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Date: 10 Sep 2010
Time: 15:04:54 -0500
Who owns Fluxus? I bet it's you lot hiding behind this Wide Word Weviews, well you ought to check what is being committed in the name of Fluxus; Tatsumi Orimoto dresses his Alzhimer suffering mum in giant polystyrene boots to cheer her up and ties loaves of bread onto the willing heads of soooooo many many Penzer participants who then return to the streets of Penzance. I hear your feet shuffle in discomfort but what to do?, the man is bringing his art therapy into a Gallery either because someone in that gallery really likes this work or maybe they admire the way Tatsumi Orimoto selflessly gives himself to his mother. The whole exhibition completely robbed me of any critical responses and I felt stupid criticizing something so blatantly theraputic. Difficult and wise for a venue that seems hell bent of nurturing mediochre before medicare . So go further East in the secure knowledge that Tatsumi Orimoto (b.1946 Kawasaki Japan)and his mother Odia were going to be just fine there in the Exchange Gallery Penzance among those twitchy curators looking lovingly at their seascapes and preparing their DADA influenced props for the upcoming FLUXUS FUN FAMILY F....workshops....WORKSHOPS? anyways, such an after party feel in that didactic cathederal of poise. Another new gallery another down at heel seaside town, The Towner Gallery, no evidence of the cringe factor here, not so many tall people hiding near the coffee etc, in fact the comestible range is on a par with The Exchance Gallery, slightly wider choice but nice people who obviously got drunk as hell last night and make coffee as if it's for themselves, bloody heck its like pitchblende! Good, I'm searing through each layer of Eric Ravilious' watercolour guoache with my X-ray vision courtesy of Illy Lavaza and Arabica Rusticana, I'm stupid with delight at this mans reading of the concept "to be English" but its knife edge delusional, cleaving a huge wall of flab from our pathetic reliance on media and false notions of style, these constructs don't bugger about with reality, they glow at room tempreture sorrounded by Harris Tweed and brogue with a whiff of a bun in the oven. Now that I've seen the sequence of dates on Ravilious' paintings I guess there really is some truth in him capturing or creating "some of the calm before the second world wide war you either consign this stuff to the artbin of your private hidy hi or you wrestle with its banal attention to technique but either way the sins of the father soon pall at the merciless candor in the 35mm camera view finder of James Ravilious, the son, who seems to have photographed Beamister Devon at the same time as his father except that his father died shortly after the birth of James. In the corners of these photographs the Princess Diana mugs and other hints about the period come to light, then you realize that what he photographed was the camera lucida of Barthes discourse; Did it truly exist beyond the little black heart in James Raviliouses lieca? I hope so, it doesn't exist beyond these big monochrome prints now but it may have then.