Kaspar's mantelpiece (for Arp)

Bob Georgeson, Kaspar's mantelpiece (for Arp), 2014, Mixed media, 12m x 3m

LES MAMELLES DE TIRESIAS

http://mamellesdetiresias.blogspot.com

LES MAMELLES DE TIRESIAS is a French website run by the charming Patrick Vincent that focuses on dada, surrealism, constructivism and other avant-garde movements. Superbly researched and up-to-date with current events and exhibitions it is a wonderful resource for all who are passionate about art. Produced with an enthusiasm that only a devotee can understand I recommend it highly and encourage you to add it to your bookmarks. 

I am honoured to be included in the list of artists on the homepage, many of them being seminal influences on my own humble creative efforts. I was also pleased to see Dusan Marek on the list, and I have shared some of my memories of him with Patrick. Thank you Mr. Vincent! It is indeed a privilege...

Friends

 Dorothea Tanning, who taught me that you are never too old to create...

 My beloved Dusan Marek, who taught me that surrealism is a way of life...

 The sublime Francis Picabia who showed me anonymous waves...

 The beautiful Hannah Hoch, undisputed queen of photomontage...

 Jean Arp taught me that Kaspar is Dead...

 Luis Bunuel, the Grandmaster, every scene my primary inspiration...

Kurt Schwitters, who showed me the marvellous in the mundane...

Holiday Dream

Bob Georgeson, Holiday Dream, 2014, Photomontage

Telegraph - What Is Your Name



As an artist racked by self doubt and perfection paralysis where every production is akin to the breech birth of an antiquarian mutant it is delightfully refreshing when one comes across an ascribed artwork that I have no recollection of ever making! Well, it's that sort of world now, especially in the creative commons...

I have no idea who Telegraph are. The only blurb I can find is from their release 'Cookies': "And another, and another... And another one big and really strong release by our super-residents Telegraph duo! Meet six underground minimalistic deep-house tunes by excellent music-makers from Minsk!"

It's not the sort of music I would normally listen to, but it's not unpleasant. The video footage originally came from my experiment mixing up Marcel Duchamp with Candy Earle called la mariée mise à nu (the bride stripped bare) although in my film the tones are red rather than blue. Thanks to Telegraph for the credit...and for the same on another of their videos called Next Room which is heavily filtered and for the life of me I cannot work out what the source was, but who cares, transmutation is the new paradigm!

Robert Hughes on video art

"Mention video to some people and watch their faces fall. If the cliché of "modern sculpture" used to be a piece of stone chewing gum with a hole in it, and that of "modern painting" was a canvasful of drips, then the cliché of "video art" is a grainy closeup of some U.C.L.A. graduate rubbing a cockroach to pulp on his left nipple for 16 minutes while the sound track plays amplified tape hiss, backward."

From the review of the retrospective for Nam June Paik at the Whitney published in Time magazine on May 17th 1982.

This quote popped up in Part 2 of Howard Jacobson's documentary 'Brilliant Creatures', a study of the careers of Barry Humphries, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes. The quote is not only a timely reminder to myself about what I am trying to achieve in video art (visual poetry perhaps?), but classic Hughes cutting to the chase with acerbic wit underpinned by a profundity that most art commentators could only hope for at best. At a time when Australia sadly accelerates backward politically at an alarming rate towards totalitarianism, there is a slight optimism in feeling proud of our cultural heritage and larrikin attitude and honouring those pathfinders who espoused a 'cause' because they believed in it more than their own self-aggrandizement...  

self: ish



A kind of maybe metaphysical sort of self-portrait thing...