Skip to main content

Bill Drummond – The 25 Paintings

When Bill Drummond announced that he would be embarking on a twelve
year world tour of his The 25 Paintings show earlier this year, it was
no belated rock and roll gesture that emulated the life on the road so
beloved of ageing icons stuck in a last-gasp music industry groove.
Rather, the show's opening leg at Eastside Projects in Birmingham
between March and June this year was the latest chapter in Drummond's
very personal pilgrimage that has provoked and confused himself as much
as the music and art establishments he has subverted over almost forty
years.

From designing the set of theatre director Ken Campbell's legendary
twelve-hour staging of Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's
science-fiction conspiracy epic, Illuminatus, through to spending his
sixtieth birthday standing on a manhole cover in Liverpool, Drummond's
restless wanderings have been a very personal Boy's Own style adventure
that have explored ways of being as much as seeing. This has been the
case whether subverting the music business with The KLF, burning a
million quid with the K Foundation,or founding National No Music Day
and his mythical choir, The 17.

The 25 Paintings ae a series of word-based canvasses that make up an
epic, ever-changing sculpture which Drummond has painted over several
times since he began the work in 2002. As he points out in the
limited edition hardback catalogue of essays and images for the
Birmingham show, 'the actual paintings aren't the important bit. The
important bit is what I will be doing in and around Birmingham...for
those three months.'

Since he wrote those words, Drummond has graffitied a bridge under
Spaghetti Junction where he also laid down 400 bunches of daffodils. He
also defaced a UKIP election poster with his own brand of Drummond's
International Grey paint, an action for which he was investigated by
the police. Berlin is scheduled to be the next stop-off point in
Drummond's nomadic action that will later take in residencies
Guangzhou, Memphis and Damascus, all of which he will sail into on a
wooden raft of his own construction.

In 2025, when Drummond is seventy-two, Drummond will end his tour by
returning to Birmingham, where he will once again lay 400 bunches of
daffodils beneath Spaghetti Junction in what may well put a final bloom
of his life and work.


Scottish Art News, August 2014


ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Butlin - The Sound of My Voice

When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) 1. THE STONE ROSES    Don’t Stop ( Silvertone   ORE   1989) The trip didn’t quite start here for what sounds like Waterfall played backwards on The Stone Roses’ era-defining eponymous debut album, but it sounds

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) 1. THE REZILL