Maybe I just want a million likes
It takes a strength not to want that
That I've begun to lose.
I have a broken heart. I'm told, I've read that there is no
Avoiding this and that in fact it is the mark of adulthood, manhood maturity
To carry a scar.
Maybe this is the place to do this I don't know.
Last week I got a letter from art dealer Peter Mcleavey, encouraging me in his sweet way, to carry on.
I once left his living room to get a cup of tea, and he told my partner that I was his biggest mistake.
That he should have and will now offer me a ten year contract, that I was the real deal.
Apparently he was a big fan of the 'Beneficiary's Office'. I heard he bought one of my upside down
shopping bag works at a fund raiser for a gallery I helped start on his beloved Cuba st.
He told me that he loved my work but couldn't sell it. I tried to not let the crack in my soul show on my face.
More recently, my revelation and subsequent public fall, from my heroes of a miss (well) spent art youth. Their pond sucking scum action of taking the money while being silent about their role as public University employees, has me painted out of the room I had already painted myself into a corner of. Even radical friends with publication, White Fungus gave me the too hard basket treatment, while the usual standards are promoted with healthy air time, multiple page spreads. God dam it I got Roger Douglas, shadowy god father of NZ's free market to publicly comment on the remnants of NZ's democratic state art vs. capitalism. That was worth more.
I was wrong to expect more and struggle to live by, to my own words, live with less. I don't know,
how to continue to participate if what is wanted from me is not what I am offering. Nine years ago I vowed to participate by existing, despite the reasons not to. And by invitation alone had thirty showings in five years, years when I was mostly unemployed, on the benefit. years I openly declared that I was a working for the public artist. My last most recent public show invitation, a year in the making cast aside in an afternoon exactly like an unwanted child's drawing. I was aborted. In a town of poor people, ruled by a tiny elite club of rich people, the gallery doesn't even bother advertising locally, pond scum.
This morning I awoke sitting in New Zealand's pond scum. Nothing moving, just the thrashing arounds of mis guided activity, all tied already to the nose of a truck that left a year ago, decades, just following through. Collecting points. I'm a fool to want more, more is what I will get. How to get less of this. Profound comments please, rack them up below.
Fuck
Dear Tao
ReplyDeleteYou are a fascinating figure, and I have followed your career or non-career for some time.
You are a fascinating mix of nativity and wisdom. You go from stupid teenager to Beckettian sage and back again.
A friend of mine told me that once you he and some friends were at a party up the coast and you encouraged everyone to run vertically up the side of a hillside to look at the moon, through ferns and over rocks, slashing your legs in the process.
I admire such acts, which you demonstrate in your non-art also, and I see them for what they are - a form of magic, mythopoetic action, rituals I have read about in the strange poetic histories of Graves and others seen performed by Dukun in Java and elsewhere.
You are similarly a ritualist with the potential to bear the same sort of power - whether or not you recognise that - playing with the symbols and gods of our age in a dangerous way, in a way that has lead to your ostracism. You are not the first "artist" to do so, just as the artist was not the first guise worn by those apt to do so.
And it is worth noting that the Trickster character in all cultures is both admired and feared. Tales about him are retold with glee, but if one of the tribe exhibits those qualities, he is ostracized or killed.
I suggest a way out. The Trickster is not expected to abide by the rules of whatever dominant morality is active, not even his own: the Trickster upsets moral ideas for the sake of it.
I see no contradiction in you selling works through Peter McCleavy while continuing to perform your ritual acts against our reigning Gods. In fact, it is right that you should benefit from the hypocrisy you are so good at pointing out, given that it cannot be overturned. A work by Tao Wells displayed in Wellington's Majestic Centre would be a wonderful thing to see eventuate. Tolstoi in the Missile museum, Ghandi in Kyle Chapman's living room.
Most curiously, you also demonstrate other aspects of the World Trickster character, including an emphasis on anal themes. One such theme perhaps relevant to your present situation:
"Ure heard them. He raised his buttocks and put his hands on his knees and looked back. He defacated as though he were throwing spears at them, for he was trying to put the fire out. He turned his anus around and around, firing at them to prevent the fire from getting to him, but it was no use. He could not. Even though he made a wall of defecation around him, higher and higher, it was no use. The fire came on and on".
- concerning Bamapama (masquerading as Ure), Northern Australia, as told by Warner
Nothing is expected from you and so everything is permitted. You have painted yourself into a corner where you now have that freedom psychically and socially. Break through the wall of shit of your own making that you have sheltered in, continue to stage work for no profit for outrage, but also take the money and run, laughing.
And speaking to your teenage side: not everyone who buys art is an arsehole. Your work will either be cherished, and if it is bought by the establishment you are against, well, they are buying an object against them - taking into their houses ritual objects of an opposing tribe, as it were. You can't lose.
Kia Kaha