Night Soil

Below is a sample blog post from http://redundantalex.blogspot.com

A basic summing up of the last month would go as follows. I am redundant (from my place of employment, an FE college in Suffolk, actually Ipswich, ok its Suffolk New College). I have been working for free as an artist in residence at the Art School Gallery in Ipswich. I know this is a crazy state of affairs. I am not proud. My first act, to plant a small circle of cress in their carpet, brought over a special task force from the borough council’s health and safety unit. The cress was banned. I have mould in my downstairs toilet, the cat is at death’s door, and I have been rejected from two commissions a film festival and a residency. I wouldnt mind but I was personally invited to apply for one of the commissions and had my arm severely twisted (by phone) to apply for the other. Tomorrow I am presenting my recent, and failed, Arts Council bid to gain funding for the slaughter of a large number of Artists and next week, if I am not slain in Peckham, I shall be talking about blogging.

Post Apocalyptic Adventure

Something has gone amiss. The trains have gone. I have managed to catch the only one running with a few other brave souls. The conductor cannot and has not made any promises about our eventual arrival in London. Personally I find all this stuff exciting, it’s like a snow day or a petrol strike, the world has changed and all we can do is enjoy it. There is an armed presence, in a final attempt to keep society going two police officers patrol the corridors.

I am hoping to get to my parents house in time for tea. They have a number of jobs waiting for me: nailing up the doors and windows, skinning the neighbours, digging a bunker. Meanwhile, at home, Annabel awaits for the return of the Pig. Not to be released until she has a good feed it is likely this pickiest of eaters will run up a hotel bill in the late hundreds before she deigns to return.

Recently we have been dreaming up money making schemes as we drift off to sleep. The latest is the use of the common house fly
Musca domestica in a revolutionary beauty treatment. Inspired by it’s eating technique (vomiting stomach juices, trampling them in and then sucking up the, ahem, dissolved material) we have decided to pioneer a treatment akin to the skin eating fish pedicure that is so popular. Our Fly Facial will involve hundreds of specially bred flies being encouraged to vomit on the faces of the rich (and stupid) in a sort of organic derma-peel. We think the idea really has legs (sorry).

back in Ipswich I shall be absent from my residency at The Art School Gallery for a few days during which time the dangerous cress will wither and die of natural causes. While this is happening I am making a new film of cress growing in my basement at home. I am hoping to project the resulting film in the cloakroom where it’s insubstantial and art approved medium should protect it from health and safety legislation.

SLUICE

I have very wide feet.

In order to order some new shoes from an online company based in Derby I took a pre prandial trip to Clarks for measuring.

Incidentally I have just heard that all the art spaces in Derby are under threat of closure due to lack of funding.

I was a little embarrassed as I had no intention of buying shoes from their shop but Annabel assured me it would be alright. Indeed the lovely assistant was most accommodating. After explaining, at length, that no one measures adult feet anymore and that, no I couldn’t use the exciting children’s laser measurer, she disappeared into the storeroom in search of a set of antique foot calipers. I have to admit at this stage I felt like a bit of a pervert. Then as she grew more excited I was instantly converted from pervert to freak. Apparently my feet are shaped much like those of a duck. It is possible that with a little more adaptive evolution I could return to the sea much like Bobby Ewing.

This is all by the bye as, having given up on Internet shoes in favour of two plastic bags secured at the ankle, I am working on tying up a few loose ends for SLUICE (please excuse the capitals). I have created an edited compilation of some films, an instruction sheet for sowing cress in toy cars and a list of titles which may, or may not, be correct. I am hoping the cress David and Annie took away with them will still be in it’s prime when SLUICE opens, but if it is not I am taking a leaf out of the Chelsea Flower Show gardeners’ handbook and have several replacements on the go in varying states of advancement.

Alex Pearl – SLUICER

Eternal present.

It is Monday morning, I am tired and handing out tea and chocolate biscuits to Annie and David. I took the precaution of buying three packets of biscuits yesterday so that one might remain, packet not biscuit. They are here to select work for Aid & Abet’s stand at the SLUICE Art Fair. It rained last night the lingering clouds making Ipswich seem greyer than usual but inside, due to my final capitulation in the matter of the central heating, it is pleasantly warm. I’ve tidied the basement and laid out a number of pieces for their delectation. I don’t know what they will pick. Previously for art fairs (both of them) I have had half an eye on what might be commercial but this time much of my work seems very transient. Will somebody want to buy a caravan planted with cress or moss? They will have to water it daily and, in the case of the cress, harvest and reseed regularly. Additionally, with time, the caravan will rust and decay. Conversely and perversely the jelly pieces seem indestructible, what are we feeding our children?

This fair though is not really about the commercial. It seems smaller scale, more ephemeral and (apart from the title) nicer.

It is Sunday, I have just eaten a small roast dinner with Annabel. I have retired to the toilet to write and inspect Achilles the damp mould. A white fuzz continues to expand from his heart of darkness. A spider, pale, almost translucent, has strung it’s web across the corner. It reaches from Achilles’ downy surface to a series of brown lumpy craters on the adjacent wall.

I am in the bath reading about vegetable spiders stringing their webs from the earth to the moon. It is too hot. I fear dizziness when I get out and read on waiting for cooler times.

Alex Pearl

Slaughter House 1

Late last night I was pleased to hear my neighbours putting their bins out. It was purely a feeling of self satisfaction as I, following the counsel of my phone, had already put mine out at a far more civilised hour. This piece of petty schadenfreude helped my drift happily off to sleep. The previous day, to that point, had not been my most successful. I had intended to attend my residency at the local gallery but unfortunately I was unable to gain residence. As show is being set up by a taciturn, some might say rude, artist who shall remain nameless. Because of this (event, not humour) the gallery door is often locked and more than once I have been seen (or not) pressing my nose up against the crack in the door gazing at the better (and safer?) world inside. Not 16 years earlier a much younger me was doing the exact same thing up to my knees in snow. I had battled my way into Ipswich from Melton in order to deliver my lectures to eager students. Little did I know that Suffolk tends to close down at the slightest hint of the white stuff and I was surprised to find no one at the art school. By the time of my arrival the weather was already worsening and, were I not writing this, you might think dear reader, that I was about to become another tragic Evening Star headline. In the absence of residential employment I gave up, returned home and continued work on my new project. This is not art but a 1965 RSW 16 it is very cute and somewhat arcane in its design. How I wish I had taken note of the internal cable routing before stripping it down. I am trying to sell my other shopper so that I might fund this project. I have made a fine poster to be hung at the New (most recent) Ipswich Art School which is part of Suffolk New College.

From which I have been made redundant.

I received an email from Andrew Bryant at artists talking. He wants me to come and talk at an event about blogging at Peckham Space on Thursday 17th Nov for a small fee + expenses

“The plan is that I will do a short introduction of you and your blogs, plus a little bit of background on Artists talking, and then you will talk for 15- 20 minutes each. There will then be, I hope, a lively debate on blogging, social network media and all that gubbins.”

I haven’t been blogging regularly on Artists Talking for a little while now due solely to the fact that I can’t seem to do it from my phone, writing in those in between times. I hope this won’t matter. I may copy and paste a few posts from this blog in a cynical move to ingratiate myself with the AN public.

“The working tittle and blurb of the event is:

Artists talking at Peckham Space: to blog or not to blog? Ever thought of blogging but not sure where to start, how to make time or how it might benefit you? Three artists discus how blogging enhances their work and careers, with advice on what makes a good blog and how to make your blog work for you.”

I have been thinking of late that blogging is becoming a bit passé having heard from a number of more trendy mouths a certain disdain for the blogging artist. Perhaps this will become an interesting talking point.

Size of an Elephant!

As is often the case, I have already written and lost this and so feel disinclined to go on. We are sitting in Starbucks next to what Annabel describes as a couple of vacuous bimbos and I am trying to remember the gems I wrote earlier. Last night we watched part three of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster and enjoyed watching him being ultra macho in a pink kilt. I was amazed at his power, not his muscles but rather the fact he got the Guggenheim to clear it’s walls and Richard Serra to shovel hot wax (though he did seem to be enjoying it). When I last visited the very same gallery it was also closed, but for cleaning not tap dancing lamby girls. All we could do was crane our necks to the skylight with the other disappointed pilgrims. We also heard that we had both got into Kerry Baldry’s “One Minute volume 5” which will start it’s world tour at Aid & Abet
In July. We will probably be there, on stage, with a large bubble bath and a Bengal cat.