Thank you everyone who came to @barnsleycivic for 'Canary in the Coal mine', a talk and screening to close the exhibition Straight A's at The Cooper Gallery.
I've been emotionally exhausted this week, so it's been hard to think clearly about the final moment in a life-long project, but those who I have spoken to since tell me the event went well.
Big thanks to @lucy_dewsnap_bearsuit for brilliantly chairing the event.
A big thanks to everyone who has come to see the exhibition 'Straight A's' at Barnsley's The Cooper Gallery, and thank you as well who came to the screening and talk at the Barnsley Civic on the final day of the exhibition, especially to fellow artist @lucy_dewsnap_bearsuit for hosting the conversation. Much appreciated.
There was a few unexpected issues with the 2nd film in the final talk, so if anyone wanted to rewatch it there is a link to it in my bio.
Thank you.
I'll have a small number of the Straight A's cassettes available at my talk at The Civic at 1pm this coming Saturday.
But along with it is a card with a link to the soundtrack to 'Wall, i', a film that is as important to me as the Straight A's exhibition, and is also a moment when I created music as part of an art project with friends from my home town.
It is cash only, but can sort things come-what-may I'm sure.
After the bank holiday there is only 5 days left of probably most important project I've done in my life (or at least in the top 3).
Thanks to everyone who has already been. If anyone is free on the final day (Saturday 11th) I will be doing a talk and screening at the Barnsley Civic - just down the street from the Cooper Gallery - at 1pm.
Then it's all over after that!
#coopergallery #thecivicbarnsley #barnsleycivic #2028townofculture
With there being literally one week left of Straight A's at the Cooper Gallery I just wanted to thank everyone who has supported the exhibition, visited, and especially those who initially collaborated with the project. Including all those who literally reincarnated Dead songs from my very early adult life.
What is next after this (?) I don't know. But I am very happy the way this has gone.
The exhibition ends on Saturday April 11th. Open everyday except Good Friday, Sunday and Bank holiday monday.
This clip from the film Big Exit, includes audio work from @drtechnical and @georginagilmartin
My exhibition 'Straight A's: Anxiety, Anorexia, Alcohol, Ageing and Art' at The Cooper Gallery ends in under 2 weeks. It's been probably most the important exhibition of my life as an artist (which is basically all my adult life), and if I don't do anything for a long time it doesn't matter.
On Saturday 11 April, the final day of the exhibition, there will be an event to mark the exhibition at the Barnsley Civic. I will be encouraging people to see the exhibition one last time, before at 1pm, I will be in screening two shortish films and holding a conversation with fellow Barnsley artist @lucy_dewsnap_bearsuit and Photography at the Civic.
Tickets are free, but booking adviced. Not really suitable for minors.
Big Exit is short book, a philosophy on the desire to escape, that I made in collaboration with photographer @rory_garforth_photo and designer @_jamie_briggs_ .
I've long wanted to make a publication like this, so it is something I am incredibly pleased with.
It's available to read/purchase at my current exhibition Straight A's, which is only on for the next 2 week (not including bank holidays).
Thanks
I forgot I made videos like this during the 2020 lock-down. It is a spoken text about my drawing 'A New Spring has Sprung', which is one of my works currently on show at The Cooper Gallery until April 11th.
Even though it is painful to watch my societal predictions from 6 years on (alongside seeing how thick and lacking white hair was head was back then) the entire Straight A's exhibition, and indeed anything else I can forsee in the future, still rests on the strange hope that was born out of the first couple of month of the pandemic.
I'm really happy to share that I will be giving my exhibition Straight A's at The Cooper Gallery a send off with an artist talk and film screening.
On Saturday April 11th, people are encouraged to go see my exhibition one final time, before taking the short walk down to the Barnsley Civic for my event 'Canary in the coal mine'. Beginning at 1pm, I will discuss my life time devoted to my artistic practice, whilst also presenting work that perhaps wouldn't have been suitable for the gallery.
The Films 'IT'S WAR, THEN!" and 'Wall,I' explore a part autobiographical/part fictional story, to speak about difficult but salient subjects such as loneliness, addiction, self hate and toxic masculinity. These subjects may be unsuitable for some.
As a milestone for a quater of a century of making this will be the very final note played.
Thank you, and I hope you can make it down.
Link in bio
#thecivic #barnsleycivic #coopergallerybarnsley #barnsley #thewall
I might not be sexy enough to reach the Guardian culture section, but here I am in the Yorkshire Post, inbetween Alan Titchmarsh's greasy onion hands, and people who've turned up on the Emmerdale set by accident. yOU can find me directly under the word 'STENCH'.
There is just over 1 month left to see my exhibition 'Straight A's: Anxiety, Anorexia, Alcohol, Ageing, Art!
It is a lifetime's event, both physically and symbolically. And if I don't do anything substantial for years to come, I'll at least have this, a show across the street from where I found my artistic 20 years previously.
The thing that preyed on my mind most, before and after the installation, and which almost made me cancel it at one point, was the perception that I was merely projection a depressed interpretation of the world, and, in turn, hopelessness.
For years I burnt that candle at both ends to make work that would one day inform a world that was "not yet here" (to borrow a term), believing that this would also be a world in which I could live a life that was "not yet here".
This exhibition, however, was always first and foremost about not beating myself up for all the aspects of life I may have "got wrong" and just cutting myself some slack for the work I have produced.
I stepped back from presenting any political rhetoric partially to allow for this. But also because I began to believe that political rhetoric in the age of social media, where immediacy triumphs, kills some aspect of the power of artistic language.
Yet, I couldn't bury it all, and more importantly, I couldn't bury the necessity for hope. It may not be obvious when looking my drawings, the exhibition as a whole is about the fact that there is no end to the pursuit of hope, or at least the pursuit of an OUTSIDE to a place where we deem there to be no hope. I used my local landscape, and my collaboration with other artists not entombed within me to articulate this.
It's a very difficult time to reference the presence of hope, and it needs to be earnest. It's in this exhibition, it's just not dancing in your face with insincerity.
Thank you again for all the kind messages of support the exhibition has received so far.
John
