[BlackRatPress]

This Newsletter Is One Long, Wordy and Difficult to Digest Paragraph But the Grammar is Impeccable and If You Lean in Close to Your Computer Screen You’ll Find it Smells Faintly of Cinnamon

Thieves Ladder, June 12th, 2008 at around six o’clock BST

Hello there. Do you remember us, back when we started this gallery? Oh we were bright young things back then. Our capillaries thrummed with vim and there was fire and gusto in our bellies. Often, during rare coffee breaks, we would clamber onto nearby rooftops and survey the world we would one day conquer. (Other times we would clamber onto nearby rooftops and play smug impromptu gigs and compare ourselves to The Beatles, but we were young and in awe of our A&R man.) But really, nothing was too much for us. Nothing was too difficult. No mountain was insurmountable and there was no park swing we wouldn’t test to the very limits of its chain – jolting our fiery bellies at its rattling apex. And then we put on the Heap show. A beautiful ramshackle wonder, a thing of corrugated coves and dark wending cardboard alleyways draped with muslin and festooned with art. A place of chaos, magic and wonder, of giant syncopated Buddhas and the unfeasible energy and noise of Dr David Ellis, musicologist and whiskey swilling shirtless madman. But it wasn’t easy. It was ten hour days and fourteen hour nights. We would stumble home bleeding and muttering schizophrenic epiphanies to our loved ones who were trying to watch ER. And afterwards, oh afterwards we were not the same men and woman, Dear Readers. We were chastened and drained. Our nerves were shot. We would spend long sleepless drunken nights staring at our dark, bruised looking eyes. We said we would never do it again. How could we? What could compare to those heady highs and lows? We vowed never to put on another installation show. We formed a tight huddle in the centre of the gallery and did one potato two potato three potato four. Because you see, even then, Swoon had another idea for a show, a transnational installation show uniting the combined talents of Denmark, America and Mexico in the lean, wiry young frames of Armsrock, Chris Stain and Poncho. She insisted this was something we do and we, in turn, smiled at her and wondered how she’d retained her beguiling force of personality as we lay broken, racked with pain and self-doubt, coffee and nicotine. We couldn’t face it. Another show like that seemed mammoth. It was like trying to get your head round mitochondria DNA. It hurt to even think about it. But then, over the last few months, we have started to feel that old energy creeping back in, inflating our weakened hearts and reviving our atrophied muscles. Besides, pain has no memory, six months is a long time in the artworld and the three of them have already booked their flights. So we here at Black Rat are both enthused and skittishly apprehensive about our second installation show, Thieves Ladder, with the aforementioned Armsrock, Chris Stain and Poncho. And if you want to bribe us for this one please bribe us with cold compresses, floatation tank vouchers, gentle words of encouragement and constant cups of hot sweet tea.

About the Artists

Armsrock was born in Copenhagen, Denmark but now lives elsewhere in Europe. He creates life-sized portraits of his fellow citizens in an attempt to retell some of the stories the city holds. He interacts with the streets by placing these portraits (each an intriciate original drawing) back in the environment from where they came. A project he sees sets of open sketch books.

Armsrock has also released a book through the Wooster Collective entitled, ‘All My Friends Are Made of Paper.’

Chris Stain is an established American stencil artist who sees his work as a direct reflection of the people, neighbourhoods and struggles that are swept along with the every day lives of the common American. With these works he hopes to capture and convey the importance of the forgotten, marginalised and disinherited individuals of society.

Poncho hails from the Chiapas in South East Mexico and is an artist whose work similarly seeks to highlight the unsung, powerless and dispossesed members of society. This time those of his native Mexico. Poncho works in stencils and intricate cut-outs and exhibited. Last year he and Swoon exhibited a show about the gulf between Mexico and the US at Mu in Holland.

See you there,

BRP

[seidbereit]

Our capillaries thrummed with vim and there was fire and gusto in our bellies

Vim! That's a blast from the past... I think I last heard my mum use the word at the end of the 70s.. LOL !! ;D ;D

[curiousgeorge]

Vim indeed!!

Is this suitable to use for a condition known as my eyes are fcuking bleeding