Manifestation of Dreams: Take a closer look…
14 Tuesday Jul 2015
Posted Art Exhibition, Uncategorized
in14 Tuesday Jul 2015
Posted Art Exhibition, Uncategorized
in12 Sunday Jul 2015
Posted Art Exhibition
inTags
Adam White, Clare Ferguson Walker, Glenn Ibbitson, Kafka, physical deformity in art, Powerhouse, Powerhouse Llandysul, Powerhouse Pontwelly, Siamese Twins, ventriloquism
3 artists interpret the subtle language of dreams and inner landscapes. Featuring paintings by Adam White, Glenn Ibbitson and sculpture by Clare Ferguson-Walker.
A collection of human curiosities out of Kafka; nightmarish metamorphoses crossing unrelated species; the sound of dreams amplified in a seashell; a ventriloquist dummy screaming in a derelict basement; artistic collaborations with snails.. Prepare to be spooked…
12/07/2015 – 21/07/2015 Mon. – Sat. 0:00 am – 5:00
Artists talks by Glenn and Adam on Sunday the 12th at 7.30 pm. Everybody welcome. Free event.
The Powerhouse/Y Pwerdy SA44 4AH http://www.pwerdypowerhouse.co.uk
02 Thursday Jul 2015
Posted Biography, Uncategorized
inTags
Adam White, Chang and Eng, Clare Ferguson Walker, Powerhouse, Siamese Twins, Smethwick, Smethwick Twins, y Pwerdy
The Smethwick Twins oil on canvas 42×36″
b. Smethwick 1836 d. Cannock 1860
Lewis and Robert Hyde were condemned by fate to walk in the shadow of the ’Siamese Twins’. They displayed the same physical characteristics as Chang and Eng, and were eclipsed throughout their lives by their more famous predecessors. Born twenty-five years later in 1836, and in the West Midlands rather than Bangkok, their credentials lacked the exoticism which had ignited the imagination of a western public hungry for physiological deformity masquerading as entertainment. Yet their personal story [or stories] is [are], if anything, even more poignant than those of the Bunker ‘brothers’ .
Like Chang and Eng, the Hyde’s were possessed of widely different personalities. Lewis pursued an interest in theology and aspired to holy orders. Robert showed a talent for writing. The boys’ only shared enthusiasm had been for sports, fired by their unbeaten run of success in the local Chance School three-legged races. This competitive urge developed into a passion for rugby. Here they were incorporated into a pack modified to accommodate them in the scrum unit. However, they were constantly thwarted by opposition teams; considered as two players rather than one, they were hampered by the forward pass rule, invoked at any time they swapped the ball from left to right hand. Disillusioned, they prematurely left the playing fields of England before the end of their teenage years.
While Chang and Eng each married and fathered children, the Hyde’s were unsuccessful in their relationships. Lewis prepared for a life of celibacy in the service of God and sabotaged any social interactions which Robert might have engaged in. Relations between the siblings deteriorated once the church made clear that it could not accept into its ranks a human specimen which so obviously had not been made in God’s [assumed] image. Lewis sank into depression and Robert, deprived of any social intercourse became progressively introverted.
Events ran to their tragic conclusion in June 1860. On the fifth, While Robert slept, Lewis took a lethal dose of aconitine. An editorial in ‘the Times’ accused Lewis of the murder of his brother. A rejoining letter from Bishop Williamson of the diocese of Shrewsbury suggested that the offence of suicide should take legal precedence over fratricide. The church rejected Lewis a second time; the Twins were therefore laid to rest in unconsecrated ground, which has since been covered by the North-Westbound M6 toll route.
Paintings will be on show as part of
with Clare Ferguson-Walker and Adam White
11th July to the 22nd
at the POWERHOUSE Landysul SA44 4AH
Opening times: 10am to 4pm every day except Sundays
17 Wednesday Jun 2015
Posted Biography
inTags
Adam White, Battery Park, Clare Ferguson Walker, Frank Sinatra, Freaks, Johnny Eck, Landysul, NYC, painting, Powerhouse, Prince Randian, The Manifestation Of Dreams, tod Browning, Utah, World Trade Centre
The Claw: b. Carbon City, Utah 1901 d. unknown Thomas Brigham Prentice was born a partial ectrodactyl. His right hand was a claw –his left hand and feet developed normally. Two younger brothers were unaffected by the condition. Though another of his stage names was ‘the Fiddler Crab’, he was actually more famous as a banjo player. As a youth his unique pizzicato style had proved a popular novelty in his home state of Utah and this eventually brought him to the attention of the Langstrom Brothers. His first public appearance with their travelling show in 1911 came to the notice of the Cincinnati Daily Press. Its reporter remarked upon Prentice’s “wonderfully lustrous appendage, at once disturbing and admirable”, and set off by “a quite singular stage costume, painted of earth reds and ochres, redolent of his native Canyonlands… his visual stagecraft indubitably elevates him above his fellows.” Twelve seconds of footage from1918, lodged in the U.S. National Film Registry in the Library of Congress, show him entertaining troops in Battery Park, New York, before their embarkation onto troopships heading for the Western Front. Fame beckoned, and with his first-hand experience of the new theatrical medium of cinematography, he headed west to Los Angeles when the industry relocated in the 1920’s. He should have been an automatic choice for a role in Tod Browning’s film about circus curiosities, ‘Freaks’ [1932], but for some reason he failed his audition. While his friends, Prince Randian [the Human Caterpillar], and Johnny Eck [the Half-Man] were propelled into the national consciousness, Prentice descended into depression. The release of the film damaged his future prospects still further; moral indignation was directed not only against the movie, but also against the practice of exhibiting victims of physiological deformities for entertainment and profit. With opportunities to earn a legitimate living closing around him, Prentice turned to Hollywood’s hidden movie industry comprising the burgeoning low-grade horror and ‘skinflick’ genres. Through this channel, he developed a network of dubious entertainment contacts and eventually found his natural audience in Las Vegas, playing private shows in the casino hotels. Some of these were unquestionably of a pornographic nature; others were tableaux highlighting his musicianship. At one of these parties, he had the mixed fortune to accompany Sinatra. Initially, things went well, but the crooner was visibly affronted when upstaged by an overextended electric ukulele solo. Thereafter, ‘The Claw’ made just two more appearances in public before retiring into impenetrable obscurity. It was rumoured that he had been used to supplement the foundations of the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in 1970. Events of September 2001 failed to verify this.
Paintings will be on show as part of
with Clare Ferguson-Walker and Adam White
11th July to the 22nd
at the POWERHOUSE Landysul SA44 4AH
Opening times: 10am to 4pm every day except Sundays
23 Saturday May 2015
Posted Uncategorized
inTags
Adam White, Clare Ferguson Walker, Halifax, Jo Jo Johnson, Powerhouse, smoke and mirrors, The Manifestation Of Dreams, ventriloquism, y Pwerdy
By way of postscript. In 1998, a body was discovered in a storeroom in a condemned office unit on the outskirts of Halifax. Police called to the incident identified the corpse of Joe, the dummy! Joe the man himself, had died twenty years before in the very same town…
Paintings will be on show as part of
with Clare Ferguson-Walker and Adam White
11th July to the 22nd
at the POWERHOUSE Landysul SA44 4AH
Opening times: 10am to 4pm every day except Sundays
22 Friday May 2015
Posted Uncategorized
inTags
Adam White, Archie Andrews, Carolee Schneeman, Clare Ferguson Walker, Germaine Greer, Howard Devoto, Jo Johnson, Magazine, NME, performance art, Peter Brough, Powerhouse, Powerhouse Llandysul, Ray Alan, smoke and mirrors, the Observer, ventriloquism, Virginia Woolf
1971. A provincial variety club. Darkness. The hum of An expectant audience. Suddenly the single spotlight directed on the small stage reveals a ventriloquist and his dummy. A nymphet clad in a clinging, short cut dress sits on the lap of an older man with greying temples. She is gazing intimately into his eyes. One foot crooks around the man’s calf, the other swings a big boot provocatively over his leg. Her hand nestles under his on her thigh. But nothing is quite as it seems on first viewing; the girl with the flowing hair; all movement and animation is no prepubescent. He is rather stiff and his movements ponderous. He is smartly dressed, but he is not clean shaven. Look more closely. This five o’clock shadow is not formed of stubble but is painted; there is a slot either side of the lower lip which runs to the sides of the chin, just like a ventriloquist’s dummy… and then things begin to make sense. The vacant stare of the man is not entrancement: the rigid posture is not self-consciousness; the clumsy gesture of the hand hesitating over hers is neither decorum nor guilt and self loathing of an adult male caught grooming a minor. He is not in control of this situation, he is being manipulated. Literally so, as he is the dummy in this particular ventriloquist’s act. Meet Joe Johnson. The girl is actually in her early forties and has been controlling him as a means of catharsis for fifteen years. Meet Jo Johnson.
Her back story was haunted by the spectres of contemporary western society , and her act was her way of coping with how they they had stalked every waking hour of her teen years.
Jo had been introduced into showbusiness by her father at an early age. She became the foil perched on Joe’s lap. Ostensibly, this strategy was employed as a newsworthy gimmick designed to increase interest and bookings at a time when all performers needed a hook which might lift them above their peers. In truth, he needed a ‘talking doll’ because creeping stagefright increasingly limited his ventriloquial capacities. The strategy worked. Audiences loved this confident young girl. However, this success came at a price. The more applause his ‘dummy’ garnered, the more depressed the man. In 1950, Joe auditioned for that most English of occupations, ventrilioquist for radio broadcast, but was overlooked in favour of rival Peter Brough. Crude audience research of the time had suggested that listeners would respond more positively to [public] schoolboy ‘Archie Andrews’ than an eight year old girl with an attitude. Joe’s brittle character produced shards of insecurity and low self esteem, the jagged edges of which snagged his only child. The abuse he inflicted upon her seems to have developed from psychological cruelty; became physical and eventually sexual by the time she was fourteen. This was to provide the sharp grit around which Jo would later mould the pearl of her solo act.
The early 60’s proved a period of metamorphosis. Increasing physical and mental debility forced Joe to commission a second dummy; a life-sized doppelganger for himself, which Jo could control with her right hand through hidden access on the left side of its torso frame. Initially employed only when Joe was incapacitated, Jo found that this full control liberated her. A feisty teenager now with her hands on the levers of power, she began to deviate from the original act’s safe script and to introduce barely disguised autobiographical elements. The audiences responded positively, encouraging further character development. In 1962 After seeing one performance through a fog of stage fright, in which Jo referred to her onstage partner/father’s’ ‘unmanliness’, Joe attacked his daughter for her treachery. A battle of words developed into clenched fists and had two results; he gave her a broken rib and she gave him an ultimatum that she would never work with him again. Aged twenty, Jo became a solo performer. She would never see her father again, though his flawed character traits would form the central persona of her onstage partner.
Her revised act coincided with a period in which censorship governing the arts in general and theatre in particular, began to lift.* This enabled Johnson to push the limits of her material. Her act was deliberately designed to wrong foot a new audience. They may have expected a comfortable sketch in the manner of Ray Alan, a man engaging in light repartee with a mannequin on his lap. This is how it rolled out in the first few minutes. Witty exchanges only gradually edged into darker areas. “Jo and Joe Jo” became an exercise in empowerment . Payback for years of incest. Dressed in curve-enhancing outfits and big boots, Jo acted as temptress to her older clumsy partner, then humiliated him through a dazzling array of insults, contempt, belittling inferences to impotence and quantitative endowment. Audiences initially registered shock but gradually, and often led by the female section of her audience, they became fully engaged with this very edgy and well written material. Eventually, critics concurred; here was a real talent, at both writing and handling scripts at the cutting edge. Germaine Greer cited her act in a 1968 article on feminist performance in comedy theatre, remarking on “her unerring aim at the dark heart of misogyny” and compared the viewing experience to “an evening spent in the company of Martha and George [Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?]; by turns fascinating, and horrifying; but never less than captivating.”[1] Larger venues, bookings, critical acclaim and enthusiastic audiences encouraged Granada TV producers to come courting. In early 1967, Negotiations for a slot for satire programme ‘On The Braden Beat’ broke down when Jo refused to tone down her material . She argued that their audience would be sufficiently sophisticated to appreciate her material. controllers had less faith in their public. The offer was withdrawn, depriving the public a potential opportunity to see Jo and a young Peter Cooke together [what might that combination have produced?]. Networks simply couldn’t have transmitted her act, because it referenced concepts of incest and patricide. The 60’s might have been a time to air these issues through the medium of sober documentary -not through comedy. Even today, society is extremely febrile paddling this particular murky backwater of the human psyche. Consequently, There are no official television clips of any of her performances.** Actually, Jo didn’t want to surrender a whole tour’s worth of material to a national audience at a single screening. In any case she preferred the intimacy of a few hundred people in small venues; private members clubs and pubs.
What we do have are some hand-written scripts. Heavily annotated, they reveal a remorseless self-critical faculty at work; pushing an idea to the very limit of taste, shuttling the punchline to and fro across a monologue of searing frankness. A character carefully developed -then ruthlessly deconstructed . What these sharp, often sour lines cannot convey is the delivery. They do not show the vocal pitch or consummate timing which by most accounts, is what gripped her audiences -often by the throat.
By the late seventies, Jo’s core audience had shifted from variety to an area of performance where she found herself feted by New wave musicians and avant-garde artists. Perhaps her most notable name-check was during the reading from “Interior Scroll” by feminist performance artist Carolee Schneeman.[2] However, her course of self-help appears to have reached completion at this time. Therapy and self-help rather than financial concerns had always guided her career. She made one final tour which reprised older sketches linked by less acerbic observations than those of earlier days. In 1977, after a performance in the side lounge at the Derby Hall in Bury -still at the very top of an admiring support bill which included Howard Devoto, she left, never to return to the spotlight. No photo essays for the supplements, very few [and no extensive] post- career interviews, ” Everything I ever needed to make public, I said during my act”[3]. She had managed to disappear from public view completely by 1980. It seems she emigrated; either to Madagascar or Panama and into contented, self-imposed obscurity.
Postscript follows: Meet Jo Jo Johnson [2]
[1] Germaine Greer: ” Puppets pulling Strings”; the Observer May 1968 [2] Schneemann performed Interior Scroll in East Hampton, New York and Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, 1975 [3] “The Empowered Ingenue leaves the Stage” intervie with Nick Benson NME June 1978
* The path toward liberalism in Britain at this time mile posted by numerous events; three examples will suffice here: a]”Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” was released as a film in 1960, expanding the popular audience for Alan Sillitoe’s 1958 novel. It frankly addressed issues of free love, adultery and abortion in a realistic style. b] The “Lady Chatterley Trial” Nov. 1960 holed literary censorship below the waterline. c] The Stehen Ward prosecution and the Profumo Affair marked the end of deference to the British establishment and heralded the birth of a new wave of satire in popular culture. 1963
* * A trawl through YouTube has uncovered nothing by way of unofficial footage. Her appeals to her audiences to refrain from filming her shows seems to have been faithfully adhered to.
More work from the ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ project can be viewed at: http://www.smokingbrushfineart.com
Paintings will be on show as part of
with Clare Ferguson-Walker and Adam White
11th July to the 22nd
at the POWERHOUSE Landysul SA44 4AH
Opening times: 10am to 4pm every day except Sundays