Open the gates

Mega bus
meet at the tree
what time?

Is it painting Jim but not as we know it?

"In the second case, the person not reading abstains, like musil’s librarian, in order to grasp the essence of the book, which is how it fits into the library as a whole. In so doing, he is hardly uninterested in the book –to the contrary. It is because he understands the link between content and location that he chooses not to read, with wisdom superior to that of many readers, and perhaps, on reflection, with greater respect for the book itself."

page 13 of “How to talk about books you haven’t read” by Pierre Bayard

Now if we do a little surgery and swap this for that we get:

The person not painting abstains, in order to grasp the essence of painting, which is how it fits into Art as a whole. In so doing, he is hardly uninterested in painting –to the contrary. It is because he understands the link between Art and History that he chooses not to paint, with wisdom superior to that of many painters, and perhaps, on reflection, with greater respect for
Art itself.

"You see, I haven’t quit being a painter, now I am drawing on chance"

- It's Mr D again!!
- Oh no run for the feckin hills!!!
- Will it ever end (head in hands between sobs)
- Say it again mo fo I double dare you!!!
- "You see, I...Blam Blam Blam!!!

Aquoiboniste

- Just say what it is!!
- what……like?
- yes, Say exactly what it is in no more than six words!!! -
- Just what it is?!!!
- Yes “Lack” of weapons in the middle east!!!
- Ha ha ha yeah that’s it!!!

This is something of the conversation I had with Tim in the Highbury vaults, struggling with the title for the lack table I was going to be submitting for the Bristol Design Festivals Grafikea Competition. The idea was that you modify an Ikea Lack table in some way, put a price on it, submit it, and wait to see if it would win the £250 prize money. Back in 2007 I had already come up with an idea for the table and although I had bought the table from Ikea I had never gotten around to submitting it to the competition. So for a year the table just sat in my workroom being a table.

When 2008 came around and due to the fact that I already had the damn table which to be honest was getting in the way, I now had no excuses, and had to enter the competition. I found myself in a fine art supply store buying three tubes of oil paint and late one evening I painted the letters WMD, first in red paint over and over in the top third of the table, then in green I painted a big WMD evenly spaced in the middle and finally WMD in black over and over in the bottom third of the table. Job done!!

The next morning I got up and left the flat carrying this lack table that now had a load of still wet WMD’s all over it. As it was very light for its size and because I could hold it with the legs I had no problem walking with it to work. However due to the fact that the painted surface was facing outwards in front of me, people kept on looking at me funny as I walk on by. I started to get a bit self-conscious and so I decided to balance the table on my head so that people would not be able to read the surface of the table. I made it safely to work and waited until lunchtime when I again walked with the Lack table to the venue in order to drop it off. The Bristol Design Festival was being held at the old Fire station in town and so it wasn’t long before I got there. After being let in, dumping the table off next to all the other tables and handing over my entry forms I was off and back to work.

A couple of days later I was back at the Fire station to have a look around the exhibition. I was impressed again by the venue itself and also by the work that had gone in to making it look the way it did. After a brief chat with Neil one of the organisers, who informed me that they had had over 600 people attend on the opening night, I took a walk around to check out the Lack tables. I find it amazing that a bunch of people that have never meet each other and who have been given the same brief never come up with the same idea!! There was only one table that had WMD’s painted on it, one table that was unmodified placed in a Perspex box, one table that was chained to the stage area with a bloody hand print painted on it and a pot plant and Mug, and one last years winner with a solitaire game on it. Overall I think that they all looked great and who knows why the public on the night voted for the table that had a retractable hood that allowed you to work in privacy?

A day or so latter I was playing chess with my Girlfriend when we got talking about the lack tables again. Chloe said, if she would make one next year, she would like to make one with a chessboard on it, the pieces made from the Lack table legs. After a bit more chat I/we suddenly struck on an idea that I now wished I had made instead of the “lack of WMD’s” idea. It should/could have been simply titled a “Lack of imagination” in which the table was
presented as is.

The more I thought about this “lack of imagination” the more I realized that this was what the original idea had wanted to be. I began to project this idea onto the show I had just seen. I imagined turning up with the table with nothing but the title. Of meeting Neil for the first time, of walking into the space, with all those other tables, those other ideas, of the looks from the others. What if somebody else had had the same “Lack of Imagination”? What then? Or what if there had been a “Lack of imagination” in 2007? This “lack of imagination” didn’t exist, but maybe it had already existed as a thought, as an idea, and had been rejected.

What if the germ of the idea in Lack of WMD’s had born out the idea of “lack of imagination”? Now I imagined one of the 600 people at the Opening night looking down on the Lack of WMD’s table, glass of wine in hand, turning to one of their friends and saying something like “Lack of WMD’s phaff !!! Why didn’t they just present a table with nothing on it and call it a lack of imagination!!!” to which their friends and others would laugh nervously in “oh my god I can’t believe he just said that” agreement.