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ON THIS WEEK
Friday 4th JULY
'Instead of wives, they shall have toads' An exhibition by Stephen Fowler PRIVATE VIEW
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The Chamber of Pop Culture Is Proud To Present:
'Instead of wives, they shall have toads'
An exhibition by Stephen Fowler
Exhibition Saturday 5th July - Saturday 26th July, 12-6pm Mon-Sat
Private View Friday 4th July, 6.30pm till late
The artist will be in residence on Thursday, Friday & Saturday of each week.
Stephen Fowler is a Folk Artist of extraordinary complexity, who over the past 5 years has created a vast body of work illustrating a deep emotional journey of personal identity. Discovering Fowler's work is literally like leafing through the pages of a giant eclectic scrapbook, which at first glance could have been created half a century ago, for Fowler's multifarious practice embraces many traditional crafts, forgotten techniques and skills that belong to bygone age, drawing freely from the worlds of Dada, Surrealism, Constructivism, Abstract Expressionism, Outsider Art and Steam Punk to create his own diverse aesthetic.
From naïve paintings of remote architecture, places of worship and hospitals, to moving portraits of troubled individuals, plant life and shell fish, Fowler presents us with a plethora of assorted drawings, paintings, prints, posters, intricate handmade bookworks, leaflets, flyers, badges, sculptures, found objects and ephemera which reflect his various obsessions for graphics, poetry, old records, photographs, film.
"Instead of wives, they shall have toads" reveals a feast of delights and allows us to glimpse inside the complex mind of this sensitive artist.
Fowler is well known for his creative collaboration with: The Murri Folk Club, Tapestry Music Festival, Tatty Devine, Zeel, Mark Pawson, Rob Ryan & Rocky Alvarez.
To accompany the exhibition there will be a programme of film and live music events. Curated by the artist.
FILM NIGHTS
Wednesday 9th July, 7.30pm
£5-£4 mems/concs
We Have No Art
1967 26 minutes
+
Mary's Day
1964 12 minutes
Two documentaries on the Artist, Teacher, Nun; Sister Corita.
+
Danielson: A Family Movie (or, Make a Joyful Noise HERE)
2006 105 minutes
Starring Danielson Famile & Sufjan Stevens with cameos from Steve Albini, Rick Moody, David Garland and DANIEL JOHNSTON.
Tuesday 15th July 7:30pm
£5-£4 mems/concs
Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum
Directed by Lynn Shores
1940 B/W 66 minutes
Wax figures, hidden rooms, secret passage ways and pelting rain.
Sidney Toler stars as Charlie Chan in this claustrophobic museum setting.
+
The Bat Whispers
Directed by Roland West
B/W 83 minutes 1930
An old dark house melodrama.
Friday 25th July 7:30pm
£7/£5 members & concessions
Home Made Record Sleeve Performance
(D.Js Nervous Stephen and Rocky play records from 'Home made records sleeves volumes 1 and 2' books, as corresponding record sleeves are projected).
+
William Fowler Band
(Post Barrett Space Folk)
Monogram
(Old Timey tunes)
The Country Teasers
(The Fall meets The Carter Family)
Continue reading "Instead of Wives, They Shall Have Toads" »
Saturday 12th July
Doors 8:30pm
£5
IBIZA: A reading for 'The Flicker' is a solo performance by Ian White. A real life true story and the image-less hallucinogens of Tony Conrad's 1966 film 'The Flicker' are presented simultaneously, like parallel lines in a face-off. IBIZA is a question about the real: an assertion of difference or a kind of hopelessness with nonetheless some good energy, a response to a specific place and a specific time, a personal history and imaginary space. Not Ibiza, but the room we're in.
Thursday 17th July
Doors 7:30pm
£7/£5 members & concessions
The Sohemian Society presents:
THE SUAREZ SÉANCE
Revisiting the dark world of Derek Raymond with the original 'Dora Suarez' soundtrack performed live by James Johnston, Terry Edwards and Richard Strange.
To celebrate the re-release of the classic 1993 album 'Dora Suarez' by Derek Raymond, James Johnston and Terry Edwards on Sartorial Records and the reprint of the original novel 'I Was Dora Suarez' by Serpent's Tail, a night of music, film and conversation saluting the godfather of British Noir.
In 1993, the author Derek Raymond and the multi-instrumentalists James Johnston and Terry Edwards of Gallon Drunk came together to record an extraordinary artifact. The text of Raymond's landmark novel 'I Was Dora Suarez' was set to an original score by Johnston and Edwards, that lifted the worlds of an unnamed Detective Sergeant, a psychopathic killer and his victim, the beautiful Dora Suarez, off the page and into a sonic séance.
Using the sounds of the streets as their guide, these two highly talented and original musicians wove a nightmarish soundtrack to the unforgettable spoken word of Raymond, immortalising a book that would change the very course of British crime fiction. The trio performed this work once, at the NFT in a sell-out concert in the summer of 1993, the first time that a music event had ever taken place at this venue. Derek Raymond died in 1994, leaving a body of work that would inspire a new generation of crime writers and steadily gain a following of new fans as Serpent's Tail began republishing his canon in 2006.
Now, James and Terry revisit the scene of the crime, conjuring Dora back from the darkness once more, with guest performer Richard Strange in the role of Derek Raymond, live on the Horse Hospital stage. To further channel the spirit of Raymond, the performance will be complimented by a rare screening of the 1993 documentary 'Passages in Black: Three Days With Derek Raymond' directed by Agnes Bert, and conversation with Raymond's friend and literary executor John Williams and Geoff Cox, the man who came up with the genius idea of putting the 'Suarez' project together in the first place.
This is a night not to be missed for all fans of Derek Raymond, Gallon Drunk and noir literature in general.
BOOKING RECOMMENDED: 020 7833 3644
Prestigious organisations such as
Plan B Publishing Limited / Faber & Faber / Atlantic Books / Sanctuary Publishing / Transworld Publishers / Simon & Schuster / Turnaround PSL / Granta Books / Serpents Tail / Dedalus Press / The Greater London Authority/ Camden Arts Centre / Camden Council / Artangel / OneWorld Broadcasting Trust / Central St Martins/ AngelEye Productions / Channel Four / Universal Records / Kerrang Magazine
have worked with us in the past to make their launches, parties and photoshoots a success, why not try the very special Horse Hospital service we have to offer?
Exhibition: 7th June - 28th June
Mon-Sat 12-6pm
Private view: Friday 6th June 6:00pm
The Horse Hospital presents Sacred Pastures, a three person exhibition that for the first time brings together contemporary religious/apocalyptic painter Norbert Kox, multi-passioned visionary artist Cathy Ward and transpersonal self-taught painter Eric Wright.
Sacred Pastures highlights each artists' dedication to revelatory and pietistic concepts within their work. While producing a highly distinctive range of imagery drawn from diverse sources of inspiration, the artists share a canon of practice that emphasizes the work as a means by which inner discoveries can be made manifest. Each has staked out a territory within the realm created by the intersection of intuition and the objective world. The exhibition highlights the diverse manner in which a bold romantic spirit is returning to contemporary artistic practice. Here are artists that eschew irony in favour of conviction and do not shrink from self-portrayal. Together presenting the antithesis to nihilistic self-referenced output while avoiding sentimentality.
Norbert Kox presents a challenge to accepted christian orthodoxy of any sort while at once presenting powerful prophetic biblical revelations. His work takes forms ranging from symbolic metaphors and visual parables to revelatory land and seascapes. Informed by his own traditional bible study as well as computerised deciphering of coded messages within the same book, the work presents Kox's warnings of christian falsehoods and counterfeits, discoveries of spiritual promise and visions of the coming end-time.
Cathy Ward obsessively explores a heady topography of remembrance, sexuality and mythology which is wound together and presented with the weight of personal experience and the depth of folk tradition. Her incredibly detailed drawings move effortlessly between an abstracted dream world and a representational landscape that is more otherworldly still. Her images are more an epitaph to primal memories than a reminiscence of personal or collective histories. It is from this vein that the work inhabits a spiritual dimension that erupts from the twisted lines in a Dionysian frenzy.
Eric Wright draws from a singular viewpoint to reveal a world laden with amorphous import. His archaic treatment of his chosen subjects be it portraits or landscapes exhibit in the labour of their creation a demiurgic inspiration. He uses realism and narrative devices to open a raw seam of transpersonal foreboding firmly rooted in his personal and cryptic lore. Exhibiting overt allusions, Wright's work goes beyond the banality of rock lyricists and other cod-romantics. The absence of any provenance for all of weighty intimation propels the work as it takes it's place in the firmament of our consciousness.
Wednesday 25th June
Doors 7:30pm
£7/£5 members & concessions
Norbert H. Kox, American Visionary Artist
approximately 20 minutes (Disinformation).
American Outsiders: Norbert Kox
approximately 20 minutes (Pulse).
To Hell and Back: Norbert H. Kox
approximately 20 minutes (various newscasts).
Sonafeld
Animation by Cathy Ward with sound by Stephen O'Malley
5 minutes
Norbert Kox will speak and answer questions after the programme.
Norbert Video
See Norbert's youTube video message here.
A trio of films that provide an insight into Norbert Kox, his work and the world in which he lives.
Featuring the London Premier of Norbert H. Kox, American Visionary Artist produced by Disinformation in an extended 20 minute cut. This sympathetic documentary takes us into the studio and mind of the self-professed apocalyptic surrealist and gives Kox the stage to help us understand the meaning and purpose of his work.
American Outsiders: Norbert Kox gives a mainstream version of Kox's work providing insight into how the fringes of the establishment try to come to grips with his full-on vision of our near future.
To top it off To Hell and Back: Norbert H. Kox shows, through a collection of news clips from his Wisconsin environs the difficulties brought in harboring a vision at odds with both secular and christian orthodoxy.
Also showing is Sonafeld a unique animation that brings the evocative worlds of Cathy Wards drawings into hyperreality. Sonafeld features the track "Keep an Eye Out" by Stephen O'Malley.
The Horse Hospital, Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1HX
popculture@thehorsehospital.com see full contact details here
"where all paths converge"
