Monday, December 13, 2021

'Les Trois Ages du Dragon Baligan, myTHself et Autres Monstres' Opening Show Night. Batiment Bleu, Dielette, 27th Oct , 2021.


I talked a few thousand people around my temporary studio space over my 4 month residence in Dielette. Few of the visitors came to see my work specifically.  Most approached a painter working on a large painting in a large open window out of curiosity. I would explain the picture as I worked and often invite them on a tour of my work inside the space.  It proved an excellent way to evolve a lyrical talk around my pictures.




As LesTroisAgesDuDragonBaligan painting reached completion I planned an exhibition to mark the end of my residence.  For the exhibition I identified five picture 'stations', stops on a mythical journey through the exhibition space.  

On the opening night I performed the tour around the pictures before an invited public including the Port Captain and the Mayor.  It was a mythical journey that invoked myTHself Trinity.

Station 1: The Easter Legs. The first public project I made after moving to France. A Christmas Stocking meets an Easter Egg in a Gift Factory on St. Valentines night (animated film).  The offspring of this mythical union of the best selling Christmas gift and the best selling Easter gift should be able to merchandise the *uck out the rest of the planet.... right?  But a tension exists within the group...  (after almost 20yrs live play action www.EasterLegs.com is under threat of tech extinction.  Ever since S.Jobs denied Flash in his pods etc. hmmm... the same Jobs who sat on the Disney board after he sold them Pixar in 2006... an obvious conspiracy against the EasterLegs in the flash... ?



Station 2: The Battle Of Walkerloo.
A self portrait in the form of a toy soldier army fighting a real pretend war for survival.  Ever since StarWars boys action toys in particular have been in the grip of the plastic toys from movies and TV.  What else should an army of toy soldiers do to get on in the world but go to real pretend war with those that obstruct and occupy the relevant space.




Station 3: The Tale Of Christopher Wanker.  Over the summer it this was this picture that got visitors embarrassed attention. Fair enough. It is a picture made to project so. But always as I talked people through 'The Tale Of Christopher Wanker' and the origins of his phallus the trepidation turned to understanding, giggles and smiles.  At the origin of  myTHself, the word I made up to author the picture. Christopher Wanker the Fantasy Banker, his cock is London's cock as I discovered it to be upon pasting my bedroom/office walls with a pair of giant scale road atlases to visualise library gleaned road haulage company data in the making of my business plan that was to make me a millionaire advertising media mogul... SMACM (strategicMobileAdvertisingCampaignMedia) ... or not. SMACM de-AD(vertising)... hmmm. West End, East End, Bell End? Londong? Oh that's why they're all called Cockneys.... I no longer wanted to be a real business man... but a part of me had already become a fantasy one... Christopher Wanker the Fantasy Banker has been with me ever since.... my toxic male alter-ego? my biggest swinging get the business done self? the holder of my tool for mass cultural penetration and insemination...



Having explained 'The Tale Of Christopher Wanker' I begin to back up to that wall behind me where my suit jacket and Britain map wings are hung.... and then.... ... ... ... the invocation of myTHself Trinity, le duelliste d'Isigny is complete!



Station 4: Les Trois Ages Du Dragon Baligan. Man vs Beast... using the power of faith and its symbols. The picture shows St.Germain surfing into DiƩlette on his flaming wagon wheel (nuclear warning adjusted Raleigh Burner wheel) and petrifying the child eating dragon beast Baligan beneath the cliffs of Flamanville... as I myTHself Trinity go on to tell the story of how another child preferring dragon beast Disney is gonna get it... using the power of my faith.... and my pictures



Station 5:  La Bataille d'Isigny Strategic Model.  (LBdISM).  An Improvised object coming together days before the show.  I needed a pictorial object to introduce and link the studio space in Dielette and further my mission to manifest an assault on Disney...  "In 1066 Hugues Suhard d'Isigny a peasant soldier left Normandy in the army William the Bastard to seek his fortune. 900 years later in 1966 one of Hugues descendants died in California leaving behind a commercial empire that had begun to capture the imagination of the world, he was Walt Disney. The Battle of Isigny strategic model enabled me to explain my surreal assault on the corporate beast via the ancestral hometown of foes creator.


Friend and picture making collaborator Martin Andrieux/ManCameraMartain along with a few others agreed to film and photo the event. These stills from his films and photos of others present at the show.




the dream of the battle... to cum?





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