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!

Collage: Photographic Societies To Day / Punk assault on the queen! / Yes, I'm over 60

RTomens, 2022

'To Day'? Well, as you can see, that's how they wrote it in 1959, the year The British Journal Photographic Almanac, from which the cutting was taken, was published. When 'to day' became 'today' as we know it...today...I don't know. Perhaps they stuck with 'to day' for years. Perhaps it was the more common way of writing it back then. Perhaps they had to have a board meeting one year in which this matter of 'to day' was discussed and it was decided, after some debate, to modernise and commit to 'today' henceforth.

Today in Britain is a public holiday as part of celebrating the queen's platinum jubilee. I'm reminded of her silver jubilee in 1977, when someone in The Green Man pub (Aylesbury) had put a safety pin through the nose of her portrait on the wall. Ollie, the landlady, was not pleased and she was not a woman to mess with. Despite her enquiries, none of us grassed. Punk rock! I think the culprit was Brick (RIP). That poor soul was always being beaten up by Soul Boys. His dedication to the Punk Look was such that he made himself an obvious target and his slight build didn't help. 

I used to say that the 'spirit of Punk' still resided in much of my art, but nowadays I'm not so sure. Perhaps it's just me being nostalgic and justifying my lack of technical skills. That said, somewhere lurking in the recesses of my aging noodle there is a 'philosophy' based on the rejection of Formal traditions, including, of course, all the nonsense involved in the pompous Fine Art world. 

Today I'm 63. I was 63 on Tuesday, as I assured the woman on the checkout at Iceland in Kentish Town. 'Why is she asking if I was over 60?' I wondered as I went to pay for loo roll and some mature cheddar cheese. Do you have to be mature to buy mature cheese? If so, will under-60s be loitering outside the store, asking older folk to buy cheese for them? She showed me the back of a receipt which stated that over-60s get ten per cent off their shopping, but only on Tuesdays. Result! Iceland, the caring face of capitalism in this age of soaring energy bills and high inflation! I didn't envy her the task of trying to read someone's age as they went to pay. Imagine asking someone who's only 51 if they're over 60. Ah, the benefits of aging. Mind you, discount was slightly marred by the fact that she suspected my age, even though I was wearing sunglasses and a cap. There's no hiding the physical effects of living through five decades! I might try putting a safety pin through my nose and wearing bondage trousers, then shopping at another branch of Iceland to see if I get asked my age again...

TTFN

Print: Opportunities Available / The Clash

RTomens, 2020

Busy afternoon creating images for a forthcoming book. Meanwhile, career opportunities, the ones that never knock. I saw a careers adviser at school but can't recall the conversation. Knowing me, at the time, if I can say I 'know me' back then, I mumbled semi-coherently and left as soon as I could. A career of any kind was never on the cards for me. Destiny? Choice? I dunno. I was useless at studying. I wasn't going to be the first of my family to attend university. Nope. I got the opportunity to see The Clash a couple of times though...

Wagner Was...A Punk Rocker?

Reading I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche by Sue Prideaux yesterday, I came to this passage...

Now in the style of The Ramones' 'Sheena Is' singalong: "Wagner was a Punk Rocker, Wagner was etc". This quote blew me away. "Now go away and do it yourself"? Demolish the theatre? Burn the score? Hardcore! I instantly thought of this famous graphic from Sideburns magazine, 1977 (often wrongly attributed to Sniffin' Glue)...

Wagner knew a thing or two about chords, his most famous being what's since been dubbed The Tristan Chord...

So come on, kids, all you need is to write an opera, get a 100-piece orchestra together and find a venue big enough. Call it The Nose Ring Cycle, perhaps. 

Career Opportunities

Of course I coulda been a contender - couldn't we all? Instead, I must content myself with career opportunities offered me by cards in the Parker Brothers' 1955 board game, Careers, which I picked up in a charity shop years ago. It's not been played in The Cave. Note the 'Special Opportunity to join Moon Expedition'. Ah, the days of space-age optimism.

I did get the opportunity to see The Clash in their heyday though...