Across The Tracks and Through The Looking Glass

Newly finished canvas, ‘Let There Be More Light’, oil 90cm x 90cm

Inspired by the old Pink Floyd song of the same name from when they were still a psychedelic rock band, from the Saucerful of Secrets LP 1968, and visions it first brought to my head when listening to it many years ago (and still does); hip hop hippy, pre acid house walkman trip man.

Success dependent on the organised brutal suppression of the work of other artists, while maintaining a veneer of respectability is utterly unsustainable therefore transient,  therefore no success at all.

Yet that has become the accepted ‘modus operandi’. Here is my compendium of wisdom on CENSORSHIP , as published in the current issue of LSD Magazine, preceded by an introduction, and followed by a piece of film….

The battle against censorship in art in these times, is a long and lonely road beset with hazards. However it is a battle that has found me, not I it; and one I accept alone.

However certain giants of oldskool graffiti and now the broader underground too, have recognised my plight and shown me tacit support and thus added to my strength to continue my personal struggle for artistic freedom, and there I have found something of the true spirit of human empathy and expression.

However it must be said that even without such support I would gladly continue my path.

By accident of birth I found myself able to draw and paint, by longing for expression I found myself on the streets with crude anarcho stencils then by the mid eighties the train yards with my dreams on metal in motion and colour, then acid house parties with ultraviolet paint, then in the studio with oil and easel where I laboured for 20 years amidst a stack of books and immersed in the study of the Old Masters, then back to the streets.

Here I found many from those train yard days too had moved on, and like me still had little voice in an art world supposedly freed for “the people” by the new wave of ‘street artists’ if you believe the PR, as I did for a while, but in reality I found the art world in the stranglehold of a voracious cartel.

They saw its’ potent symbols, identity and lexicon merely as a vehicle for profit, be it of narcissism or cash, and saw myself and others like me who held their meaning dear, as a threat to be pushed aside, silenced and ignored, or charmed, duped, bribed, gifted and flattered into acquiescence.

In my search to show my own work outside the confines of this closed shop which rejected my every inroad outright, found me allied with other oldskool writers who shared my alienation; those who shared aspects of my story, continued to make art and thus identified with my plight.

At that point a journey was embarked upon, in the true DIY ethic of the punk rock I grew up on; to build  something from the ground up and set up our own gallery, then a notice was pinned to my wall warning me against such an act, which was ignored, then a car was driven at me. How scared the cartel must be of the reality of art to act this way!

London writers of our generation experienced something no other artists ever have or ever will.

Not only were we the first proper ‘wave’ to saturate the trains but we were, in these heady days witness to the most concentrated awakening of consciousness in the history of the planet, even stronger in its’ pure intensity than the hippy explosion of the 1960s….acid house, the full unforgettable syncopated sensory plunge into the inner world and holographic universe in its’ purest form.

With the biomorphic shapes and ever mutating motion of graffiti lettering and clattering of wheels on tracks resounding in our heads we were then thrust into the hallucinogenic meltdown squelch of the Roland TB303 synth and relentless kick drum, in an ancient shamanic dance, now laser lit, that broke down our very DNA and reassembled it in under the strobe as brave new beings.

The B.P.M of Jack the T.A.B now forever in our bones, was a dance that accessed the ends of the universe and the building blocks of life itself and brought the shapes alive in a synaesthesiac time warp of sound which we reassembled as art.

Think Drax’s abstract wholecar hallucinogenic zigzags and loops that shook, rattled and rolled with the funk of the underground, possibly the most viscerally stunning and ‘primeval’ of these utterances which propelled the magical art of the ancient sacred cave screeching and clattering through the tunnels of the Circle Line, think of Fuels epic, heroic, mythical and  prolific visions of numinous otherworlds, Nu Age lava lamp styles,  and spontaneous quasi-religious poetic scrawls which set apart his hard won crown as an unbelievably prolific outsider and fearless groundbreaker, of Cherish’s aztec jelly-mould styles, Acrid’s spontaneous abstract panel pieces, Mean’s ‘dancing’ letters and experiments in spatial distortions of  perceptions of the street and in the flowery spiralled tags and squashy throw-up letters that abounded all over the system from everyone from Bus One to Drop One….

Graffiti and the ‘invisible world’ go hand in hand from the earliest engravings on caves, but in London in 88-90 as the golden ages of acid house and train graffiti emerged side by side the two cross pollinated in a style never seen and have left a legacy that grows, albeit often hidden, to this day.

These writers I held in awe, some I painted with then, others I paint with now, others I’ve never even met, they and many more are those that awoke my curiosity and unwittingly guided my path, that lit my way inspiring my search for my own voice in art just as much as the surrealist and visionary painters such as Ernst, Matta or Blake. They all had the vision and pluck to rise against the conventions of graffiti or the art of their time and take it further, into the ‘otherworld’ as opposed to contemporary stylistic convention or current profusion of stage managed saccharin gimmickry, as did Blade and Futura in their own way in New York.

Some of these writers, those with the inclination are continuing their investigations, imaginations freed by the movement, electricity and industrial energy of dirty London train graffiti, freed by the spectacular inner pyrotechnics and spiritual inner joy of “The Experience” still working out their visions….others like a fine wine or lively cheese have matured, taking their influence from their life in the outer world , the enlightenment of travel and the information age and their ruminations on our culture, their continuing legacy, or of literature and their epiphanies in Eastern mysticism or the delirious ravings of the romantic poets…

The spirit of the individual is that which drives such people and which gives life to the pioneering uncategorisable works that are created in the awakening’s wake….we are many and we have many creative years of our lives ahead of us….

Is it street art? Maybe not, as the current use of the term has lost its’ value, but we were and still are street artists, the original street artists of this generation..

Is it fine art? It can be, yes, but freed from the stuffiness of the academies, the hierarchy of art’s cartels, and the rules of the classics.

Is it graffiti? That depends where it is and what its saying, but we’re all writers, whatever medium we use and its’ fluid dynamics once it met ‘jack the groove’ leave a legacy and flow that carries into whatever art we may make…

London’s scene uncovered a timeless dynamic and fused it with mass transit, lighting a fuse in many a mind. that meanders through the infinite illumination of the information age and the dusty tomes of arcane lore….

Is it a movement?

No! It’s a continuous and ancient undercurrent in human culture that took on a hearty mutation and new direction and after incubation and ponderance among many individuals is rising its’ head.

We need no labels, but we do need awareness, if we are to transcend the current serpentine hierarchy of control with its’ false flags of freedom, empathy and anarcho-meritocracy under which it aggressively infects, maligns and attempts to ‘own’ and thus censor every new growth of culture with its’ covert influence, contrived infiltration and complicit continuation of their monopolist values which celebrate denunciation of free thinking and original expression in favour of imitative, non-challenging, anti-cerebral, overtly commercial empty gesture and fake posturing.

That is what I was, (at the time unknowingly) trying to challenge by setting up a space in Brick Lane.  I got out of train graffiti in 1989 and while still painting the odd piece I pursued the hallucinogenic mythical experimentation, as I re-emerged and hooked up with old comrades and certain old heroes who I now count as my friends, it confirmed my suspicions how much there was so much more to come from this dynamic still, how much was being ignored and deliberately censored, how we writers, far from the way they had been portrayed by the street art cartel were often the most intelligent, honest, open minded, poetic, enlightened and the most socially and politically aware.

All the things elements the collective wore on their sleeves as commercial false flags we carry in our heart as our life and purpose….

Any schism is not graffiti versus street art, it is of the authentic versus the synthetic, the individuals against the collective, freedom versus censorship, spirit versus mammon.

I attempted to escalate this spirit to the next logical level, into physical space, as an accidental by-product in my own search for somewhere real to show my own discoveries in paint, a place where the phenomenon that gave my work life and from which new ideas continually emerge, could be appreciated, contextualised and given due consideration for everything it was, is and will be for many years to come.

But such expression did nothing to glorify the cartel so was banned.

While I would not consider myself an Objectivist and would most definitely consider myself a proud (though discerning) altruist in opposition to many Randian thinkers, I maintain this speech given by Howard Rourke in the courtroom scene from The Fountainhead to be one of the most remarkable edicts of truth in the history of expression.

My apologies for not updating my blog for a few months but I have had more ‘computer problems’.

I have yet again been the victim of a targeted hacking attack by representatives of the “urban art cartel” those heroic, freedom loving, anti surveillance, pro human rights, pro individualist, champions of the outsider, the dispossessed and downtrodden yes those guys, who this time even sent me a “greeting card”.

However this has proved to be yet another, albeit significant milestone in a catalogue of Pyrric Victories in the cartel’s campaign of monopolist domination through intimidation, censorship, hacking, threats, mismanagement, smears and stalking against myself and other artists,  webmasters and dissenters, in total diametric opposition to their carefully crafted projected personas. 

They accessed files detailing the full extent of all events, which I have methodically  accumulated and set down, and as such, would seem to indicate people’s involvement, directly and indirectly, in  the campaign against our intended gallery in Brick Lane showing visionary fine painting by oldskool London train writers.

As a result certain key players in this campaign have since taken significant steps  to distance themselves and attempted to forge alliances via a charm offensive. Others have continued the threats, re-enforcing a hundredfold  the resolve of myself and my allies.

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
Buddha

They also accessed material I had been preparing for LSD magazine and attempted to negate the value of its’ content ……I withdrew the piece from the magazine.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

Abraham Lincoln, (attributed) 16th president of US (1809 – 1865)

On that note I’ll hand over to the stunning intro written by the publishers, those wily wordsmiths and enlightened empaths, those pioneers of freedom in deed and thought, Wayne Anthony (Class of 88) and Sirius 23; to the current issue of the planet’s finest mag, which you will find embedded below for your reading pleasure…..

As the creaking autocracies of the Middle East and North Africa rumble, stumble and begin to tumble, we are assured by breathless commentators worldwide that the internet has finally come of age as a political weapon, and that social networking channelled through the prism of protest has heralded a glinting, nascent dawn in people power, connectivity and a new egalitarianism in which traditional hierarchies dissolve into the digital.

There can be no doubt that we are entering a new paradigm in human interaction and the chemical bonds that held 20th century conceptions of society together are slowly turning liquid in the virtual flame. Formal institutions, unions, and rigid organisational frameworks are being relentlessly subsumed by the underlying laws of physics – that a cloud of cosmic matter will inexorably and exponentially begin to self organise into an ever more complex organic system. And thus we see the chaotic platform, the medium, the base elements of the internet attract into ripples of order so sophisticated, we’d tip our hats to God for such intricate design if we weren’t already kneeling before the empowerment of the Enlightenment.

The tiniest act can start a revolution or end up valued at $25 billion with virtually no investment, no permission and no control. In the biting irony of our times, the most resolute, sophisticated and well funded control structures in the world have given birth to an open source reality where physical dominion is all but vaporised and individuals have a potential power never before witnessed in history. Geography is looking like a dated relic of a clumsy 3 dimensional age, sub cultures coalesce in a quantum vortex of cyberspace, magazines like this are possible, artists and musicians go viral and local expression suddenly has global reach.

And yet we have to be more vigilant than ever before. It is certainly true that in the recent sweeping seismic shifts in the Arab world, social networking has been used to an extraordinarily powerful end, and the internet has been used to turn heavy handed censorship and 20thcentury bullying tactics on their head. But can we really say the same for the West?

The online profile most of us hold so dear may be the triumph of the world according to advertising. We may deplore the numb acquiescence that has seen the hysterical corporatisation of our public spaces and claim to despise the capitalist constructs of aspirational advertising, but whether we like it or not, our egos have in many ways seized the day. The sudden ability to control public perceptions of our identity have encouraged us to see the world through the spectrum of advertising and present who we would like to be to the outside world far more effectively than many of us can manage in person. Of course we have always advertised in some sense – fashion alone wins that argument, but as we encounter the multi dimensional realities of information and connectivity, are we missing out on new, non linear, synapse shattering angles of perception through which to hone our interpretations of reality.

The internet was once seen as the absolute victory of the individual and the subculture over the vertical structures of ‘old’ society, and even now, the war being spoken of is the power of corporations and governments to pressure threats such as Wikileaks by terminating access to digital funding and host servers. But it is critically important never to underestimate the shifting nature of control, and the real threat that faces us all. Repression, oppression and the ham fisted simplicity of shutting down organisations and banning dissent may be losing the battle against the virtual in the old school militaristic regimes of the Middle East, but in the West, that kind of identifiable enemy is the least of our worries. Infinitely more ingenious is the new, equally virtual form of mass manipulation….unrestrained freedom.

Take one part sense of security and blend vigorously with the skin deep sincerity of advertising culture and you have an endless stream of freely shared subversive opinion that results in very little beyond self congratulation within the subculture.

We can Save the Whales, Support the Myanmar Monks, protest against local gentrification and register our disapproval of swingeing budget cuts all in 5 minutes on Facebook. We’ve made a difference, we’ve presented a gleaming hologram of our better selves and as the armchair militancy of the comments come rolling in, we can all bask in the glow of our own power without ever actually doing anything. As long as we can talk about it and let the world know where we stand – that’s us done for the day – let’s get some youtube vids on the go. There’s nothing quite like the sense of being free to render you completely ineffective.

None of this is to dismiss the awesome power of the internet and social networking – this magazine would be a hollow idea and nothing more without them. And obviously there is nothing wrong with defining your online identity through what you wish for yourself rather than who you actually are at work on a rainy Tuesday.

Support the Whales – great – not everyone can fight pitched naval battles with Greenpeace. There is no conclusion, there is no answer…just an awful lot of questions that it’s so tempting to forget we should ask.

And the overriding, fundamental aspect of this and any social and political debate is summed up by Faust’s greatest biographer, Goethe… ‘None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.’

Control is a serpentine, shape shifting force that defies categorization and often exists as a self organizing system itself – almost as a form of social gravity rather than necessarily within nefarious individuals, and it is never, ever as visceral as when we surrender to it unknowingly and voluntarily.

The might of a thousand invading armies will never have the same raw, magnetic, all conquering hypnosis as a dose of consumerism and the expression of your own personal consciousness through a colonial language you always assumed was your own.

On that note – let’s GO

Wayne Anthony (Class of 88) and Sirius 23

See my article on CENSORSHIP on page 232 and I interview anarcho punk legends the Disrupters and Prem Nick on page 380, plus there’s the usual array underground talent from around the globe…….

 

 I did all the artwork for Arcadia, one of the highlights of Glastonbury 2010, the Festival’s 40th Birthday, the hottest on record and some say the best yet…

 

For two weeks we relished the bliss of perfect English midsummer in the most mystical part of the country, Glastonbury, where ley lines meet and legends were born, in The Vale of Avalon, the ancient mythic gateway to the heathen goddess; a place of pilgrimage for millennia.

I was onsite with the team of militant revolutionary dreamers and genius engineers known as Arcadia, easily the best sound system around and quite possibly the greatest show on earth.

Their meticulous attention to detail and fantastic organisation extends to the busy site canteen who kept me fed and watered with an ever-changing array of fresh veggie delights and herbal teas….

I painted anarcho punk slogans since 82 then graffiti at the birth of UK hip hop in 84, onto London’s tube system in 86 through the golden age of train graffiti moving to acid house backdrops in 89. The nineties and new millenium saw me painting at traveller squat parties and Reclaim the Streets protest raves. Throughout the quiet renaissance of classical, surreal and visionary oil painting I was at the easel and fused my skills back with graffiti in Shoreditch in 2009 then onto MuTate Britain with the Mutoid Waste Company in Ladbroke Grove under the Westway…

Now in 2010 I feel glad to have played a small part by painting for the next underground zeitgeist, one which takes influence and energy from all those phenomenon and more, but boldly maps out a new frontier that is purely its’ own…ARCADIA.

Like all underground revolutionary movements the gold rush is for the inner treasure. The ultimate reward is the accomplishment of the dream and the actualisation of the idea. At Glastonbury 2010 Arcadia surpassed all expectations and reached dizzying new heights of inspiration, engineering, teamwork, sculpture, music, lighting, pyrotechnics, performance art and energy as this film shows….

 

The Build

 

 

When we arrived onsite the Afterburner stage was still in its early stages, the ‘legs’ of the spider are actually scrap from customs xray machines that used to scan containers and lorries. Pure genius…

The core of the beast is expertly manoevered into place…

…and it shows its’ face.

In keeping with Arcadia’s militant branding and apocalyptic atmosphere I did the line-up board using their trademark stencil lettering, and carefully distressed the fragments of plane for that ‘hauled out of the swamp 5 years after the crash’ look….

 

…with lots of help from capable hands.

The entrance arch is a couple of modified plane wings, possibly from a glider, it’d been rubbed down to the bare aluminium so to keep the burnished metal intact on the ‘pipes’ I used Belton’s amazing transparent black spray paint to get the relief modelling without losing the wonderful texture which gleamed from underneath as the sun caught the metal…The design was finalised between myself and Pip Rush and based on carvings on an ancient Aztec  temple….

 

Here’s a video of the build in progress.

 

The line-up boards go up….

I then cut back over the black with Belton’s burner chrome to get a contrast against the aluminium and carefully painted the pop rivets and ‘crazy paving’ seams by hand.

 

Pip was keen to use my ‘Circuit Splat’ style so I modified it to pure abstraction with a vivid tribal background on some pieces of aeroplane scrap to hang behind the massive ‘Arc Bar’, the sun was pounding down…

 

After painting ‘til twilight the lights go on on the new Afterburner for the very first time and the eerie entity blinks into life.

Next day the crew finish building ‘stage left’ so I can start the piece.

 

Across the field the punk tent takes shape

After being branded with the Arcadia logo by their prop maker and effects guy, Simon, he begins work on the dirty-metal-effect background for my piece….

…and I start blocking in the arrows. Some respectful inspiration drawn from amigo Keen One here, but in 3 dimensions and distressed with a strong Elate/Arcadia twist….

 

….and lots of rivets, seams, gleams, glints and the Arcadia logo in the centre….

….everyone seemed to really like this.

 

Here the graffiti began to fuse with scrap art by Simon and Sam…

 

Finally after sweat and dedication, blisters, sprains and minor sunstroke Arcadia opened on Thursday 24th June 2010 to the public ….

  …who went nuts….while many crew take the opportunity to sleep until rested before re-emerging to enjoy the weekend.

My art at the Arcadia Arc Bar ‘scuse the poor shots

 

You could feel the heat on your face from the other side of the field. Experience Arcadia, they’re doing amazing things.

 

I’ll let the Lords of Lightning sign off this post as only they know how.

All pictures of Arcadia build by me and Jenny apart from a few select shots of Afterburner show and Glastonbury used  with permission Creative Commons and taken by Luke Blackmore, lusciousblopster, mark-vauxhall, medalliamagpie, Tangentical, fussy onion, Al Green midlander123 and bfirsh; thanks to all.

Massive thanks to Pip and Bertie and all Arcadia crew.

To See Exclusive Shots of Arcadia Glastonbury 2010 Build and Official Arcadia Videos Click Here To See My Post-Festival Blog Entry!

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

 The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, is the largest open-air music and performing arts festival in the world.

The main attraction for many revellers for the last few years has been one of the smaller, more underground arenas known as Arcadia.

 

                                                                                                                                                 

Arcadia is a synchronised pyrotechnic stage and lightshow sculpture arena featuring world class bands and deejays and illuminated by lasers, intelligent lighting, water jets and flamethrowers and is built from military and NASA scrap, primarily jet engine components.

Deejays and bands play live surrounded by what must be the most incredible spectacle of light, smoke and flame on the planet, as tens of thousands of people dance in an ecstasy of ritual theatrics and shamanic pyrotechnics.

Think Heironymous Bosch meets Mad Max versus ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ and you’re getting somewhere.

     

 

I was delighted to find out that my painting is thought of so highly by the visionary behind Arcadia, Pip Rush, that I have been asked to design and paint all artwork for the entire Arcadia arena at this years Glastonbury, 2010; the festival’s 40th Birthday.

Pip’s the younger brother of Joe Rush,  founder of the Mutoid Waste Company and has spent much of his life since a baby in the delirium of Joe’s events;  we share many similar inspirations and themes in our work.

  The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter- A Painting by Me…..

…and some Graffiti by me…..

We put our heads together and have been bouncing ideas backwards and forwards so expect  something a bit special.

Year by year Arcadia Spectacular have expanded at Glastonbury, starting off in ‘Trash City’ in 2008 with the Mutoid Waste Company. It was so successful that they were given their own field in 2009, this was in turn so successful that  this year, 2010; to quote organiser Micheal Eavis…

"We’re giving over an extra 15 acres to Arcadia …..because the feedback we got on that area was fantastic.”

As a result the Arcadia crew are ramping up the spectacular even further, featuring a new top secret ‘Afterburner’, the main stage structure, which  takes the whole show to the next level.

Mutating daredevils on highwires and trapezes will do battle with actual lightning bolts, pyrotechnics and flamethrowers high above the arena in a mid air extravaganza of cosmic significance and electric delight that will bring the ‘invisible world’ into living focus before your very eyes and ears.

I will be doing my best to provide this sensory feast with an incredible surround of amazing art that will help Arcadia to transport minds to places and times far from this dimension.

Thanks to the guys at Chrome and Black paint shop in Shoreditch, East London, yet again, for looking after us so well….

                  

                      Arcadia Stage Line Up Glastonbury 2010

                     Weds 23rd-Sun 27th June 2010

 

Arcadia photos Creative Commons many thanks to Luke Robinson  theadz01 and Russ Garrett

Magic Window Studios is a concept for a new London art gallery that I’ve been working hard to put together over the last year as anyone who follows this blog will know.

Due to interference and a campaign of  intimidation, (related in my previous post) it has not seen the light of day.

I have also encountered other adverse reactions that I have not recorded here.

My intentions were not to make a pot of cash, (though a humble living would have been nice for myself and the other artists).

Instead my dreams were of an aesthetic aspiration, giving exposure to ignored, untrained visionaries and first generation London graffiti pioneers from the roots of our rich urban culture; exploring typography, symbolism, social commentary and archetypes, free from the restrictions of graffiti but freed by it’s energy to explore new dimensions.

I have made a reluctant decision to cancel forthcoming events.

I apologise to those who were to be involved in this project, including artists who have been preparing work and individuals and agencies I had engaged to help. I find it hard to believe that we have faced this level of opposition to something so authentic, and of such interest but this has unfortunately been the case.

……………….

“For better it is to do mighty things, to dream of glorious triumph, even though checked by defeats, than to take part with those poor souls who neither do much, nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory or defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt- January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945

It is with this wisdom in mind and in a spirit of peace that I relate this news.

Elate/ Jon

We kick off part two of this post with the golden age train writer Cazbee 53 from DSS Crew Da Sure Shots, from Ladbroke Grove piecing the outer wall of the MuTate Britain mechanical zoo….Many of Cazbees pieces rolled past this spot on trains,or were under the Westway itself.

Now he’s back 20 years later, along with oldskool steel writers Fuel, Skore, Mear, Crok, Don myself and a few of London’s more new skool to take the vibe back to the raw, enabling a potent and complementary mix of the hardcore underground vibes and tribes….

 

 

and back inside for another shot of me and Vibes….

……and onto the wild, diverse art within, here’s Jimmy South of War Boutique

 

 

Lyle Doghead, LRRY and friend

Elate, Obey

Anarchist Crockery by Carrie Reichart

In Dog We Trust by Jolly Good, made with real dollar bills…

 

  Vera Bong

Dotmaster

 

 

The toilets…

 

New Arrivals…

What I have posted is a fraction of what is there, you really have to get down to this 12,000 foot space and experience the most revolutionary art happening London, probably even the world has ever seen.

The future is unwritten!!!

The Mutate Britain shop is now online check it here!!!!

Families are welcome to this multisensory extravaganza!.

Full dates and opening times below. We look forwarding to seeing you!

Opening times:

Opens December 4th to December 20th – FRI / SAT / SUN

Fri – 2pm -10pm
Sat-1pm – 10pm
Sun – 12pm-9pm

We are also open 2 Wednesdays for the Portobello Winter Festival on the 9th & 16th December – 6pm -10pm

FRI & SAT (NO ENTRY AFTER 9PM)

SUN (NO ENTRY AFTER 8PM)

£2 before 6pm / £3 there after’

www.mutatebritain.co.uk

www.mutatebritain.wordpress.com

facebook mutatebritain

www.myspace.com/mutatebritain

 

Here’s some more pictures from the MuTate Britain Winter Show. I’m going to be adding a whole load more as a separate post at the weekend at some point as I need to rephotograph stuff to a half decent standard.

This has to be one of the best art exhibitions anywhere ever in my humble opinion and I’m very glad to have had a hand in it….If you like your surrealism apocalyptic your graffiti groundbreaking your grime genuine and your people straight up this is the place for you…..We kick of with Rubbish Fairy and House of Doll

 

 

Mear

Skore TRC

Crok

Achy

Towns

Fuel

Joe Rush

   Elate Vibes Lyle Doghead and LRRY and Pakka

Lyle Doghead and LRRY and Pakka with plane by Sam Haggerty and Dotmasters

Teddy Baden

Joe Rush

 

Wreckage International

 

 

Joe Rush and others

Sam Haggerty

War Boutique

 

 

Joe Rush

Sam Haggerty and Joe Rush

Obey Giant

Wolf and PXL

Andy Seize

Elate Vibes

Dotmasters aka Bagsy

Sam Hagarty and Dotmasters

Liam Cordy

Joe Rush

Mutoid Dave and others…

Elate Cazbee

Pure Indulgence

Families are welcome to this multisensory extravaganza!.

Full dates and opening times below. We look forwarding to seeing you!

Opening times:

Opens December 4th to December 20th – FRI / SAT / SUN

Fri – 2pm -10pm
Sat-1pm – 10pm
Sun – 12pm-9pm

We are also open 2 Wednesdays for the Portobello Winter Festival on the 9th & 16th December – 6pm -10pm

FRI & SAT (NO ENTRY AFTER 9PM)

SUN (NO ENTRY AFTER 8PM)

£2 before 6pm / £3 there after’

www.mutatebritain.co.uk

www.mutatebritain.wordpress.com

facebook mutatebritain

www.myspace.com/mutatebritain

 

For those that haven’t heard, the exhibition One Foot in the Grove by Mutate Britain is currently on under the Westway, Ladbroke Grove, West London; each weekend until November the 1st 2009, 12-10pm.

The Westway is where the UK graffiti scene started in earnest when the Clash bought Futura 2000 there to paint in 1982.

The Mutoid Waste Company are a travelling band of punk-squatter mechanic artists led by Joe Rush that infected the acid house party movement with their dark and surreal bio-mechanoid humour, building scrap metal  wastelands and delirious mindscapes in a shock juxtaposition of realities guaranteed to give any trip a hair raising edge.

Think Heironymous Bosch versus Tron and you’re getting somewhere…

Inspired by the desolation of the 80s to escape into a parallel post apocalyptic universe they inspired a generation to create, myself included.

Some of the best acid parties I attended in the late Eighties and early Nineties had input from the Mutoid Waste Crew or their many splinter groups Circus Irritant, Circus Warp, Splattered Fantasy etc,  these plunged my young, impressionable and highly expanded consciousness into a Bermuda Triangle of anamorphic archetypes, cyborg spectres and grotesque apparitions in parody of human and machine form, fractured and echoed by laser and strobe, syncopated and shaken with deafening electronic bass.

The vibe was always intensely surreal, the most outrageously attired and hideously painted forms appeared from the flickering fog in theatrical convulsions, the music was the most twisted repetitive acid, deep and tribal, which stripped the senses gradually to total derangement, beat after pounding beat, until finally at one with the music the chaotic environment and your inner world became one.

Now twenty years later the Mutoids are under the Westway, and it’s not a squat, the police are not outside, the pounding house and techno has been replaced by an eclectic mix including ragga, reggae, punk, soca and rockabilly and the sweating, swaying trance-dancers have grown into bespectacled media professionals pushing buggys.

They still roll out the 303 acid sound when the fire-breathing machines get loose though…

Their amazing signature art, friendly warm family atmosphere and tongue-in-cheek vibe is however present in abundance, accessible and inspirational to the whole family, exhibited together with an array of street and graffiti art, so when I was asked to come and paint a wall I was honoured to oblige, being able to give something back to the community that gave so much inspiration to me in the mad days of the late eighties and early nineties!

It was very short notice so I improvised with some graffiti letters with a twist ….

 

 

 

There is no doubt in my mind from the captivated expressions on the faces of their visitors that their inspiration will grow into new and exciting ideas in years to come.

 Lyle Doghead and Lrry

 

 

 

Oh and by the way everything is for sale!

 

 

 

All photos by Jenny

So in their own words….

Below you will find details of how to get there and when it’s open. It’s one of London’s biggest underground art events ever. So don’t just hear about it, watch the video, read the info, explore the blog and get down to the show! We promise to look after you with our fully licensed bar, delicious food and inclusive festival atmosphere. There honestly, really and truly is no better way to enjoy art.

Open on : FRI 12-10pm / SAT 12-10pm / SUN 12-9pm

Ends: 01.11.2009

Location: 3-6 Acklam Rd, London, W10 5YU MAP

Entrance: £1 before 6pm – £3 thereafter

Website here Mutate Britain

‘If This Is Peace…’ 

Oil on Canvas