It mean “peace for his fiancee” which is the name of a piece in the exhibition that is kinda hidden (even I forgot about it when I was doing the photos).
Remember this thing…
Well, the light that seems to appear from the frying pan lid with the speaker cover pot riveted into it is a cupboard containing…
… this little sculpture. So it sits hidden within the desk and a single light runs from the junction box on the floor below to allow it to be seen through the door and also through a portion of the perspex part of the top.
During the 90’s I ran around town building all sorts of stuff in shops and cafes etc as well as the odd complete shop, shopfitting mainly, but I did it all from demo to lighting and plumbing, with the normal metal and wood inbetween, and I was always conscious of the fact I hold no tickets for any of the work I do so I saw myself as a cowboy. But not how we all think of cowboys when we see shoddy work but as that fellow with a horse and a bag of tools able to do just about everything required by using those tools and lots of lateral thinking.
But I don’t want to go completely into everything I’ve used but shorthand it down to The turtle that is the world of US and Canadian Indian legends, flying on the wings of pre-history, marked by the British Empire, carrying the Tiger with the Cowboys head wearing a mexican hat below the first of the bi-planes and holding up the sword of righteousness. The Penguin rides shotgun and the thumb points forward.
I could, literally, write a book about all of this and the interconnections thereof, but I won’t because I don’t need anyones understanding of my own reality, most probably better people don’t get it and it remains mysterious… even shrouded under a complete lack of understanding or interconnection, playfully simple even…
And below is the dinosaur headed cowboy. A different cowboy altogether. Uniform wearing dull head holding his magnifying glass to probe the meanings of that which flies statically above. Between the dullhead and the govenor, as in limiting device, hangs the heart and the sphere…
The desk is the grand message accross the years to Mr Marx about mysteries and possibilities that must run rampant with the human endevour. Indeed a socialist and communistic base for operations would be desirable to allow the basic needs of us all to be fullfilled but we must have the freedom to explore ourselves and to push the boundaries of our abilities… Capitalism with it’s feedbag of coin instills and grasps those passions to its own dull needs, or should I say it somewhat offers the scope while altogether dulling the outcome. Somewhere in the middle way lies the ability to provide for all and still allow the brave to dance and entertain… without ruining the planet in the meantime….maybe.
Wow my own feelings of my communist/Marxist ideologies interwoven with altruist tendencies and capitalist freedoms,I have never been able to understand let alone express.
I have never been able to see the line between the two and that uncertainty and conflict has kept me out of such thinking and activity.
And yet you managed to do so with a sculpture made from the leavings of capitalism,the discarded images that exploited the poor as labor and the not so unfortunate as being trendy and desirable until the next new thing was thrust upon them.
Had I simply gazed upon without your explanation/interpretation I would have dismissed it as delightful but whimsical at best.
Thank you for sharing the underlying meaning that gave birth to the sculpture,and for expressing what I have not been able too.
This is the mark of true art/artist and why it will always be needed no matter how advanced our technological achievments.
Hey Bryan, I read the first part of what you wrote and hoped that you’d copied it straight from my own as it was a really nice set of words but then I read back through and realised they were your words.
“communist/Marxist ideologies interwoven with altruist tendencies and capitalist freedoms”
Very nice!
I’ll have to get you to review my next show before it goes up and get you to write a kind of critique the intial viewers can use to find their way through the works.
So in a sense what I did is working. I don’t want to go all out and explain exactly what the works mean for me but give just enough hints of possible interconnections to allow people to go off on their own tangents.
Keep thinking about it bro, the book needs to be written that demystifies the underlying concepts of Marxist ideologies while also bringing the good work of the old bearded fellow back to earth and mixing it up with some freedoms and the need of the human to be an individual. I got a good knock forward years ago after finding a book by a german, Ernst Fischer, “Marx in His Own Words” which allowed me to see the overall scope of Marx and his ultimate direction, which I hadn’t been able to garner from reading the thick and sweaty tomes of the original philosophers. Laymans terms and Occams razor should be applied to all things that become lost because of over indulgent grammatical gymnastics the prevail in academia.
Life could be so much more than the pissing contest is seems to be for so many.