Had a busy week. I did a solo performance at Glimpse on Tuesday at 43 South Moulton Street and also appeared as part of The Union for a show at Meals and SUVs, Doleston, on Friday night. This entry will be brief as I have work to catch up on for College and for my business, before Outcider Art this Friday and a residency with Gary Stevens for Whitstable Biennial from next Sunday. It is all getting a little too much and I have been doing a lot of very long days, but Whitstable should be a chance to get away for a few day.

Glimpse on Tuesday was great fun. The exhibition was a charity do in support of Thames Broadway and was organise by DegreeArt.com who sell artwork by graduates. I was invited to perform for the VIPs. I was told when I took the gig that Cherie Blair had been invited and it sounded like a chance to have a bit of a word with her about what her family and neighbours had been up to, but she did not turn up. However I did get as much free beer as I could drink and I met some other interesting people.




I had a video screen in the bar which I missed because the beer made me loose track of the time, but my friend Fox who attended said that the other video in the screening were all priced in the thousands of pound and mine was priced at £15. This was not usual shabby crowd of art student I usually expect at my gigs. The event was attended by a lot of people in smart suits who would probably be described as ‘cadre’ in French. They were people who could afford to buy or deal in painting and sculptures prices in 4 figures or more. The audience seemed to enjoy my performance and surprisingly they were more readily accepting of it than some of the other crowds I had played to of late, however they were here to buy art and I had nothing to sell.

The Union is a group of 11 artists which includes myself. Exactly what that means is quite complex, we have developed some sort of horizontal power structure for making art shows. After our first show at Goldsmith a couple of weeks ago we were offered another show at Meal & SUVs in Dolestone, London. We immediately agreed, however it soon became clear that we only had a couple of weeks to put the show together and that a band called Black Autumn Gold would also be playing a gig in the venue later that night. We initially intened to just move our previous show to the venue because we had so little time to make new work, however we soon realise that our monitors, projectors artworks and gear was going to interfere with the band setting up their kit. We decided instead to literally support the band. We spent the evening playing at being roadies, selling promotional merchandise, guarding the doors and tending the bar. However we had to hastily knock together merchandise to sell, promotional items and make CREW t-shirts for ourselves so as we could be identified. It was hard work, but the evening was actually very good fun. You can check out the website I made for the band at www.blackautumngold.co.uk

The show was an interesting move for the Union because with 11 artists with 11 egos it was very hard work getting everyone to agree on anything for the previous show. Because this time we chose to be come subservient to Black Autumn Gold we could forego our precious egos and work together to help the band.

Theo is coming to Goldsmiths next week to do his lecture on art and radical politics, he has invited Mark Quinn [Fuxus] and John Topple to help. We have title the show OUTCIDER ART. It sounds like it might turn into some sort of revival of the Built Like a Truck Drives Like a Gallery symposiums for those who remember them. I think this will make a nice contrast to my recent work. Working with Theo and Quinn will be a much more developed and natural group dynamic compared to The Union and it will be a chance to demonstrate to my London audience that Frog Morris is not just a one man show.

Have decided that this is enough work for for me to be getting on with so I might skip the gorilla performance at Strawberry fair next saturday, but will see how I feel later in the week.

I am performing at GLIMPSE on Tuesday. The entry fee is £10 for a night of performance, video, music and art. Cherie Blair had been invited so it should be interesting...
GLIMPSE
43 South Moulton Street, London W15 KRS
Tuesday 23rd May 9.30pm

I also have some video in GLIMPSE BELOW
GLIMPSE BELOW
Tuesday 23rd May 8.30pm

It's been arranged by DEGREE ART

I have also become involved in an artists collective called The Union and we are supporting a great art band called BLACK AUTUMN GOLD at Meals & SUVs Art Gallery, 295-297 Haggerston Rd London E8
Friday 26th May 6pm
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There is some shakey video from the Swan Gig on Google Video

Last night'’s show at The Swan presented a challenge because the work I had been doing in the studio had digressed away from the performance poetry that I had in mind when I proposed this shows many weeks ago.

The shows with Bob & Roberta Smith had given me a safe space in which to establish my performance poetry and gain acceptance though Bob'’s kind patronage. However, I had been criticised for placing my work within the safe bubble of white cube galleries. People expect to be challenged by contemporary art; therefore paradoxically challenging people in art galleries is sometimes not that challenging.

I am good friends with a punk band from Ipswich called Skreworm, they are Frogstock regulars and they had given The Blo Boys a few gigs when nobody else would dare. Following a discussion about John Copper Clarke, they had kindly give me a slot reading poetry in-between the band at last night's gig in a pub in Ipswich. It was a challenge to see if I could face down an audience outside of the art gallery. Punks appealed to me because they are usually culturally active people, but not so cynically art-savvy.

I had recorded a podcast for Motif radio a couple of weeks previously for which I had cobbled together some new material to temp listeners who had heard my previous set quite a lot of times by now. I was still uncertain about the new material, as it had not been presented live before and I had not yet received much comment from the podcast. I nervously had shuffled much of this new material to the side, but when I got to the venue last night I realised my time slot was longer than I expected and I need to include any extra material I had to hand. One piece in particular concerned me which was entitled ‘Democracy of Mediocracy as it dealt with politics in a confrontational manner. I was very aware that political art can be a bad move and this risk of failure became all too tempting for me.

The response to the show was mixed. The favoritesites received a good response, as did a revised version of ‘Tomorrow's World’ which I had finally got to work after several failed attempts. Following the first half of set I was approached by offers of more gigs. The second half of the set was to a drunker audience and contained the new material, which was sweetened by sofavoritesourites such as Angry Badger. There was a distinct sense of unease in places judging by some of the whispering between the more stony faced members of the audience. At my next gig I might put a video camera behind me and record the audiences response rather than my performance. What I do is not just light entertainment, I want it to provoke the audience. Whispering in the audience is good.

After the show I received several comments from people at the bar, I had a suspicion some them had presumed I'd done a runner when I went to the toilets to change out of my costume.

One young chap at said that I had “balls” to stand up there and say that stuff, he sounded impressed but added “you can'’t dance to it”.

Another girl approached who was from a commune who were involved with some of the other bands performing that evening and offered me a gig at a Green Fair. She was impressed I'd dared to get up there and say what I said and she no doubt wanted that kind of attitude for an politically motivated event. I responded that I was sorry if it freaked people out, but she replied :

“maybe you're saying something the bands can't say”.

I have decided to change how I am using this Blog. It had been pasting up half baked critical theories that desperately needed critique but this is only suitable for a very select audience. I have decided instead that this blog should become more of a diary. I have a list of shows coming up over the next few months, and this is might turn into some kind of tour diary, but this isn't really a proper tour. The shows are going to take various unusual forms, from art installations to video screenings to stand-up poetry readings to guerrilla happenings and I am going to attempt to tie up this series disparate events. Some of this is going to be funny anecdotes and sometimes it will wonder into theories, philosophies and proposition.

My recent art practice has spun off on differing trajectories. I am currently studying for an Masters of Fine Art at Goldsmiths College. Late last year I developed a performance poetry project. The project initially grew from work I had been doing with rock band The Blo Boys and I had started by taking the lyrics and reading them to audiences as poetry without music. I also started writing some poetry specifically for this format of presentation. Being a stand up performer is quite a brave (or perhaps foolish) thing to do as in front of an audience you are very vulnerable. Rather than take the conventional approach of trying to become more secure I had instead tried to exploit this vulnerability.

Initially the poetry received an awkward critical response as people did not know where it stood.– Was it art? Was it music? Was it theatre? Was it poetry? What the hell was I actually trying to do? Eventually I started to secure my unusual position through a series of shows and radio performances help by the patronage of the great Bob & Roberta Smith. I started to get offered more shows and was asked for proposals and applications.

As these proposals were being processes I returned to the studio to work on some new material and started making a series of video that aimed to resolve many of the criticism I had received. Building on the live performance poetry, these video were directed to focus on the performance rather than the poems. Some of the early videos have been proposed for public screening, but most of this work has not been shown publicly. However it has received a remarkably positive critical response from those who have seen it. It is more refined and also much drier than the live work, but has also lost a little of the fun of live shows and feels mediated by video.

Though the video work has received a good critical response and presents a new direction for my research, meanwhile proposals for show I put forward earlier in the year have been processed and I am out of the studio and doing live shows again with old material. My practice iperusingng different directions.


I have also become involved in a group called The Union and I am creating collaborative work as part of this as well.

Mean while I am still also trying to pay the bills by running my own business designing commercial websites.

It has all gone in different directions and I hope that this blog may navigate though all this confusion!