Observing the Observables #3

-Reviewed by Andie Berryman–

At first glance this volume of writing and graphics seems quite testosterone-fuelled, kind of a kickback 1990s slacker re-imagining of the popular diaspora of late sixties biker culture offerings such as Easy Rider and Steppenwolfs Born to be Wild. The choppers are there but they’ve run out of fuel, they serve as mere objects to photographed.

‘Daydreamers shoot for rays,holy raiders and months of May…While the matter remains quietly’ (Holy Riders)

Indeed in this volume the subject matter appears not to be that ‘Art is the site of resistance’ (as seen in most throwaway copies of small gallery literature) it’s more like the ‘Art is the site of subsistence’:

‘Attempting to scrounge perspective that leads to compelling’

Perspective is not needed here, just an understanding that writing and art fixed together need not be deep and compelling, just there telling it like it is. It’s quite a melancholy theme that threads the pieces together. My cranium jukebox flipped the record over to Once in a lifetime by The Talking Heads once I’d read ‘Paddle on the Chop Bruv’:

‘High tide to low. Waves crashing, nowhere to go’

The question is, does this set of series have anyway to go? It presents the site of subsistence, whilst I understand that this is California dreaming turned to California drowning, why is it of interest to me? The only thing that seemed at stake was the two male protagonists’ view of their lives through the patches mindlessly stitched onto ripped-up Levi’s. The nomad, motorcycle warrior of the road is gone, the artists know the road is blocked and yet they they imagine the legends in a post-industrialised Capitalism-is-eating-itself world. As a traffic cop would say ‘Stop rubbernecking, nothing to see here’.