéric is curating another show featuring a selection of artists very soon in London. I'll let you know the details when I know. meanwhile, enjoy the images...

Joe Tilson - The software chart questionnaire - The Magazine of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (May/June, 1968)

Took a punt on this seeing as it was reasonably priced online. The best feature is undoubtedly Joe Tilson's 'software chart questionnaire'. It reminds me of the art/text intersection explored by New Worlds magazine from the same period. I looked up the forthcoming 'book' mentioned on the final page but it turned out to be a plush portfolio of prints, therefore way out of my price range should any appear for sale. Never mind. I'm very happy with these pages in the ICA magazine. 

Ink drawing: Whatcha Gonna Do?

Whatcha Gonna Do?, RTomens, 2025

 

The entrance to Hell / 'Anarchist' book fair groupthink hell / Vispo: For All I Care

 

I found the entrance to Hell on Saturday. It's near Waterloo station. 

Meanwhile, just a few yards away, I had to enter another kind of hell, the Anarchist Book Fair.

Yes, I had to enter because I was helping someone do a mimeograph workshop. My job being to type some stencils to be rolled through the mimeograph machine.

Apart from the Clod magazine stall and a couple of others I noted as I sped through the tunnels (yes, the event was in some tunnels - how...underground! - what's more, tunnels famous for being decorated by graffiti artists, as if the political messaging from the stalls wasn't traumatic enough my eyes were treated to a visual blitz of spray can...stuff) the politics all ran down the same tram lines (oh, plus, at least a few old-school sellers offering theoretical history books which, in this context, seemed quaintly old-fashioned since some of it was peddled by bearded men to whom Kropotkin actually meant something).

I used to think anarchy was about rebellion and free-thinking but here was a majority all saying the same thing instead of offering alternatives to the regimented official Alternative - blah, blah. 

I'm too old to care?  

To me the spirit of anarchy resides in Dada, in actual diversity of thought, in unique creative vision etc.

What do I know? 

For All I Care, RTomens, 2025

Metafisikal Translations - Eduardo Paolozzi / Paolozzi's artist's books (absence of)

 

I've been watching it for years. 

The price never dropped.

I couldn't afford this, the one artist's book by Paolozzi that I didn't have. 

Three weeks ago I got a tax rebate so I could afford it, in theory, but should I really spend that much on one book? A 48-page, screen printed book from 1962, signed by Paolozzi. Big deal!

'You don't need it.'

'Of course I don't need it. Who actually needs books? What do we 'need' apart from food, housing and enough money to pay the bills?'

'Then again, what's money? There are no pockets in a shroud, are there?'

'No, so you can't even take one book with you when you...go.'

'Don't remind me, please, of either my mortality or the fact that my book collection cannot go with me...and anyway, it'll be nothingness...forever...'

'So before you sleep The Big Sleep, buy what you want if you can afford it!'

Luckily, a London bookseller was offering Metafisikal Translations at the joint lowest price online so I emailed them and cheekily asked if they could drop the price at all. They agreed. It still took me a few days to finally decide to buy it.

Little seems to have been written about Paolozzi's artist's books. They're mentioned in some monographs, usually in passing. The best source has been Eduardo Paolozzi - Writings And Interviews, edited by Robin Spencer, a superb collection and essential for anyone wanting to dive more deeply into Paolozzi's work. That does include this book and The Metallization Of A Dream, but strangely, neither Kex nor Abba Zaba. The Metallization Of A Dream does get two pages to itself in the Whitechapel Gallery's monograph to accompany their major exhibition in 2017 and Judith Collins at least dedicates a page to Paolozzi's use of texts in her monograph, tying in his word collages with Gysin and Burroughs' cut-ups.

Obviously his major works according to most critics will be the sculptures, followed by his prints and collages but as someone who works with words and has had a few books made I naturally find Paolozzi's books fascinating. Anyway, here are a few pictures of my Metafisikal Translations. You can scroll through the whole book here on the Tate gallery page.