Russell Mills was in town yesterday. He was speaking at the University of Ulster as part of the Ulster Festival of Art and Design. Mills, I suspect he won't mind me saying, is a particularly unfashionable designer. In fact, the tag "designer" hardly fits. Most of the work he showed was more "art", although has often been deployed in a design context, CD and book covers, for example. He's also a musician. Mills is not for everyone but he is for himself. And if there's one thing I admired about him it was a not-up-his-own-arse approach to his super-self-indulgent work. I don't like his work, to be honest, but that doesn't matter. He was interesting. Here are my notes…
My Notes:
The importance of sheds, in relation to Barnes-Wallace and the bouncing bomb.
Sirens.
Hairdresser that made starlight.
The up-their-own-arseness of art.
Schwitters.
Generative Japanese oily wall.
David Sylvian.
Crying fish homage to Benny Hill.
Pissed punk printer hijacks Pentagram artwork.
Porno playing cards.
Sensible sandels.
Cycling in the countryside.
Sheep and three voices.
LA for dinner on Thursday.
Blood, my blood, insects.
Obliged to live in catacombs.
The Christians saying, "Fuck You", to the Romans.
Iceberg off East Anglia.
Punctuated by gunshots.
Barking like a dog.
[At this point we were interupted by a woman choking and I subsequently lost my pen lid. Which disturbed me.]
Micre.
Wisdom and knowledge.
Stained glass, PVA and peat.
12 inch IBM hard disk.
Foot and mouth sheep with human head x-ray.
Pages turning into flapping wings.
The fossel of a shed.
Biblical air plant.
[At this point we were interupted by the choking woman's friend who had eventually decided to see if her friend was OK. I found my pen lid.]
Fuck you Michael Nyman.
White egg cosmic spade.
You didn't include my notes.
(I'm disappointed)
Posted by: Alice | 09 June 2011 at 01:21 PM
What's Michael Nyman done wrong?
Posted by: Rich | 09 June 2011 at 10:41 PM
You'd have ask Russell about that.
Posted by: Richard | 10 June 2011 at 08:20 AM
Very cool chap, gave a talk to us graphs design students in the 1980's at Preston polytechnic. God I feel old.
Posted by: paul | 06 July 2011 at 04:07 PM