Actually, this book is not about David Bowie, it’s about the art I came across while haunting the galleries of London in the mid-90s. But David did review the book on BowieNet, and in that he concludes:
'This is a superb little book on how and why artists think the way they do. It's about the process of assimilation, contemplation and, finally, expression, that we all do in some form or another. An excellent book. A call to arms for those who have been cowered by the cult of anti-intellectualism. I mean: "finkin 'an 'at".'
Cover blurb:
Duncan McLaren - gallery visitor, fiction writer, pizza delivery boy. He never/always compromises. In Personal Delivery he adds his own garnish to the deluxe pizza of contemporary art. Baked for eighteen months, 10-12 minutes and one terrifying second in the author' skid-lid, at temperatures ranging from red hot to cool black, this book is a taste sensation - both an avant garde concoction and a classical feast laden with bonnes bouches.
Looking at the work of a variety of artists, from the internationally acclaimed to those fresh out of art school, McLaren teases out the underlying ideas, often letting events in his own life - relations with the artist Jo Bennett and his experience as a writer - throw light on his concerns.
His uninhibited and imaginative responses go far beyond academic or critical. Filled with lucid images, deadpan humour and challenging perspectives, Personal Delivery entices you into a thriving, humane, multifarious world.
Here's a photo of Duncan in February 2012 giving a talk about Personal Delivery at Edinburgh School of Art:
Press quotes:
‘Proving you don’t need formal training to appreciate the torrent of British creative vitality, McLaren dissects the work of prominent artists like Tracey Emin and Cornelia Parker, as well as visiting unknown students at Chelsea Art College. A brilliant riposte to the usual elitist art critique.’
'Rather than simply critique their work, McLaren is more interested in what inspired the artists to exorcise themselves through that art, going one step further by relating what he has seen in the exhibition to his day-to-day life.'
Guest List
'There is something terribly endearing about this book. It is so unstructured, so deliberately under-edited, so very work-in-progress that we’re able to sympathise with McLaren through his travails and cringe and feel for him through the awkwardness of his prose. Undoubtedly McLaren is intending his novel to be in itself a work of conceptual art.'
The Herald
'When it came to handing out rations of nerve and verve, Duncan McLaren was not short-changed.'
The List
Personal Delivery, which was bravely published by Jeremy Beale at Quartet, didn't sell many copies, but it did lead to a column in The Independent on Sunday and the opportunity to write features for art magazines.
The book can be bought here:
www.amazon.co.uk
Duncan writes: Of the features I wrote for art mags, the ones that I think most highly of are as follows:
'Last Train To Nobsville': The Art of Paul Noble. Contemporary Visual Arts. issue 20 or so. Actually, all the features commissioned by Keith Patrick at CVA were written for the right reasons.
The features on Roddy Buchanan, Stuart Murray and Joanne Tatham and Tom O'Sullivan that appeared in the Scottish Enlightenment issue of MAP (Spring 2007), on the invitation of Alice Bain.
My column in The Independent on Sunday, for which I have to thank Isabel Lloyd and Jenny Turner, ran for 19 weeks before a change of editor finished it. Here is a selection of the pieces:
PUBLIC VIEW
ADVENTURES IN CONTEMPORARY ART
NO 5: THE HANGING MAN
The invitation card to this show is a photo of a man - arms by his side, feet encased in special footwear - hanging upside down from a ceiling. I invert the card so as to normalise the view but instead highlight the strangeness. The torso seems lengthened, the neck shrunken and the sinuses and forehead bloated. He looks more dead than alive.
I go along to the show at the Museum of Installation. The first room is empty, except for a pair of speakers kept aloft on opposite walls by a steel Acroprop. I wait for a sound from either of them ... "Let me down," comes from one speaker. Shortly followed by "Don't let me down," from the other. The same two lines repeat, differently spaced and pronounced. Downstairs, a dozen TV sets have been stuck to the ceiling. On each is the image of a man hanging upside down. He doesn't look as distorted as on the card, perhaps because I can't turn him the right way up for scrutiny. The hanging man is swaying or twitching slightly, so it is a moving image, not a still. And in each case he's wearing a different combination of shirt and trousers. From a vantage point in the smaller of the two rooms I can see four suspended Carl von Weilers, although the one wearing a green T-shirt and white trousers in the bottom corner of a monitor is only a reflection from the facing screen. "Don't let me down," is distinctly audible from the room directly above. I won't let him down.
This installation seems to deal with endurance. In the other ground- floor room there is a single speaker and a monitor. The monitor shows a man with a wooden "gun" being drilled. The voice of the drill sergeant barking out instructions is relentless. The response from Private von Weiler is immediate but seems a bit shaky. How long has this "By the right ... Turn!" business been going on? It's been going on and on. It'll be going on now, though I can't hear the orders (the artist's own voice?) from my resting place in the basement.
Being upside down is hard on the body. Located so low, the heart has to work against gravity rather than with it, and has to pump much harder than usual to get blood to the legs and feet. In doing so, a lot of blood must flow through the face. Day after day after day ... Varicose veins on cheeks and forehead? "Let me down," pleads an anguished voice. I can't let you down, mate.
Home, I flick through the catalogue with its scribbled diagrams, loosely- connected paragraphs and high-powered quotes. I'm reconsidering the invitation card when I realize I may have got the wrong end of the stick. Perhaps the show is about the viewer's perception rather than the artist's perseverance. I think the televisions were hanging upside-down from the ceiling. If they'd been put the right way up, then so would the figure. So the figure may have been recorded simply standing on the floor. Surely not! - there's still a demand for artists who conspicuously suffer for their work ... For months, Carl von Weiler has - or has not - been hanging upside down in his studio: drinking coffee (and just about swallowing it) ... doing sit-ups (Christ, it ain't easy) ... and thinking about sex (the sound of his heart pounding between his ears). Don't let yourself down, Carl.
I phone the artist's studio to ask a question, but there's no answer. So I get back on the train to Deptford ... The monitors are, in fact, the right way up. And I reckon from the hang of his clothes and the constant swaying motion that the artist is indeed upside-down. So it is about the individual's hopeless perseverance. I recall a Beckett quote from the catalogue: "But now I do not wander any more, anywhere any more, and indeed I scarcely stir at all, and yet nothing is changed." But isn't it a bit late to be still waiting for Godot?
Home again; I phone the artist's studio. The call is answered. "Carl von Weiler?" I venture. "Let ... me ... down," croaks an end-of-tether voice. A picture comes to mind of the artist with the phone pressed to his poor topsy-turvy head. I assure him I'll do what I can. But what can I do? "Don't let me down," comes back, sure and strong.
He hangs up.
Carl von Weiler, Museum of Installation, SE8 (0181 692 8778), to 14 November.
'Personal Delivery', Duncan McLaren's book on contemporary art, is out now from Quartet (£12).
PUBLIC VIEW
ADVENTURES IN CONTEMPORARY ART
NO 7: PUCK ROMEO
This is going to be fun. In the luminous white gallery above a Victorian pub are 25 similar sheets of white paper, A2 size, wall-mounted in white frames. On each is what Emma Kay can recall about a different Shakespeare play.
From the middle of the room I can see that four of the sheets contain only a single centred line. I have to walk towards the walls in order to read the titles. One is Much Ado About Nothing.
The artist has written just a few lines - aligned left - on seven of the plays. The Taming of The Shrew is summarised in broad outline, with the names KATE, PETRUCHIO and FATHER capitalised where they occur in her description. About Richard III, she states categorically: "Things are not going well for him politically and he has fallen in love with a YOUNG WOMAN who is rejecting his advances." I look out of the window at what is a leafy part of the East End. There's something strangely authoritative about the summaries. Perhaps because they don't admit to an incomplete knowledge of the plays, and because they're perfectly laid out and internally consistent. A pseud's guide to Shakespeare?
Where the artist can recall a quote she gives it a line to itself, so these stand out. For Antony and Cleopatra she has remembered relatively long quotes, including "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety. Other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies". Of Hamlet there are four lines quoted: "Alas, poor Yorick"; "The quality of mercy is not strained"; "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead"; and "Is this a dagger I see before me?" In Julius Caesar the three quotes are all from that play but the "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears" line is credited to the by-then-dead Caesar. And no, my O-level English assures me, Brutus was not hovering in the background while Antony and Cassius stabbed Caesar ... But this work is not really about point-scoring (fun though that is).
In most cases, between about a third and a half of the page contains text. The artist seems stronger on character names and surer in plot descriptions here - I guess these are the plays she's read or seen on stage. But various things catch my eye. Goneril is given the line "Out, vile jelly". Richard III's "My kingdom for a horse" speech is assigned to Antony and Cleopatra. And it is Macbeth's brother Duncan who remembered that Macduff was "ripped untimely from his mother's womb". A false memory, perhaps; a knowing game, certainly. The work foregrounds the idiosyncrasies of an individual's memory, both the artist's and viewer's. The artist has surely studied the two plays whose descriptions nearly fill their pages. I scan Romeo and Juliet and towards the bottom pick out the quote:
ROMEO: "What, love, no drop left for me?"
It takes me a moment to work out what's happening (a drop of water? wine? blood? ... poison!) God, that's so sad. What a poignant and poetic line. It moves me right to the other side of the room where it's great to see that the other fulsome description is of A Midsummer Night's Dream. I read this at school and have seen it several times since (at an outdoor venue while at college; at the Barbican while working in the City; and with Joanna at a mud-drenched performance at the National). Studding the precis are four evocative quotes: PUCK: "I know a bank where the wild thyme grows." HERMIA: "Thou painted maypole." TITANIA: "What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?" BOTTOM: "Methinks I was an ass." Emma Kay's Dream ends with Bottom resolving to be more modest.
In the pub downstairs I sit with a pint in my hand and A Complete Shakespeare in my head. RICHARD: "I know a place where the wild thyme blows." LADY MACDUFF: "What angel wakes me from my second-best bed?" WILLIAM: "The quality of mercy is not strained." JOANNA: "What, love, not a drop for me?"
If we shadows have offended ...
Emma Kay: The Approach, E2 (0181 983 3878), to 22 November.
'Personal Delivery', Duncan McLaren's book on contemporary art, is out now from Quartet (£12).
PUBLIC VIEW
ADVENTURES IN CONTEMPORARY ART
NO 14: STANDING STONE
According to my map, there should be an Andy Goldsworthy sheep-fold about here. The stone walls on either side of Fellfoot Road make it difficult to see into the adjoining fields, but if I stand on that stepping stone emerging from the centre of the wall, what do I find? ... dry-stone walls enclosing a huge boulder.
As part of a five-year public art project straddling the year 2000, the artist is reviving and adapting sheep-folds throughout Cumbria, maybe a hundred in all. There are supposed to be a set of them along this road, which is presumably a drove route, so I look out for another stepping stone in conjunction with a gap in the coping of the roadside wall. The next is on the opposite side of the lane, the fell side, and this too contains a large boulder - slightly taller than the free-standing stone walls of the enclosing fold. As with the first fold, there is a gap low down at the end of one wall for sheep to enter, with a lintel stone providing a base for three feet of wall above it. There are sheep tracks inside the fold. The animals probably use the place as a shelter in bad weather, a single file of them huddled nose to tail between the large rock and the stone walls.
I hurry down the lane to the next stepping stone. I step up on the valley side of the lane wall, and discover a third sheepfold. This one is different, though; this one strikes me instantly as a place of contemplation. Again, it's a huge boulder inside stone walls, but this boulder is lower-lying, smooth-edged and its presence seems to invite a kind of human occupation. Sheep are welcome, but, standing in the wall-head gap on a sunny day like today, it's my eye that's drawn to the place: drawn across to the brightly sunlit south-facing inside wall, and pulled down to the warmly-lit top surface of the smooth boulder. After a while I realise I'm invited to make the leap required to take me over the threshold. As I step, I'm thinking of an astronaut jumping on to the surface of the moon ...
Only for an instant, though. I'm still on planet Earth, standing on ancient stone. There are two perfectly-rounded bowls eroded into the top of the boulder, both filled with rainwater and oak leaves. Around the other side of the boulder is another hollow. This one is dry, drained by an unseen crack. Acorns - some nibbled, others untouched - suggest that a squirrel has been using the hollow as a picnic table, and that it intends to come back for more. When I'm gone, I suppose. It would be foolish of me to think that this wonderful place in the sun was mine for ever.
I make myself warm and comfortable on the stone. Yesterday, in the wind and rain, on the way to mend a collapsed section of dry-stone wall, my friend Kit and I came across a sheep lying dead in a field. While Kit tried to establish the cause of death, I looked round for a glass container to put the ewe in, and some formaldehyde with which to preserve the thing, before remembering that in the country, they do things differently. Kit solemnly informed me that the creature had died from loss of appetite. I asked what he meant, exactly. He meant that the old animal had lost its appetite for winter winds and driving rain and a diet so monotonous that ... I got the picture.
We buried the sheep where it had fallen. I wanted to make do with a two- foot hole, but Kit urged me to keep digging. I wanted to make do with a three-foot hole, but Kit urged me to keep digging. I wanted to make do with a four-foot hole (I had lost my appetite for winter winds and driving rain and a digging so monotonous that ...), but Kit urged me to dig on. Finally, the hole was six foot deep - as per EEC regulations - and the sheep was buried. I went to the edge of the field, lifted a boulder from the collapsed section of the dry-stone wall, staggered with it back to where we'd been working, and gently lowered it onto the head of the grave. Kit said a few words. "Your turn now, our turn later." Or something like that.
Where am I?. Lying on my back on a boulder in the sun. Sheep, squirrel, hill farmer, artist, me, the boulder - our place in the sun. I make calculations as to who'll be here longest. The answer is clear.
In the meantime there are plenty more sheep-folds to explore further along the lane. I make a move.
Andy Goldsworthy, 'Sheepfolds': map and information from Cumbrian County Council, Heritage Services Department (01228 607306).
'Personal Delivery', Duncan McLaren's book on contemporary art, is out now from Quartet (£12).
PUBLIC VIEW
ADVENTURES IN CONTEMPORARY ART
NO 15: RERERENCE LIBRARY
All the books have gone. They were there once, there's evidence of that. But they've gone now, and the blank silence of the white room leads me to assume that the enlightenment embodied in them has disappeared too.
That's my first impression of Rachel Whiteread's Untitled (Book Corridors). But I need to look properly at the work. Three huge long blocks of plaster running parallel with the containing walls of the gallery give four corridors to walk down, six walls of missing books to look at.
On either side of each plaster block there are six shelves. The artist's plaster has flowed where it could. Where it couldn't flow was into space occupied by shelves and books. So the solid horizontals are the spaces above where the books once stood in rows, and the shelf itself is represented by a gap. The books are gaps too. But where the top edge and the leading edge have pressed into the plaster, the pages have left an impression on being eased away from the set plaster. Instead of the usual view of spines, I'm looking at the impression of thousands - millions - of page edges.
All the books seem to have been paperbacks - hardback covers would have left deeper indentations in the plaster ... This batch of thick Penguin- sized books are slightly warped, suggesting the books were put under tension before the plaster was poured ... The books vary in size - the taller ones cutting into the ledge of plaster above, giving it a ragged bottom edge - but there is a level line at the foot of the books, an even gap ... Some of the books have been made in the traditional way, as batches of eight or 16 galleys folded together. They leave a subtly different impression from books consisting of individually cut pages ... The impressions of the page-ends is so realistic that the temptation to think of them as actual pages is strong. There is no distinctive paper smell, though ... These marks are smooth. Perhaps the books were pulled away before the plaster had set sufficiently ... My God, I'm getting bogged down in minutiae here, but that's what the work encourages - a scrutiny of traces.
I walk up and down the aisles wondering if the Picador edition of Elias Canetti's Auto-da-Fe was once here and has left its mark. In the novel, written in Vienna and set in Germany between the wars, Professor Kien is ejected by philistines and thugs from his home and private library. Undaunted, and helped by Fischerle - a chess-playing, hunch-backed dwarf - the professor sets himself up in a hotel room. This involves unpacking his library from his head.
I stop pacing the plaster aisles. This particular socket fits my recollection of the Picador's height and thickness. I focus on the white-spined volume standing on the shelf in my room and transfer it here. The paperback holds its position an inch above the ledge of plaster. It floats ...
The professor spreads brown paper over the floor, then mentally (a good trick if you can do it) hands a packet of books to Fischerle, who begins piling them in a corner of their hotel room. The dwarf allows only a moderate height to each pile, and tests them by gently passing the tip of his nose over the top book. Between the piles he always leaves a few inches where he can conveniently insert his hands. After an hour Fischerle is in difficulty because of his hump. Manoeuvring carefully as he does, he still collides with books at every turn. He feels like spitting on them and going to sleep. "In all my born days I never see such a library," he growls. The professor boasts that Fischerle hasn't seen the half of it yet, though he acknowledges to himself that two-thirds of his library is unpacked. His exhausted helpmate threateningly suggests that they finish unpacking in the morning. The patronising professor respects the little man's fatigue, and agrees they could probably finish off later. "What we do for books is well done," he smugly concludes. It all ends in tragedy.
Rachel Whiteread's soon-to-be-realised Holocaust Memorial will be installed in the Judenplatz in Vienna. Apparently the block - which looks like the cast from the inside of a whole library - will be viewed from outside, ghosts of book pages to the fore.
Stepping out of the corridors of this library, I survey the plaster blocks one more time. I can't help feeling there's just enough space to contain all the great books ever written. Their paper, ink, flesh and blood.
Rachel Whiteread: Anthony d'Offay Gallery, W1 (0171 499 4100), to Friday.
'Personal Delivery', Duncan McLaren's book on contemporary art, is out now from Quartet (£12).
PUBLIC VIEW
ADVENTURES IN CONTEMPORARY ART
NO 19: ANDREAS GURSKY
Beneath a featureless white sky flows a grey body of water flanked by horizontal green banks. Parallel to the green runs a grey path on the near side of the ruffled water and a grey shoreline on the far side ...
The first image to grab my attention is the very scene I've been walking through to get to the gallery. If it is Hyde Park, then all the geese and trees and people have been removed from in and around Serpentine Lake. Andreas Gursky does digitally manipulate his monumental photographs. But this picture is called Rhein, so clearly I'm on the wrong track: I'll orientate myself in a minute.
All the photographs are huge. Some are empty of people: an aerial view of Los Angeles at night; an expanse of suspended cellular ceiling in Brasilia; floor after floor of identical hotel balconies with hanging plants. Actually, there is the occasional person in the hotel's corridors, but they are so tiny relative to the monolithic facade, so separated by unbroken lines of corridor, that they serve to emphasise an essential absence of humanity.
And some have lots of people: politicians milling around on different levels of the Bundestag, bald pates and sheaves of papers prevalent; a sea of young heads and shoulders pointing in the same direction at a rave; skiers walking across snow-covered ground, the line of tiny figures stretching all the way from one side of the picture to the other.
I stop in front of a diptych of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The two panels make a single scene, row upon row of trading-floor workers arranged in a triangular format, the traders facing the empty centre of the room. Red sound-damping screens on the wall, red-carpeted corridors between the rows of desks, and hundreds of red-waistcoated workers, four-digit numbers on their backs. They're on the phone, reading the financial press, shouting to colleagues, using keyboards, looking at monitors. My eye moves up and down each row, skips between reds, takes in the hive of activity.
As in this diptych, the artist is usually at a distance from his subject, looking down on it. "Man is central to my photographs, even when, in exceptional cases, he can be reduced to the point of invisibility." This God-like, detached viewpoint is fine. I enjoy sharing it. But I want something else too: I step closer to the image, so my field of vision doesn't extend to the edges of the scene. The detail is captivating.
The rows of seats are actually composed of narrowly separated workstations at which sit six people in aircraft-seat proximity to one another. Each has a telephone, keyboard and monitor on his desk. Every second desk has a printer on a raised shelf. Jackets on hangers hook onto the work stations where they can; bare pink hangers do the same. The scene is crystal-clear, information-rich, electric.
I see myself taking a seat. Not in the middle of a set of six since that would involve temporarily displacing traders into the narrow gangways, but on the end of a row. Quite comfortable, except the back support only extends for a few inches above the base of my spine. But, like colleagues nearby, I can lean back against the surface of the workstation in the row behind me. At the front of my desk there's an additional plastic work surface which I flip up. What do I do now? I think the dealer in the seat next to mine is power-napping, otherwise I'd ask him.
The phone rings, I buy stock. The phone rings. I sell stock. The phone rings again. It's Andreas, speaking from the Bundestag. He tells me about arrangements for the weekend. One: intercontinental flight. Two: cross- country ski. Three: happy people, happening sound - the happiest sound on the planet. Sounds like one cool deal. I ask where we'll be chilling out. A block booking - floors 14 to 34 - has been made at an atrium-style Portman Group hotel in Atlanta. Every room identical. All come, all crash. Two-litre jugs of decanted mineral water available from room service at no extra cost.
I key in what I know, and e-mail it to every screen in the triangle. After a few seconds, a pulse of activity starts to beat through the room. Soon there's a real buzz to the place. Just as I'm thinking that maybe I could get the hang of living in a post-industrial, mass-elite society, I'm caught up in a wave of hysteria which forces me into the gangway, sweeps me along the molten corridor and rushes me outside ...
Beneath a featureless white sky flows a grey body of ruffled water flanked by horizontal green banks.
Andreas Gursky, 'Photographs 1994-1998': Serpentine Gallery, W2, to 7 March.
'Personal Delivery', Duncan McLaren's book on contemporary art, is published by Quartet (£12).
This next one was never published as I'd been given the boot by a new editor. Which perhaps explains the tone of the piece...
PUBLIC VIEW
ADVENTURES IN CONTEMPORARY ART
NO 20: TO BOLDLY GO
A room at the Saatchi gallery is filled with Brian Griffiths low-tech sci-fi work. It brings to mind the bridge of the Starship Enterprise in the first series of Star Trek, only here the workstations and instrument panels are made only with Blue Peter materials. Along two walls of the room is an epic version made with large sheets of cardboard. But I approach a tackier one that seems built on a more human scale.
Basically, it’s cardboard boxes flattened and stuck together to make a unit which presents a plane at 45 degrees to anyone standing in front of it. Instrument panels are additional rectangles of cardboard stuck on the first layer, with plastic bottle tops - from bottles of Lucozade and mineral water - standing in for knobs to be twiddled. A strip of parcel tape stretching all the way along the top glistens in a metallic sort of way where it crinkles. It’s not entirely convincing, but then neither was the multi-million-dollar Apollo 13 that Hollywood built for Tom Hanks.
I stand close to the control panel and let my eyes linger on details. Bottom right: a plastic cup glued upside down to a patch of cardboard. Top left: the bottom of a green plastic bottle sliced off and stuck - bottom outwards - onto another piece of cardboard, giving the impression of a light that is presently off but could come on at any moment. Upper left middle: a golf ball stuck on the end of a plastic tube, suggesting a microphone, while the metal tea strainer on the main panel suggests a place from where a voice might sound.
A toggle from a dufflecoat is attached to a thin cone of plastic which passes through a plastic hemisphere cut from a plastic eggbox. Beside this is another duffle-toggle similarly attached. I flick first one toggle then the other, wondering how my actions translate into reality. Have I put the ship off course? To compensate, I move a paint-roller handle through 180 degrees and stare at the monitor screen (black plastic bin-liner stretched over the top of a mop-bucket mounted on its side)... Good, we’re still on course.
The work reminds me of a text by David Shrigley. Laboured, childish capital letters spell out the message which includes:
I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO WORK A FAX MACHINE OR A COMPUTER.
I HAVE NEVER HEARD THE SUPERIOR SOUND-QUALITY OF A COMPACT DISC.
MY FRONT DOOR DOES NOT HAVE A DOORBELL YOU JUST HAVE TO KNOCK.
WHEN PEOPLE TRY TO TALK TO ME I JUST GRUNT IN RESPONSE.
BUT, SURPRIZINGLY, I AM THE CAPTAIN OF A V. HIGH TECH SPACE VESSEL AND AM GOING ON A MISSION NEXT WEEK. I NEED 12 GOOD MEN. MEN WHO ARE NOT AFRAID OF...
“Chief?” says a voice from the tea strainer, startling me. I stare at the strainer, waiting for more message, but it’s the phone that rings. Its string won’t stretch to where I am standing, so I have to move to the left and crouch down in order to use it properly. It’s the captain and he wants a resumé of my career:
I DO NOT KNOW ANYONE WITH A MOBILE PHONE.
I OWN A TELEVISION WITH A VERTICAL HOLD KNOB.
WHEN PEOPLE SHOUT AT ME I START TO SHAKE ALL OVER.
DURING MY DRIVING TEST I DROVE FASTER AND FASTER UNTIL WE CRASHED.
BUT, SURPRIZINGLY, I HAVE BEEN MADE CHIEF ENGINEER ON BOARD YOUR V.HIGH TECH SPACE VESSEL AND AM GOING ON A MISSION THIS WEEK. WE NEED 11 GOOD MEN. MEN WHO ARE NOT AFRAID OF...
The captain interrupts to tell me he is afraid of only two things.
“And what might those be?” I ask.
“Space,” he mutters, sounding embarrassed.
“Uh-huh. And?...”
“Aliens.” His voice trembles.
“I see,” I say, coldly, but secretly I’m relieved. Not so secretly, I burst into tears of relief.
“It’s all right,” says the captain, who has beamed down to the engine room just to put a consoling arm round my shoulder, “No-one’s going anywhere.”
“Not us, anyway,” I say, sobbing.
“No,” says the captain, reassuringly. “Never us.”
‘Neurotic Realism’ is at the Saatchi Gallery, NW8 (0171 624 8299) until April 4.
‘Why we got the sack from the museum’, David Shrigley’s new book is published by Redstone Press.
‘Personal Delivery’, Duncan McLaren’s book on contemporary art is published by Quartet (£12).
When Janet Street Porter became editor of the paper, I was given my old job back, or at least a version of it. I wrote 150 reviews for the paper in the next year or so with never a single moment of boredom or disappoinment. Then there was another change of editor.