This morning was spent photographing and videoing a new series of double portrait paintings of Heckel's Horse Jr and Heckel's Horse. Side by side, apart from one where I accidently put two Heckel's Horse's on. So it was supposed to be twenty but because of this mistake, there's only 19 with two Heckel's Horse Jr's left over for the next batch.
More mugshots than portraits, it tells the contrasting stories of Heckel's Horse Jr and Heckel's Horse like a tale of two brothers, born into the same circumstance but with very different outcomes. The text underneath the portraits reads:
ANARCHY FOR ART MANIFESTO POINT 10: The streets allow HECKELS HORSE JR to be free and feral. (I should have put "run free and feral". Never mind.) Galleries lock HECKELS HORSE in posh stables to fatten him up so he can go humiliate himself in fake showjumping competitions, cheered on by his demented and rabid champagne tossing butchers."
Heckel's Horse is a painting collaboration between me and Billy Childish. We paint them together at his studio in Chatham Dockyards in Kent:
We've made around 200 paintings together so far, mostly six footers on stretched canvas. Despite making them since 2013 and both of us wanting to do a Heckel's Horse solo exhibition, getting the necessary approvals has been hopeless. Lots of big smiley talk but ultimately, always a no-no. Welcome to the artworld. On the negative side it means our paintings are locked up in storage indefinitely, but on the positive side it exposes a huge gap in the market for Black Ivory to fill. If you want something done, do it yourself. Everyone's familiar with underground music scenes, why is there such an apparant lack of them in art? So I started painting my own versions of Heckel's Horse paintings under the name Heckel's Horse Jr, removing all controls the galleries associated with Billy have, and meaning I can go out into the world and do what I want. Heckel's Horse can't even get a book done, let alone an exhibition. Heckel's Horse Jr. can do as he likes. No gallery, no agents, no fretting about art markets and art business rubbish. All the freedom underground music has, but in art. All the freedoms everyone has till they start talking to galleries, business people and tying themselves up in knots for the sake of pleasing the commercial contemporary art world. Poor old Heckel's Horse rots in a dungeon while Heckel's Horse Jr runs free and feral. There's a similar story they used for a film about Paul Gauguin, the starving wild wolf and the fat pet dog with a leash around its neck. With all the other ways to monetise virtually anything, Free Art Frees Art shows the world how artists today can be free and truly independent.
It's been a sunny and fairly windless weekend but I still didn't go to Camden as these new editions need to get finished and processed first. I think they'll go down well in The Camden Market Free Art Man display and the dates have changed to May till November from March till November. Partly due to not having enough work. If I give away 500 artworks a month it totals 3500 over the next seven months. Without having Aon here to supervise the display I'll be doing it myself, meaning not much time to replenish stock once summer arrives. Next year I'll hopefully avoid this mistake by doing more small works during winter and less big ones. I did around 600 in Thailand last winter but were mostly big time consuming ones no one wants. If I spent the same time making quick small ones, I should have enough to start doing Camden regularly in March next year.
This set of paintings are acrylic on sketchbook paper. Three coats of red acrylic. The outlines are black Posca pen and black Winsor and Newton Indian Ink with a long Chinese style brush. The cardboard is good quality double corrugated I picked up from the streets of Camden and Muswell Hill. The writing on the back is in black Sharpie permanent marker. Also on the back are handcut printouts of the Free Art Frees Art Manifesto and the Anarchy for Art manifesto. The handwritten text underneath the paintings is in black Posca pen and red Sharpie. It's all glued on with PVA, then PVA'd over the top to protect it and give a gloss finish. Hanging holes stamped into the top corners with an awl.
