Брюс Лейси

source: mutantspace

Bruce Lacey is one of Britain’s great avant garde artists, a true eccentric – two words I very rarely get to use these days unfortunately – his entire artistic life having been a cathartic working through of his experiences. He’s been an oddball comedian, actor, painter, sculptor, film maker, shaman and God knows what else and his work is now being shown at an exhibition called ‘The Bruce Lacey Experiment’ at The Camden Arts Centre in London.

What can you say about Lacey in a few sentences? What can be said about a man who has been celebrated in song by Fairport Convention, has had a film made about him by another crazy eccentric, Ken Russell, has been torn to pieces in the papers by Anthony Burgess, befriended by comedian Lenny Bruce, appeared as George Harrison’s gardener in the Beatles’ film ‘Help!’ and designed all kinds of wacky props for the post-Goon Show TV careers of Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Michael Bentine.

The exhibition promises to give visitors an idea of the range of his work, a broad brush stroke of his artistic life, with painting, sculptures, robotised assemblages, theatrical performances, installations, community arts projects and ritual action performances all on show.

To give you a little flavour of what the man is like and what you can expect from the show here’s what he had to say about his work:
I am finding my own way and people, if they want to, can follow, I am shitting on the way, which are my artworks, and the critics are coming along picking up my shit and saying ‘ooh this is fantastic texture, ooh what a beautiful colour…’It’s all crap for me, I’m a simple person.

The gallery website has this to say about his work:
Lacey has described his work as a personal psychotherapy an approach began in his early 20s whilst hospitalised with tuberculosis after serving in the Royal Navy during World War II. It was then that he began to draw macabre scenes and childhood memories. After his recovery in 1951, he enrolled at the Royal College of Art and simultaneously began his performance career with outrageous stunts drawn from circus and variety theatre.
Lacey often involved his family in his escapades, as revealed by Ken Russell’s 1962 documentary, The Preservation Man. In this film Russell captures Lacey’s flamboyance, his six children around him, revelling in a magical atmosphere. Around this time Lacey began constructing assemblages and machines expressing his feelings about the technologised and conservative Cold War society that surrounded him. He was hailed as a leading figure of the ‘New Realism’ and his assemblages took the form of full size kinetic automatons (‘electric actors’) including the comic figures of Old Moneybags, Clockface, Electric Man and Rosa Bosom. It was Rosa who won the ‘Alternative Miss World’ in 1985. A number of these are included in the exhibition.

Part of the show will be dedicated to Lacey’s performance activities – a practice that began in the 1970s and included performances with his collaborator Jill Bruce. Lacey revered the approach of pre-historic man in creating not for decorative or aesthetic ends but with the purpose of making something happen in the universe. He committed himself to becoming aligned with the mysterious forces of nature, becoming a transmitter and receiver of thoughts, ideas and energies. In the 1980s he returned to painting – which took the form of ritual diagrams and imagery, in shamanistic formats derived from performative endeavours.
Now in his 80s, Lacey lives in a farmhouse in Norfolk surrounded by his bizarre collection of creations. His latest project he calls ‘vox humana exploration’ using his voice through a series of effects to perform his own songs plus those of David Bowie, Rod Stewart and Queen.
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source: whitehotmagazine

The Bruce Lacey Experience
Camden Arts Centre
Arkwright Road London NW3 6DG
Until 16 September 2012

Bruce Lacey’s work might seem an odd choice to exhibit during the Olympics, but it makes sense. The 85-year-old artist has had a Zelig-like career which has seen him work with iconic British figures such as Spike Milligan and Ken Russell. He has also experimented over the past five decades with robotic assemblages, magic, painting and sculpture. Curated by fellow maverick Jeremy Deller, the exhibition gives an endearing insight into his life and also captures the spirit of the times he was working in and against.

Walking onto the second floor, the walls are mounted with framed posters of Lacey’s extensive appearances and performances throughout the 1960s and 1970s. There’s an air of nostalgia, which is accentuated by the first room where we see artefacts from Lacey’s childhood and adult-sized play costumes recreated from that period. A video, narrated by Lacey, shows footage of his family. His mother and his grandfather have near-identical faces to him, as though he came about through binary fission. A sculpture featuring baby dolls and a penis made from primary coloured tubing is suspended from the ceiling like a nursery mobile. The airy light-filled surroundings make it seem benign and playful rather than sinister. The recreated adult-sized play costumes and Lacey’s own childhood robot toy (the first type to be sold in the United Kingdom, before World War Two) make the connection between the child and the adult, showing us that Lacey’s fascination with assembling and performance began early on.

Installation view of The Bruce Lacey Experience at Camden Arts Centre, 2012. Photo Angus Mill

There’s a swift transition to the other three main rooms, where we see his later work. During art school, Lacey developed a fascination with old Pagan rituals, styled on Native American and Aboriginal ceremonies. However, he wanted magic to be rooted in the British landscape, and so he travelled around the countryside conducting rituals, some captured on video. Seeing him scrambling up rocks, covered in blue dye and rooting through sticks shaped like a vulva makes it impossible to take him seriously. His earlier performances—as different as they are—in a comedy troupe called British Rubbish had exactly the same strain of individualistic anti-nationalistic humour, acknowledging British decline at the same time the country’s Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told potential voters: ‘You’ve never had it so good’.

Lacey’s robotic assemblages are the real highlight—the mechanics are crudely visible so they resemble fairground automata, decked with human remains. The Politician has false teeth attached to its rusty levers, and a box for a body with ‘INSERT A PENNY’ written on it. A kitchen cupboard meant to represent a classroom has baby dolls lined up inside whose lower halves are levers for pushing out sausages. His female robot R.O.S.A.Bosom makes the same point about the social formation of identity, going on to be the first and last robot to win Alternative Miss World in 1985.

Lacey’s work railed against the prospect that consumerism would become the main expression of identity, as suggested by the boom years of the 1960s. In the gallery text, he recalls his fears about the loss of individuality and critical thought at the time. But the exhibition also revels in a tourist-friendly nostalgia about the imaginative possibilities of the decade. In a side room, there is a video of the octogenarian Lacey, in the Norfolk farmhouse where he lives surrounded by his life’s work. We see him working on his new project Vox Humana Explora, which involves him tunelessly singing covers of Queen and other British bands. It’s good to see that his fears about the future were unrealised, and he remains as characterful, unique and playful as ever.
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source: brucelaceyexperience

When we met Bruce Lacey we were entranced – a modern day magus in brightly coloured clothes, he combines a very British interest in art and science, bringing them together in a way unlike anyone else either of us had encountered. It was as if Dr Dee had been reimagined by the Goons.

We proposed to Bruce that we would like to make a feature film about him, and he kindly agreed. So every few months we would descend on his farmhouse and commit a little more of his world to video. Very soon we realised that we would only be providing an introduction to the world of Bruce Lacey, as a thorough documentary would have to be more like a TV series to cover all the ups and downs of Bruce’s extraordinary career….

So please take your seats, fasten your safety belts and enjoy your trip into the Bruce Lacey Experience…
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source: camdenartscentreorg

Bruce Lacey (born 1927) is one of Britain’s great visionary artists. His lifetime pursuit of eccentric ‘making and doing’ has been a cathartic working-through of his experiences. This survey of a rich and diverse artistic production is a celebration of both his vibrant life (which includes working with Spike Milligan, The Beatles and Ken Russell) and his art which reveals telling links with the visual culture of the last 60 years. Co-curated by artist Jeremy Deller and art historian Professor David Alan Mellor, the exhibition charts Lacey’s artistic development in a career encompassing painting, sculpture, robotised assemblages, theatrical performances and installations, as well as community arts and ritual action performances.