Blog - Alexander Augustus: Recent Episodes
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So far, my career (and life) has been a bit of a cyclone. Recognising a glaring lack of funding and philanthropy for the arts in my native UK, I became fixated on seizing opportunities wherever they arose globally. Setting off at 18, I have been in constant motion ever since.
My journey has traversed various fields and continents, from anthropology in Norwich to teaching English in Brighton and Cambodia to working in museums in the U.S., co-founding and directing my spatial design studio in Seoul, graphic designing for advertising and gaming start-ups in Berlin, to lecturing Environmental Design in China. I've showcased my art from Maribor to Saigon, New Hampshire to Marseilles. My drive to create, research, write, and design has persisted throughout these endeavours, culminating in my current body of work - installation art, audio, sculpture, film, costume, gaming, and beyond...
I am now delighted to announce that I have been accepted to Harvard University as a doctoral candidate. Here, I have the opportunity to weave these diverse threads together in my new research. As outlined in my proposal (below), I will delve into the creation of innovative public monuments. This opportunity marks the next chapter in my lifelong commitment to art, politics, storytelling and justice - transforming monuments into urban artefacts that serve both present and future generations, rather than merely tethering us to the past.
Thank you for being with me on this journey, and if this topic also interests you, reach out via email form below:
Name * First Name Last Name Email * Subject * Message * Thank you!
This blog post is the first of two about Utopia, Thomas More’s seminal book from 1516.
I have always been fascinated with the idea of Utopia. Originating from Thomas More’s 1516 work, the promise of Utopia sits somewhere between fantasy and administration. On one hand, Utopia is fantastical because we cannot quite believe that humans can effectively organise equality. On the other hand, utopic ideas often call for the redistribution of resources we already have. It seems at once achievable and impossible. More’s Utopia was a staggering form of Medieval proto-science fiction which gave rise to a new genre of satirical writing. It is unapologetically sharp, referring to the structure of English society in the 16th century as a “conspiracy of the rich”. The premise of his book is simple; our societies suffer from bad management. But what is the price of implementing a Utopic system? Freedom, perhaps? My interests lie in the urban infrastructure, housing, architecture, art and culture in More’s Utopia.
*Libellus veer aureus ned minus salutaris quam festivus de optima reipublicae statu, deque nova insula Utopia, Louvain (1516).*
*Sir Thomas More, Hans Holbein, the Younger (1527).*
Messy Thomas More.
Over 500 years ago Thomas More coined the term Utopia with his book of the same name. Utopia translates from the Greek words “ou” and “topos” to mean “not a place” - and More’s pseudo-anthropological work weaves together elements of fiction and nonfiction in his vision of a seemingly perfect society. It is ultimately a political and social satire which sought to critically examine wealth inequality, political corruption, religious intolerance, and flaws in the legal system at the time.
The first peak of the book is an unexpected treat at the start where More gets messy and preemptively attacks his critics, explaining that they may criticise his work, but at least he has some work to criticise, of which they have none:
“They seize upon your publications, as a wrestler seizes upon his opponent's hair, and use them to drag you down, while they themselves remain quite invulnerable, because their barren pates are completely bald”.
For me, this scene conjures images of bald drag queens ripping wigs off one another. More then turns on his readers, calling them ungrateful:
“[...] some readers are so ungrateful that, even if they enjoy a book immensely, they don't feel any affection for the author. They're like rude guests who after a splendid dinner-party go home stuffed with food, without saying a word of thanks to their host.”
Now, any reputable artist has likely encountered a mercenary clutch of art-world-professionals at their exhibition openings, primarily there to drink the gallery's booze and interrogate the artist about their material expenses. Let’s just say that I can relate hard, and after More’s opening tirade, I was primed to wolf down anything he was serving. Luckily Utopia only gets better from there, as More proceeds to lambaste the rich, the clergy and the Catholic Church, the owners of capital, those with passive incomes, and all the governments of Europe. Indeed, Utopia is often referred to as one of the most influential books in history, and was clearly very radical in 1516, espousing progressive ideas on the rehabilitation of prisoners, religious pluralism, the equal distribution of capital, gender equality in employment and dress, emphasis on education, restraint on monarchic spending, and the abolition of private property! Remember, this was the time of Henry VIII, and More was going full proto-communist, attacking corruption and inequalities in his own time. The messaging in Utopia can be seen as relevant even in the context of today's British government; currently being led by a billionaire Prime Minister with business ties to enemy states; with billions of pounds being funnelled into the secret offshore trusts of Conservative Ministers, and most importantly, having been criticised as 'patently corrupt' by Carol Vorderman. Despite the heavy subject matter, More still manages to keep the tone light.
From the outset, Utopia feels quite playful, starting with pictograms of the fictional Utopian alphabet and poems written in this language, which remind me of the secret languages I made as a child. It then goes on to some letters between More and his friends which supposedly verify Utopia’s existence, but in reality, were fabricated to corroborate the story.
The rest of Utopia is divided into two books, the first of which describes socioeconomic debates between himself, a fictional traveller called Raphael Hythloday and another friend called Peter Giles, who is a real person. Within this chat, Hythloday describes a dinner he attended which was hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury and attended by a sceptical lawyer and a number of bickering clergymen. Hythloday has apparently been to a faraway country called Utopia, and proceeds to describe that place in the second book.
Throughout Utopia, Hythloday serves as the mouthpiece for most of More’s criticisms of England. In this way, the framing of Utopia is written as a chat, within a chat, within a chat, within lots of chats - and presented as quite removed from the opinions of More himself, who’s character often disagrees with aspects of Utopia in the book. This was probably in a bid to keep his head - which was eventually lopped off in 1535 when he was decapitated for treason.
*Pieter Gillis, Peter Giles (1486).*
The Housing Crisis.
One of the most striking issues discussed in Utopia is Hythloday’s derision of landlords, who he discusses as “a few greedy people [who] have converted one of England's greatest natural advantages into a national disaster.” He specifically criticises the rental market and the idea of profiting through passive income and stowed capital. Hythloday explains:
“Well, first of all there are lots of noblemen who live like drones on the labour of other people, in other words, of their tenants, and keep bleeding them white by constantly raising their rents. For that's their only idea of practical economy - otherwise they'd soon be ruined by their extravagance.”
This is a relatable issue since UK renters spent an average of 34% of their incomes on housing costs in 2021-22, compared to only 9% spent by mortgage holders.
In other words, renters are currently paying four times as much of their incomes on housing than homeowners - and they don’t get to keep the house in the end! The system is clearly rigged. Our hero Hythloday goes on to discuss the hoarders of capital in more general terms:
“And now, what about those people who accumulate superfluous wealth, for no better purpose than to enjoy looking at it? Is their pleasure a real one, or merely a form of delusion? The opposite type of psychopath buries his gold, so that he'll never be able to use it, and may never even see it again.”
I believe this sentiment to be both spicy and accurate. It is important to mention here that I read the Penguin Great Ideas edition of Utopia, which was suspiciously translated from Latin with the inclusion of terms such as “capitalism”, “communism”, “sociopathy” and “psychopathy”, none of which were existing terms in 1516. Hythloday then goes into more detail about how tenants are abused with forced evictions:
“They're either cheated or bullied into giving up their property, or systematically ill-treated until they're finally forced to sell. Whichever way it's done, out the poor creatures have to go, men and women, husbands and wives, widows and orphans, mothers and tiny children.”
Tudor house, circa 1500.
According to a report by The Guardian this year, more than 100,000 families in England are living in temporary accommodation, including over 125,000 children, due to homelessness and forced eviction. This is the highest rate in 20 years. The charity Shelter reports that 24,060 households were threatened with homelessness in England as a result of Section 21 no-fault evictions in 2022, and Novara Media reports that the housing charity Safer Renting found 7,778 illegal evictions took place in 2021, with only 11 cases being investigated by the police.
*Warne's National Nursery Library (1870).*
*The Venetian model city of Palmanova from Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg (1572-1680).*
In fact, tenant rights in England have been uniquely worse than most of Europe, since 1988 when the Section 21 Housing Act made it possible for tenants to be evicted with just 2 months' notice without reason. By comparison, Italy, Belgium and Ireland - give tenants between 3 and 10 years of protection according to the BBC, making our own ruling body sound similar to the “greedy, unscrupulous and useless” nobles of 1516. Hythloday then cites Plato’s discussion of private property and posits that:
“you'll never get a fair distribution of goods, or a satisfactory organisation of human life, until you abolish private property altogether. So long as it exists, the vast majority of the human race, and the vastly superior part of it, will inevitably go on labouring under a burden of poverty, hardship, and worry.”
This discussion sets the scene for book 2 in which Hythloday describes how the Utopian urban environment is structured to avoid these abuses of power. Up until this point, I pretty much agree with all of More’s critical discussion of England, much of which is depressingly relevant today. After 500 years, it’s enough to make you wonder whether the British enjoy punishment - and these days we are even voting for it! However, it is with the production of solutions that I begin to disagree intensely with More, largely due to his equation of art to elitism. Please continue to my second blog post on Utopia…
This blog post is the second of two about Utopia, Thomas More’s seminal book from 1516.
As discussed in my previous blog post, PART I, Thomas More’s book Utopia describes a distant island in which society is structured to promote equality and harmony. However, the title translates to 'not a place', in Greek, and More is ultimately launching an attack on the corruption of English society in the 16th Century. In this two-part blog post, I am interested in More’s views on housing, art and architecture.
*Headpiece from Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1518).*
Architecture
Utopia is prolific for its reimagining of the built environment and how this can restructure society. One of the most controversial offerings from Utopia is the analysis of land ownership and architecture. More describes a situation in which there is no private property and all space is designed in a state-sanctioned modular fashion:
“In Utopia, where there's no private property, people take their duty to the public seriously.”
As we will see with all Utopian design, the architecture is described as simple, utilitarian, and without ornamentation. All houses, towns and cities are modular in form and there is no distinction between the houses of the rich and poor, reflecting an emphasis on equality. Residential areas are clustered around central squares, with the design encouraging interaction among neighbours, similar to Grecian agoras. There is an emphasis on quality of life, with wide streets, well-ventilated houses, and sanitary conditions. Materials are locally sourced and sustainable. So far this all sounds wonderful. However, red flags begin to emerge when More describes how households, towns, cities and colonies are organised. We begin to get a sense that freedoms might be compromised with limits on population in households and regions:
“Each town consists of six thousand households, not counting the country ones, and to keep the population fairly steady there's a law that no household shall contain less than ten or more than sixteen adults - as they can't very well fix a figure for children. This law is observed by simply moving supernumerary adults to smaller households. If the town as a whole gets too full, the surplus population is transferred to a town that's comparatively empty. If the whole island becomes over-populated, they tell off a certain number of people from each town to go and start a colony at the nearest point on the mainland.”
*Civitas Veri, or City of Truth, by Bartolomeo Del Bene (1609).*
The Utopians seem to be treated rather like cattle here, being divided up into pens and moved around based on numbers rather than relationships or preferences. Furthermore, they are not allowed to stay housed in one place for more than a decade, at which point they are shipped off to a different house in order to quash attachments to specific properties. In a similar vein, specific trades are practised by certain households, and if a child wants to learn a trade practised by another family, they are sent away from their biological family, and to a new one, which adopts them. This device can be seen emulated in The Divergent, the dystopian teen books and films.
You are not even allowed to visit another town without permission from the state, and if permission is granted, you are sent out with a group of others on a collective passport. In this way, everyone keeps a watchful eye on each other, and anyone who fails to return in the allotted time will be located, brought home in disgrace, and possibly put into slavery. Yes - Utopia has slavery. It is a construct more like community service, and the slaves can work their way out of slavery, but is an ever-present threat for anyone diverging from the utopian way. Hythloday, More’s imaginary guide to Utopia, labours this point, explaining:
“You see how it is - wherever you are, you always have to work. There's never any excuse for idleness. There are also no wine-taverns, no ale-houses, no brothels, no opportunities for seduction, no secret meeting-places. Everyone has his eye on you, so you're practically forced to get on with your job, and make some proper use of your spare time.”
This social commentary appears to be targeted at “members of so-called religious orders [and] the rich, especially the landowners, popularly known as nobles and gentlemen”, who More essentially describes as “insatiable gluttons”, and likely to avoid work at all costs. More does emphasise that labour should be reduced to a minimum and suggests that workers use their optimised leisure time to watch public lectures and educate themselves. From this perspective, the protocols are framed in a fairly attractive way to the working person.
*Cover of George Orwell’s 1984 (1949).*
However, in light of Republics with similar structures, such as North Korea, these restrictions become quite sinister. Sometimes my best ideas come to me when I’m sneaking around doing things I really shouldn’t be doing - or doing nothing at all, in fact - just exploring aimlessly. I was struck by how slippery the slope is between utopia and dystopia - and this is especially true in the discussion of art, entertainment fashion, and the organic production of culture. In recent decades, Authors such as George Orwell and Margaret Atwood have created fictional dystopias inspired by this type of state control. In my view, on the left, we often know what we find unacceptable, but are unable to create a viable alternative. We are seeing this now with Critical Theory and the removal of public monuments. I became interested in what More has to say on this topic, as I will now discuss.
Public monuments in Utopia.
Public art in Utopia is an especially interesting topic for me since this is the domain in which I have built my career, and have been conducting my research with the University of Cambridge. In the world today a kind of proxy war is being fought with public monuments due to recent protests over racial equality and social justice. Specifically, statues relating to the US confederacy, British Colonial rule and slavery have prompted a renewed sense of urgency in the UK and the US to reevaluate the messaging in our public spaces. In Utopia, the entire urban infrastructure has been imagined to facilitate a democratisation of space and lifestyle, however, I could only find one paragraph about public monuments, which are often seen as urban pillars of shared memory and values:
“[...]they put up statues in the market-place of people who've distinguished themselves by outstanding services to the community, partly to commemorate their achievements, and partly to spur on future generations to greater efforts, by reminding them of the glory of their ancestors. But anyone who deliberately tries to get himself elected to a public office is permanently disqualified from holding one.”
This is an interesting offering from More as it emphasises a need for humility in the population. Individuals who are seen to self-promote or campaign to be mythologised will never see themselves in stone.
*Statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee being removed in 2021.*
There is no mention of hereditary rights, such as monarchy, and I am curious to know what Thomas More’s contemporary, King Henry VIII, must have thought about this passage - bejewelled and standing proud in monuments across the land. So what do Utopian monuments look like? Well in the Utopian artwork itself, we do not see democratisation in the same way as in the architecture - it is still espousing the same kind of figurative, state-sanctioned, hero-worship that would have been common in 1516, and that we still see today. Virtually all civic monuments seem to fall into the same formula, whether they be Communist, Capitalist, or some other -ist. When I lived in Berlin I used to see the colossal head of former Communist party leader, Ernst-Thälmann, outside my kitchen window.
Also, notice how the pronouns describing the statue are male. Monument Lab, a US-based studio, logged and examined 50,000 U.S. monuments in the US in 2021 and found that of the 50 individuals represented most frequently, 88% were white men, 50% were slave owners, 6% were female, and 10% honoured Black or Indigenous figures. My current research is concerned with practical solutions for reimagining public monuments to represent masses of people, rather than individual hero worship. My artwork A Dangerous Figure, and the representation of the mass young unemployed, led me down this road of inquiry.
Back to Utopia. Next, I was interested to know about how Utopians were able to express themselves with fashion.
*Henry VIII statue, University of Cambridge, Kings College.*
No fancy pants in Utopia!
On the subject of fashion, Hythloday is fairly vague, stating that summer clothes are made of “thin stuff” and winter clothes are made of “thick” stuff. Enlightening. Utopians are apparently “content with a single piece of clothing every two years”, which would be “neither sumptuous nor sordid”.
The fashion cannot change, because it is regulated, and is "neither disagreeable nor uneasy". The only piece of flair the Utopians are allowed is a badge showing what job they shoud be doing and what level they are. This is all in the name of equality. Furthermore, all clothes are unisex so that “no sex may be distinguished by their habits”. In terms of gender politics, is it also interesting to note that Utopian women were said to work and share the same jobs as men, such as sewing, craftsmanship and farming, which was extremely progressive in 1516. Women are even allowed to be priests in Utopia, “although”, Hythloday explains, they “aren't often chosen for the job, and only elderly widows are eligible.” He does, however, still describe women as the “weaker sex” and proclaims the eldest man to be the head of each household. Although I understand the egalitarian rationale for this uniformity in fashion, it reads like a prison scene in which everyone is wearing working overalls. It is not difficult to draw links between Utopia and various totalitarian states to follow in the next 500 years. There are, however, some in Utopia who are allowed to be more expressive with their clothing. These are slaves, babies, and the clergy, as I will discuss.
*Plate from Utopia (1516).*
In Utopia, expensive materials and fancy clothing were often presented as the objects of ridicule. In order to deter Utopians from opulence, slaves were accessorised luxuriously:
“They also use chains and fetters of solid gold to immobilize slaves, and anyone who commits a really shameful crime is forced to go about with gold rings on his ears and fingers, a gold necklace round his neck, and a crown of gold on his head.”
The idea is that precious metals should not be used to glorify individuals, but should be used for the betterment of society as a whole. Therefore, expressions of wealth and pride are transformed into a kind of circus, meant to provoke distain.
*Plate from Utopia (1516).*
Children are also given extravagant jewels and gold chains to play with, so that these things would be associated with childishness and something that every adult should grow out of. When you look at the intentions behind these restrictions in fashion, they are clearly noble, and More discribes a land where the locals are disgusted by inequality and sycophantry:
“But what puzzles and disgusts the Utopians even more is the idiotic way some people have of practically worshipping a rich man, not because they owe him money or are otherwise in his power, but simply because he's rich - although they know perfectly well that he's far too mean to let a single penny come their way, so long as he's alive to stop it.”
This must have really annoyed the King, which I am totally on board with. However, I could never live like this. I do not believe it is in our nature to homogenise every aspect of our lives. Perhaps, I would mind less if the claims were at least consistent across all Utopians, but the clergy appear to have clothing which is quite a lot more elaborate than everyone else! Hythloday explains that:
“The congregation is dressed in white, and the priest wears multi-coloured vestments, magnificent in workmanship and design, but made of quite cheap materials - for instead of being woven with gold thread, or encrusted with rare jewels, they're merely decorated with the feathers of various birds. On the other hand, their value as works of art is far greater than that of the richest material in the world. Besides, the feathers are arranged in special patterns which are said to symbolise certain divine truths…”
The materials may be cheap, but skilled craftsmanship is not. I find a great contradiction here. In this respect, you get a sense that More doesn’t really hold a lot of value in skilled craftsmanship, and with this disparity in clothing, a subtle hierarchy appears to be seeping through the cracks of Utopia. So I find myself asking, does human nature ensure that true equality is an impossibility?
Utopia or Dystopia?
More’s Utopia has beautiful intentions. There is an awful lot with which I agree, however, I believe the implementation of his system would mean the destruction of freedom and resemble something far closer to a dystopia. There has been rich discussion over Utopian ideals in the following centuries, from the Communist ideologies of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and the realisation of utilitarian brutalist architecture, to the dystopian fiction of George Orwells’ 1984, and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
*Rendered plan for The Venus Project.*
A direct link to More’s Utopia is the aspirational architecture of Jacque Fresco’s The Venus Project. Films such as Equilibrium and Fahrenheit 451 focus specifically on the destruction of art and the individualistic imagination, which, as an artist, I find particularly sinister. With every form of work, entertainment and expression so tightly controlled in Utopia, all under the watchful eye of neighbours, there would be no space for genuine culture to sprout.
Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate, London (1968).
Utopia allows for only one model for fashion, one model for architecture, and virtually no mention of any sculpture, painting or illustration. This leaves More’s Utopia feeling incredibly austere in my eyes, and because of this, I have concluded that in More’s Utopia, there is no art.
My Utopia!
Two years ago I envisaged my own Utopia, creating an audiovisual artwork called Power from the Blazing Stone. This was a commission from a Lithium Mine in Cornwall and was set against a backdrop of complexities to do with ethics in the mining industry, the history of oppression faced by the Cornish people, and the mythical folklore of the region. Similar to More, I described a world in which private ownership of land was no longer a reality, but every child had a powerful piece of technology tethered to them in order to fulfil their every need. The adults, however, had mysteriously disappeared… Following the launch of my artwork, I began to receive comments suggesting that I was helping to enslave humanity for a new world order:
Genuinely interesting. YouTube automatically hides comments like this, but in many ways, I am just grateful for the interesting interactions. Please go and have a listen with this link, play the game with this link, leave me a comment, and let me know how I did. The entire series is free.
This blog post contains spoilers for Alexander in Mimesis. If you haven’t already listened then hop over to Apollo Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Amazon Music or stay right here on my site, and give it a listen! If spoilers don’t bother you, then read on…
I extracted Alexander in Mimesis from encounters with graveyards, bars, museums and research labs. As I explored Manchester, NH, the story revealed itself in pieces and I tried to let the space guide me. What I didn’t expect, however, was to end up writing my own anti-Jack-and-the-beanstalk in order to grapple with the darker aspects of capitalism. As an artist, I’ve always been conscious that I occupy an unusual place in the world of work, and after the covid apocalypse, the idea of value and payment really came to the fore. I sought to discuss this somehow and was searching for a vehicle. Eventually, I decided to reverse the analogy of capitalism embedded within "Jack and the Beanstalk" to shed light on the challenges creatives face in a commercial world.
*Jack the Giant Killer. Illustration by Hugh Thompson (1898).*
I turned the golden egg-laying hen into the main character and presented Jack and the giant as opposing parts of the same unstoppable force. So let me tell you my thoughts on the story and how I adapted it…
Illustration by Walter Crane (*1865-1915*).
Jack and the Beanstalk presents the misery of working-class poverty whilst promoting risky investment as a viable road to a happy ending. Jack and his mother are impoverished farmers. Jack’s mother asks him to sell their only asset for money, but he trades it for beans instead. Angered, Jack’s mother recognises these beans as worthless, but little does she know that they represent the optimistic, gambling spirit of entrepreneurship (lucky!). The beans sprout into a towering stalk of capitalist enterprise, providing our hero with the opportunity to climb above the clouds, traversing the class boundary, and up to a giant’s castle, representing the wealthy elite. Jack steals the golden egg-laying hen from the giant, i.e. the means of production, and chops the beanstalk down so the giant topples to his death.
The positioning of the giant parallels the annexing of wealth and power in capitalist societies, with a few individuals or corporations exerting significant influence over the economy. Jack becomes a kind of Promethean saviour, releasing some of that godly wealth to himself and his mother. A working-class hero. The beans were never beans, they were risky investments which leveraged Jack into wealth, and in the end, the golden egg-laying-hen becomes a kind of passive income from which Jack and his mother can live charmed lives till they pop their clogs. Jack had to lie, gamble with assets which did not belong to him, break and enter, steal, and commit murder to achieve this - and thus, completes his character arc from proletarian into the new bourgeoisie.
*Illustration of Jack And The Beanstalk in The Red Fairy Book (1890), Henry J. Ford.*
*Jack And The Beanstalk. Illustration for The Book of Nursery Tales with introduction by Compton Mackenzie pictured by HM Brock (Frederick Warne, c 1910).*
Jack and the Beanstalk extolls the virtues of becoming a risk-taking, amoral adventurer - a yuppy, basically. If you need an example in the modern age, look at stock market investors, or 90% of tech startup CEOs. Heralding such a protagonist always felt strange to me, and as I grew older I realised that Jack and the Beanstalk served as an analogy for capitalism, with the values of a pyramid-shaped social structure at its heart. It offers an unattainable path to success on the one hand and staggering wealth disparity on the other. I think of the lottery system in Orwell’s 1984 - and although I recognise that’s a critique of communism, I think the analogy works better with capitalism - ironically.
Jack’s usurping of the giant is a symbolic changing of the guard and an indication of healthy competition within the thriving marketplace. Jack is not fighting the market system, he simply wants to be the one at the top of it. There is no agent in this story fighting against the unequal distribution of wealth - the system itself. Our job as spectators is to cheer Jack on as he becomes an elite manager of capital, as opposed to a value creator, inventor, worker, artist, or labourer.
Interestingly, the closest representation we get of the creative spirit is the hen that lays golden eggs. It is tempting to think of the hen as an alchemist, but symbolically I see it as the worker. The hen represents us, the normal people, the factory line workers, the builders, the teachers and nurses, the shop workers and bank tellers, the product designers and artists, scientists and engineers; those with expertise who sell their knowledge and time. The animal represents us - without a voice - we are the property that Jack wants control of.
*Warne's National Nursery Library (1870).*
*Illustration by Arthur Rackham, 1918 edition of English Fairy Tales.*
This realisation became the foundation for my work, Alexander in Mimesis. In my reversed narrative, the hen takes centre stage, emphasising the careful craftsmanship of the golden eggs. Alexander in Mimesis follows me creating the story of Alexander in Mimesis. In this sense, the resulting artwork is the golden egg, so the concept is cyclical, hence “Mimesis”. Jack and the giant merge into the outer world of the giants-in-the-sky, the Mimesis factory, triggering a larger discussion about the art world's place within the capitalist market - fish in a barrel who dream of other worlds. Do artists truly experience freedom of thought and expression? I would say that every artwork is a compromise between the brief, funding, available resources, the skills you’ve got, and the market. In many ways, Artists are actually more bound by capitalism than anyone - with successful artists selling directly to the very richest giants! These artworks are status symbols and hold cultural collateral - or mana. In this sense, I think the idea of artists as free is a fallacy. The golden-egg-laying-hen seems a good analogy.
I think subliminally I was also questioning the nature of artist residencies, in which artists are housed in foreign lands to generate a kind of cultural capital by simply being and doing - a kind of magic mana. At their best they can be temporary safe harbours for artists; facilitating inspirational adventures with new experiences, resources and networking opportunities - and most are highly competitive. In this sense, the artist becomes almost like one of those “Garden / ornamental hermits” from the 18th century who lived inside the rockeries of wealthy landowners and were viewed for entertainment, or occasionally asked for their wise advice. There is a peacefulness to it, but very it’s passive in nature - just like the giant’s hen. It is a position of prestige, but usually not one of power. Sometimes I think of it as being like a firefly in a jam jar, with which someone might light the darkness a little.
I am planning to explore the idea of the artist as a producer of mana in my next project - so this is very much on my mind these days.
*John Bigg, the Dinton Hermit.*
18th Century depiction of a Garden Hermit.
So the key drama in Alexander in Mimesis becomes the mystery surrounding mana - what is Alexander generating? How could this currency be profitable to the giants and not to Alexander himself? If Alexander is the hen, then who is he laying for? And so we embark on a much larger discussion - how is value measured and sold in the art world as a subsidiary of the capitalist market, and how do artists fare considering their presentation as more spiritual / ornamental than commercial? Alexander is, himself, one of these giants, and has ultimately placed himself into a box - a position in which he is able to create, and outside of which he could not survive. So this begs the question: will Alexander escape the fate of the hen? Can he break the cycle and become an agent of his own fate? Or will he bounce from owner to owner, laying eggs for the consumption of others for the rest of his life? This is the key question repeated continuously by the turkeys. Can we find a better system than capitalism? I have no idea, and Alexander in Mimesis is an invitation to hear my utter confoundedness at the whole machine.
Illustration from Alexander in Mimesis (2022).
Finally, it is no coincidence that I had wild turkeys raising these questions over freedom and capitalism since I had only ever encountered farmed and slaughtered turkeys until I arrived in New Hampshire in 2021. Seeing fowl like this, roaming boldly, was a revelation for me - it seemed like a win for freedom. They were precisely not like the hen in Jack and the Beanstalk, but quite brazen, and I became obsessed with visiting them for as long as I could brave the cold. I do believe humans could set themselves free - if we only reorganised our resources to benefit the many rather than the few, and allowed machines to take the bulk of our manual labour, and AI to tackle the bulk of our managerial work, without casting the unemployed into poverty…
Anyway, “Live Free or Die, New Hampshire!”, whatever freedom means.
If you have not already listened to Alexander in Mimesis yet, be sure to give it a listen now!
Photograph by Ethan Townsend.
In the scorching heat of a Berlin summer day in 2017, I found myself captivated by the intricate mating rituals of beetles. With my camera in hand, I dedicated myself to capturing their every move, eventually transforming my footage into a short film. While some may question whether it was a productive use of my time, I believe that delving into the wonders of the natural world and sharing it with others was actually probably not a good use of my time. Enjoy.
In 2022 I completed an artist residency in The Factory on Willow, Manchester, NH, US. This project culminated in a series of public steel sculptures and a three-part audiobook, find links to these below. In the exhibition opening I did a live Q&A with Creative Director of the Orbit Group, Dave Hady. It was a lot of fun, please find the video here.
- To listen to the full story: https://www.alexanderaugustus.com/work/alexander-in-mimesis
- To see the sculptures: https://www.alexanderaugustus.com/work/meleagris-live-free-or-die
Two months ago, the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge sent students an email concerning ChatGPT. This warned of the strict guidelines on student conduct and academic integrity, stressing that students must be the authors of their own work, and that the use of AI platforms such as ChatGPT would be dealt with under the University's disciplinary procedures. Though the email conceded that AI platforms were now being used as research tools worldwide, it stressed issues related to biases in the current information searching model, the questionable accuracy of content, and ethical concerns related to the use of large datasets and gathering data from users. In response I logged onto Open AI for a cheeky look. I had mixed results.
I started slowly, asking for simple facts such as the ISBN and DOI numbers of books I had in front of me. Then I pasted a few BBC articles into the platform and asked it to summarise them. All of this was accurate and instantaneous.
Next, I wanted to test its creativity:
The pitch it came up with was a sculptural birdhouse which would have some aesthetic and conceptual function alongside being a practical birdhouse to support the wildlife in our garden. I was quite excited about this idea, because I have been envisioning this exact project ever since I created artwork for Cheongju Arts Council in 2015 and 16 - in which an abandoned cigarette factory was opened up for the first time since the 1980s. The building had only been inhabited by pigeons for decades and the floor was inches deep with bird poop, bones, feathers, full carcasses and recent eggshells - it was a biological monument to generations of pigeons, displaying life, death and rebirth. An incubator and a mausoleum. The projects: The Butterflies of Andokbul and The Mother Crowns of Neo Joseon were made here.
The Mother Crowns of Neo Joseon - Crown of Stories (Those white bits on the floor are feathers, egg shells, and bones…)
Since the council were about to displace the birds, I began pondering on a giant sculpture to re-home the pigeon population. So I liked it very much when ChatGPT offered this suggestion. However, the value of the work would be entirely in the narrative the artist brought to it and the execution - otherwise the idea is essentially “make a novelty bird house”. Curious, I went on to ask some more questions.
I asked it to pitch an artwork about the local otter population, and it suggested a life-size sculpture of an otter made from recycled materials. Now, I’m from Brighton, so I grew up around underwhelming sculptures of animals made from bits of driftwood and recycled crap. I dropped that and asked it to pitch a project related to our Darwin domestic bee population, and it suggested a sculpture which doubles up as a bee hotel or hive. I asked it about the hedgehog population and it suggested a sculpture which doubled as a hedgehog shelter. I asked it about bats and it suggested a bat house. I asked it about wildflowers, trouts and swifts - all local to our garden - and it suggested life-size sculptures of each made from recycled materials.
Okay, so I was seeing a formula here… Is it stuck in a loop? In design we call this “fixation“. Perhaps my questioning was too limited.
So then I changed it up. In design we often focus on clients, sites, research and ideation tactics in order to avoid fixation, so asked it to pitch artworks to specific professors, fellows and the Master of the College. However, again, it suggested bird houses and life-sized sculptures of animals using recycled materials. I was impressed with the comprehension of the tasks and the cache of information it gave me about each client, but as an ideation tool it seemed to be quite limited.
Few
I breathed a sigh of relief; in its current form this AI could never replace me. It reminded me of those kids who excel in the academic subjects at school but really struggle with creative or problem-solving tasks, and in an effort to dominate the class spew facts and figures at everyone with tenuous analytical or generative ability. I addressed this directly and requested: “Could you suggest an idea with the same brief, but a very unusual and unique idea, unlike the type of conservation art we are used to seeing?” It replied with an experiential pitch about the dangers to coral reef populations - which, although more dynamic, totally failed to meet the site-specificity or client factors of the brief:
Cambridge doesn’t have a shoreline… or a coral reef… So I backtracked and leant into the idea of the bat house. I asked for project specs: “Please can we develop the bat house sculpture idea? What specifications would it be required to meet and what shape and location would you suggest?” ChatGPT gave me very good product analyses of existing human-made bat houses with dimensions, materials, sites and placements - all the things a good design spec would include:
These specs are incredibly useful to begin a project with, and ChatGPT did all that research and product analysis in seconds. It is worth pointing out that the “shape“ part of the question was very uninteresting and unoriginal. An AI visual platform would do very well with this brief though, something like Midjourney or Dall.e. There are plugins which allow these two types of platforms to develop conceptual and visual outputs together, which makes me quite uneasy…
I don’t want to be limited to wood, so I challenged the materials it suggested and it gave me a solid reasoning for its choice, alongside alternatives and explanations:
It began to hit me that although ChatGPT was not yet capable of creating ideas which were intellectually stimulating to me, it was very good at giving me all the dry information I would usually need to research thoroughly for myself - the technical parameters. A very quick way to stand on the shoulders of giants who came before. So what does it know about artists and the art world?
Curious, I went on to ask ChatGPT about where its art-related data sets came from. It listed a few sources I’ve been covered in, so I asked it about myself. The response was a weird mixture of true statements and total fabrications. Mostly fabrications, to be honest:
It has clearly mixed up my Seoul-based studio, “The Bite Back Movement”, with “Bite Back”, the animal rights group. It also claimed that I was a painter trained in the University of Leeds - which are both very much not true. ChatGPT does make me sound very interesting - but there are clear ethical issues associated with this type of error - especially if I were to apply for a job working with children or vulnerable populations and there were questions surrounding my criminal convictions - of which, in reality, I have none. It’s a little disconcerting.
I turned my attention back to making artwork. I pulled in a real proposal I was working on about future foresight and art + science, and asked ChatGPT to flesh it out and finish it. At that point I think it had a bit of a breakdown because it gave me a sad face, followed by a couple of really pedestrian interpretations of my proposal involving trees and lab coats. It then went on to generate dialogue from my perspective about my bio:
I started to get bored and asked ChatGPT for a date - but it was having none of my shenanigans… very cold indeed!
Finally, seeing as it had some insights into my biography already, I asked ChatGPT what my next artwork should be; “What would you suggest Alexander Augustus’ next artwork should be?” This was the answer:
I couldn’t agree more. So I guess it’s time to go outside and collect more experiences. Having an interesting life and unique insights is the only way I think artists can stay one step ahead of imitation. As a research tool I have fallen a little in love with ChatGPT, and I will be keeping it open in my browser for the foreseeable future.
Many think of Darwin College as the garden oasis of the University of Cambridge. Others see it as a kind of monastic escape from the contemporary world with its miniature islands, herb gardens and bee hives. Others only know it as having the classiest dive-bar you’ve ever seen. Regardless of what Cambridge residents know, everyone has heard rumors of the rare and ancient plants in our gardens - Jurassic living fossils, cloned trees, parasitic beings… something about a banana tree which can’t make bananas.
It’s surreal to think that I’m moving to Cambridge in just over 2 weeks. I’ve only been there once, in 2007 I think, and was escorted off the University premises for drunkenly skinny dipping in the early hours. “Efficient security”, I thought to myself, crossing the bridge away from the college and leaving a trail of wet footprints behind. I knew from experience that the University of East Anglia security definitely could not run that fast. The gates clanked shut as I pulled my underwear back on, and I marvelled at the beauty of the scene. I had bought the cheapest available Easyjet flights with some friends, returns to Valencia, and due to the timing we’d decided to crash on the floor of a friends’ friend’s Cambridge college dorm overnight.
I still remember the taunts from my Dad’s friend André; “Do you like Gilbert? Do you like George? Are you going to grow up and be like them?” I was around 5 or 6 years old, and my family was visiting the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao with friends. My Dad’s friend André was a pest, and since hearing me begging for the latest Polly Pocket toy for my birthday, had taken a particular interest in bothering me.
I had a molar tooth extracted yesterday evening. I have spent the better part of 24 hours lying in agony and cursing dentists everywhere. Fortunately, I could distract myself with a machine learning program called Midjourney. It describes itself as “An independent research lab. Exploring new mediums of thought. Expanding the imaginative powers of the human species.” and alongside Dall-e, is one of a few new computer vision programs which allows you to generate images from written detailed descriptions.
What are these weird humanoid things doing playing around with the magical creatures? Is it the National mascot of Ireland, or isn’t it? Ask anyone on the street: “Lion, Unicorn, Dragon, and…?” They will most likely say: “Shamrock… no, Leprechaun… no, wait?” But after a quick google search, I discovered that the Hare is actually the national animal of Ireland!
I couldn’t get this off my mind, so I made some Venn diagrams.
“Don't make fun of British speech or accents. You sound just as funny to them but they will be too polite to show it.”
“You can understand that two acts on your part will slow up the friendship - swiping his girl, and not appreciating what his army has been up against. Yes, and rubbing it in that you are better paid than he is.”
“The British don’t know how to make a good cup of coffee. You don’t know how to make a good cup of tea. It’s an even swap.”
(Amen!)
Is the Easter Bunny a Christian deity? How about Father Christmas? Of course they are both in the cannon of Christian symbolism, but do we believe in them? Well, yes and no, many children of Christian families do, regardless of whether their parents believe or not. Father Christmas is loosely based on St Nicholas, but he’s more like a transformation of pagan Winter-gift-giving spirits from European Folklore. And the Bunny, with its colourful eggs, judging the behaviour hopeful children? Well this character also hails from pagan Springtime beliefs, and seems to have slipped into the Christian tradition via stone carvings of rabbits in churches. The reason I’m brining these examples, is because I’ve always been fascinated with the blurred boundaries between cultural stories we respect, and those we don’t respect.
Last week marked the launch of the 2020 Colombian Biennale, Barcú. I was invited by Gallery Nuance to collaborate with Fundación Vida Nueva, which translates as “Foundation for New Life.” This charity offers women in Colombia the opportunity to leave sex work, and as a continuation of my “Faces of Employment” series, I created a portrait of the brave women currently working with the foundation to better their lives.
“Your job is to sand down those plaster vaginas” the gaunt middle aged man snapped at me, flicking his wrists towards the pile of cast genitals on the work surface. I remember blushing and sweating and wondering what I had done to deserve the nasty tone with which he ordered me around. “Of course I’d never let you take the casts, none of the customers would want you pouring gunge all over their genitals, that’s my job,” he scoffed.
The first time I encountered death was at the age of 5. I remember walking back from the park with my family and tripping on the torn and twisted corpse of a pigeon, burst open with its red and purple strewn across the tarmac. It had a snapped beak and crushed head, but its tortured eyes were wide open.
I once went to an art performance in Hackney, London, where a young couple frantically assaulted each other with clumped handfuls of rotting fish, flung from plastic buckets. I recall the feeling of panic as the stench of rotting fish-offal slapped against my face and stained my clothes, groping for the exit, straining to see by the chaotic flash of the strobe-lights in that dingy basement. The performers pounced and tumbled through the space to an eardrum-bursting soundtrack of violin shrieks and smashing furniture. I remember thinking “this is out of control, nothing we do in this space can control this madness, it’s beyond me,” I never wanted to enter that mental head-space again, but alas, last night Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s 2020 Presidential debate took me there.
Now, for many of us in the global audience, Trump’s unapologetic ignorance and performative bullying have been a constant source of flabbergastery since 2016. We struggle to see his appeal, and for many of us who consume so much American media, it's difficult to believe that this is what Americans would vote for. I have lived in Washington DC for an accumulative period of 1 year, and in the Summer of 2008 I lived with political interns in GW halls of residence. Today I was reflecting on that experience and trying to assess whether I could have predicted the madness we are living through.
“BUT WHAT DO THEY DO WITH THE RUNTS ON A FARM?” demanded the intern across the hall, a young man from a military family with a prison-block haircut and an evangelical intensity in his eyes. He was serving as an intern for a Republican Senator. “Ummm, well, there are cases where farmers separate the runts, look after them, and then they grow up to be just as healthy as the others in the litter,” I replied. “No! He retorted triumphantly, as though he’d pushed me into some kind of lib-tard trap, “farmers allow them to die for the economic benefit of the farm!” We were talking about the Welfare State, and no, we were not actually talking about animals on a farm, we were talking about humans. To my disbelief, this nineteen-year-old was inadvertently espousing the virtues of eugenics to a room of excitable young students, many of whom treated his comparison of human and cattle healthcare to be quite normal. “You’re talking about letting people with disabilities die? And people who cannot afford healthcare? Or the elderly?” I asked, but the discussion had moved on.
I found myself in many situations such as this, and the Republican sentiment was almost always along the lines of “the cream will rise to the top, and the rest should work harder.” It’s in no way dissimilar to the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” mantra of the UK Tories, but there was one stark difference; the element of performance, almost as though the performance in itself was an argument. There were more projected-voices, memorised talking-points and body language exaggerations in those circles than any drama school social I’ve encountered - and my mum used to make me go to stage-coach every Sunday to dance to the music from Cats. Try enduring that tormented forest of jazz hands for 3 hours at a time!
“Well this is a lot,” I thought as I scooped up another cup of Kool-Aid, red wine, tequila, and whatever other alcohol I could scavenge, wondering how much I had to drink before I’d have the confidence to drag these guys to a bar. You can’t drink until you’re 21 in the US, and back in 2008 I was only 19… I’d been legal in the UK for over a year and that was besides the point because many British teenagers, armed with photoshopped passport scans, began drinking in bars at the age of 15 or 16. I was determined to get this group of interns out of the Halls and into a club; but after being thrown out of liquor-store after liquor-store, I soon realised that DC was really very strict. Eventually I got a stranger to buy me a large tequila, drank most of it myself, and we went to The Black Cat Club, where they put thick crosses on our hands in permanent marker to prevent us from buying alcohol. I washed mine off in the toilet three times and was eventually thrown out. Following that, there was lots of sickness, lots and lots of sickness - clumps of sickness, one might say, and the Taco Bell at Union Station would never smell the same again.
Back to politics. In the US, it’s usual for halls of residence to require you to share rooms with other students. In my flat there were initially only two of us in one bedroom, myself and a Democrat interning for a senator on Capitol Hill. However, after several weeks, the third intern arrived - a wildly confident jock-type Republican, who threw all his crap on the top bunk, slapped a bible down on the bed-side table and declared that he’d be regularly bringing home some “sweet pussy”, warning us not mind the shaking of the bunk bed each night. In debates, his key talking-points usually revolved around the “Christian values” which he shared with his fiancé back home in Alabama. Again, this guy held himself like a performer, with rehearsed lines, a plastic smile and buckets of rotten fish - I mean confidence, buckets of confidence. Unshakable, lacking in depth, and configured like a cerebral-bulldozer.
And this went on and on for three months. Another day I sat with some political interns at lunch, and an outspoken Republican was making the restaurant into his one-man performance space. His talking-point was very clear; he was concerned about the accessibility of the cinema. “Average, apple pie, American families cannot afford to go to the movies! They work hard all week and cannot afford the movies!” he kept shouting whilst waving his arms about. This was somehow his argument against immigration, and although others had counterpoints they wanted to make, his facade was impenetrable. Watching Trump and Biden on tv at 2am last night gave me flashbacks to these moments, “'I've done more in 47 months than you did in 47 years, Joe” Trump shouted over and over, “China virus,” he boomed, “I brought back football.” And the outrageous soundbites kept coming, “your son Hunter!”, “fake news, fake news, fake news.”
And it’s not just Trump, this arrogant, soundbite approach to nuanced topics seems to permeate through the right-wing of American debate, far more than the left; just look at Ben Shapiro,
Candice Owens, Milo Yiannopoulos (please can we just say he’s American), each with their own catch-phrases, each more provocative than the next. Don’t get me wrong, in the UK we have buckets of our own rotten fish, but nothing with this particular brand of puke. In the UK I can only equate it to the subculture of the political upper-class from which Boris, Cameron and Blair arise, but even that posh-boy culture is often blundering and apologetic, and seemingly far less targeted.
Now, I’ve picked on Republicans here, and I’m sure the interns who were working for Democratic Senators were also debating and making their points in performative ways… but I cannot really remember a single one of them. I cannot remember a single retort which the liberals made against the conservatives. No mic-drop moments. Which was frankly surprising, considering outlandish and brash statements coming from the right-wing interns. I do, however, remember the nuanced arguments between the different factions of the left-wing interns, who seemed more comfortable debating one another than the Republicans. I remember discussions about the free-will of women in the Middle-East and the symbolic implications of wearing burkas. I remember some discussions about Affirmative action, I think. Maybe we talked about inclusiveness in children’s books? To be honest, the only things which stuck with me were the performative and unsubstantiated claims of the Republicans. Because they were entertaining. Trump is entertaining. Meanwhile, the Democrats in the room were spending more time arguing amongst themselves.
So was this den of interns a microcosm of what was going to come? Maybe? Perhaps I’m overthinking it. Anyway; clumps of sick and clumps of rotten fish.
I don’t believe in fate, but if I did, I would tell you that divine intervention brought Philip Pullman’s work to me exactly when I needed it, flying on the wings of a Nationwide Current account.
As an atheist, anti-authoritarian boy in the late 90s and early 2000s I did not encounter many narratives or role models I could latch onto. Children's books were often thinly-veiled moral stories, referencing allegories in the Bible and reinforcing socially acceptable ways of behaving. The Chronicles of Narnia, for instance, struck me as a vapid retelling of Jesus’ life, but as a lion... the Lion King, too, seemed to be a vapid retelling of Jesus’ life, but as a lion. The chocolate-box world of Harry Potter was fine, but the goody-two-shoes act wore thin pretty quickly. Despite being a child, I didn’t want to be spoken to in a voice developed for children - I wanted to be addressed with all the complexities and nuances of being human. This is what I found From the His Dark Materials trilogy.
For everyone, growing up is a wrestling match between our own instincts and the diktats of society. I was simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the human world. It seemed to hold so much opportunity, yet every hoop I found myself jumping through felt so contrary to my instincts; school, work, social life. Every step I took forward seemed to be the wrong one, and so I spent most of my childhood hopping, skipping and doubling-back. My instincts told me to French knit elaborate costumes for my cats; make epic drama videos starring my guinea pigs; steal shiny things, such as my Grandad’s WWII medals, and hide them under the floorboards; they told me to make up stories and push-back on authority. I would have preferred planting vegetables in a field than playing football on one. Suffice to say, I often didn’t fit in. And as I grew older, I realised that my instincts would attract me to all manner of things, and people, that I was not “supposed” to be attracted to. Children's books had done nothing to prepare me for being unconventional and I found myself deeply troubled.
By the year 2001 I had discovered Bjork and I got a paper-round to save up for her album, Vespertine. I was 13. My mum helped me to open my first bank account and about a month later I received a mysterious package; it was a signed, first edition copy of The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. As if by magic! Unbeknownst to me, Nationwide had entered me into a prize draw for opening my account - and from all the hundreds of thousands of people who opened current accounts that year, I had won.
I was never good at reading or writing, I could never decide which hand to hold the pen with, and tried to read and write everything back-to-front. My mum said I had extreme “left-handedness” and till the age of around seven my work could only be deciphered with a mirror. So I was terrified at the size of this novel. But I borrowed my brother’s copy of Northern Lights and began to read the trilogy. The heroine was a young girl, Lyra, who fought and lied and did all the things children are never supposed to do, but all the things which we would have wanted to do. But she was also brave, spoke truth to power and questioned everything. Her family life was dysfunctional, the Church sought to persecute her, she was pulled and twisted between classes, and most of the adults she encountered told her that her instincts were wrong - yet she kept going - on her own terms. For the first time ever I enjoyed reading, yes, I struggled, but I pushed through because the narrative compelled me to. Lyra was bringing me with her on her rebellious but righteous adventures.
The truth is that as a child I was full of mischief, and I saw myself in Lyra. But the truth is, also, that I suffered with a deep and burning shame, because of the ways in which I was different. In the third book in the series, The Amber Spyglass, I read about the angels Baruch and Balthamos. They were refugees from God, who had forbidden them to love one another and so they were fleeing from his tyranny. At this point in my own life I was finding myself attracted to men, and as I read about the angels, a feeling of being acknowledged swept over me. It was a tiny section of the trilogy, and if you blinked you would have missed it… but for me it was a powerful moment, and for the time it was incredibly trailblazing for a “children’s book”. I wouldn’t admit any of those shameful feelings until I was an adult, six years later, but children need a semblance of acknowledgement and I certainly wasn’t getting it from Narnia. Of course, Sir Philip Pullman maintains that he is not a children’s writer, and puts that perception down to marketing rather than his work.
Impassioned, I reviewed Northern Lights for coursework in English class and received my first ever A grade in that class. And once I had received that grade I began to believe I might be able to achieve other good grades. Before long I was boosting my grades in all classes, and that’s when I realised that University may, in fact, be accessible to me. The books spoke to me in a language I understood, and that opened up something wonderful.
A friend of mine used to quote his Anthropology professor at me; “if you want to change society, write a children’s book.” When I think about the impact this book has had on me, I can't help but believe Philip Pullman’s work has touched a generation of free thinkers and storytellers.
Queen Elizabeth II is the main character of my new artwork, entitled “ANGER“. The audio-experience follows her journey into an apocalyptic, sci-fi, epic adventure, heavily influenced by my personal Covid-quarantine. The work touches on class, Brexit, employment, and mental health - and of course there is a healthy does of auto-biography distributed about the place.
The artwork is by no means angry at the Queen as a person, or her family for that matter, on the contrary, in fact, I have written the character largely to reflect the relationship I had with my own grandmother, as a human, and I hope to have done some justice to both women. That’s why I call it ‘my Queen Elizabeth‘, because it’s my interpretation. However, I have used Queen Elizabeth’s identity as a kind of raw material to discuss the class system in the UK; almost all of the dialogue from her character is quoted directly from speeches, interviews and public announcements. It’s all tongue-in-cheek, following the great British tradition of satire! So stay calm!
“Leopold pulled at a velvet rope dangling above his head, the motion of which dropped a curtain behind Elizabeth. A window looked onto a grassy enclosure. “I say!” exclaimed Elizabeth, as she gazed upon a marvellous creature, slithering about on multiple tentacles. It appeared to have a dozen eyes, several horns, and a body shimmering in the light with innumerable polypropylene wings. Her staffers gasped and reached for their mobile devices to take pictures, before remembering they had all been confiscated.”
I have always been fascinated with the concept of Monarchy. I’m a Brighton boy, so you would be hard-pressed to find many pro-monarchists in the liberal circles I grew up in, and I accept this bias totally. But as I grew up, the concept of nobility struck me again and again as some dark shadow looming over the facade of our democracy. As a young teenager, I still remember the moment when I fully understood what The House of Lords meant… “but… we are a democracy, aren’t we? How can there be inherited positions of governance?!“ I consistently asked myself (and those around me, usually to their annoyance). Since then I have skirted around this issue with Lord Sainsbury himself, who is notably liberal and philanthropic to the Arts and Sciences, yet I was afraid to directly address this issue with him… but why? Surely he is supposed to be my equal in this society, yet the weight of his inherited office crushed my confidence like an ant. It still does - even when I find myself with someone simply speaking RP, or with that private-school confidence - it intimidates me. As it’s supposed to. And artists are particularly confounded by this dilemma, for reasons I doubt I need to explain. Again, I liked chatting to Lord Sainsbury, and I do not blame him for his inheritance, but still… he is entirely unelected and his opinions shape our country. I struggle with this. My project The Clockwork Earl touches on this topic.
Growing up, Prince Harry was only 4 years older than me, so I always had an eye on his progress. Not as competition… but somehow a little bit as competition. I was intensely curious what made this family so special, perhaps naively, and what made these Princes so elevated above myself, my brother and the kids in my neighbourhood. My defining characteristic has always been my artwork; even from before I could articulate with speech and writing, I was already illustrating my thoughts on the world around me. So my attention really focussed when Prince Harry released his A Level Art final project, showcased by the world’s global media. Very soon afterwards he was accused of cheating . The art teacher accused him of being a ‘weak student‘ and noted that the Head of Art at Eton completed all of his artwork for him. Again, I will keep repeating myself, I do not blame young Harry for the predicament he was in, but the same questions kept pouring in - are we even pretending to be in a meritocracy here?
As an adult I can see the naivety in this question - of course we are not aiming for a meritocracy, and we never have. The narrative of ANGER deals with this in my own bizarre and abstract way.
And then we get onto the really sinister stuff - the history of the Windsor family, the association with Empire, Colonialism, the very recent and continuing link to the Nazis, the paedophilia of Prince Andrew… to be honest, there seem to be more skeletons in the Windsor closet than most average families. And to think that these people were somehow appointed by the divine right of God, a higher, all-knowing being - I can’t quite get my head around that.
Having said all that, I am very happy to see that the Princes are shining their lights on the issue of mental health, especially in young men, which absolutely needs attention in the UK today. And I am gripped by the stir which Megan and Harry are making - to be honest I’m a little in awe of what I’ve seen. Their desire to make their own money, releasing them from the obligation of ruling, it’s pretty wild - although I admittedly know very little about it.
I am conflicted, as many British people are, about Royalty and nobility. I do not know the answer. They are so unfuturistic, I just couldn’t resist making a sci-fi project about them. So instead of offering anything actionable to deal with my feelings, I wrote a 50,000 word narrative about biblical mutants fighting a war against a young artist and The Queen of England. I hope that’s an acceptable response.
I am so excited about my new project, set to be released mid-late October with Route 17 Media Art Centre, South Korea. So please check out updates! It’ll be a digital audio-experience, over 3 chapters and 9 parts. Sort of like an audiobook, with immersive elements, a series of accompanying sculptures and a lot of people eating each other’s innards.
I’M SO EXCITED I’M LITERALLY LOSING SLEEP OVER THIS PROJECT!
I’m really proud of the University of East Anglia, and am prouder still to have been profiled by the “Where are they now“ alumni tributes.
It was around 14 years ago when I moved into the brutalist concrete jungle of the University of East Anglia. At that time I could not have guessed how deeply the experience of studying at UEA would develop me as a person, and as an artist. Of course I had heard many good things about the university before visiting; it was supposed to be the best for Environmental Sciences, Creative Writing, and of course it has the SCVA Gallery! But unfortunately, it was also not uncommon for people to call it “The University of Easy Access“, and I still overhear people asking “UEA? Is that in the Middle East?“ I went to investigate for myself!
The campus is straight from a sci-fi novel from the 70s - elevated concrete walkways, glass pyramids, a central amphitheatre, all located by a lake in the beautiful Norfolk countryside - and now adorned with a series of Antony Gormley figures. Following a tour of the Sainsbury’s Centre for Visual Arts (SCVA), with their Picassos, Giacomettis, Bacons, Moores, ancient Greek, Japanese, Pre-Colombian, Inuit and Egyptian artworks, I dedicated both of my two university application options to UEA. There was nowhere else I could imagine studying.
How was it possible that Norman Foster’s first ever building was tucked away in the idyllic Norfolk countryside, loaded with masterpieces which would rival any gallery in London? And at that time a world-class team of academics, ranging from British Museum and V&A Curators, to world renowned Art Historians and Archaeologists. Being nurtured in that environment for 3 years, handling the artworks, studying the cultures, and finally graduating in a Cecil Beaton designed gown - it was beyond a dream.
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I have always fully supported the ethos of UEA, and see it as a kind of rebel among UK Universities. Built in the 1960s, the intention was to rival the older universities, and open educational access to everyone. My understanding is that the left-wing and atheist principles of the University prevents graduations from happening in the Cathedral. I also understand that UEA was offered a place in the Russell Group and rejected it on grounds of principle. Not to mention that the school of World Art and Museology was an industry leader in recognising non-Eurocentric artwork as of equal value to their European counterparts - displaying both side-by-side, decades before it became fashionable. When the former Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, was offered honorary Doctorates by Oxbridge Universities he rejected them, but once offered an honorary Doctorate from UEA he willingly accepted - attending his graduation the same day as me in 2009! (I said hello but I was shy).
ALSO in 2015 the Sainsbury’s centre was scouted as the location of the Avengers HQ - yes, I did personally meet Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America, and I was still shy. Robert Downey Junior asked to have the pin I designed for A Dangerous Figure, and Chris Hemsworth asked if he could have my shoes. I said ‘no’ to the latter, but I understand that Mr Downey Junior still has my work.
And not to brag, but in 2008, I was on the front cover of the UEA prospectus, and that year we did win best looking student body in FHM magazine… just saying… not that those two things are linked or anything…
So you can see I am still in love with UEA.
Now, having said all of that… I do have a bone to pick. Considering how incredible this place is, why do I always find that I’m having to explain to people what UEA is, and where it is? The one main criticism I have is the branding and marketing of UEA. As a designer I look at the logo, website, visual output in general and I ask to myself “is it trying to look cheap and tacky?“ The branding is way off base, clumsy and careless. Furthermore, I could barely find a single stock image of the campus looking as beautiful as it does in real life! A simple Google search should pull up numerous high-res and non-pixilated images of all the beautiful artworks in the SCVA, as well as the Gallery and campus itself. Why am I struggling to find these images?
Come on! Step it up UEA! You owe it to yourselves and your students to show yourself off! Now go get your cheap-ass branding in order and market yourself properly to the world!
Tell everyone how incredible you are UEA! I’m behind you all the way!
Anything I missed? Comment below and add to the conversation…
“When the creatures moved, [the wheels] also moved; when the creatures stood still, they also stood still; and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. “
Ezekiel 1:21 (NIV)