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ALSO IN THIS ISSUE In order to question what it is that makes us human, Barry George III has eaten all the parts of his body which aren't required for survival at it's most basic. Read the exclusive last interview before he digested his own voicebox and became merely a brain in a jar. Sarah Lucas teams up to write Tracy Emin's 17th suicide note with a glitter pen on 'Hello Kitty' note paper. Dan Bigs, famed for his photographs of Iron Lungs now lives in a bathysphere at the bottom of leeds canal. He shows us round his wonderful new 4 foot metal abode. 
28 strong 90s Leigh Bowery art pop combo Minty who used to give birth to each other on stage whilst wearing shower curtains for dresses, take on popular new Garage group The So Solid Crew in a battle without rules. 
Sue Chambers' Slut Party (1997, canvas and blood) Scaled up version of notorious 'Piss Christ' remade as new 'Angel of the Scots' 100 foot wide at the bottom of Loch Ness. 
"Alan McGee baught our New Barbarians and using animatronics re-sold it as a cross between Oasis and Kraftwerk" Webster and Noble - Whatever happened to our classic work? Self-Obsessed Prattle. 
"I am constantly half asleep with one eye open and one in a dream" Kurt Lennon is watching YOU Alex James' mobile phone stolen by art thieves for its brit art heavy address book. Since selling 'Pocket Mummy' for £87 million, Gillian Nutri-Hobbs hasn't left her house for ten years and lives off Pizza. The author of her biography asks us to decide whether this is art or retirement and thus whether he should compile his book now ignoring this part - or take up 90% of the book describing what this final work of genius means. |
At breakfast time yesterday, contraversial artist's artists Jeremy and Dido7
announced the arrival of their new exhibition, but it's not going to be in
a traditional gallery. Their press release explains further...
"If an artistically advanced alien race visited this planet and showed us their sculpture of the earth made out of a glass ball of piss - can we seriously offer them a waterpainting of the moon and expect them not to laugh? Art must progress." Jeremy and Dido7, 2002.
Described as "Pantomime like Eminem whilst at the same time *surreal*, making them visually *exactly* the same as how the Aphex Twin sounds" (Jo Whiley, Disc Journalist), and "as eccentric as Gilbert and George but with two Gilberts and no George" (Tony Parsons, acclaimed author of "Man and Boy", and "Soccer with David"). In our work, we use humour and shock in order to raise vital questions on life. In our hands, simple puns like 'Fanny Farm', 'Columbine Harvester', and 'Clit Richard' are so much more than mere puns as we visually construct them into physical objects so that in essence we can question what is the joke and where is the art? Is it the laughter that makes something a joke or is it the object itself, in which case does laughter in fact come from the point where our work makes us look ie somewhere inside ourselves - vibrating our very soul.
In 1997, we claimed notoriety when we broke into the Albert Hall and left a life size gonad made out of nazi memorabilia in their toilets (the transgressive "Hitlers Ball"). You may remember us for that. Or you may remember the provocative time we paid some street kids money to graffitti slogans over the underground trains. They painted what we told them to ('Your TV Tells Lies', 'Your body is like a factory', the lyrics to 'From Dispair to Where' by the manic street preachers) - and so technically this is still our art, not theirs. Who knows, one day the overpaint on those trains will have to be painstakingly removed and the slogans restored so that our art may once again be seen but this time by a more appreciative future audience. Perhaps even the whole trains will be placed inside the national gallery. Think about that for a second. Or two. But that's our past, which is the rest of the world's future. Now, in 2002, angered by the oppressive nature of the established galleries refusing to show our latest exhibition presumably because it is beyond their understanding (we emailed the tate 'modern' and they didn't even respond), we have been forced to set up our own space. This means our exhibition is going to be held in father's greenhouse and shall begin as soon as soon as there is nicer weather and he has created the room for us by moving all of his tomatoes out into the garden. Expect it about June / July time. At the exhibition you may see, smell, hear and taste some of our latest works. I shall now describe a bit of what there is to enjoy. Everything's Gone Green We called our exhibition this because it's a play on it being in a greenhouse, which also sybolises the way our work plants ideas in your head that grow in your mind. Its title comes from a New Order song. We wanted to name it after a Joy Division one but there didn't seem an applicable one on the greatest hits so that's the next best thing. I preffered Joy Division because they were darker, but it's good to know that after killing off his alter ego Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner was able to bounce back having reinvented himself as a pill popping son of a gun.  That said, hanging was a bit of a dull way for him to kill off Ian, really.
David Bowie killed
Ziggy Stardust so much better when he sealed him in a block of
steel
and left instructions for how he could
become the foundation
stone for the building of the internet. We hope to do something
like that if we ever have tax problems like David had and need to 'kill
ourselves' off.
Anyway - back to the exhibition. As you enter, by the sliding glass door we shall be playing "Jack up your body" by Atari Teenage Riot, so imagine that playing now. If you haven't heard it before, simply imagine happy hardcore being made so darkly that it makes you want to physically attack the speakers. Why? Because you can't handle the truth it is incomprehensibly shouting at you. Yes, that good. Here we shall also give you some complimentary wine, but this shall not be in a conventional glass or a mug but rather in a thin plastic bag. This is because being in a greenhouse is just like being inside the wine glass. That's another angle the exhibition is coming from. Drink it in whatever way you like and come in. Video Installation #3 The first thing you shall see in our exhibition is a video installation showing on the big living room TV. (NB It shall not be playing when Heartbeat or Songs of Praise is on because of the parents want the telly back then - check listing magazines for details.) It is a video that Jeremy made on father's digital video camera. The camera itself is quite an old one, though it was top of the range when he got it - the capitalist bastard. What it shows is a vision of what appears to be an obese woman in a long flowing cape about to throw herself off a tall building - before metamorphosing and flying away as an angel. It is an amazingly beautiful and profound piece. Some may find this shocking in itself that we did such a nice installation. We subtitle it "Leap Hog". Our friend Dan says that it's obvious that it isn't a tall building and a woman but rather a small building and a pigeon filmed out of focus by an amateur. But who is he to say what is art? He is only a doctor. There are no amateurs any more. You either have it or you don't. Tim Marlowe said that if he could isolate a single frame from it then 58763 is perfection and that he couldn't contain his emotion if it was on screen for any longer than the 1/30 of a second which it is. He presents Channel 5's "Tim Marlowe on Tate Modern" - who do you trust, him or a doctor? A month of Fun Days? Dido7 has put his diary on the greenhouse wall. This is obviously a very honest and open thing to do. It's even more brave when you consider that the four weeks it covers turned out to be some of the most emotive of his life. Some of it has faded in the sunlight, but it's still worth reading. The diary starts when he walked into a hospice in the mistaken belief that it was a new arts cinema showing a 4 hour film by some underground auteur filmed not in black and white, but in red and brown so that if you have different coloured eyes like David Bowie one of which is short sighted and the other long then the film itself appears to be in 3D, with the emotion actually appearing to pour out of the screen at you. This is the sort of thing that Dido7 loves to see, except when he goes to the multiplex every Thursday with a knowing sense of irony. Though he does love the underground films best - Guy Ritchie and 'Twin Town' are his favourites. The diary continues at the hospice where he finds himself falling in love with four different girls who each coincidentally have been given less than the time his diary is to cover to live, and ends with him grieving more than anyone else will ever know. His depression and confusion expressed in his diaries is so personal and profound that it's hard to read in many places. It's a very brave piece, so much so that he never kept a diary before or again.. Here is an extract: "I told her that I'd just been reading Nietzsche and that god is dead, but not to worry because I would live on through my art and that now she has met me, she has inspired me and so part of her may also live on through my art also. I intend to read more Nietzsche as I have only got as far as four quotes, but it sounds like something I'd like. Quite dark and moody. Leaving her alone, I thought about Danni, about Lilian, about Dawn and Julie and whether my heart can take so much love. I decided that the best thing to do would be to never see any of them again - but to keep them alive in my thoughts and work from now on." He typed it all out on his I-mac which symbolises the coldness of the computer age and also questions how if we're all zeros and ones, is there really room for a number two? Bedside Tramp  In cactus corner, we are showing a collection
of photographs of down and outs' shelter placed alongside
clippings of celebrity houses cut out from mum's Hello magazines.Seeing the Jonathan Ross indoor swingball court juxtaposed alongside a bed of recently slept on nettles is transient and postmodern, I think. It gives a good impression of life behind a beard. It's important to see this work as these homeless people could never express themselves if it wasn't for us. Maybe they could write a poem in 'The Big Issue', but mum always makes us wash our hands after reading that, as you don't know where the vendor's been. And if they were poets, they'd be artists, not homeless. Street painters or buskers or something like that. Fans of our work may remember we used our artistic alchemy to turn one vendor's poem actually into art by dampening the page with it on and printing his "You couldn't live without your phone but I don't even have a home" onto our faces by pressing against it so that the print would come off on our cheeks. Wearing his poem, we then walked around town pretending to be homeless ourselves and sold copies of it to raise money to publish our electroclash fanzine in glossy A5 1/2. Sporting Spice Mel C turned later that very poem into a song, which just goes to show how high art can easily be diluted into the populist. The Randy House  This is a trilogy of works which shall be held inside the
plastic wendy house I used to play in as
a young boy. It's only a small wendy house, so you probably
will only be able to stick your head in to look inside.It's held in here because the three pieces are somewhat adult in nature so don't go in if you're easily offended or a prude. At our trial run, a few people looking at this fainted - though that might be simply because it's a bit stuffy in there with it being inside the greenhouse. We have painted the wendy house red to symbolise it being the heart of the exhibition. Like a heart, it was going to have four chambers but Dido7 tore down the nude photographs of himself as he didn't look quite like he expected. Santa Whores We start off with this on the left 'ventricle' (wall). It's a collage picture of father christmas made out of prostitute's calling cards. We feel it makes a mockery of Christianity - How can they seriously respect Saint Nicholas again when they've seen him ridiculed so? I think this piece more than any other really pushes the boundaries of what is art. I don't think anyone's made a picture out of calling cards before. Certainly not in our village. Sadly, because Lady Dawn Chambers was the only prostitute who used red card to print her adverts, we had to take down all of her cards from the phoneboxes to make the piece and this put her out of business. However, we did buy the glue to stick the cards on with from her subsequent mail order business she set up so that's okay. The gravy boat. It's tradition that shock artists at some point make a painting out of shit, however we are post-shock, nu-shock, emo shock - and so to progress this movement we have painted a picture OF shit WITH shit using a toilet brush in place of a paint brush. Interestingly, the toilet which the brush was previously used to clean had a seat we designed ourselves. It looked like a policeman's mouth and to flush it, you simply pushed down on the helmet. Sadly, you can't see that seat anymore even if you have taken your shoes off to get into the house since after warming it by sitting there too long, the paint came off on Gran's arse at xmas 99. The Torquay Shroud.  On holiday, Dido7 had a wet dream about that film where Sharon Stone uncrosses
her legs and you can see her knickers. When he awoke, there was a
stain on his sheets the exact shape and size of Sharon's face.
It's almost as if his entire body is capable of art and this was a
fine portrait.Sadly, we have to keep this exhibit in a glass case ever since Sue Webster was caught trying to pollenate herself with it in order to have a baby genius. You remember Sue and partner Tim Noble from BBC TV's 'Living with the enemy' in which they tried to explain the value of their work to some traditionalist pensioners by telling them to "fuck off". Anyway, that is all that is in the Wendy House. You may now leave. A tape of Jeremy djing - DJ Crampfingers. Who are they to say what is art? You may not normally get to hear DJing in galleries, but you can here. This is a tape of Jeremy playing only the darkest of sounds with lyrics at a subliminal pitch you can't hear with your ears but still can with your brain. You may well pick up words like "What am I doing here?" in your head without actually being aware that that is what we are playing. It questions life. Keen DJs may also be impressed that he tends to play the songs backwards and mixes out. If you would like to see him DJ live, we hire the Pensive Pheasant every other weekend. Blur's Alex James is often seen there with a glass of red wine in his paw so come along. He is the genius in the band, which is why he hasn't released a solo record yet but drinks a lot. He tells us you can only ease pain out onto record slowly and he thinks that the red lips that drinking wine gives you makes him look very pretty without having to put on lipstick - as male lipstick is so 80s but he is somewhere around 2020 where even women don't wear slap. Anyone to say "woo hoo" or play blur songs on the jukebox at him will be evicted. Indeed, anyone to use the jukebox whilst I am djing will be evicted also - as we cannot disconect it from the speakers. Ultimately, It's only you who will lose out. Parting Shots. In his spare time, Jeremy freelances as a police photographer. Here we proudly display some of the more artistic murder scenes he has shot. We do have plenty of other work and this is not just to fill up space, as the Evening Post have suggested the last two times we have displayed these. One of the most powerful photos features the aftermath of a wife who has thrown a starved alsation at her cheating husband who was cutting the hedge with a chainsaw. For this, Jeremy was on a political bent mentally and so for the photograph, he decided to cast his shadow over the scene whilst dressed in a costume of a certain multinational mascot. The red blood on the yellow hedge certainly helps make it. The first person to identify which company he is humiliating (ie which mascot he is dressed as) shall win a packet of Cannabis as soon as it is legalised and Malboro or Benson or someone like that can sell it in a more professional and honest way in order to prevent us having to go through the humiliation of buying, and smoking twenty pounds worth of black dog hair again. Lawrence of a Philia.  We have re-recorded the soundtrack to 'Lawrence of Arabia'
to feature Lawrence expressing his innermost perversions.
"Those pyramids look like Madonna's tits",
"How many men have buried their shit in this sand?",
"Damn that fanny mirage".
We do this for all 3 1/2 hours of the film. You must watch it all.
Noone is allowed in or out after the film begins. This accompanies our remade version of 'Naked Lunch' . We have made this with smells alone. The book stimulated our mind, the film our eyes and ears. We thought, why not tell the story with smell. We think it's the definitive version, though you should be warned that some of the smells are made out of industrial solvents. Note: It is currently planned that 'Lawrence of Scataphilia' is to be shown on the little upstairs telly, but if anyone has a decent sized one we can borrow, then let us know.  The most disgusting thing in the world. This is found art. We found it in the see when we were on holiday in Iceland. We hid it in Jeremy's suitcase, but because of the air pressure difference, it swelled up and made the suitcase explode, taking with it five surrounding suitcases - which we had to pay for. It stunk the plane out so much that it's next flight had to be delayed whilst the baggage compartment was bleached out. If it had gone on time, it might never have hit that other plane. Isn't it ironic? Anyway, it's been in Dad's lock-up of seven years now, and seems to be at it's peak so we thought we'd display it. Seeing this really makes you humbled to be human and makes you wonder if god exists, could he really make something like that? That will be the final piece, and after seeing it, you must crawl out via a pain of glass which we have removed at the back of the greenhouse, so not to cause disruption at the entrance queue. There is still some small spikes of glass around the edges, so best wear a thick coat whilst in the greenhouse so not to scratch yourself on the way out. We look forward to seeing you there. You will find it easy to recognise us, as we still have the inquisitive eyes of genius children (we'll also be dressed as harlequins). Shock you later, Jeremy and Dido7 NOTE: To avoid the conventional, theartshole.com is not actually located at the web address theartshole.com, but at rather monkeon.co.uk. In a further move of breaking with tradition, the rest of the site has nothing to do with this page at all. But why not read it anyway. You got this far. How much worse can it get? |
