Anaconda Johnny - Jamie Mcleod & Jeremy Reed
PRIVATE VIEW and BOOK LAUNCH with a performance by The Ginger Light: Saturday 13th December 7PM
Tickets £5 on the door
EXHIBITION: SAT 13th DEC 7pm – SAT 20th DEC MON – SAT, 12 – 6PM
Anaconda Johnny is the latest collaboration between one of Britain’s most renowned poets and writer Jeremy Reed, who has written more than 45 books of avant-garde prose and poetry, and widely exhibited photo-artist Jamie Mcleod, the pair having previously collaborated on the Marc Almond book “Adored and Explored”. For the Anaconda Johnny show they evoke the 21st century spirits of both Genet and Rimbaud, if either were alive with a camera and ink. Mcleod creates the artwork for the exhibition and with Reed writing the poems for the book launch with a performance by Ginger Light and Itchy Ear at the same event previewing on the 13th of December at 7 pm.
Mcleod conjures up images from his mental metropolis with neon flickers and freak show figures that populate his unhinged vision. Modern but ruined pop portraits with a savage twist; toxic imagery in candy colours. What at first looks pretty is in actual fact corrosive and condemned. Straight from trawling various urban underbellies, McLeod says, “ The city is a puzzle confusing, attractive, a place of entrapment and bombardment. You can lose your way and your mind. I lost both and now I am reclaiming them. I traveled on an endless journey through the city of night, into the land of labyrinths with smoke and broken mirrors. Places blessed with pure evil, where criminals frequent and male whores shake it and trade in forbidden currency’s with the horror and beauty of youth. It’s a journey from uptown boulevards to downtown no-go zones, from the luxe-lands to the trash cans, via heartbreak hotel with nothing left alive except ugly memories. I offer you up the fruits from the brutes, and I paid a high price, for your pleasure only”.
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Jeremy Reed & The Ginger Light is the musical collaboration between the acclaimed poet and author Jeremy Reed, the musician and producer Itchy Ear & Harpist Maria Christina. Together they create a performance dynamic unparalleled in British poetry and an excitement usually only generated by pop. The Ginger Light is an attempt to blur the boundaries that exist between spoken word, music, sound design and song – often incorporating multimedia elements into their performances. Since forming in 2008, they have gigged regularly throughout London and beyond, steadily building up a loyal and appreciative following. Their debut album Big City Dilemma is available through Cherry Red Records/SFE
Jeremy Reed has been for decades Britain’s most dynamic, adventurous and controversial poet. Called by the Independent, “British poetry’s glam, spangly, shape-shifting answer to David Bowie”, his poetry, fiction and performances of his work are singularly inimitable in their opposition to grey mainstream poetry. He has published over 40 books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction – including works on Scott Walker, Lou Reed, Elvis Presley, Billy Holiday and Arthur Rimbaud. Jeremy writes about every subject considered taboo by the British poetry establishment – glamour, pop, rock, sci-fi, cybernauts, mutants, gay identity, drugs, the neuroscientific, the disaffected and outlawed, and, of course, the fizzy big city chemistry of the London in which he lives and creates.
www.Jeremyreed.co.uk