Heavy Manners Art

Often heard in a gallery of contemporary art: "My five year old could have done that" So much so, there's even an art book called "Why your five year old could not have done that" My more pertinent response is, do they really all have five year olds? That's a lot of five year olds. What happened in 2013 that caused such an abundance of procreation? Did we have shit weather all year? Probably. But do the "critics" say the same in hot countries? Not all my work is so serious. Honest. I painted this, acrylic on basswood scraps and...

I was intrigued by using the idea of "old communication" methods to subvert the immediately visually obvious with playful oxymorons and even the odd joke. In the same way the original cockneys used rhyming slang to communicate with each other in front of their paymasters as a secret language. Given I practise on board a boat, Four Rivers, the answer was right in front of me. An old set of nautical signal flags. When Four Rivers was launched in 1947, she had no VHF radio, no morse code equipment, obviously no GPRS and no satellite navigation. Just a bunch of...

 In 1988, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty (aka The Timelords) published a book; The Manual (How To Have A Number One The Easy Way). Their case study, “Doctorin’ The Tardis”, which was fabulous, was indeed a number one record. But it wasn’t all good news. Austrian band, Edelweiss, read the book, stole ABBA's "S.O.S.", and sold five million copies of their own case study, "Bring Me Edelweiss". Which was shit. In 2018, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the book’s publication, I decided to not be an artist.