Someday soon 14.03.2016
Someday soon they said I was going to be famous
They said it when I was about to leave college in Exeter where I had developed various formats of Appleheadman/Apulhed (I actually invented the character in Bournemouth) and he’d become a bit of a cult figure in the local student population thru the graphic-strip I did in Reflex, the student newspaper in Exeter. The they said it when I self-published my buk (short-named or ‘sub-titled’) Apul-One* in 1975 when not many were selfpublishing with its personal-phonetic spellin when not many were doing shortened spellins. To be ‘famous’ didn’t serve much attraction to me even then. I wasn’t striving for fame, apart from the potential freedom it might bring with an alleviation of my financial needs and maybe some call for my work. As we all knew then cos the beatles told us so, money can’t buy you love, and I had lots of that, even if I didn’t always reciprocate fully nor appreciate it. Indeed I had a built in mechanism to flee from it at all suspicions that it was looming about. It took decades for me to learn how to accept praise and appreciation even tho I werked so hard to gain it. One of the tings I love about PA is they clap you when you finish. Maybe that’s cos they’re glad the thing is done? Only jokin. I think.
* I been working on the follow up, The Shrewd Idiot for forty years and it should be ready to launch sometime soon!
Sometimes some folks says I sometimes writes well sometimes and that sometime soon enough I may make it big as a writer. Well I cannot await sometime to happen. I did wait sometime. I started writing sometime ago (1969). It’s taken some time to get this bad. I guess I got sometime left, or right, write. But I not got some ting to prove cos I done all that some time back.
Here’s Judy Collins singing the beautiful song Someday Soon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ7rrszpJlI
So, I went up to London twice this week. First time was on a mission to see the last day of Auerbach at Tate Britain who I believe to be the best painter in the world, by far. I was not disappointed.
I also popped into the new bookshop Libreria and it was really beautifully set out with lots of books I’d love to buy. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/21/libreria-bookshop-rohan-silva-second-home-interview#img-1
I saw this great couple o folks there and aksed if I can use their image in ma blog and they say ok dokay
There was so much to do I had to wend ma way back again on the Wednesday to go see the exhibition preview at Marsden Woo gallery where they had some beautiful readings to give the launch a real whumpf.
“An evening of performance, poetry and text works curated and lead by SJ Fowler in response to our current show, Alida Sayer’s Lexicon,
took place last night at Marsden Woo Gallery. It was a fantastic event, with new work by diverse and talented poets being seen and heard for the first time. Many thanks to all involved!”
For those who could not attend, SJ Fowler has kindly provided us with videos of the individual performances –
Giovanna Coppola https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=661TBOS5maY
Fabian Peake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifime9uPQMk
SJ Fowler https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OKXtuchtA4
Iris Colomb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvqTKhR9F6k
Christian Patracchini https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y73uSDOvWx4
I also visited the Rebecca Horn section in Tate Modern because I had seen those wonderful feather head-dresses she did and wanted to find out more. RH was and is one of the world’s great performance artists. Her work hinges, literally sometimes, around the ‘props’ she manufactures. I learned a lot looking at them, very inspiring.
http://www.rebecca-horn.de/pages/biography.html#top
also, I got some of her trappings on camera.
As I was searching the net for stuff about RH I happened upon some incredible work by Helen Chadwick which in terms of old style virtues in art blew RH into a feathered hat. HC was a very earl exponent of woman in art and I love what I found.
http://comemporarypracticedc.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/research-helen-chadwick.html
another woman artist I discovered this week was Yinka Shonibarembe, I loved her extravert use of colour.
http://www.yinkashonibarembe.com/articles/present/
On Friday night I went to the launch of Colchester firstsite’s new Warhol show which was peppered with females making great stuff. Camille Walala has done some wonderful abstract images on a wall which I never even dreamed of filling and made it look great.
http://camillewalala.bigcartel.com/category/prints
Hattie Stewart, ex-student at Sheepen Road college has a wonderfull show wherein her work, which takes inspiration from the likes of Disney, Keith Haring and Rick Griffin’s walking eyes, really lights up the gallery. http://hattiestewart.com/
And finally there was little Georgie who did these wonderful spirals in the mock ‘Factory’ which firstsite has set up for folks to do prints in during the Warhol show.
Aside- David Bailey: “Visually, Picasso was definitely the most important person in my life. When I discovered him I realised there were no rules. I didn’t go to art school, I didn’t even know what art school was, but the teachers who taught drawing always said, ‘Oh, you can’t put a line around things,’ and I thought, ‘Well, Picasso does, stained glass windows do, so I don’t see your point.’ Obviously, they were wrong.” I didn’t go to art skewel eether David.
apulhed tingling 