HELL BUS @ GLASTONBURY
Glastonbury was absolutely incredible, thanks to everyone who called into the Hell Bus in Shangri-La. A massive thanks to everyone at Shangri-La for having me, and to my amazing Hell Bus hard party/work crew:
@thetwopack, @kestra.laurent.dances.the.bug, @pineapple_king___ and @hannahslogic.
It was hard to get any photos inside the bus when it was full as when it got full it was very full and the queue was out the door. I’d say around two thousand people crammed through this thing over 5 days altho I suspect more than that. The response was amazing and ran the gammut from “is this by Shell?” to “Its fucking boss that innit!” and “that was the most randomest thing ever” to “it’s an astonishing piece of work”. But overall it was super positive and I couldn’t have asked for a better crowd and a better reaction. All that work paid off and now we know it works and doesn’t fall apart when countless numbers of smashed people smash through it.
Also included here some photos of some other work I had around the site, an animated Hell video on the Gas Tower stage between bands, a poster of my Everyone is Dead print which someone tastefully altered with a ‘dont buy the sun’ sticker, my ‘Life’s Great/Yours Isn’t” print on sale at @shangrilart, and the train carriage full of subvertisements I installed at Platform 23, the bar in Shangri-La.
I’m already jotting down ideas for next year and hope to get the Hell Bus out to some more events this year. If you’re organising something the bus could feature at get in touch!
HELL BUS @ PEOPLE’S DAY – 16th JULY
The Hell Bus is coming back to Lewisham on the 16th July and will be open to the public at the People’s Day festival at Mountsfield Park. Entry is free!
The event runs from 12 noon until 9pm, with last entry at 7.30pm. Hopefully see some of you there!
BERLIN SCANDAL
The group exhibition I co-curated in Berlin called Werbepause – The Art of Subvertising (at Kunstraum Kreuzberg until the 21 August) has been generating some controversy in the German press.
The conservative CDU Berlin General Secretary has condemned the show in terms that are pretty funny (see a v basic translation to the left). It’s also been condemned by local advertising executives furious that government funds are being used against them.
While I was worried that my Occupation piece would be the focus of a scandal, the main controversy surrounds the billboard that was ‘stolen’ from the street and installed in the gallery by Rocco und seine Brüder, and the bus stop hack packs which we produced and are selling at cost price.
There has also been some strong objections to the pro-Palestine work in the show by myself, Special Patrol Group and Protest Stencil, due to the German left’s bizarre unqualified support for anything Israel does. A phenomena which I think could almost be more fully explored in its own exhibition/psychology experiment.
BERLIN SHOW PHOTOS
Here’s some photos from the exhibition itself, the response has been amazing with tons of people through the door and I met loads of people who were properly enthused by the show.
The only downside has been that my PTSD Action Man sculpture was stolen on the first day. I’m really gutted about it, this is a piece that I’ve exhibited since 2013, almost ten years. But I’m planning to remake it with a pigment ink print as the box had become faded over the years, and the stolen box is easily identifiable if it ever surfaces on the art market. I hope whoever stole it chokes on it 🙂
JOHNSON
Good riddance to bad bastards.
Now we just wait for the other bastards choose a new bastard to be in charge for a bit.
This is an old poster I put up a while back. 180,000 dead because the british media thought a posh bin bag of a man, a habitual incompetent fraud was preferable to some mild social democracy, funding the health service, and pumping the brakes on the neoliberal sell-off of the country.
Now the press are patting themselves on the back for choosing to notice Tory scandals that, when it was inconvenient, they had studiously ignored for years. With Starmer and Mandelson in charge of Labour it’s been safe to attack the Tories without endangering their tax bracket. And the journos want to dress it up like this means democracy works.
As flying_rodent said on twitter, Johnson isnt Caligula, he’s the fucking horse, and the media put him in power. They should be ashamed. But they’re incapable of it. Fuck off.
Have a great day everybody! Now we just have to look forward to Queen dying and Starmer resigning due to a chicken korma. And then look forward to doing it all again with a new round of incapable corrupt cunts.
“The bastard is dead, long live the bastard.”
ARTICLE IN DOPE MAGAZINE
My article about the Hell Bus and what it’s like making satire inside a dystopia, features in the latest edition of DOPE, a newspaper by Dog Section Press that is available direct from them but also from vendors on the street. Every three months Dog Section print 35,000 copies of the paper and the vast majority of them are available, for free, to financial or housing vulnerable people, (no questions asked) to sell on at the cover price of £3. Not only is it a much better paper than the Big Issue, they also don’t charge their vendors for their copies. The paper is also available free to prisoners. More info on distro points at dogsection.org/dopeinfo
You can help support their work by backing them on Patreon, which allows them to print more copies per month, while you get a subscription copy through the post in exchange.
Craig and Matt from Dog Section were among the group of co-curators of our current Berlin subvertising show and Dog Section also had a fantastic stall at Glastonbury.
KEYRINGS
The key for the Hell Bus needed a key ring so I thought I’d get some made up. You can get one of these from my website shop here.
I put these online the same day I failed my first driving test attempt (stalled and rolled backwards at a red light on a hill in the first 5 mins of the test lol/argh).
My wonderful driving instructor has also just retired from the profession altogether (I can have this effect on teachers) so need to find a new instructor and try the test again. Ideally by this time next year I want to be able to drive the Hell Bus myself so it’s a hurdle I have to drive through at high speed.
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Eternal thanks to anyone who’s ever backed my work on Patreon or through the shop!
And thanks for reading!
