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REVIEW : posted 13.02.03.

LONDUMB - an art exhibition - Saturday 8th February 2003.

Hello there.

'Kay, let's get down to business. None of you are mingers. I want to get that straight before I continue, because I've received several letters from readers asking whether they ming or not. (Really ? - MMT)

No. You don't. None of you do. You're artists, dagnamit, each and every one of you, if only by virtue of visiting this site, and artists do not ming. Except the bint with the unmade bed who didn't win the Turner Prize. Looks like a horse, you know the one. (Presumably he's talking about Tracey Emin. Let's just see where he's leading with this… - MMT) Anyway, just felt like I had to get that out of the way purely because today's review concerns ART.

As usual, my Friday started with a "meh" closely followed by a vague grunt of awakening. I staggered into the office to find The Head Monkey himself, Mr Taylor, sitting at his desk, his great red face a darker shade of scarlet than usual, and as he breathed, great gouts of wrathful steam spewed from his salivating maw and crimson fiery ears... eyes yellow and glaring like the very devil himself... and his talonous fingernails ripped great gouts of splintered wood from the finely polished mahogany he sat behind.

I knew something was wrong. "Hi", I ventured. He continued to seethe. I noticed the red leather chair was bubbling gently as his massive back radiated a heat the likes of which one would only experience in hell, and, shielding my face from the mighty inferno emanating from 'mon capitan'… I swear Beelzebub himself would have looked upon his mighty visage and despaired.

"BRING ME… A REVIEW !"

"A review ?", I stammered, trembling even as his great clawed hand reached forward to grasp my nipple ring and twist it agonisingly three turns counter clockwise.

"A REVIEW !", he screeched, "AND THIS TIME MAKE IT PRINTABLE !" - (referring of course, to the Great Lost Review, Simon's ranting and obscene tirade on the play "Yesterday's Future". Just ask him personally. I'm sure he'll give you the gist - MMT)

I looked at him. "Er… ok."

So, grabbing my pad pencil and a copy of "Time Out", I headed off to the station to get a train down to Euston… Somewhere out there was an exhibition, and By God, I was going to slag the shit out of it.

I don't like reviewing things on my own. It makes me feel like a talentless social dyslexic with no mates who can't get a girlfriend. With that in mind, I phoned the physicist with the nice hat. Remember her ? She's the one whose hat took up two-thirds of my last review. Nayway, she's a great person to do this sort of thing with. And with my press card, and her hat, we can get into practically any event. Remember that kiddies, especially mon petit Goth chicks. Corsets and hats are your passport to a life of free lunches. Use them.

So anyway, I'm heading up to Euston, flicking through "Time Out", trying to find something worth reviewing. There's this ninety year old woman who welds, there's a museum of Freud, there's a "Star Trek" convention… and then I see it. In a little gallery in the West End some bint's making clothes out of skin. Perfect. I rang the physicist. (Okay, see that's a lie, I didn't ring her, but for the purposes of narrative flow let's pretend I haven't met up with her yet)

"Hi !"
"Loopy !" (that's her name for me. It's a long story involving the internet, falling over a lot, and unsuccessfully attempting to find a way of doing more than just writing about her hat).
"Ello ! Listen, do you want to go see an exhibition of clothes made of skin ?"
"I do indeed, shall I meet you at the "Don't Run" sign ?"
"Yes".

See, easy as that. Sometimes people tell me they find it hard to ask girls out, like it's all embarrassing or something… my advice ? Great. I don't find it hard whatsoever. More people for me, fuck you.

So anyway, I'm happy. I'm on my way to spend a day with a nice hatted physicist, I'm going to see skin clothes AND ! I'll be able to get a review to my editor and thus save my arse from his fiery wrath. Rock. Unfortunately, that's when it all went to shit.

I got off the train.
Great.
I met the physicist.
NICE HAT !
I bought some G&T (kids, don't do art sober)
I showed her the article and she said…
"Loopy, you twat, that's last week's "Time Out !"
Arse.

So. I'm in London, and I have to find a way to entertain both of us for a day and review a show. After much tutting, we both agreed there was really only one logical course of action. We bought a disposable camera and headed off to the National Portrait Gallery with one simple agenda - Get Drunk. Which would be the end of the review, had the G&T not kicked in, and this small addendum been added to the plan.

Get drunk enough to take weird photographs of people and things, and then go and illegally display them at the National Portrait Gallery.

Now THAT'S ! a plan.

And so it was. I unfortunately can't show you any of the actual pics. These, presumably are sitting in a police vault ready to be used in evidence against us for crimes against established art, once they've been analysed and used to create photofits and track our movement through London.

However, Lucy, the physicist (who, by the way, has been going to the milliners. Think trilby rather than fez.) will probably get prints and if she does some of the better ones : for example, the "Mad Grinning Bench Man", "Man With Ecstasy Mini Polo", and "Kanger-Lupe" may get an airing at a later date. For the record, however, here's our exhibit, just to prove we actually did it, entitled "Londumb, a transient movement in too many parts"

So there ya go. At this point, you're probably wondering "Kay… thanks for that… now can I have those ten minutes of my life I just wasted on this pointless crap back now ?" Short answer. Nope. But there is a point. And its this, my doodles.

The world's a great big fuckin' toy box, and the only thing that separates us is the toys we're allowed to play with. The rich and successful get to play with big impressive toys like art galleries ; the plebeian scumtwats like myself get to watch them play and that’s about it. But you know what ? That’s crap. There's absolutely nothing stopping you playing with the big toys. All you need is a bit of true grit.

Paint a painting and go hang it in the Louvre, write a poetry mag and shove it in every bookshop you can find. Written a piece of music ? Go play it in the foyer of the Albert Hall ; arrange your plasticine people in Madam Tussauds ; write "spade" on a spade and lean it on a shelf in the British Museum - hell, write a play and go perform it in the toilets at the National.

Why ? Because you have as much right to the toy box as anyone else. So they're famous ? So they're getting paid a shitload to have adoring fans coo and preen in front of their latest masterwork ? So what ? There's a reason these places are so huge and imposing, and it's to make you feel like your privileged, to make you feel like you're standing in the presence of greatness. In many ways, to humble you with stone and glass, these buildings are telling you that for a fiver you can stare at the face of God - but don't touch, and for chrissakes don't think you have a right to be here.

Screw that. I spend all day on a library help desk, you think Damien Hirst comes back from a hard day's snorting coke from a supermodel's navel and having people tell him how brilliant he is, needing to have his ego massaged, any more ? Crap. I say, take it back. Take back the galleries, the museums, the concert halls, the theatres. If you're successful and talented, you don't need these places. Go exhibit in an underpass.

Let's fill the Tate Modern with doodles scribbled on the back of McDonalds receipts by a disenfranchised burger cook... fill the libraries with anecdotes from the streets, the offices, the dole queues. You're a successful artist ? Great, now back the fuck away and go pack shopping bags, so the girl who does it in Sainsburys can have a few days off to get her photography collection together. What, you thought she enjoyed bleeping your pasta through the till all day ? No way doodle, her heart's full of star dust and she cums comets.

So do you, so do we all, so does everyone who reads these pages. It's your toy box, you have a right to play with it - because you're artists, each and every one of you and you don't ming.

(Note : Simon would like to thank Lucy for her contribution to the day. Without her wit, charm, intelligence and downright head gear sense, this review would have been shorter and contained less references to hats.)

simon edwards.

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