Damien Hirst, 'Life is Normal', 1995

'Life is normal'
Damien Hirst b. 1965
Long sleeved T Shirt (Screen printed)
Size M
1995
£20.00
2013.013



I had completely forgotten that I owned this but with the family away I have had an opportunity to sort out my groaning T shirt shelf. By the sedimentary system of filing I use for such things this had found its way to the bottom of the pile. I have too many T shirts. I also have a Barbara Kruger T shirt which carries the slogan 'It's a small world until you have to clean it' - this was a present from my wife Lynn, a souvenir of an arty junket in New York, oh how she must have laughed as she flexed our credit card. She bought our son a cuddly tortoise puppet, I don't like wearing this either, T shirt or tortoise.

I mainly wear T shirts associated with sailing events, to the point of disintegration as it happens.

Hirst's T shirt  reminds me of the 'slogan' T shirts that Katherine Hamnett made fashionable in the 80's, also it reminds me of Wham, the 'Wake me up before you GO GO' period, when George Michael might have been described as bouffant. A time when in order to look cool you simply had to walk around with an irritating and slightly in your face truism on your chest like '98% don't want Pershing'...

Hirst's T shirt injects a vapid nothingness into this 'space' it's just stupid. It inflicts embarrassment on the wearer to the power of 10. Also the neck is tight. I wore it once but never actually went out of the house in it!

However this discovery is not a tail of woe... for it also reminded me of how I bought it by mail order from the brilliant 'supastore MIDDLESBROUGH' exhibition in Linthorpe Road in 1995.

I have found the catalogue and it is priceless, a collection put together out of association and probably a bit of blagging, a snapshot of who could be got, who was who, including a hefty clump of soon to be Turner Prize nominees and winners.

Runners, riders and shot in the paddock, they are all there recorded for posterity at a time before word processors were in widespread use in galleries in Middlesbrough. Obviously things are different, though not necessarily better, now. In those far off days before email (yes really) it was OK to make do with a crappy old typewriter and a telephone (maybe with buttons) although this typewriter has a sans serif typeface. To me (and I suspect only to me and the person who bought it) this says its a bit 'gallery'. Some line drawings made with a biro and a photocopier complete the production. If one was being uber critically aware, it might be described as a homage to the 'zine'. It is lifted by the fiddly circular binders.

There would have been a great case for buying one of everything in it. It taunts me with the stupidity of what I actually bought. Slideshow here... enjoy.





Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Adrian Wiszniewski, ‘Unicorn’, 1986

Unicorn

Adrian Wiszniewski b. 1958

1986

Etching & Letterpress

610 X 810   

1986

£250

2013.012

In 1986 I was (reaching for calculator) 18! I had a Saturday job working as an assistant for the Simon King press in Beetham. The press specialised in block printing, wood engraving and letterpress.

Simon was approached by Charles Booth-Clibborn to print the written content of the inaugural Paragon Press publication The Scottish Bestiary. 

Booth-Clibborn, while still a student, had personally approached the Glasgow boys (the mid-eighties generation that is - the ones being bought by Goma in the 90’s doh!) to illustrate a suite of poems ‘The Scottish Bestiary’ by the poet George Mackay Brown (1921 – 1996).

Wiszniewski’s subject was the Unicorn.

I helped Simon set, kern and prepare a makeready for the lead type to what I still consider to be a near fascistic state of perfection, still not good enough for him mind.

We used a beautifully restored, by him, Albion press made in the 1820’s which he and I hand pulled in turns. No offence was intended to the Scottish in this choice of press by the way! 

I think now that I could have gone on from this to be a powerful rower! We then printed the papers we had received from the Peacock Press where the illustrations were being done. It was tense because the edition was very small and we couldn't afford too many spoils, of which, this is one. 

Simon gave a couple of spoils to me I think recognising that he wasn't paying me very much. Looking at it now I really can’t see what was wrong with it. I had it framed when I moved to a new house. The bedroom has always seemed the right place to put it.The Unicorn has watched me get middle aged and fat.

The poem is lovely and so is the type in which it is set ‘Bodoni’ if memory serves. 

UNICORN

You will not meet the unicorn

Outside the queen’s garden.

 

He goes among the roses and the fountains

Very delicately treading.

His silver horn and shines in the sun. 

The queen’s ladies

Offer him roseleaves and honey.

Too coarse! 

He devours the scent of the flowers.

As he leans his white neck

On the white necks of the ladies.

 

Peacocks fold their fans and droop

When the unicorn walks in the garden. 

The swans

Drift dingily to the far side of the lake. 

Blackbirds stop singing.

 

The unicorn comes to the garden at night

Under the full moon.

He feeds on dew, delicately.

 

He will not go near the sundial.

 

In winter he moves through the snow

Invisible

But when he breaks the script of the bare branches.

When King and council come

With their talk of war and trade and taxes

The unicorn gallops to the bower

Where ladies sit at the looms.

‘Sweet ladies, give me sanctuary now

In your tapestry’….

Gravely, there, for centuries, heraldic,

He sports with the lion.

One by one the royal ladies have withered and died. 

I can see what’s wrong with it now that I have stood in front of it and pushed the poem through voice recognition software… It’s not justified quite straight to the page. Now whose fault was that?

Links

Yale Centre for British Art 

British Council 

George MacKay Brown

Museum of Modern Art

Albion Press 

Adrian Wiszniewski

David Tremlett, 'Abyssinia', 1989

Abyssinia 

David Tremlett b. 1945 

Screen print

61 x 79

1989

£50 

2013.011

I bought this print in 1999. I paid £50 for it.  It is 30/100. This was one of a series of print editions by the Serpentine Gallery.  I remember that I had tried to buy the Bridget Riley which was under-priced at the same time but that this had sold out immediately.  

They exercised a practised snottiness on the phone when I asked them to roll the print and post it to me (relax no harm was done) but I did wonder whether a conservator was really needed for the task. 

Tremlett was nominated for the Turner prize in 1992 alongside Grenville Davey, Damien Hirst and Alison Wilding.  Astonishingly Grenville Davey won!  Looking back on it 20 years later is a bit like remembering who was in the charts.  

As it happens I do remember who was in the charts: Whitney Houston, Snap, Shakespeares Sister and the Shamen: ‘E’s are good’ (snigger).

Tremlett’s drawings (colourings) are normally made in a specific place and drawn directly onto their support engaging with the structure of walls and buildings, both inside and out. Works that can be bought (especially as cheap as this) are rare. I like it, I like the structure of the truncated word complete and not complete. 'Sin' links the bathroom and bedroom in our house (snigger again).

It was a transition year in which the eighties became history and the millennium became a prospect. Actually it wasn't a good year at all.

I have updated this entry having found the certificate that came with it. It cost less than I thought. I have to say the Serpentine editions are very good value.

Victoria and Albert Museum

David Tremlett

Serpentine Gallery