• John Barry (1933-2011). Click on the image to hear Theme from Midnight Cowboy, 1969

255 Today

I've got two prosaic names, with nothing in between. I'll never know if grandiose titles safeguard against underachievement. But, then, how could Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, with a whole sentence of his own, be anything less than prolific?

Pocket

We cat-sat for some friends a while back, now an 'unforeseen series of events' means we may have her indefinitely... whoops!

Malicious Damage

Charged with 'malicious damage', Orton & Halliwell were famously sentenced to six months for borrowing, bastardising and bringing-back a selection of library books. Once evidence but now artefact, these pieces are purile; hilarious and disturbing by turns. Mixing surrealist collage with a healthy literary irreverence, they also seem to pre-empt a subversive humour that later pervades the decade.
 


I planned to include a selection in a group exhibition at Islington Museum in 2005. It turned out not to be such a huge cultural coup, Peter Blake had long since trumped us with About Collage at the Tate Liverpool in 2000. While, more devastatingly, low-level insurance/security saw that we eventually hung only high-res scans.



Luckily there's a far better opportunity to view these minor treasures along side the sculptural responses of artist, Adam Gillam, at east London's Ancient & Modern, 13 Jan - 26 Feb 2011.

Ancient & Modern, 201 Whitecross Street, London EC1Y 8QP
Wed-Sat, 12pm-6pm • +44 (0)20 7253 4550

Milly Freeman

Still in the mood for celebration? I thought not. Exuberantly poised somewhere between Niki de Saint Phalle and H. N. Werkman, it's still well-worth checking-out the work of young illustrator (and assistant extraordinaire), Milly Freeman.