Cielo Drive Blog

Working on the Man/son series last year, opened a literal can of worms, as far as the research involved. Part of my own personal remit, was to trace what I saw as connections back to my hometown of Liverpool, and so I began a blog as a counterpoint to the series called One Hundred & Fifty Cielo Drive. 
The latest post is the first in a series of posts on the Mersey Freemasons, and you can read it by clicking the following banner link

I endorse this Christmas message.

The tabloid, degenerate, darling, Banksy has been at it again-courting controversy with one of his little stunts. Banksy of course is about as anti establishment as Saatchi exhibiting the Chapman Bros-in fact Banksy is probably the brainchild of Saatchi, but that's another story.

I've given enough column inches already to this philistine, and this would have been just another note of irrelevancy, except to say that his latest wag is on my old stomping ground-The Walker Art gallery in Liverpool. I daresay the Walker was in on it-good for them, it's a splendid gallery, that deserves national attention.

But what I also like about the work in this instance, is that it's casting a light on an issue that far outweighs any of Banksy's usual media whoring for attention, at a time of year when religious sugar coating is predominant.
You can read the article here: Banksy unveils church abuse work

Dead/Ends Announcement : David Buckley

For those who have been inquiring about my book-'Dead/Ends' which was originally scheduled for online release today, there has been a small delay of a month or so.

One of the reasons is because we are now going to be fortunate enough to have a contribution by none other than David Buckley, who shall be writing the foreword.

For the uninitiated, David is a tremendous writer and biographer, whose credits include 'R.E.M. - Fiction: an Alternative Biography', 'The Thrill Of It All: the Biography of Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music', 'No Mercy: the Authorised and Uncensored Biography of the Stranglers' and the wonderful 'Strange Fascination: David Bowie-the definitive story'-the latter being what I consider the uncontested authoritative work on the Thin White Duke. As if that isn't enough he is also a regular contributor to Mojo magazine as well as writing the official sleeve notes on major Bowie reissues such as 'Ziggy Stardust', 'Diamond Dogs' and 'Young Americans', and currently he is working on a bio "Electric Dreams- the Human League, Heaven 17 and the Sound Of The Steel City", scheduled around the time of the 30th anniversary of "Dare"

A full bibliography is available to read and purchase here:

David Buckley Amazon List

As well as sharing a mutual regard for all things Bowie related, we also both grew up in Liverpool in the Seventies and so this is very exciting and something we are hugely appreciative of.

More news about the official release date for Dead/Ends coming soon.

David Gough inspirations-day five: The Walker Art gallery-Liverpool

Day Five of five Things that Influenced me as a kid

Living in Liverpool in the 70's, one could have been forgiven for thinking that the only culture left was the unisong of Kop supporters singing 'You'll Never Walk Alone', or hearing the Beatles on the radio.

That certainly would have been the case, had it not been for faded 19th Century coliseum building in the town center called the Walker Art Gallery.
My first visit must have been with my Old Man, or perhaps my Grandad-I was still too much of a tot to remember who exactly-but what I do recall is the opulence of the lobby, the smell of varnished oak and high ceilings with gold flourishes, a side room with alabaster statues before the marble staircase with vast canvases resplendent with Napoleon or Greek allegory.

It was my first introduction to real Art,and although it would be years before I was to see a faded reprint of Bosh's Earthly Delights, my calling was assured in the years between. I've visited so many times since, from bunking off from school to sit for hours studying the masterworks, to seeing it's glories fresh through my children's eyes.

Below are five pieces that consumed me.

'A Horse Frightened by a Lion'-George Stubbs. 1770

'Interior at Paddington'-Lucian Freud-1951

'And when did you last see your father?' William Frederick Yeames-1878

'Echo and Narcissus', John William Waterhouse, 1903

'The Murder'-Paul Cezanne-1868

David Gough inspirations-day three: Liverpool

Day three of five things that influenced me as a kid

"No one who has any self-respect stays -but flees afar as though from a country that has undergone the visitation of an angered Jove.”James Joyce

Every artist or writer holds a weary relationship with there hometown. Growing up in Liverpool in the Seventies and early Eighties felt akin to living in a warzone.
The architectural contemporary dream of the sixties had been reduced to the urban squalor of a abandoned tenements, whilst dilapidated Victorian alleyways lay strewn with garbage, soiled mattresses and bursting couches. Burned out cars sat on faceless gray estates, while shipyards heaved with rusted old vessels on banks of shit colored mud-bygones of an industrious era. Everything felt like decay, particularly when you lived by a cemetery.

These were the playgrounds of my youth.



It's all too easy to heighten reality, recast it as some romantic, resilient 'Boys from the Blackstuff' morality play, but the truth is far from ideal. Still looking back at pictures from that era, I can see the influence that those times had on my creative geography.


All photos copyright Dave Sinclair, for more of his incredible images go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/dave_sinclair_liverpool_photos/

Artifact-Tales of an Antiquarian-Mothers Milk

Any artist who was a child between 70 and 85 will attest to having gone through their Giger period. Mine began upon seeing 'Alien' on home vhs sometime in 1980, and didn't really bare fruit until sometime in 2003. The Biodegradables-(: or biomechanics and degradation combined-geddit?) had their origins in Gigers morphic automotons, my own existential angst combined with the decaying shipyards of my Liverpool home town, and what is in retrospect an early projenitor to Steampunk.

As immediate predecessors to the mythical transience of the mermaid paintings, it was all very telling, and I really ought to have continued tapping that vein, because I could have been inhabiting the same demographic as Chris Mars by now,(yeah,right) but as is always the case, the need to make money won out.

Sadly, the series was shortlived, to the point that there were only four paintings ever produced. One of those pieces-'Mothers Milk'- tackled the same themes in a majority of my art-that of origin-in this case the notion that we are all contaminated from conception, through predisposition of our genetics and those of our surroundings.

For all their obvious derivation, of the countless pieces I produced in the early noughties, the Biodegradables still stand up for me as works I'm really proud of.

Travelblog-In my Liverpool home.

When I left England a little over five years ago, I had determined that it had failed me. To my mind,it had never supported my ambitions or elevated me from my humble provincial origins, and I sensed pretty early on, the hopelessness of it ever being a foundation for me to build my life on.

Moreover, I scoffed at my hometown of Liverpool ever being a cultural epicenter for the arts, railing that it had traded for too long on the currency of four moptops who fucked off and changed the world, and having scraped that particular barrel for all its worth, could only ever again procure scum from its depths.
Never would it be anything more than a bitter catchphrase of low life's and lowly living, a Harry Enfield caricature of gobby yobs in trackies, a Boys from the Blackstuff cliche of dossers, thieves and sociopaths. Whilst the city would ever bare the psychological scars of little Jamie Bulger's death, at the hands of two of its 11 year old sons.
Returning for ten days then, was something of a revelation. Of course I could have been seeing it all through the ghastly fog of jetlag, which I tried in vain to rectify with sleeping pills at night, and the high fructose diet of triple redbulls by day, but it appears to be very much a city reinvigorated by futurist architecture and glossy American style malls, and a vigor for the new.

But if there is a life there for me, then lest we forget why I was there to begin with-the prodigal son and all that, to the bosom of my family go I. And what a wonderful, delightful in all its complexity gallery of relatives I have. We are all getting older, and I don't think I ever realised how much I missed them, how much I took them for granted, until I was with them again.
And of course, I am a doting Grandfather.
Oh little Quinn, all the wonder and glorious travails of life ahead in those little, curious blue eyes. All furrowed brow, peach complexion and sweet little grunts. He is the most beautiful and precious thing.
So much crammed in such a short time, ten hundred snapshots of English idyll, fish and chips and tea and scones.Crumbling Roman walls in Chester, ostentious guilded Pre Raphaelites in Port Sunlight, misty Mersey drizzle, Dali at the Tate.

Now I'm back,having burned the candle both ends, and endured a fourteen hour delay in Philadelphia, I am suffering a serious bout of the flu. I slept eleven hours last night, and my head feels like its full of cement, but I am glad to be 'home'-for I feel I can call it that now.

Something for the Weekend-Ferry Across the Mersey.

I sit here this sedentary Sunday afternoon, on the eve of becoming a grandfather for the first time. Despite my predisposition to be a curmudgeonly old sod, if I'm honest, I never thought I'd feel old enough to be a grandparent. And yet as my daughter-Emma- lies in a labor ward on the other side of the world, I must admit to being beside myself with anxious excitement at the prospect. I can't wait to meet you little Quinn-I can't wait to see myself maybe a little wise in your eyes.
We shall be leaving for the UK in just a few days. Meanwhile, as Lani and I have been busily preparing for our trip, any effort in the studio has been at the behest of organizing my crap, and cleaning out every dusty nook and crannie. I did manage to complete 'the Triumvirate' piece however, which now has a new temporary home at the San Diego Art Institute. Its looking like an exciting showcase, and I'm pleased with how solid this collection is-I've great ambition for the project to culminate when we return.

For the moment however, I am content knowing that I'll be spending the time in between with my family, meeting my grandson, perhaps walking along the river Mersey with a steaming bag of fish and chips, or standing in front of 'when did you last see your Father' by Yeames at the Walker. Its been too long.

Which reminds me...I never liked Gerry and the Pacemakers version of Ferry across the Mersey, but my old ZTT stable mates Frankie goes to Hollywood did a nice dramatic retread in the 80's, which was on the B side for Relax.

Head Candy-Sacred Ground

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Gough Medicine-Playgrounds of youth

'And taste The melancholy joy of evils past: For he who much has suffer'd, much will know.'

Homer-The Odyssey, Book xv, Line 434

Beirut on the Mersey - Photo courtesy of Ian Hanslope with thanks -check out his idiosyncratic eye: http://www.ianhanslope.com