Edinburgh Festival 2009
I was urban somnambulating, on my way to the college art shop, Hypocanthus at the controls. My co-pilot was hijacked by a cacophony of power tools and generators coming from the college grounds. Perfect timing: city is under excavation and it appears the college isn’t exempt.
A look behind the tarpaulin and my simmering rage was taken off the heat. Inside a sculptor was mercilessly attacking a slab of rock. This was to be a stage for a month long performance.
Eleven shelters, each housing a sculptor and a block of stone, was the setting of Milestone- brainchild of Scottish sculptor Jake Harvey. He had the inspired vision to display 10 international sculptors (and a graduate) at work in the grounds of Edinburgh College of Art. Artists from Japan, the USA, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and the UK were assembled, each demonstrating their mastery and differing styles. Over the next month they would create a finished sculpture from scratch. Through gritted goggles they assaulted, smashed, gouged and beat their hapless victim into submission. The creative fallout covered everything in a blanket of white.
In sculpture evidence of the trauma and struggle between creator and creation is usually polished away before put on display. Here was a visceral demonstration of destruction in the quest for beauty - for art. Quarrying sculptors remorselessly destroyed in order to create: they are not art nihilists. Superficially their acts appear as wanton destruction, yet are demonstrations of a fevered desire to consummate their relationship. The rock never submits without a fight. The two find their way together with psychometry and ardor. The course is set in stone, dictated by the flow of the petrified veins and mille-feuilles. Milestone was an insight and a revelation. It helped me to better understand my processes and draw some analogies. My subject, like the sculptors stone, is defined by the light of it's surroundings. It too is impassive and acquiescent to its environmental conditions until I start to reveal with my light. With light I can obscure, hew and expose with surgical precision.
Once a week, for the span of the event, I made my pilgrimage and kept a record of the consequent acts on this stage.
Priest paying homage to Jake Harvey Scott's creation.
Hayashi Takeshi Japan
Joel Fisher USA
Sibylle Pasche Switzerland
Gerard Mas Spain
Susanne Specht Germany
Peter Randall-Page and David Brompton-Greene
Jessica Harrison Scotland
Atsuo Okamoto Japan
Daniel Silver Israel/UK
Carlos Lizariturry Moro Spain
The Edinburgh Festival is about to kick off and Mark (Borkowski) is already here casing the joint. I first met Mark 23 years ago when he was promoting chain-saw juggling clowns from French circus troupe Archaos.
For many years we were creatively conjoined and intent on creatively twisting the public's melon. We share a kindred Carney spirit and appetite for subversion. Mark is now a legend in his field and a published authority on the art of the publicist.
One of his many clients, James "Tappy" Wright is in Edinburgh promoting his new book 'Rock Roadie'. Tappy, a former roadie, claims in his book that Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager. My uncle Terry, a porter in the London morgue at the time of Hendrix's death, joked he had trouble screwing the casket shut due to the size of his legendary member. Terry was the final nail in the coffin.
The usual story- I met Kamikaze in a disused abattoir in the l'aisselle de Marseilles where the fetid stench of rendered carcasses clung to the walls. The site was trailer trashed; strewn with crippled and cannibalised caravans. The Kamikaze Plaza was an oasis of land-mine cacti in the slaughter-house's Esquina Latina. Tin baths, oil cans, pre-mulched toilets and piss-pots provided shelter from the bonemeal mistral.
I had flown a thousand miles to discover that when he wasn't travelling he stayed just 2 miles from my door. Kamikaze reigns from the Principality of Pilton. His pathological impulse to bring laughter courses through his galvanised veins. Kamikaze's motto is 'C'est la Fuckin Vie' and his métier is cracking smiles in granite. We are each others star-gate. That was 7 years ago and now he's come knocking. Kamikaze's got a present for me hidden up his sleeve. He's been waiting to surprise me since returning from Peru and now he's inching-up his shirt cuff. There amongst the hallowed tapestry of tattoos stood the syringe-spined silhouette of the Cactus Gardener. My work is now indelibly mortalised.
Next week he's off to India for three months of laughter making and tea tasting- La Dolce Vita!
Tonight I'm in London accompanied by nervous excitement. I've been invited to the unveiling of 2 new rooms in Century Club. Century is a refuge of tranquility conveniently located in the heart of London's Theatreland. This oasis of calm is crowned with a roof-garden, a surviving bastion of tobacco camaraderie.
I'm apprehensive because the rooms have been designed around my photographs and tonight is the first time I'll see them. Sophie (manager) commissioned two sets of prints- Cabaret for the new games-room and Fuerzabruta for the restaurant. The Cabaret photographs set a seductive and heady tone. All the details have been precisely worked out by interior designer Louise Begley, right down to the red felt cover of the pool-table.
The adjourning restaurant is in contrast light and airy. The suspended Fuerza dancers look down on the diners like sirens from a basilica fresco. To celebrate the occasion Sophie has laid on food and drinks. I've invited some friends on the condition that they're on their best behaviour.
Javier is already here, lounging resplendent under one of the Cabaret prints, cocktail in hand. He's talking to Josephine (Darvill Mills), cast member of Cabaret and subject of one of the photographs. Everyone is gobsmacked by the floor-to-ceiling print of Clemmie Sveaas and James Dreyfus that greets them.
Ralph (Brown), the only friend I know to be immortalised on celluloid and in cellulose, has turned up with that glint in his eye. We met when I was shooting the NT Auditions and hit it off like on-coming mail trains.
Ralph's a gifted pianist and saxophonist, you can find his recordings on CD and vinyl. He's about to perform at the Brighton Fringe Festival in the tribute band The Brighton Beach Boys and revels in the story of when I met Brian Wilson. As a side-line he's also an author, director, screenwriter, producer and prize-winning playwright. He is a polymath who just won't let go of his infatuation with acting.
Gerry (Cottle Jnr) arrived brandishing his Aussie amour, Sue. He's going through his Mungo-Gerry-fro-phase - the dude's a walking Van De Graaff de-generator. Hair apparent to the throne of the Cottle Dynasty, Gerry was born in a side-show, weened on midget's milk and has an incurable case of congenital showmanship. Gerry's the Philippe Petit of these occasions. When a party slackens and sides split Gerry gets out his metaphorical unicycle and stitches the void with a tightrope act of death-defying wit.
Rebecca (Daly) came up to me and took my arm for support. She'd been star struck and was still reeling. This involuntary reaction had never happened before. Bex, Avid Master and doyenne of the edit suite regularly rubs shoulders with the glitterati. Being confronted by her hero from adolescence 'Danny' (Withnail and I) was a disorienting experience. He'd obviously made a deeper impression on her than she'd realised. Ralph has that effect on people, beware!
As Abigail would agree "a party's not a party without vol-au-vents". Patrica (Lima) was that missing patisserie. She took the party up a gear and homed in on Iffat, the two of them committed social reformers.
By day Iffat fights social injustice with a rolled copy of British Vogue under her arm. Tonight she was keeping a watchful, little-sisterly eye over me, making sure I was distributing myself equally.
Brother-in-arms Ed Webster (photographic producer at 4Creative) was casting a critical eye over the images. Ed's commitment to getting me representation is now taking it's toll. My photographs meet with his approval and he promises that the quest will not end until an agent sees sense.
Michael (Hulls) is a luminary in the world of theatre lighting design. The last time I spoke to him was to tell him his epitaph had just been read out on the radio. A panel of Saturday Review critics had savaged a performance he'd just worked on - 'in-i' by Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan. The critics agreed that the only saving grace was the lighting genius of Michael Hulls who eclipsed the show by turning 'Kapor into Rothko.' Michael was modestly horrified by this news; Anish Kapoor had designed the set!
When the final daiquiri was demolished we retreated to the roof-top garden and whiled away the night under the stars and smoke.
