Punk collage / Me & Paolozzi / Digital collage

Black Spot Fallout Threat

 

Photographs: Unexpected objects / The Thames at Wapping

 

Unexpected objects found at bus stops. Above, Camden Rd. Below, Bruce Grove, Tottenham.

By the Thames at Wapping.

I found a worn piece of wood which made a nice readymade sculpture.

Tony Cragg at the Lisson Gallery / Vispo-collage: And Reveal / Talking about your art & talking bollocks / Sex Pistols

 

Reflections at an exhibition - Tony Cragg at the Lisson Gallery. We sat on the low white wall in the courtyard and ate some cake. LJ thought the sculptures would be easy to steal, looking at how low the boundary wall was. But we wondered how heavy they were. Too heavy to lift? And how would they be sold? 

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And Reveal, RTomens 2025

Another collage of old vispo pieces, this time against type on a photo of material found in the street. Sometimes I would like to say more about my work but perhaps that is only the effect of the idea that artists should say/be able to say something about their work - something...profoundly illuminating, perhaps? But I am not in the Art world. I am not in the academic world, that's for sure. Do I play dumb, like Warhol, or am I really dumb? 

All I can talk about right now...no...not even talk, only mention, is the poor performance by Chelsea last night in losing to Arsenal with barely a shot on target. That and the fact that this morning, at 11.04, my mind is asleep and my eyelids yearning to close so I stare into space frequently, out the window at the rare occurrence of sunlight illuminating the houses opposite and really I should be outside in that sunlight, preferably on a clifftop with the cool sea breeze on my face instead of hunched over this keyboard in the city...

Someone leaves a comment on my FB post of a recent artwork but it is an obscure (to me) reference which I don't understand, possibly because I am dumb, or because he is a lot younger and is saying something only under-25s would understand. Which reminds me, when I said 'bollocks' as we walked down the road the other day I wondered if Young People would even know what that means/refers to. It feels like such a 70s word, even though I think it's still commonly used (amongst men) today in the UK. Americans never say 'bollocks', do they?  Now I think of the Sex Pistols album, Never Mind The Bollocks and realise that it must, to some degree, have introduced the word to a previously ignorant world, although not to the extent that it then became part of their language. The thought of people all around the world puzzling over the word in 1977 amuses me.

I presume it's common to talk bollocks about either someone else's art (hello critics!) or your own. That's a stupid sentence. 

I mean...

...artspeak is widely recognised as bollocks and artists either willingly puff up their work with pretentious bollocks or are encouraged to do so by galleries. Perhaps I'm envious of their vocabularies being greater than mine, along with their ability to concoct clever-sounding sentences in relation to their art.

Or perhaps I'm just...a...lazy sod!

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

Vispo: Amount To Something / Jorge Luis Borges, G.K.Chesterton and falling out with 'friends' /Three types of Rain (Dark, Text & real)

RTomens, 2024

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I've given up trying to be smarter than I already am. Perhaps, once upon a time, long ago, I tried. I may have tried in my twenties, for the very first time. What did that entail? Reading 'smart' books. Or were they just books by smart people? Smart people can't write terrible books, but they can write ones you find boring...incomprehensible, annoying etc.

It's not as if we fall into comprehensive categories, is it? That brain surgeon is hopeless at DIY and that rocket scientist can barely dress properly. Can we therefore call them smart? Really? Is there a total person, adept at practical and intellectual tasks?

You may watch lumps of flesh pounding the pavements as I often do outside a cafe and think 'Brainless idiot!' But you're being cruel. Supposing they were as brainless as they appear; it isn't their fault. They were dealt a hand at birth? Environment? Parents? Socio-economic situation? And even if it is their fault because they never once tried to learn anything except the basics such as walking and eating, it was their choice.

A few weeks ago I thought I'd challenge myself by reading Jorge Luis Borges. The Labyrinths collection had been sitting on my shelf for years but I didn't just start reading that, oh no, I bought The Complete Fictions. I was quite serious. It's chronological so, to begin with, A Universal History of Iniquity (1935). I read all the stories. Then Fictions (1945) and the 'story', Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius...dammit! I was defeated...I fell at the first real hurdle, closing the book with a sigh and, you might imagine, if I was a cartoon character, steam hissing from my ears. Pah! I've not given up on Borges and will return to him as soon as I've got over this...event.

So I turned to another recent purchase, bought because of Borges, who was a fan of G.K.Chesterton's Father Brown stories. Again, I bought the complete collection in one volume and read the first, The Blue Cross, which I enjoyed. How could you not enjoy such a refreshing approach to the crime story and a masterful display of writing? Then halfway through the second story, The Secret Garden, it dawned on me that I had lost the plot. Or to try and be more precise, lost track of the characters involved. Oh please...

Am I really so stupid?

I blame the internet. As part of the bridging generation, from no-internet life to internet life, I move from addiction to resistance. A common scenario, I'm sure. I check in online frequently, but rarely stay long. Long enough though, it seems, to become another victim of concentration deficit. Bah! 

Unfortunately, the internet being my gallery without walls, I must tune in regularly. If not for my art, perhaps I would visit less often. Then again, as a virtual hermit, socially, I might have to go online to talk to 'friends'. I've heard people describe books as their 'friends' and thought, 'How sad that is', yet I'm in no better position, perhaps even worse since my ability to engage with even those 'friends' seems to be rapidly diminishing! 

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Yesterday as I waited for the bus...'it was cold and it rained and I felt like an actor' so I looked into a puddle and took a photo. 

I've been listening to other types of rain, Black Rain and (appropriately, considering my 'art' and struggles with reading), Rain Text. Black Rain are a new discovery for me but they began in 1992. I can't say what, if anything, marks them out from all the other Dark/Techno/Ambient artists, but they have something that I find...engaging...satisfying. Perhaps it's that balance between the genres that they put together so well. That or the fact that, recently, with the onset of Autumn, their music suits the mood I frequently find myself in. 

Rain Text are Giuseppe Ielasi & Giovanni Civitenga. III is their first album, just released on SAGOME. Don't rush to judgment should you decide to give it a casual liste and skip through - no, give it time - that's it - relax with a cup of tea, light a pipe, put your feet up, clamp on or insert the headphones...and you'll find a lot more going on than may first appear. How can I put it? The compositions may not be packed with complexities or heavyweight sonics, so it seems, yet there's much to be said for the way the pair juggle sounds, jiggle sounds, even, from percussive patterns to concrete pavement gritty ambience; perfect soundtracks for moody weather...even, to borrow the film title, a seance on a wet afternoon.

Music: Friendly Electrons by WOLFGANG SEIDEL / Vispo: You Tried / Photos: Canary Wharf

 

Wolfgang Seidel's Friendly Electrons offers positively charged subatomic sound particles not bound to any particular genre but instead alighting on 'free' Jazz, Modern Classical and Electronic Abstraction. My favourite recent album. There are rarely any that impress me so much. Friendly? Yes. Feel the warmth and clarity! 

Wolfgang Seidel doesn't have a Wiki page but the Rock band he was in does.

Seidel plays everything, proving his chops on Try Harder. Not in a showy fashion, but integrating vibes, drums and piano brilliantly. The following Film Noir eschews the obvious Jazzy big band film noir soundtrack formula in favour of tightly arranged strings resulting in dark tension. Mostly electronic, always excellent and highly recommended.

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RTomens, 2024

Made a few days ago. It began with the phrase, then the typing of the 'Y' leading to the phrase before continuing on down and out of sight, just because that's where it wanted to go. 'Y' made its final appearance as a packed cluster at various angles because it wanted to fill out the bottom section.  

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RTomens, 2024

Emblematic of big business, Canary Wharf may represent a hellish manifestation of corporate greed...or...seen another way, as I did recently, a daunting, magnificent architectural spectacle...on a purely visual level; partly futuristic but with remnants of industry Past remaining in the form of cranes (?) like these...

RTomens, 2024

Since what were the docks for anyway but commercial enterprise? Still, the old machinery used then for the practical purpose of shifting goods, as opposed to today's button-pushing wealth creation, looks fantastic. Parts such as this, found at one end of the South Dock...

RTomens, 2024

RTomens, 2024

Walking between the buildings a few weeks earlier, it seemed as if the whole idea had been abandoned. Post-lockdown, fewer faces sat at screens in all those offices, presumably. One day, I imagined, it could be a Ballardian landscape of totally empty offices, cracked facades, broken windows and weeds having found their way through the cracks in the pavements to bloom everywhere. 

TTFN

Stranger In A Strange Land / Vispo: TDS

 

Yes, as L.P. Hartley said, 'the past is a foreign country'...and you are a stranger in a strange land there. So there I am circa 1987 in my first London digs which I'd been in for about a year, thinking to myself 'The streets aren't paved with gold!' An Ornette Coleman album in the alcove, ready to impress all the hip young chicks I would lure into my den - ha-ha!

Who was I? 

A younger person, before the wrinkles and blemishes grew; before grey hair replaced the brown. A painter, no less! But before the internet there was no-one to see my work, except friends and...those chicks (I probably hid the paintings away rather than proudly displayed them...or at least, I should have done if I wanted any 'success'!).

No emails. A communal phone on the wall outside on the landing above the stairs. A communal kitchen across the hall and a bath further down, shared by girls working, like me, for the NHS. I welcomed and pushed patients in wheelchairs around the hospital by day and went to Jazz clubs and gigs at night.

What I imagined was in my future I have no idea. What I could not have imagined, despite using a typewriter for letters and poems, is that decades on a typewriter would become my most-used tool for art. Here's my latest. Title: TDS

RTomens, 2024

Photo: Shoes in Kentish Town

 

RTomens, 2024

A singular shoe, often hanging from a wire overhead, is not an unusual sight in London. That in itself is an odd phenomenon. This morning, however, I came across this pair, neatly placed as photographed. It's as if the invisible/man/woman was waiting to cross the road. Shoes in search of feet to fill them? They had been placed, rather than simply thrown down. A prank by someone? An Art statement? Who knows...

In Nomansland

 

Perhaps you've been in Nomansland, figuratively speaking. Looking at my current situation (unemployed) negatively, I could say I'm there now. But then, does that mean that being employed is the only positive place to be; a 'real', solid, acceptable, viable 'place' in society? Since we tend to gauge our place in society so simplistically it's tempting to say I'm in Nomansland. 

Wait though, I refuse to be put there! Whilst it's fair to say that not being employed mostly does a person no good, should anyone find themselves in that state and somehow survive in good mental (if not financial) health, then surely that's a good thing. Work for most people is that time-consuming chore that's necessary to survive, materially. 

I have a dull work record, from one dead-end job to another, broken by spells of unemployment. I coulda been somebody, you know! Alas, poor me. The somebody I am had to be fashioned from bitter experience, some lucky breaks and most of all the creative drive that gives me pleasure. 

Work (paid) may be gone forever, but at least I now have time to visit places outside of the overcrowded city; places like Nomansland. The route there was by country lanes, trees lit by a mostly muted, low winter sun, all the more glorious for that...

Nomansland itself is a huge common named, presumably, because no man could own it and hurrah for that. Thank god there are acres in the countryside that cannot be claimed by anyone, either a farmer or a greedy speculator. 

Book: Reshaping The Invisible (1963) / Collage: Liberation Through Chemicals

 

Charity shop find yesterday. It was priced at five pounds but some pages are about to fall out so I asked if five pounds was the pages-falling-out price or the we-hadn't-noticed-the-loose-pages price. Deciding it was the latter, he took a quid off. Imagine (can you?) how thrilled I was to open this very plain, anonymous-looking book to find it filled with fantastic full-bleed colour (Agfacolor) images. It was produced to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, Bayer, who, funnily enough, trademarked and marketed Heroin from 1898 to 1910. It's funny because the title of the opening essay is: 'Liberation Through Chemical Research'. I don't think heroin ever liberated anyone.

So I was/am torn (not pun intended since I use scissors mostly but do tear sometimes) between using the pages for collage or keeping them untouched. This afternoon I went the third way by altering scanned images from the book on the computer, plus one from a film annual. Here's the result.

RTomens, 2024

As I was saying to a friend the other day, I prefer paper collage to digital (you noticed?). I like it for the reasons usually stated; the feel, the rawness, the handmade look. Yes, I know software can recreate all those things but I've never felt inclined to learn a program that will do it. Plus, I confess, that when I see a very good collage that imitates handmade but then see that it's 'digital' I say 'Pah - cheat!' to myself.

See yah.

Street photos

 

Print/paper collage: New (and the making of it)

 

RTomens, 2023

Inspired by flicking through a book about Jacques Villeglé I made the piece above this afternoon. I can't pretend to be in the same league as either him or Mimmo Rotella, but it kept me occupied. 

Talking of Rotella, whilst in Cockfosters earlier this week we came across this...

,,,amazing, eh? It could have been a roadside exhibition of Rotella's work...almost.

To my delight there was further decollage nearby, from which I got this photo...

...the application of which to my torn collage gave me this...

So now you know.

Foto / Non-readers

So the man outside the shop nods towards the vacant shop over the road and says an artist he knows wanted to buy it as a studio but it costs too much - well whadda surprise! I tell him my room is my studio because I'm an amateur who works small and besides doesn't have room to store paintings, well JP's paintings are already slid into a compartment (shelf) we suspended on the skirting boards of a cupboard and the living room door and if we store them near the window (where they used to be) they get mould growing on them because we live in a damp, semi-basement cave and the paint on the walls in my room near the window is peeling away, which is funny because I tried painting on some printing paper yesterday and having rolled it a few times the surface of that paper started coming away exposing the second white layer, which looked crap and couldn't be remedied to my satisfaction.

A man comes in the shop and asks if he we sell street maps, like the old A to Z books we all used before smart phones - what are we, a fucking post office?! Look around you'll see clues everyhwere - we're a bookshop! Ha-ha-ha.

People come in for cards. We do sell a few. One wanted a birthday card - what are we, a fucking card shop? Ha-ha-ha.

Some come in and only buy cards. What's wrong with them? Don't they read? Well, surprise, surprise, not everyone does.

So I stand outside having a fag watching all the people walk past thinking 'Don't they like books?' How can anyone walk past a secondhand bookshop? But they do. Most of them do. Most of them have more important things to do than browse a selection of Art, Photography, Philosophy, Fiction and History. So I smoke some more and wonder what can be more important than that. I can't think of anything. Then I get cynical and start cursing them all (not out loud) for being useless blobs with nothing more interesting to occupy their minds aside from child care, shopping for food, watching Netflix...or...or...what? I don't know what people do or think about most of the time. people are a mystery. I look in their windows walking down the street and wonder what their lives are about, really, what does everyone do? They watch Netflix. They watch sport. They watch films featuring superheroes smashing up evil enemies - or something. They don't make Art. I don't blame them. It's either in you or it ain't. It's not a lofty pursuit. It's nothing at all to most people.

This week-end I console myself with the knowledge that Chelsea cannot lose. They're not playing. 

Artwork: My Life Of Thrills / Vispo and The Working Man / Artwork by Jane Pearrett

 

RTomens, 2022

It's multi-media - I'm multi-media: TV, video, computer - ain't we all? 

Talking of a thrilling life, our Wenzels loyalty card was fully stamped so the loaf was free. 

Vispo and The Working Man: I'm in the garden typing this morning whilst a workman is up on the roof fixing the leaky gutter. He rings the bell afterwards and shows us the repairs he's done. Then he asks me what I was doing on the typewriter. 

'It's called visual poetry,' I say. 

'That's cool. I saw you turning the paper 'round.' He smiles. 'I've never seen a typewriter being used before.'

So you see, you snobs, the Common Man is capable of appreciating one of the most obscure branches of 'the arts' (is it even a branch at all? More like a twig). LJ reckoned it's because he didn't carry any cultural baggage (just a tool box). I think she's right. But that can swing both ways...wide open to anything...or door firmly shut on any art that 'doesn't look like art'. That's not only a problem with the Common Man. I know a few folk who think they're 'cultured' but their respect is reserved for purely formal art. This may (in some cases) be because they have an automatic distaste for anything artistically 'radical' because radicalism in art so often came/comes from the politically infantile utopian dreamers; types who fantasise about 'revolution' without having given any serious thought to the consequences.

All I posted was this...

Yes, it could upset someone. Anything could upset someone. 

Hmm..this modern art thing...

...what's it all abaht?...

...I'll drink some more coffee and think it over

Artworks by Jane Pearrett