Simon Wells: Sup

Max Mosscrop: Forms Without Content

Mike Marshall: Flood Plain

W. G. Sebald

But I never liked doing things systematically. Not even my Ph.D. research was done systematically. It was done in a random, haphazard fashion. The more I got on, the more I felt that, really, one can find something only in that way—in the same way in which, say, a dog runs through a field. If you look at a dog following the advice of his nose, he traverses a patch of land in a completely unplottable manner. And he invariably finds what he is looking for. I think that, as I've always had dogs, I've learned from them how to do this. So you then have a small amount of material and you accumulate things, and it grows, and one thing takes you to another, and you make something out of these haphazardly assembled materials. And, as they have been assembled in this random fashion, you have to strain your imagination in order to create a connection between the two things. If you look for things that are like the things that you have looked for before, then, obviously, they'll connect up. But they'll only connect up in an obvious sort of way, which actually isn't, in terms of writing something new, very productive. You have to take heterogeneous materials in order to get your mind to do something that it hasn't done before. That's how I thought about it. Then, of course, curiosity gets the better of you.

Daniil Kharms (1905 – 42)

Iam interested only in “nonsense”; only in that which makes no practical sense. I am interested in life only in its absurd manifestation”


Daniil Kharms, experimental writer, children’s story-teller, member of the unconventional artistic grouping OBERIU, fine tuning antics and eccentricities into a practised art of “absurd life creation”.

Kharms often utilizes reoccurring obsessions: with falling, accidents, chance, sudden death, victimization and many forms of mindless violence which are often taken to extreme ends and consequences.

One man was pursuing another when the latter, who was running away, in his turn, pursued a third man who, not sensing the chase behind him, was simply walking at a brisk pace along the pavement.

Herbert Read Gallery

Herbert Read Gallery is on the Canterbury campus of the University for the Creative Arts.
http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/index.cfm?articleid=8452

Cortez arrives...

Cortez arrives… is an exhibition of contemporary art which will take place at the Herbert Read Gallery in the University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury, from 6th March to 2nd May 2009, with work by Jo Addison, Adam Gillam, Mike Marshall, Max Mosscrop, Alice Walton and Simon Wells.

The exhibition considers the premise that art sometimes has unreasonable beginnings. The title is taken from an unpublished fragment by the poet George Oppen:

Cortez arrives at an unknown shore
he is absolutely lost
and he is enraptured.

The theme of the exhibition was generated through playful reflection on the incorporation of art schools into universities, and the consideration of art as a form of knowledge. The show includes painting, sculpture, photography and collage by six artists who cultivate accidents, chance, and apparent foolishness, to suspend conscious understanding and reawaken a sense of the strangeness of the world.