Blog Archives

Edge of Chaos at the Hundred Years Gallery

17/3/2017

above : Grassy Noel : Alicia in The Wasteland
This Week at the Hundred Years Gallery
THIS WEEKEND:
Women of The Wasteland / The Sybilla
Saturday 18th March 7:30 / £5/donation
Women of The WasteLand Includes Performances by:
The Amazing Butoh Dancer Mai Nguyen Tri performing with the Fabulous Fear of Fluffing; Jill Rock, Grassy Noel & APE, Robert Robertson, Luisa Tucciariello & Michele Paccagnella, Ivor Kallin, Giles Leaman, Johnny Cole, Rachelle Allen-Sherwood and many more in a Saturday Night Extravaganza of Film, poetry, performance, improvisation, electronica, dance and percussive inventions, celebrating Alicia in The Wasteland, the Sybilla, Vivienne Haigh-Wood and Valerie Fletcher...
Women of The Wasteland is a Night of Celebration of The Mutiple Migrants, Misfits, and Mythological Characters that have chosen to live by The Ancient Flowing Thamesis and help create the Rich Tapestry of Peoples, Stories, Poems and Songs of The Mega Metropolis Londinium.
The Asylum
Ground floor until 26th March
A selection of works from the gallery's own archive by Juan Gallego Pinazo, Johnny Cole, Jim Sanders, Gerard Ukpan and Christopher Northall
Apocalypse Jazz Unit
Sunday 19th March 3:30pm
Rick Jensen's astonishing Apocalypse Jazz Unit have released at least 60 digital albums, several of which were recorded at Hundred Years Gallery. It's Rick's birthday and since it falls on a Sunday it seemed apt to do an afternoon show at Hundred Years Gallery, come and watch AJU do their thing and then continue after with some food and drinks... there may also be cheesecake...
We're open for business as usual : Thursday 1 - 6, Friday 12 - 8, Saturday 4 - 11, Sunday 12 - 7.
Residency: Rita Says
Fridays 3-5:30pm / Free
Current Artist in Residence, performance artist and sculptor Rita Says will be developing three new performance works in the gallery space on Friday afternoons during March and early April.
Music & Books NOW IN STOCK at Hundred Years Gallery:
We stock releases and editions by artists who record and perform at Hundred Years Gallery, including O-ARC, I Know I'm An Alien, Dimitri Djuric, Gleb Kanasevich, Bordille Recordings, Zumar7, Earshots, Richard Sanderson, Alex Bonney, CCTVYLLE, Cos Chapman, CRAM Recordings, reductive journal, Tolerance Manoeuvre, Mass Producers,David W Stockard, Robert Robertson, Funking Poets and many more.
Opening Times this week:
Thursday 1 - 6, Friday 12 - 8, Saturday 4 - 11, Sunday 12 - 7
Hundred Years Gallery presents a full program of exhibitions, live events, screenings, talks and workshop. Artworks, prints, books and recordings are available from the Gallery shop.
Excellent home cooked food and drinks are available in our comfortable coffee bar.
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Our mailing address is:
info@hundredyearsgallery.comhttp://www.hundredyearsgallery.com

Memories of Spike Hawkins

3/3/2017

Very sad news – earlier this week the poet Spike Hawkins died, aged 74.
Always unpredictable, he was known in some areas (like hospitals) as John Hawkins. As a poet, he was known as Spike Hawkins, and taxi drivers called him Frank.
In the late Nineties, my boss asked me to set up an international poetry book series, and Spike was the ideal person to lead it. Known internationally, he wasn’t part of a narrow clique, so he was able to suggest some excellent poets for the series, which we called Poets’ Voices. I wanted each book to include a CD of the featured poet, to take each poem beyond the page into performance – the poets read their work in their original language, and if possible in English translation.
Fortunately, before the publisher was conglomerated at the turn of the millennium, a selection of Spike’s own work was published in the third volume in the Poets’ Voices series. One memorable afternoon in Steve Dracup’s recording studio, he recorded Spike, who read all the poems in this book, a marathon performance with hardly any re-takes. (more below)
The relatively short, pithy and amusing poems in the book are everyday but surreal in character. What could we call this collection of distilled different experiences, word-plays and atmospheres? I suggested the title 250 Grams of Poetry, which Spike liked, as he enjoyed street-markets.
Years later I chose sixteen of my favorite poems from this book, and set Spike’s reading of them to film, in I’m Back, the title of the shortest poem in the collection. Films like this were shown in underground screenings I set up at The Foundry (no longer in existence) and in the Calder Bookshop, when the publisher John Calder was around to support such events.
Once, at The Foundry, the audience enjoyed Spike’s reading of his poems so much, (peppered with his amusing anecdotes) that it looked as if they would miss their last tube trains home. (This was before all-night underground services).
I wanted to capture audiovisually, before it was too late, Spike’s reading of his latest writing. I grabbed the large professional video camera from work, and filmed him in his home, choosing and performing his own selection of poems and texts from his notebook. The film is named Assault on Time, after one of his poems which he performs in it.
This reading took place during a brief summer thunderstorm, whose rumbling followed with providential timing a tragic poem about a soldier lying on barbed wire on a battlefield in World War I. At another synchronous moment Spike reads a poem which features the sound of dogs barking – and there they are: the dogs in Breugel’s famous painting of hunters in winter, they bark on the wall behind the poet.
Later, Death makes a brief appearance:
‘Met Death on the market –
asked him if he was on the ‘phone
He started waving and said he was
an unlisted number.
Why? I asked.
Nobody rings my number (he said),
But I ring everybody once.'

From Spoonflags
by Spike Hawkins (1943-2017).

Edge of Chaos at the Hundred Years Gallery

Memories of Spike Hawkins

Archives

linksEmpedocles music/film From Invisible City:East Side MorningPsychic Neonand also some websites:Dennis Dracupframing sounds

links
Empedocles music/film
From Invisible City:
East Side Morning
Psychic Neon
and also some websites:
Dennis Dracup
framing sounds