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Donald Urquhart on 'Listen to the Wine'

You know the kind of things you say when you're drunk? "The Scissor Sisters are the new Frankie Goes To Hollywood"; "I love You"; "I always HATED your piercings."; "Why is my potato gratin not as good as my Mum's?"; "I AM Woody Allen." And this, which came out only last night: "Do you believe in God?" [pause] ~"I certainly do..." [Longer pause] "...otherwise I couldn't possibly be a devil."

Well, 'Listen to the Wine' will I hope provoke much similar pub talk and conversations through which some people may arrive at revelations. A lot will talk nonsense despite everything, and a lot of talk will be "through drink". But listen. Listen to people when they talk after they've had a drink. They might talk rubbish for a bit, and then something brilliant and clear might come out. Maybe a secret, perhaps a truth?

As I write this there are drunks walking and talking past my house. Maybe one of them was you?
'Listen to the Wine' is about alcohol, the glamour and drama, the melancholy, spite, vitriol, humanity, and hilarity. It's about everything and nothing. Alcohol is a massive part of our culture (Britain is the 12th most drinkingest industrialised nation), and has played a major role in the development of the arts. It has ever been thus. I do not seek to explain anything about alcohol nor do I want to sermonise on its evils. I am just showing drawings on a theme of alcohol. Read the entire article here Source: artshole

The Legacy of Leigh Bowery by Donald Urquhart

The Costumes

Last year I helped Nicola Bowery to catalogue Leigh's costumes in preparation for 'Take a Bowery: The Art and (larger than) Life of Leigh Bowery', the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia. This involved carefully going through all of Leigh's costumes, listing and describing them, and then photographing them with Gary Carsley, the exhibition's curator. It was exhausting work, especially as the weather was bizarrely hot; lugging bulky and heavy costumes from Nicola's attic and arranging them with their correct accessories, then checking we had managed to photograph them all. "What shoes did he wear with that? Shall we check the Fergus Greer? Which way up does this go?" Often the costumes looked sad and deflated when we put them on the wooden stand, so we would have to pad them out as best we could, and we had to find a wig block to photograph the hoods and headwear on. I managed to charm the man in the local charity shop into lending us one from his window display - a slightly grubby but male polystyrene wig block. Perfect.

You should see some of the costumes, they really are beautifully made, and gorgeously, painstakingly (and otherwise) beaded. I adore the linings he chose: chartreuse, acid green, watermelon, salmon pink, butter-cream, electric blue; and of course even the stains on the clothes provide delight. Some hems are stiff with 'disco mud', that impossible-to-remove filth that you only get on a nightclub floor. I reckon it's a mixture of shoe polish, booze, puke, and chewing gum, but try though you may, you can never completely wash it out of anything.
Read the entire article here Source: showstudio.com

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