This will be the final event of Such Stuff, after Monday the show will be struck and will ‘Leave not a wrack behind’.

This is your chance to pick up a bargain. The guide prices range between £4.99 and £285, and will perhaps be even less on the night.

But if you are not buying you are equally welcome to be part of this unique event. We are especially thrilled that the auctioneer is to be none other than Frinsley Baggage, the renowned art opinionista and critic. He really enjoyed his book signing on the opening night and is excited to be leading this closing down sale. Catalogues and guide prices will be available when you arrive on the night. However, you may wish to place bids by telephone if you cannot attned in person. To reserve your copy of the catalogue guide prices or arrange a telephone bidding assistant please email Frinsley through the Signapse site. We look forward to hearing from you.

Monday 5 December 2011 : Colchester Minories art gallery Essex CO1 1UE.

Viewing starts at 6.30pm.

It will all be over by 8.00pm

Visit :www.signapse.co.uk

Follow : @signapse

See the film : www.youtube.com/user/signapse

Olympic posters ? Whassaappennin ? More posing than postering. YBA poser ?

It’s all very well being the grit in the bikini of the establishement, but that was a long, long time ago. Now we have Middle Aged British Artists, and we need a better word than MABA. My friend Steve came up with just the phrase to describe what happens when an enfant terrible gets properly settled at the armchair :

Les pantoufleurs terribles.

“Pantoufles are slippers. So someone who’s middle-aged and smugly comfortable & likes curling in in their slippers in front of the fire is a pantouflard. But the verb pantoufler has adopted two meanings: to laze around at home and also to transfer to the private sector. The latter meaning got attached to civil servants who use their privileged positions to secure hugely well-paid jobs in the private sector before they’ve given decent service to their country.”

Perfect. You heard it here first.

I need your help developing a new test to identify machines and non-human entities.

Play “I wish” by Stevie Wonder. If you can stand completely still throughout, then you a non human unit.

I  need some help to develop this playlist, which will yield more accurate data. We can then  apply it to managers, helpline administrators, PR people and gallery front of house and others we encounter in our working lives. Then we can roll it out, as managers tend to say. Ooops.

Suggestions so far are :

1. “Reasons to be Cheerful” by Ian Dury and the Blockheads.
2. “Denis Denis” by Blondie/Debbie Harry
3. “Cool struttin” by Sonny Clark

Then we can think about having some fun designing the hardware, no better place to start than the Voight-Kampf Test. I can’t believe that the Blade Runner sketchbooks now fetch over £100 a pop secondhand, I remember them being full of beautiful drawing by Ridley Scott. It was clearly a fully imagined place for him before he went near a camera.

Douglas Coombes of Ipswich community radio asked me onto Lifelines, his weekly talk and music slot. I ended up being in the studio with Julia Devonshire, Ipswich art project officer. We talked about the joint show of Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy and Gareth Bayliss in the old Ipswich art school building, her object exchange project and how that connected with Such Stuff at the Minories. Was a really interesting morning.

I love radio.

It’s my imaginary/imaginative friend in the studio. What also makes Lifelines really worth a listen is the playlists, Douglas gets the guests to choose them and I heard a really beautiful reading my Roger McGough. Here’s my playlist, which I got carried away with and we only had time to listen to four of them :

Miles Davis : “Nuit sur les Champs-Elysees (take 2)” from Ascenseur pour l’Echafaud.
Little Stevie Wonder : “I wish.”

Now that’s what I call poetry, and the best bass line ever :

Smokin cigarettes and writin somethin nasty on the wall

Teacher sends you to the principle office down the hall

You grow up and learn that kind of thing aint right

But while you were doin it, it sure felt outta sight

I wish those days, could, come back once more

Why did those days ev-er have to go

I wish those days, could, come back once more

Why did those days ev-er have to go, cause I loved em so…….

Antonio Vivaldi : Concerto no. 2 in G minor.

US3 : “Cantaloup (Flip Fantasia)” from Hand on the Torch

Annie Lennox : “Every time we say goodbye” from Red hot and blue.

Cannonball Adderley : “Autumn leaves” from Somethin else.

JS Bach, played by Glenn Gould : “Chromatic fantasy & fugue in D minor”

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi : “Stabat mater dolorosa”

Howlin Wolf : “Highway 49″ from the Howlin Wolf London sessions

Captain Beefheart : “Yellow brick Road: from Safe as Milk

There’s loads more on the list but we only had time for three. Lifelines on Ipswich community radio is definitely worth a listen. It’s on between 10 - 11.30am on Wednesdays.

Matthew Bowman curated the Such Stuff exhibition, and took these rather fine shots of the static show. The Garden room at the Minories is screening the film, a 10 minute animation :

The Front room houses the static show including 6 large charcoal drawings on scrim, a room set, box installations of the props used in the film and some embossed prints :

Matthew works at Essex University and Colchester institute, we had many really interesting discussions as the project was developed, but he had a really good knack of trusting me when I needed him to. This meant that a lot of the working methods for this show were worked out as we went along. This made it a really exciting show to make.

Surely, like supermarket chicken wings, the word “contemporary” should have a use-by date. If we think about the term contemporary at all, we probably mean stuff made in the last 60 - 100 months. You can see the word used in this way right back to the 1940’s and beyond. I think it’s time to move on and start thinking for ourselves a bit more.

“Contemporary” is a lazy term because it appears to absolve the viewer from deciding for themselves if the work is any good or not. It’s a quick way to count work in or out  when we don’t have the courage to say if we like it or not.  This infatuation with the last 60 - 100 months is nearly as unhelpful as the infatuation with the previous 60 - 100 years, which is known as “retro”. But even less helpful is “cool”, meaning stuff made in the last 60 - 100 hours.

Computers couldn’t function without a completely regular timeline. This timeline has to be rigidly followed and unflinchingly shared with other computers. But humans can be much more promiscuous with time, which is why we are more interesting to talk to. So instead of asking “Is it cool, contemporary or retro ?” I’ve been trying to think of different questions that could be asked of the art we see and make :

• Does it feel authentic ?

• Does it connect to me, here, now ?

• Does it disrupt the assumptions I am making here and now and does it leave me looking at things slightly differently ?

• Does it leave me asking interesting questions, or does it merely present me with another answer ?

• Am I slightly less complascent after looking at it ?

For me, Hogarth is a contemporary. William Blake’s books are contemporary. Charlotte Salomons gouache sketchbooks are contemporary because they are all role models for me in the studio and signposts when I am looking at other peoples work.

For me Goya’s Pinturas Negras are contemporary -  they feel closer to Frank Auerbach than Auerbach ever feels to Chris Ofili.

And don’t try telling me that Caravaggio isn’t nearer to Francis Ford Coppola than Coppola is to Guy Richie.

I feel we need to stop being frightened by the ticking of the clock and start trusting our own reactions. Try to feel braver about making judgements for ourselves about what connects work together and even more important, what connects it to us.

This is largely from a conversation I had with my philosophical best friend Hugh Aitken last night over a bottle of Highland Park. Having friends who are smarter than me is treasure beyond measure especially when as in his case they are also wondrously earthy and emotionally wise.  Safe journey North dear Shug, and come back soon.

Just got back from the first day installing the work. Mixed feelings,  partly a shock  to see ideas take shape and start breathing on their own. Partly feeling regretful that its too late to change anything  Mostly straightforward relief at getting shot of this work that has been obsessing me for months.

But mostly just feeling tired, and grateful to my mate Melvyn who did the difficult stuff.

It’s strange how my relationship with the work changes as I prepare to hang for a show. It’s partly because I’m saying goodbye to it, like when a close friend moves to a different country. It’s also because the detailed admin you need to so at this stage is MUCH more stressful than doing the work itself. Pricing … Framing …. publicity and press stuff …. aaaagh. But it’s also wonderful to see how it went from here, which is a really early visual I did of the whole thing :

To here, which is one of the box works :

and ended up here which is your invite to the launch event :

I hope you can come to the launch on Friday. The performance is between 7.00 and 8.00 pm. and that’s the bit I’m really looking forward to. Once that performance is over it will never come back.

Just woke up after a long day rigging the show at Brighton. I was showing my CD engravings, people liked them and I really should do some more.

The PV was heaving, they had to stay open for extra time so everybody could get in. I checked out Alexander Korzer-Robinson again this year. His altered book sculptures gets better and better. It’s very easy to copy Joseph Cornell but very difficult to say anything new.

Off to help at Origin in London  tomorrow where Susi Hines and Maya Selway are showing. I need an assistant or three ….

Brighton Art fair : 12 PM Twelve Printmakers 

Dates : Thursday 22nd September 6.00pm - 8.30pm (ticket only)
Friday, 23rd September 11.00am - 7.30pm
Saturday, 24th September 10.00am - 6.00pm
Sunday, 25th September 10.00am - 5.00pm Venue : Corn Exchange, Church Street Brighton, BN1 1UG

It’s great to be back again this year. I’m showing the lithograph/monoprints from my Changeling series Bestarios de ensueño as well as reviving some of my CD engravings based on song titles. Come and snap up your copy of Trout mask replica.

CATOS 2011 : Open studio

Dates : Saturday 1 October 2011. 11.00 - 6.00pm.
Venue : My studio.

The annual CATOS safari where you can observe me in my natural habitat. I’ll be working on the box works for the Minories show so it’s a chance to see how they are progressing and also to see the prints from Brighton.

Such Stuff : an event of film, performance and drawing

Dates :

Launch event : Friday 21 October 2011. 7.30 - 9.00pm. Includes a performance and the first screening of the film. There is also a preview for press/networking on the same day, so please get in touch if you’d like a personal invitation to that.

Static show : Saturday 22nd October to Tuesday 6th December 2011

Closing event : “Everything must go.” Monday 5 December 2011 6.00 - 8.00pm
Performance and public auction of work.

Venue : The Minories 74 High St. Colchester, Essex CO1 1UE.

This show brings together several parts of my working life and has been really exciting to make. It combines film, performance, drawing and box installation and has become my requiem for all that redundant media and all those forgotten messages.

I hope you can come to the launch event, which is the only time you will be able to experience all the work in it’s entirety. At the end of the static show we will be pulling the show apart in an event called “Everything must go”. Such Stuff will then only exist in our memories, leaving “not a wrack behind” so I hope to see you before it goes.

Such Stuff at The Minories coincides with the opening of Firstsite at the same location. This beautiful building is designed by Rafael Viñoly as an internationally important arts centre.

Just finished a week on the big drawings. Aaaaaaaaaaaaah that’s better, to have finished the animation and to have got back into my comfort zone. There is something about charcoal - the most primitive and the most sensitive of materials. I also found out from a science programme on the radio that carbon was one of the first materials to appear after the Big Bang. We are made from soot and silicon. Perfect.

Now I can start on the box installations. Despite the wobbly moments I love this job.

I’ve been working with Trish Mansfield- Devine on the press materials for the Such Stuff show in October. She has spotted that I’ve got really contradictory ambitions for this show. Even though visual art is rooted so firmly in the object, I strongly hope for it to be an event rather than a static collection of things, for it to live more in memory than in the artifacts that remain afterwards.

But I had a lesson in how possible that is when I had one of the most engaging and reflective afternoons of my life at The Fat Duck restaurant. A proper warm welcome just like you only get with people that have very little to prove. Fourteen courses - each one a tiny, funny, intense unsettling haiku that meant we spent a lot of thoughtful time with our eyes shut. Taste and smell - the two most wired senses we have and, according to the staff nurse in the hospital when my dad was dying, the last ones to shut down just after hearing. I wish I’d had some of the honeysuckle from the garden of our tiny, cramped flat in Manor Park or the smell of cider and creosote from our two week summer holidays in Devon to accompany the quiet story I whispered to him about what an amazing dad he was, as he died with such slow grace.

With some notable exceptions visual art consistently undervalues these two important, visceral and emotionally wired senses. This is because smell and taste are very diffficult turn into a static gallery show that can stay up for the routine 6 weeks. Taste and smell are also difficult for galleries to sell to people. Smell and taste are also the most democratic of senses. As long as you pay proper attention to them they need the least foreplay and education and best of all they don’t demand a lot of babble and squeak to be written about them. Either you like it or you don’t, either it tastes good or it doesn’t. Either you fancy that person or you don’t. I know you can manipulate these senses like any other but somehow we usually know when food has been treated with disrespect, just like we know when a place or a person smells unwholesome.

So. Don’t buy that tasteful still life painting. Go and do the real thing. Book a lunch at The Fat Duck with somebody you really like.

I’ve been working on the sets and the models for weeks now. This is an ambitious animation project for the time available. What is it with me and the deep end ? But I’m totally engaged with the process of making, I’m effectively drawing with wire.  As that unfolds I’m getting more and more excited about the storytelling possibilities that emerge as I go along.

I can’t really talk about the work. If the work works, it speaks for itself. Either it does or it doesn’t, it’s not for me to say. I do want to talk about my motivations, what makes me care so much about this daft, uncertain job. I’m trying in different ways to work out where I am in all of this culture stuff, where I belong. It feels like I live and work in the tiny gap between the human-ness of objects and the object - ness of humans.

There’s something so poignant to me about things that are like humans, even more so vice - versa.

 These are some of the new prints I showed at Aldeburgh last week. They combine the direct drawing of lithography, with the painterly, unpredictable marks of monoprint. So each print is unique, 1/of 1.

 I’ve never felt convinced about the merits of hand making identical prints, especially since most people have a bubblejet printer. Giclee. You can give it a poncy Academy Francaise name, but it’s still duplicating. My friend Steve said ‘giclee’ is french for ejaculate. That sounds about right. It’s the printmaking process that motivates me, it’s difficulty and unpredictability. If the prints all look like clones, where’s the fun in that ?

This process is called lithography, but it has nothing to do with stone. It does use a flat plate though, unlike relief or intaglio printmaking. I’m drawing directly onto an aluminium plate, which I’ve abraded with wet and dry and pumice powder. I’m trying to get the surface as near as I can to toothy cartridge paper, which isn’t as easy as it sounds.

I really enjoy mixing the different monoprint inks on the painting slab, experimenting with plate oil and extender to start building layers, like glazes. This series includes some metallic ink. Each mix is unique too. Different amounts of tack, stiffness, density will repel or cover each other on the plate, so colours can be seperated and layered. Hayter called it viscosity monoprinting, and he really understood how to control that process. But there are no repeat performances for me. He was in control of this process but that kind of control doesn’t feel important for me.

This is painting by other means and just as labour intensive. The pulse of similarity and difference between each print is so compelling as they come off the press. Exciting, challenging, like improvising against a really good rhythm section.

Painting without any drawing. Easy to talk about but, for me, difficult to do. So now I’m parallel planning two paintings and can report so far so good. Gill, one of my students brought in Dale Berning’s  interview with William Kentridge. William Kentridge is talking about the often troubled relationship between drawing and painting, which for him is no trouble at all. This is because he commits fully and ardently to the process of drawing in and of iself. In this straightforward and direct interview he is both clear and inspiring about the importance of drawing as completely independent of other outcomes.Once I stopped to think about it, I could clearly see this in his work. Here’s part of what he says, but it’s worth visiting the Guardian site to read all of it :

“I work closely with different kinds of references. I have a collection of images and things to which I refer throughout my working process. I find my visual imagination is always less interesting than those things I’ve discovered in looking at the specifics of details. If one can hold on to the specific, it almost always is more interesting.”

He says that the observation of specific details gives “authority” to a drawing. I’ve always felt this too, which is why I get annoyed with people being snotty about “representative” art because they think it has to be literal and obvious and can’t be “abstract” or “conceptual”. For William Kentridge the process of drawing has to be fast otherwise it gets stuck. Maybe it’s a matter of temperament, but for me it is more important for the drawing process to be slow and meditative. But he’s totally right that it must be rooted in the actual all the time.Today, a day of thin layers over the sharp drawing and opaque white. Creating the weather in the empty spaces around the drawing, linear drawing can be sterile unless it is inside an ecosystem. This one is just paint :

Simple process really, applying printmaking techniques to painting. Using a roller to apply thin areas of tone and colour, and wiping back with a soft rag. This one is paint over charcoal drawing :

I find it really inspiring, to have a negotiable surface which can add tone or colour and then wipe back in the same way that you can erase back into a tonal charcoal drawing. Had a lot of fun and even breathed new life into a painting that had paused …

This one began with that amazing line in Paradise Lost where Lucifer says “Awake, arise, or be forever fallen. ” Milton’s devil might just be the first modern hero. Back to watching paint dry now and then an hour on the boat ..  This weekend I’m making a film prop, for an independent project called “See”.