4 – 6pm. 23rd june.

exhibition runs 23rd june to 7th july 2011.

oriel beaufort, temple street, llandrindod wells. ld1 5hg

http://www.celfogwmpas.org/www.celfogwmpas.org/Artist_in_Residence.html

 open tuesdays and wednesdays 10am to 4pm, other times by appointment.

telephone 01597-8222777 for further information.

 semtxt. a sequence of one word visual poems. surrounded, often defined by words, we also use language to free ourselves. and language is alive as this exhibition shows. semtext is a body of visual poetry in charcoal. it produces a backdrop akin to jackson pollocks drip paintings by furious action-writing and rewriting over and over repetitively to reclaim languages. this produces a layer of ‘asemic’ language – which you can look at but cannot ‘read’. then a new word which collides existing words in new combinations is erased out of this dense layer of charcoal to comment on many aspects of contemporary life including medicine, mental health, media, nationhood, sexuality, warfare, family, environment etc. radical antipsychiatrists, deleuze/guattari talk about the lines of our life – both the formal ones – & also the more subliminal, that mark our unique voyages. i try following these ones in my work, giving voice to alternatives, these strategies for survival

mo thunder is a collection of visual poetry in which found words and phrases have been placed under pressure and re-configured. Playing with typography and a textured approach to design, this is a work which refracts a variety of different kinds of everyday language, foregrounding oral as well as visual effects in a mesmerising way.

http://soundcloud.com/burnsean/not-losing-yr-marbles-walsall

the text of it reads as follows:
d/rift. stranged house, a long-time friend and handfuls seed out pillboxings – wildflowers compost-downing, spore to rugs, pips under floorboardings, husks inside hand-fueled piano, and watered all in, the labels slapped on, slapped on – us uneasy on wolf-blue, ices no purchase, this brash, the sound/sounds of cracking up. world-as-ballgag no inspired by ‘famous anarchist’ (are there any other kinds?) official plaque blue opposite different blue ov sex shop three minutes from gallery square, fun loopy but still loopy? theres a beauty in nailing the amp for this kind of dissonance

i also presented cracking up – a durational performance. i will repeatedly crack open walnuts using only my left hand and offer the nut flesh up to audiences. this is intended as a small but cumulative and defiant tribute to those not making it thru the mental health system i have filmed a short clip of this which can be downloaded / watched at http://vimeo.com/20374244

it will be playing in the new art gallery walsall in february

one
look at the screen. look. what do yu see? a composition surely. a composed shot, yes? the blur ov liquid eye weighing the image down and pooling, spooling toward this eye-blur, lines ov red spreading. isn’t this art? aren’t boxers knuckles? this image – a document ov blood, ov bloodied, ov bloody, the starting to congeal, and artfully out ov focus, no? some soft-core bleed. doesn’t this look to yu like the site ov body-art impressed on real time? isn’t this live, livid, living? don’t shy away, don’t shuck off yr gaze. are we agreed we can name this art?

two
out vile jelly. king lear, act three and gloucester is being blinded for his loyalty to the old king and yr meant to react with a fuck-me flinch, its supposed to be that powerful, when really its health & safety’d violence. they lay gloucester down, a wall ov bodies to prevent yu from actually seeing, and then he’s raised up again – bam – two bloodied holes where his eyes should. its pantomimey rather than cut as catharsis. blood as blood rarely works well as art / in art – visually, in live performance or on screen. king lear was my introduction to blood in art, where it started for me. wasn’t real, but culturally sanctioned, looking weak. i couldn’t identify with this. zatoichi is perhaps the exception. takeshi kitano’s retelling ov this japanese tale where blood in his film is the tiniest whip ov blade – its bloodfast, blood-rare, the blade as psychology then a tell-tale small drop left hanging, s we witness this totality. this is japanese sword-work from one who knows how to cut and cleave and leave this trace hanging in yr mind – a rich red darkness that speaks as blood all too rarely does in art

three
i was part ov fotofeis – the scottish-wide photography biennial – a decade and a half back. yr gonna tell me i should pronounce it ‘bee-en-arl-ay’ but i’m sticking with biennial. and there was this major exhibition around the fountained central courtyard ov aberdeen art gallery. photographs ov death-row apparatus. someone had designed these killing machines, they’d thought hard and long about the aesthetics ov death. and even in death, in the dying, the institution must send a clear-cut message to the one doing the actual dying. and someone had taken the trouble to photograph all this. colours saturated. square compositions if i remember rightly. and the composition ov each shot was key. and that exhibition opening and its skirting around the actual meat, pussyfooting round what they / we were seeing. lots ov talk ov the composition, the saturated colours, the neat framing – but shying from the actual killing mechanisms, that discussion – what were they / we so scared ov? laughing loudly at this crying off and away from where the real engagement lay, others cast angry glances at me, i couldn’t stop myself, but waited to be asked to leave

four
paint with blood and yu get a weedy rust, nothing like the real thing. we’ve all thought it. but some ov us have actually done it. why insist on painting with blood when its so peely-wallie, so washed out, so less-than-real? i too tried this once, forgot it dried thin and brown. blood is only briefly like blood after all

five
boxers knuckles from punching too many walls, no wonder my writing – the mainstay ov what i do – is unreadable. i have to type if i want to understand what i have written. knuckles long disappeared into the meat ov hand, wanting constantly and urgently to crack what remains ov knuckles on my left, my writing hand, where those knuckles have sunk within. try sketching, drawing, writing with that, that reality, my constant pain in creativity. boxers knuckles as art and now should be the time when i crack my knuckles – and someone among yu saying don’t, and another shivering the lengths ov their spine, and a third laughing nervously – only i can’t crack knuckles to order … but if i could, yu’d sit up and pay attention, notice that amplified craaack

six
walk into the gallery and i am confronted by a climbing frame attached to the wall. it is a few feet off the ground and a little under twice my height. there are blades set into the metalwork where yu place hands or feet as yu climb. that’s right, blades. its for climbing barefoot. unaesthetised climb – escalade de non anesthesiée, 1971. gina pane. gina pane climbed this structure repeatedly until she could climb no more. it took 30 ascents – the naked blades on her hands and feet. gina pane, one ov the founders ov body art, her countering complacency at the vietnam war, body as tool, blood as by-product. that and other small cumulative acts ov blood, a gesture not more, body as metaphor. she also drew with her blood – but it still stained the paper a most unbloodlike rust. cutting the hand that wrote – shock, yes. but the shock ov the 70′s has long worn. each ov her woundings took place just the once, but were photographically documented. she quit this pattern ov bleedage in 1981, just over a decade spent with blood. that’s right, she packed up, packed it in, moved on, found vitrines. i’m not against her bloodied art, i think she showed great courage, but i am with her moving on. a decade ov blood, a bloodied decade sounds about right. why do we need more?

seven
look at the screen, now what dya see? this is not art, but was always intended as a private image. its important yu know this is true, every word. eight year ago i was under section, detained under the mental health act on a psychiatric ward. a danger to myself or others; let me rephrase that – no danger to others, allegedly a danger to myself. and all this while i was cutting myself up pretty badly, the only thing that stilled those voices ov my mind. fracture-proof glass wasn’t as i head-butted or punched out those panes and got the glass i needed. so pretty bloodied the whole six months i was locked-up, confined. eventually working toward my release when they at long last accepted they could get nothing further from me, i was at last given a decent support worker. they asked if i knew what i looked like when i cut. i said no. they replied maybe yu should sometime, look at yourself cut, see what it looks like from the outside, if just for a moment. i was at last discharged into this hostel for the homeless. no mirrors there. i had a camera, a mini-disc player, a microphone, a kettle, a few books – whaddya need books for yr homeless, a duvet, a pillow, a kettle, some changes ov clothes. and i still cut myself, not so bad as in hospital but still … and then one day i remembered this support workers words, seized my camera, fired off two shots. one ov my forearm – that one was in focus. this second yr looking at now – camera held at arms length, aimed towards my head. two shots intended as private document – something for me to look at – see if i developed a different way ov looking. i have hardly cut myself since, though my boxers knuckles have grown. but there’s more. while i was in hospital a live art event took place elsewhere in the small city i lived in. locked up, obviously i couldn’t go. and someone reasonably well known as a live artist then and well-known now decided to cut themselves as their live art; deciding body art would be so co-oo-ool. and they did. and they hit an artery. blood spraying all over. they had to be rushed to a&e and slowly through the course ov that night and on into the early hours – hospital managed to get their bleed under control. and all this conveyed to me by a friend who had seen me held together with stitches and then been at the event where the blood flowed as over-egged art. look at this screen and what do yu see? not art but a document, a testimony, but its not a testimony to the fuckwit who hit an artery in the name ov live, ov body art