La bataille D'Isigny. Part 2. Filming.

In late September 2019 ManCameraMartain, LauraCameraWife and I arrived in Isigny-Sur-Mer.  Our mission was to shoot footage for a film.  A no-budget guerrilla operation beginning at the Eastern edge of town near the gates of the huge Dairy factory.  Using Google Earth I'd pre-selected the first camera set-up.  We improvised the rest of the shots as opportunity presented whilst I performed the simple story board I'd made over the summer.

Dashing about the quai in a business suit attracted the attention of locals and we had some fun banter whilst explaining we were making a short film concerning the town and it's relation to the Disney Corporation.  After a long afternoon filming we returned home and I began to arrange the footage to see what had been captured and what other footage we would need to complete the film.

 

ManCameraMartain and I returned the following week with a tight list of scenes to capture.  We decided to shoot these on a Saturday afternoon - a relaxed,  non sacred leisurely time of the week.  This mission must capture myTHself transformed from suited business man to myTHself Trinity fantastic warrior angel on the main bridge over the sea canal.

Wings (1)

I've only seen angels, fairies or demons fly in films or seeming to fly in pictures.

To attain flight wings must be capable of creating lift.  For the last few months I've been making a pair of wings to assist with a flight through culture.  For more than 20 yrs I've pictured myTHself Christopher Wanker with the map of the UK behind attached to him via his cock London's Cock.

This picture made in 1998 shows me trying to become myTHself Christopher Wanker.  I've cut around some of the figures so a map could be inserted or the figure folded out into another dimension from the picture plane.   I made a 3D clay phallus with London's cock as cross section to help me integrate and act out in the picture making.

20 years later in computer sketches preparing for "La Bataille D'Isigny" I began to depict CW with his cock London's cock and a pair of map wings made adding a second mirror image UK map digitally extracted from google.  In composition with the EasterLegs and Walkerloo paper soldiers Christopher Wanker begins to become Christopher WonkerWankerWalkerloo, myTHself Trinity.

The real wings are made from 4 deconstructed 'AA Handy Glove Box Road Atlas's' (and their copyright spell) and painted fleshy mirror Britain maps applied to wood composite panels.   I hope a good flap will aid their flight after take off... scratch the face of Disney.

Christopher Wanker Pants Down. Strike Three. New Light Prize Exhibition 2017.

At home for Christmas 2015 I came upon The 'New Light'  painting competition show held biennially at the Bowes Museum in County Durham .  Born in North East England I met one of the criteria to enter and decided to try for the exhibition in July 2017.  I submitted two pictures recently made 'The Aluminum Ladder' and 'The Tale Of Christopher Wanker'.

The Aluminum Ladder by myTHself , acrylic on board, 1220x1530. 2016.

The Tale Of Christopher Wanker by myTHself, acrylic, map and false gold leaf on board, 1220x2220. 2015-16.

In September 2017 I was disappointed to receive a letter regretting to inform me that my pictures had not been chosen for the exhibition. Strike 3.  Fucked off with failure at judged painting competitions I knew I must find for myTHself a place to show Christopher Wanker.

I had enjoyed making the pictures and valued the results but failure to win an exhibition space meant in accordance, with the agreement I had made with my wife, I must return to building full time.  By the end of October 2018 the house I had begun building in 2013 was finished and let out.  I became a land lord with time to make pictures.



  

Christopher Wanker Pants Down. Strike Two. The Royal Accademy Summer Show 2015.

2015 was the bicentennial year for the Battle Of Waterloo.

Inspired by the Royal Academy Summer Show Open Call for that year I made pictures for the entry application.

In 2013/14 I was commissioned by my friend to paint a picture for his new restaurant in Cherbourg.  Respecting the taste of the patron I planned and painted a large sensible figurative acrylic composition.

I enjoyed painting at this scale and gained confidence in the pictures success at the restaurant.  I had thought painting a de-funked medium but skillfully applied paint to make a picture can be magical.

Between 2013 and 2018 I spent most of my time building a house but mid-Winter is unsuitable for building outside.  I dedicated a month to make a new picture for the show.   Judging it was time to expose more I decided to unite two disparate parts of myTHself - Christopher Wanker Fantasy banker would back the toy soldiers at The Battle Of Walkerloo.

Alas the pictures were not short listed for display in the RA summer show of 2015.  Strike 2.

I had never been completely satisfied with any Christopher Wanker photo montage picture.  Whilst living in France I took an afternoon painting class at Cherbourg art school and was shown the basics of 'pretend it's oil' acrylic painting.  I developed a kind of brush scrubbing paint technique on to a dark painted base board which had solidity.  I was seduced by the leather like surface of the painted pictures.  This Christopher Wanker had been painted onto the road map surface, which had been glued to a board.  His painted body united into the map surface as picture on to paper.  The unity of the UK road map and myTHself Christopher Wanker was much more convincing than the photo montages.  Painting the map and him together made Christopher Wanker more real, as a picture. 

too big for my studio i made him in the living room.

'BattlingTheBeast' Christopher Wanker pencil drawings by myTHself. 2015 (5 x A3)

Photographs taken by friends and myTHself at London's Cock 'Coming Out Of My Bedroom' Exhibition, 1996.

On a Sunday afternoon in the winter of 1996 I held the private show 'Coming out of my bedroom' in my bedroom, in Fulham, London.  I presented models and collages depicting 'London's Cock' to invited friends.  The presentation and subsequent discussion of  the map phallus overtly fixed the identity of myTHself Christopher Wanker and the logical conclusion that his cock was London's cock.

How Christopher Wanker came to be. 19/09/2006 & 25/06/2017 myTHself.

He/I is Christopher Wanker. He is at the centre of myTHself.  He was the first part of myTHself to come from Christopher Walker.  

"See me.  In my suit I feel a part of my country.  I feel it between my legs.  I see how it unites me with my country.  My cock is London's cock.  With my cock, London's cock, I began to play with mythself.  With my cock, London's cock, I propagate myTHself.  It's what my cock, London's cock is meant for.

I come from within myTHself, from a driving ambition to be part of you.  I am my ambition seen frustrated and fulfilled in my grotesque and surreal unity with the map of my country.  I am an image aroused by desire to be before you and get into you. Put my cock London's cock into you, seeding myTHself...  Look at the map of my country and see part of myTHself... I mean business - mean I business, 

I am Christopher Wanker and I am here so you will see and consider myTHself.

For years I have remained within myTHself, behind Christopher Walker.  Within myTHself I always had the knowledge that I was, that I could come out.  It sustained myTHself through the banal labours of Christopher Worker painting the walls in people's lives brilliant white with obliterating  emulsion.  I feed the egoism in myTHself that puts myTHself before you and in you.  You have perhaps all, already looked at my cock, London's cock, but only now thanks to me  can you see it!  My cock is London's cock, it's my fantastic tool for cultural propagation, dissemination - it's in you!"  

Hitching North & South

How did I come to see it and how did it become a part of me?


In the week after Easter In 1994 on the M1 motorway south of Nottingham I sat in the back seat of a car whilst the two blokes giving me a ride talked in the front.  I was hitch hiking south having visited my family in the North for Easter. I saw the rear of the truck in front and it said ''Hula-Hoops'' a brand of potato snack I knew and ate.  As we overtook I saw 'Hula -Hoops' was also on the side of the truck. The next truck we passed said nothing, it was blank on the back and on the sides... I began to see blank sided haulage vehicles all around. Trucks with hauliers own details on the sides seemed almost meaningless to most of the public who saw them.  With a quick count I estimated two thirds of the working haulage trucks' existing surface space could communicate with more relevance to see-ers on the crowded British road network.

Over the next few months I spent my time turning this observation into a business plan. I called it "SMAC'm" - Strategic Mobile Advertising Campaign media.  I knew nothing of business and little of advertising but began the project with belief in the idea and self confidence.  I was living in west London surrounded by the affluent business class.

I immersed myself in the creation of the business plan.  To help me visualise the roads and hauliers locations I pasted my bedroom/office with a large scale road atlas of Britain.  It covered the walls and the ceiling wrapping the insides of my room I worked, slept and dreamt in.

His London bedroom/office/laboratory in Fulham, London.

I saw how business needed demand for it's product - with care for little else - and how advertising encouraged and created this demand - with care for little else. I became disillusioned with them both.  My belief in the feasibility of smac'm remained but my belief in its reason to be was undermined. Without money or experience raising the capital for my idea would be difficult. But without my belief it was impossible. In an attempt to persuade my self I thought up 'De-Ad' and fantasized that with profits from SMAC'm I could create a de-Advertising communicative work which would present the other side of the product of business.   ... together they made SMAC'm DeAd, and it was.

The corps of my schizophrenic business fantasy SMAC'm DeAd enveloped me.  Filled with frustration in my thwarted ambition I stared at the map of my country pasted on to the walls of my office... of my bedroom.  The map represented roads constructed over hundreds of years by the desires of the country's people to move them and theirs about.   On the roads were the trucks, and on the trucks would be the messages my vision had enabled.  My fortune would come from the advertising I had foreseen and that advertisements potential to tap into the desires of my country.  And I saw it rising in the form of the main roads north out of London, The A1(M) & the newly finished M11... rising north from the newly completed orbital motorway, the M25. At once it was part of me. My cock was London's cock.  I became united with the map, the form of it, of my country and me.

Over the coming months I excitedly explored my fantastic new anatomy . I became myTHself Christopher Wanker , banker of fantasy, whose main interest would be the interest of others and who in his suit could feel apart of his country.

myTHsel's bedroom/studio/office/gallery Parson's Green, Fulham, London circa 1996

myTHself, Christopher Writer about Christopher Wanker 19.Sept 2006.