Antony Micallef will show his huge Times Square piece and Faile, JR and Blu, whose huge graphic murals adorned Tate Modern, will show alongside Jonathan Yeo’s porno portrait of the US President. Zevs will perform using his unique liquidated logo on a very different kind of naked canvas. Invader, famous for leaving cubic aliens around the planet, will be revealing his most ambitious psychogeography to date, and another secret work will provide a certain famous lady with some much needed funding for her forthcoming presidential campaign.
All this transformed instantaneously the moment I entered ‘Poison’, the long awaited show of new works by Paul Insect. Reality shifted, like the cutting point, the leap or rupture between the world as I knew it and another parallel dimension. A world in which Playboy Bunnies are not just skeletal, where religion is not merely a subliminally bad joke.
In this world, this other universe that is situated on the former premises of an old porn set, where the furniture has over the years amassed more life budding potential than a well managed sperm donor bank; in this universe the Playboy Bunnies are Skeletons, Popes and Saints are adorned with Mickey Mouse ears and clowns noses and women don’t have to worry about the state of equal rights as long as they can balance a glass plate on their over-plasticised, under-nourished frames.
It is a pushing to the extremes, a courting of the point of éclat, like a mirror held in front of my face. This is us, this is me, this is what I am doing. The rupture less abrupt, the leap is diminishing!
Many thanks to everyone that came along, to all that helped put it together and of course to Mr Insect. The show runs until 5pm on Sunday 21st at 9 Caledonian Road, Kings Cross, N1 9DX.
Inspired by the Liber Chronaricum, a book of woodcuts first published in 1493, the style has been twisted beyond recognition by Donwood, and the linocut is carved in a resolutely Medieaval style, with elaborately curled flames, Op-art waveforms and a stabbed leaden sky. The linocut was created specifically to be printed at St Bride’s Institute, based on photographs and observational drawings of Fleet Street.
Fleet Street Apocalypse was cut into linoleum by Stanley Donwood during January and February 2008. It was printed on 4th March, 23rd July and 3rd September 2008 by Stanley Donwood and Richard Lawrence at St Bride’s Institute, Bride Lane, Fleet Street, London, with assistance from Kim Vousden. The printing press used was made in 1844 in Finsbury, London by Hopkinson & Cope. The paper is acid-free archival quality Somerset White 300gsm satin, made at St Cuthbert’s Mill, Wells, Somerset, and the ink used is Cranfield Letterpress black. The print area is 25” x 38” (640mm x 970mm approx), and the paper size is 30” x 44” (760mm x 1120mm approx).
An original edition of 10 proofs was printed in March 2008, and an edition of 50 prints is available from www.slowlydownward.com. An additional edition of 40 prints was donated by Mr. Donwood to St Bride’s Insitute, and is available from them. The prints are priced at £750 each. The print is available from either Stanley Donwood’s website, www.slowlydownward.com, or from St Bride’s Institute.
Further information will shortly be available online at www.slowlydownward.com, if it isn’t already.
