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The Comme Ca Art Gallery
‘THE SOULS OF MEN THAT GOD MADE DIFFERENT’
by: Alker & Liddell, Edward Barton, Billy Childish, Antonio
Claudio Carvalho, Robert Clarke, Bob & Roberta Smith,
Charles Thomson and Martin Vincent.
Collection curated by Mike Dawson, Comme Ca Art
24 Worsley Street, (Off Ellesmere Street), Manchester, M15
4LD
From: 02.08.03 - 28.09.03
Opening Times:
Sun & Mon: Closed, Tues - Fri: 11:30am - 5:00pm, Sat:
12:00pm - 4:00pm
Late night Thurs until 7:30pm
All other times by appointment only. Tel: 0161 839 7187
Preview
Event: Friday 1st August 2003: 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Please call Comme Ca Art if you would like to receive invitations:
0161 839 7187
"The Souls of Men that God
Made Different‚ is an exhibition that attempts to provoke
the notion of a re-orientation to integrity and the spiritual
journey that was once at the heart of modern artists‚
sensibilities, rather than giving gusto to any form of monotheism".
"The Someone, 2003"
Selected info on the artists:
Alker & Liddell: David Alker and Peter Liddell
have been involved in collaborative projects since 1996. Their
practice operates in Manchester and London. Their work engages
directly with the ways in which histories are constructed
and documented. They make and remake cultural material including
record collections, exhibitions and artworks. These reconstructions
take various forms including paintings, prefabricated objects
and handmade scale models. For this show they present a series
of small painted canvases titled "The Patron Saint of
Sculpture". "A long time ago we saw something which
took our breath away. Through the window of his workshop we
watched a man in a black coat fashion geometric objects from
plaster. We watched intently as he worked late into the night
creating a series of small elements, one after the other,
until they covered the surface of his workbench. Later, we
were standing in an exhibition surrounded by artworks, which
had been composed, to the fiercest principles of pioneering
abstraction. No statuary, no installation, no found objects"
Edward Barton: A rock bard, musician, composer, poet
and artist based in Manchester, well known for writing the
Opus 3 hit "It‚s a Fine Day" playing a guitar
with a wooden spoon on The Tube, 84 (this also debut of one
of his paintings), and his performance nights/events "Misery"and
"My Eye Hurts" Barton was the first to open a gallery
(Oblong) in Manchester‚s "Afflecks Palace"
Because of their Dadaist and often crime-related edge Oblong‚s
shows often get as much coverage in the pages of the tabloids
as they did in the art press. Since the closure of Oblong
in '92 Barton has been writing a lot of poetry and music.
He has become a rather reclusive painter and art maker who
only surfaces when pestered. For this show Barton will present
a series of paintings he made just before the stroke of midnight
on New Year‚s Eve, 1999. For further info on Edward Barton
visit: www.edwardbarton.com
Billy Childish: An artist, poet and musician based
in Chatham, Kent, who studied painting at St Martins School
of Art, from which he was expelled in 1981. Childish has published
over 30 collections of his poetry, recorded over 80 albums
and produced over 2,000 paintings. He is the co-founder of
the anti-conceptualist group The Stuckists, which is Œagainst
conceptualism, hedonism and the cult of the ego-artist‚.
According to Childish, true art is to be found in the Œdepth
of personal expression rather than in the drive for fame and
press cuttings‚. Recent projects include ŒThe Different
Souls of Men Gig‚, Matt & Phreds Jazz Club, Manchester
(2003), and CALLING THINGS BY THEIR PRPOER NAMES, THE BOSS
OF ALL ENGLISH RITERS, EVIDENCE AGAINST MYSELF, selected poetry,
woodcuts and drawings, published in 2003. For further info
on Billy Childish visit: www.billychildish.com
Antonio Claudio Carvalho: A leading artist, "poet-historian
of global art‚, based in Brazil and London. ŒTo
talk of the narrative in Antonio Claudio Carvalho's work is,
at once both obvious and extremely superficial. The written
word whether referring to names of artists and writers or
to quotations, is completely integrated into the figurative
whole. As well as a bold colourist, Carvalho is a precise
and accurate draughtsman, who has developed an extremely personal
synthetic calligraphy. Some compositions recall comic strips,
but the all over synthesis of the image possesses its own
very particular characteristics"
Pierre
Restany, 2003.
Robert Clarke: An artist, based in London, a convert
to painting, Clarke once worked in advertising but became
radically disillusioned with the commercial and creative stranglehold
it had on his soul. Clarke‚s paintings have in the past
been called "hectic amalgamations of form and brush strokes",
but the focus of his work has shifted, and it‚s now the
content that really shines out. His works share a sense of
the grotesque. Like depictions of circus-curiosity relics
they are simultaneously triumphant and tragic. The subject
of "John the Gorilla Boy" strongly desires empathy
from his viewer. Meanwhile the subjects of "Two Duelling
Alien Generals" emerge from a bleak red canvas surface
looking confused, as if wondering who their creator is. Helen
Ellery (Director of the Sea Gallery London) recently commented
that Clarke‚s new works "suggest a continuing interest
in painters such as Dubuffet, Guston and Davie, coupled with
his personal tragicomic imagery and uniquely twenty-first
century aesthetic."
Bob & Roberta Smith: The brainchild of artist Patrick
Brill, originally this pseudonym was an "amateurish,
failed artists Character, the antithesis of the successful,
career‚ artist". One of his reoccurring themes is
the saturating "glue-like‚ effect culture can have
on us, and this has included photographic work of himself
with "The Beatles" It is his text paintings, enamel
on gloss board which have gained Smith the most notoriety,
partly due to the dyslexic misspelling of some and partly
due to his continuing "pop at the art world" Now
he reminds us through his paintings ŒNUFFIN IS REEL‚
and ŒNEW IS THE NEW OLD‚ just how gravely serious
artists can take themselves once they have become committed
to the role of "artist" talking with such pathos
and so earnestly about their own work and the art world in
general that according to Smith you could mistakenly believe
" they worked for the f**king NHS. What has being an
artist come to?" He asks sombrely, "hanging out
with Elton f**king John?"
Charles Thomson: An artist, poet, and longest standing
member of the Stuckist of which he co-found with Billy Childish
in 1999. He continues to be the driving force behind the Stuckists,
particularly since Childish‚s departure from the group
in summer 2001. According to Thomson his art career started
at the age of five "by selling a drawing of his teddy
bear to his Grandfather for 3d" Since then he‚s
tried everything that the history of art, art education and
art institutes had to offer, before finally settling in to
the limitations of oil, acrylic, canvas and figuration. Most
recently his work depicts his cathartic exorcism of a short-lived
whirlwind romance and marriage to a former stripper. Thomson's
subject matter is a non-moralistic interpretation of her previous
working environments. For further info on Charles and the
Stuckists visit: www.stuckism.com
Martin Vincent: An artist, curator and writer living
in Salford. Vincent presents a series of recent drawings that
were made on a computer, and drawn with a mouse. According
to Vincent, "If they are about anything (and if it helps)
they are about place. In the broadest and narrowest sense.
Where things are, what language they speak, where you are
when you're looking at them, where things are when you're
not looking at them. Two of them are geographically specific
- USA, London - while the others contain few clues about specific
location. The relationship between these two modes is quite
important. The maps are no truer that the other images, and
it's the latter that correspond more closely to our (or is
it just my?) experience of locality. (And the actions depicted
intimate that, wherever it is, it isn't here)."
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