Tesco’s Swinest, Colin Lowe

Colin Lowe, 2 Months of Panic, 2009

In the beginning there was…_no that’s shit._
Once upon a time….bollocks.
In a galaxy, far far away…meaningless & derivative.
I wanna tell you a story… no longer has the cutting edge spunk filled precursor to hollow laughter it had when I were a little girl.
What’s the point? Yeah maybe start with a question. Always good to start with a question. Makes the reader think you have an all encompassing library of halfread books at home all gurgling away in the back of your bounce when really you can’t be fuckin’ arsed and haven’t got a clue what to write. Puts the shits up you it does when 2 artists who you know ask you to write about their work and they say it’s for a catalogue, you start to get a migraine. Then the real kick in the teeth is there’s no fuckin’ money in it either. Say la fuckin v for defeat. The Artworld on a budget in 2009.
So.
The state of British Art today, in 2009. No that sounds like a JJ Charlesfuckinworthy manifesto stroke slighty holes in your pyjamas attempt at some smart alec fannying around with language like trying to nail a jellyfish to a vertical surface with some cooked spaghetti hoops.
Oh Christ now I’m sounding bitter and resentful and like some moaning Sean Landers piece from 1999.
All positions are taken.
All ideas have been allotted a star for their own branding.
New sunbeams are in short supply.
Shaun & Mally’s work acts like a cloud of honesty in exchange for some beans that if planted with a paid for studio and a stipend would tower over Kapoor, Quinn and any other bought for rich kids.
Nowadays you haggle for the junk that falls off the back of the Damien caravan.
How the other half live has turned into you can’t fuckin’ tell anymore, who is successful, who has anything worth saying and how the fuck does Anthony Gormley get so much air time?
Makes me puke blood every morning and it’s not because I care about art.
I do to the nth degree
I’m just envious.
Plain and simple.
It looked so easy.
So fuckin’ easy.
All arguments have been stretched back in on themselves producing tautological tongue twisters most MPs (filibustering over the new bit of legislation on the right to die then come back to life, then kill yourself again add-into-the-fuckin-night-erm) would probably stay well clear of.
I don’t know.
Money makes everything seem nicer.
Anybody who tells you different HAS NEVER HAD A BOSS.
Full stop.
End of story.
The chances of most Hackney artists getting a sniff of success are less than fuckin’ zilch.
Not even a chance.
The chances have all been used up.
Hit 35, not with a major gallery.
You might as well pack it in a banana boat and try and sail it to a desert island and follow yourself round and round looking for Man Friday until you put a spear through your foot and go beserk.
All the art materials in the fuckin’ overpriced shops aren’t gonna get you out of the hole you’re in.
The Whole Year Inn.
Nicked from Leaving Las Vegas.
Ok, so I’m a quietly disgruntled, chirpy, angry, loner with no place to live, no job and no girlfriend to take off some of the ever hardening edges.
I’m trying to write this without resorting to an all embracing lambasting of the whole fuckin’ mess ART in 2009 has got itself into.
On the one hand I want it to be better.
To be bleaker, less packaged, less focused, less healthy, less of everything it’s become.
On the other hand I really couldn’t give a toss and want my own space in which to die happy but trying.
Fat fucking chance.
When you were young and fresh out of college, hope still seemed alive.
Two working class blokes, one from the East End of the back end of Stoke, the other the space behind
Buckingham Palace.
Then again I wouldn’t change places with Lisa Milroy or Fiona Rae for all the tea in Tescos.
A 100ml serving of orange juice provides you with 0.7g of protein, blah, blah, but at all I want is your hot, wet pussy dribbling down my face
Your pussy
and a lager
followed closely by a cigarette,
followed closely by a spliff,
followed closely by another lager,
followed closely by another lager,
followed closely by a chat with Picasso + Giacometti,
followed closely by another cigarette,
followed closely by another spliff,
followed closely by an acid tab or tab of acid,
followed closely by a hit from doctor Benway,
followed closely by another lager,
followed closely by another lager,
followed closely by another cigarette,
followed closely by another toke on your joint,
but I’ve given up smoking and today I haven’t had a
drink for 8 days and everything else I’ve
mentioned goes with smoking + drinking except,
you’ve guessed it,
your pussy
which doesn’t cost you anything health wise, and if you believe that, go back to the infants
and this time don’t believe a word anybody tells you especially if it has a pussy.
What this has to do with Mally & Shaun’s work, but maybe it’s like a badly hung, badly painted back-drop to their 3 dimensional high jinks that sit around on stage snarling and swearing internally. Roughly hewn from their joint psyches, these sculptures want you to laugh and take them seriously simultaneously. A hard act to perform when holding down a full-time job each but
one in which they pull off with a kind of scruffy elegance and political nouse that most artists would get a club card to join.
Are you having some of this?
The truth is anywhere you want it to be.
Religion politics are outmoded and NO LONGER RELEVANT institutions.
Lettuce start again.
Welcome to the new now.