(above: Reinventing the World So We Need Not Experience It
Hal Camplin)
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The Dead Inventive
The Dead Inventive collection contains artworks in the form of inventions that do not work, in the mechanical sense of the word.
Invention has never been just about technology or science. It is also about language and behaviour and artists are often the first to deconstruct them. They are driven to pervert logical mechanisms to have an invention accepted for its imaginative intention rather than because it is a solution to a common problem.
As we have been told recently, by the scientists, that the speed of light has just got slower, it appears we have a whole new universe to discover…
The Dead Inventive booklet is available from Email: kangarookourtATblueyonder.co.uk
April 2005 Cube Microplex
performance with poets Boydon Goodman, Sofia Gradin, Mac Dunlop, Andi Langford-Woods, Ross Rossiter, Pat Reid, Sam Thomson, Cult of Eris, Life Forces Research by Contacting the Living Research Dept. and Geranium Fields by The Laconic Badger Trap
May 2005 Kangaroo Kourt (regional response) gHOSTbOY (Bristol), Johnathan Polkest (St Ives), Johnathan Aldous (Norwich), Contacting the Living Research Dept./ (Birmingham), Tim Green (Gloucester)
June 2005 St James' Wine Vaults, Bath Fringe festival above artists + Carolyn Arnold, Hal Camplin and Gerry King
October 2005 IL Bordello, Bristol with performance by Pete Hunter and Annie McGann
Here is a review of the show at St James Wine Vaults, Bath in the Critical Friend (part of Arty magazine edited by Cathy Lomax):
There is more of course to seduce me - on the mantelpiece wall hangs a concrete lifebuoy by celebrated street artist Ghostboy with the title Baby, we can still be friends- so these inventions don’t work because personality has got in the way?
This is rough and ready art but it feels deliberately so, and unlike most art school shows. There is not attempt to be funky it just seems to want the hand and mark of the artist to be left clinging to the idea. The artist is a stain, something irritating and perverted. Yes, but jesus what a beautiful mess.
List of works:
A Machine to Make Brainwaves (video still) Sam Thomson
Preparing for Paint: Looking like Landscapes Carolyn Arnold
A Sick Man's Fantasy Religion Hal Camplin
Geranium Fields (performance) The LAconic BADger tRAP
Life Forces Research Contacting the Living
(Harry Palmer, Eleanor Hoad, Liam Walsh)
Machine for the Projection of the Human Voice Tim Green
Reinventing the Head John Morgan
Baby...we can still be friends gHOSTbOY
