Saturday 3April/Sunday 4April: Welcome to Japan. Travelling light through time and space. London-Dubai-Japan. 2 flights, 8 movies, 4 single serving meals. 3 beers, no sleep, and a whole lotta sky: |
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My first impression of Japan, Ground Control. A beautiful big sky sunset at Kansai airport. |
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Monday5:Jetlag Jump-start. The day rolled into a nighttime morning, Cherry blossom horizons and Pop surrealism. A little lost in translation, words like bicycles collide and ride off before I get a chance to catch up. But the sunshine and beautiful chaos keep everything contained and entertained. Catnaps and power kips, struggle on to Osaka city to see the bright lights of a Capital glow. All fun and games and smiles exchange business cards and un-knowing looks of Octipus balls, Bamboo shoots and Absinthe shots. |
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Tuesday6: Finding your feet. Creative Chaos. Time frames and mind games. Woke up to yellow butterflies fleeting flirting floating, chased by the domestic cat. The cat that thinks it’s a dog. Woodlands and blossom parks, I went to sleep in the sun, bare foot under a blooming cherry tree. Into the Kyoto neon nighttime, concrete jungles, “makes me wonder how I keep from going under”, Visions of two headed reclining monster mythologies. True conditions all rendered in brightly coloured pen and ink.King Kerouac, like a monkey on my back reads: “everything I wrote was true, because I believed in what I saw” |
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7april: (do-itashi-mashi-te) “don't touch my mustache” - you're welcome Body clock adjusted and sushi infused, confused we struggle on. Buying wood to stretch canvas, you know something wrong when you feel so good about working so hard. You know something right when it doesn’t feel like work at all. Sushi breakfast/ Sushi break slow, cycling narrow winding roads of suburban sawdust. *** Its now late and as I paint, live Japanese jazz standards bleed from the bar below into the studio window. Dirty hands, fingers all smudged with blues and reds of human conditions and renditions of great masters in my mind.This other planet is food for the soul, and it is delicious. |
Japanese coffee house. bunsen burner coffee pots.
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The talented mr.Goodenough. AKA Mr. HeadSpace making stretcher frames for my canvases.
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(ita-daki-masu) – “eat a duck and mouse” - lets eat
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| 8april: woke up in a gutter staring at the stars. Spent the day buying paint, painting paint, inhaling paint and eating ice cream. Big cloudless blue skies led the way to happy lunch under a tree. Ping Pong Sing Song. Seeing faces in road signs and bodies in bicycles. Home from home, comforts in coffee, Monmouth and Jaffa Cakes, it’s the small things that make the big things count. Remember the people that will forget you. Someone waved at me as I cycled passed, pleased to see me seeing them, a friendly passer by, stranger smiles and miles of simple pleasures measured in laughter. Human masks and automatic anatomy. We can all be angels, we can all be monsters, it depends who sees it. |
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| Friday9-Sunday10April. |
Tokyo. Faster than a speeding bullet train. Last hours in Nara night before, the quick step, good foot to Tokyo. Hot spring small hours and sleep of the dead. Woke up to the sound of a shooting gun, Picking up the pace, flying north, spray cans at the ready. Ready, Steady, Tokyo-Go-Go, following sword swallowing instructions, magic tricks and big city illusions, confusions. (Eat as much as you can before you get fat.) Talk yourself to death and walk yourself out of breath. Avoiding all sharp edges, shadow characters selling dreams and tattoos, rice wine, foreign tongues twist at every turn, take only what you need, or else your greedy nature escapes me, Hungry for colour, light and heady experience. All followed by the sleep of fatted kings, “This place has everything”, bull fights, 24 hour churches, electric toilets, air con, tree tops, fire escapes, and a Starbucks on every shoulder. Buddha Bless, Buddha Bliss, this moment leads to that moment, leads to card board city, and old lady feeding stray cats in their hundreds. You got it written all over your face. And like the flash of a camera, it all disappears and leaves you bleary eyed and confused at your own dumbfounded expression. |
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Tokyo street markets. all the monster masks you could ever ask for. |
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umm...what station do we get off at? |
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Japanese toilet, heated seat, electric ass wash etc... |
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RoboCop? |
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Beautiful typography: |
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More rice wine Mr.Goodenough? |
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help yourslef to the pickled bar snacks. |
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womb with a view: Hotel view of Tokyo by night. |
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Drunken escapades: |
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The day after, the night before, somewhat hungover, or still drunk, the painting began. |
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The Design Festa gallery Crew. Thanks for having me gang, you guys love to boogie. |
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If in Tokyo, go visit the Design Festa gallery. A very full on gallery experience. |
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Exhausted and on our last legs, flying by bullet back to Nara via Kyoto...Hello Mount Fuji. |
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>>>Tokyo Over and Out<<< |
Monday12Tuesday13 Days blend into afternoon nighttime. Another hard day in the office, painting and drawing and learning ways of the samurai. Genki Boy: high energy Ping-Pongs. Wearing masks to protect our identical identities, poker faces and Ninja tunes. Potato liquor? Isn’t that Moonshine? Time measured in drips of paint and the long and short of your pencil shavings. Tradition condition, we replace histories with Hollywood and get game shows no one knows the rules to. Late nights with the birth of a billion bull frogs sing the death of a blessed blossom tree. Eating fried things on sticks, chicken hearts and other internal organs. We carry on regardless, taking in as much as possible, but missing the best bits as we stop to count our counterparts.
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Wednesday14/Thursday15 April |
| The honeymoon is over. Back on my head. But first some wide open spaces and temples of all sizes. One size fits all and tall fat Buddha looks down on a billion flash bulbs of the tourist hoards. I have to remember we are all tourists in one way or another. Everything is new until you see it for the second time. The human eye and memory lie, but the camera captures, and keeps your picture fictions safe and sound. The work has stretched and mounted, the last few day have sped up and been spent, up to elbows in paints and glues all contained in the HeadSpace studio. Painted faces, poker faces, all highlighted and rendered in primary colours, bleeding, burning after images and bright enough to light up the room. Home made dumplings and coffee service second to none. Japan has the right ideas; assist and you shall be assisted. I feel special for no special reason. Going about the daily tasks, we are counting down to Saturday, a celebration of art and music at the Absinthe Bar gallery in Osaka. A full on evening of international artists, performers, Djs, Musicians, Poets, Dancers, Ninjas; all under one roof and armed to the teeth with endless, boundless energy. Genki, happy to be here and to have seen all this happen before me. Wow, “everything you can imagine is real”, someone clever said that, and I believe it. The HeadSpace countdown has begun. |
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Painted installtion at HeadSpace Studio. Nara.
Painted installation set up. Gallery Absinthe. Osaka.
Sat 17 April Osaka HeadSpace Exhibition. Eat it all up. eat as much as you can before you get fat. and head-lining, the artist took notes as the marathon party rolled on and presented more Capital Chaos than words or pictures can calculate. Osaka Saxophones, Octopus balls, painted video cocktails, Raga jazz, electro beats. “Upstairs there’s a guy playing a metal drum with his teeth, downstairs the girls are wearing mirrors on their asses. The bass is heavy enough to let the drummer kick…and list went on and the good times were killing me” . The party was heady and non-stop we went on till 9am, and slept standing up. Sleep when you’re dead the DJ shouted as he stood on one foot to slap his ankle. A truly wonderful time, honest people having the time of their lives, the feeling of madness in every direction, you could strike sparks anywhere. 3 hours sleep was enough and all of it gone in a blue blur of neon nighttime. If only this life had a rewind button, if only my eyes had a record button. Dancers and DJs, punks and Goths, transvestites and real life Ninjas, all under one insane roof of absinthe fumes. Sheesha smoke and endless beers, sweet kisses and handslaps, Osaka night became morning and we thanked our lucky stars and made our way back to reality.
Dance performance. Artist unknown. My work as back drop.
Painted installation.
One of the many performances that my camera did no justice to record. you cant see, but in this photo there is a guy beat boxing and playing a water drum while a beautiful lady danced with bells and peacock feathers.
The HeadSpace Crew. Thanks for organising Chaos. you guys love to boogie.
Next day self medication.
Osaka by night. The night after the night before. on our last legs. Heading back to Reality.
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