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The Outsider Art Thread

Yes - It was a common annotation on sideshow banners of that era.

The 'Alive' notation is ubiquitous on Snap Wyatt's banners, but I'm not sure it originated with him.

My theory has been that it was a way to insinuate the subject was 'actual' without using words like (e.g.) 'real', so as to dodge being accused of actionable fraud or deception.
Would it have had the same meaning as 'live' now?
 
Would it have had the same meaning as 'live' now?

My interpretation is that it meant 'live' as in 'living proof; not artificial; not another Feejee mermaid hoax.'

Just for completeness ... I don't think it was intended to mean 'live' in the modern sense of 'here and now in the studio; not pre-recorded.'
 
Shine on you crazy garden! Syd Barrett's strangest tune yet
A lecturer in hauntology has turned debris from the Pink Floyd singer’s garden into a piece of music.

Locating strange connections that lurk in our unconscious has become an obsession for Mulholland. He’s a lecturer in psychogeography and hauntology – areas of study that stray into the unconscious and the seemingly supernatural – at Glasgow University. He’s also a musician who likes to incorporate these ideas into his work.
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https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.amp.../10/syd-barrett-strangest-tune-yet-hauntology
 
People swanning around in giant balloons that they can deflate to become outfits on the catwalk ..

 
Saw the first half of this last night on BBC4... takes a while before you get a handle on what his art actually is... and even then I'm not sure I'd want to sit through it :thought:

Arena: B. Catling: Where Does It All Come From?

An eye-popping insight into the extraordinary, late-flourishing career of maverick artist, teacher and performer Brian Catling RA, whose unique vision and imagination are celebrated through a shifting narrative of newly restored archive material, exclusive interviews and specially shot footage. (...) is a window into Catling’s world that, like Catling himself, defies categorisation. It is shaped through a stitching-together of rediscovered archive material with newly shot interviews, fragments of previously unseen filmworks, interjections and interactions, ghosts and revenants. Important locations in Catling’s life and work – south London and Whitechapel, museums, churches, dives, Gozo, Leipzig, Copenhagen – are interwoven with imaginary landscapes and revisited, explored or recreated. Interviews and long-lost performances are remade and repurposed, seances held, dead or vagrant voices resuscitated. Characters, symbols and strange beings – some of whom then reveal their role and purpose – are glimpsed or merely spoken of, sometimes without explanation. At times, fiction hijacks fact to reveal other, deeper truths.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0011v76/arena-b-catling-where-does-it-all-come-from
 
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Outsider Art Exhibition is back.

At the Outsider Art Fair, which returned to New York this week after a two-year hiatus, there is no scene-stealing piece—and that attests to the strength of its presentations.

Art—painted, woven, wired—can seen be seen in just about every corner of this fair, spilling out of a booth, crawling up the wall toward the ceiling, descending from above by strings, and sitting pretty on a tabletop. There’s a joyfully chaotic feeling to some sections, as if the dealers, visibly delighted to be back, could scarcely leave anyone home.

Around 65 galleries came out this year, which marks the fair’s 30th anniversary. Many brought new works or art from overlooked outsiders well past due for acclaim. At Andrew Edlin Gallery’s booth, for example, visitors packed in to see a suspended self-portrait by Tom Duncan and an atomic collage by the recently rediscovered cigar-roller-turned-artist Felipe Jesus Consalvos.

The veteran galleries have bigger booths by the entrance, and most brought the masters: Martín Ramírez, Henry Darger, Joseph E. Yoakum, William Hawkins. The extra space invites the crowd to slow down and really study the works. In particular, a book made of soot and saliva by James Castle, the enigmatic Idahoan, at Hirschl & Adler Modern benefits from close viewing. ...

https://www.artnews.com/list/art-ne...ir-2022-best-booths-1234621138/ricco-maresca/
 

‘Ron’s Place’: drive to save Birkenhead palace of outsider art

Ron Gittins, who died in 2019, left behind a rented flat decorated and piled high with artworks

The front room of the late Ron Gittins’s flat has a Pompeii Villa of the Mysteries vibe to it. The hall could be an Egyptian tomb. The bathroom, an aquarium fever dream. Handmade fireplaces include a lion 3 metres tall, a minotaur and – in the kitchen – a Roman altar.

The interior of Gittins’s home would stop you in your tracks anywhere. The fact that noone knew it was there, that he spent decades creating it by stealth in his rented ground-floor property in the Merseyside town of Birkenhead, stops you a bit longer.
In the next few weeks, fundraising events will be held to help save “Ron’s Place” from being lost for ever.

Gittins, a complicated, eccentric character, died in 2019. He left a rented flat piled high with bags, boxes, magazines, videos and handwritten notes, some in code. Along with the works painted and sculpted on to walls and ceilings are papier-mache figures and costumes he made by hand.

Although noone truly knew what Gittins was up to in his flat, he was well known locally and would sometimes have art work commissioned.

“Ron was friendly with the fishmonger in Birkenhead market and he commissioned a painting of him and his brother as Roman invaders to Britain in the fourth century, sacrificing a red mullet,” said Wallace.

It’s not on display. “The fishmonger’s wife hates it. It’s wrapped up in bubble wrap in the garage.”

“What is noticeable is that everyone who comes here has a kind of childlike response. There is something fascinating and stimulating and uplifting about it … maybe something a bit sad about it as well.”

The plan is for Ron’s Place to become a community resource, inspiring and stimulating creativity. Supporters see it as part of the wider cultural regeneration of the Wirral town.
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Room with lion fireplace
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