joy division remembered............madchester @ its best

 joy division......the sounds of madchester.......if you would like to contribute please contact me directly...

a trailer introduced by the late tony wilson mr madchester of factory records.......just watch ian curtis ....girating.....and with the manic stare....a great band.....

this is part of a series of "pavement poems" in tib street in the northern quarter of manchester....this area houses lots of interesting bars...restaurants.....clothing shops...is the home aflecks palace...an alladins cave in an old warehouse...filled with multifarious shops and stalls......vinyl exchange is a mecca for secondhand cds and vinyl....check the area out....

stevenson square the northern quarter....i used to arrive here on a number 90 bus from rochdale....there used to be a lyons cornerhouse....gone now

check this little video out....love will tear us apart....a great collage of images ....leading to fragmented black and white photos.....

 a classic shot on hulme bridge

 great shot with the phone box.....late for practice...a gig...who is he meeting....we will never know....

heres another video with john cooper clarke getting in on the act....seen and heard reading chickentown in some downtown shopping mall....with people malling around....a real performance artist...great stuff..

travels with doctor who......in the" camera obscura bag"

travels with doctor who....charts the good doctors sojourns with his mentor charlie......on their joint expeditions....or just plain visits to interesting places.......the doctor because of his size and demize is often seen or found hiding in odd surroundings.....having a closer look @ and even becoming part of the work he is looking at....he has exchanged his mode of time travel from the telephone box to "the camera obscura bag"

 

the doctor lands on a big collage where will the images take him...

.

the doctor visits the faile temple in lisbon

 doctor who and the flying carpet

the doctor lands on an african sculpture......






















and yes hes appeared at the science museum in lisbon.....in a still life.....look carefully at the artefacts.....

cholamondal sketch book.....artist village south of chennai....india

at around this time last year hilary and i were in tamil nadu .....travelling by train...bus and taxi....visiting the most fantastic temples whilst staying at the artists village in cholamondal just south of chennai....i collected posters from walls along the dual carriageway.....this is a sample of some of the collages that i made....i also made some very big ones approximately 7metres long.....in these larger works i combined indian gods.....ganesh....shiva..

.with film stars...and other emphemera collected from the temples....for example maderai...what an amazing place....you can see more at holts in india blog

jakub nepras video artist....................AAAAAmazing!!!!!!!!!!

i first saw his work at the ccb....the barrado in lisbon......i came on it quite unexpectedly...in a small darkened room........wow....awesome....magical....unbeleivable....what is it........how was this done....just a minute there are people in there ....ballroom dancing...cars moving....all these reactions at the same time....it was the "babylon plant"....here in this short video.... you see some of this fantastic world that he creates.....it is one of the best works i have ever seen without a doubt.........

.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgedAFGi2Yw

let me know what you think.......

policromia urban artists...quarteira...algarve....2010

this is a new designated area for " policromia" a quarteira based urban art team......for some time they have been painting walls in the area....but always undercover....quick here come the gnr.....in recent times there has been an outbreak of what i term "visual vandalism"...this has been happening worldwide......closer to home in lisbon....in lisbon there is a dedicated area that has been sponsored by j c decaux the adveretising company...elevador de glorias.....here is an everchanging wall space which is controlled by the artists themselves.......here in quarteira there was a recent clean up campaign.....anibal moreno of loule camera recognised the quality of much of the artists work.....so we have 2 areas for the group...the underpass and a length of wall by the stadium....this is a good positive action by the local politicians....rather than obliterate the work....it now has a stage to perform on....i am really excited by the project......i hope that you will look again at grafitti in a different light next time you see some.....there are some very talented artists out there in the urban metropolis...they are enhancing what could be a concrete jungle with vibrant images.....

texto con text out of con texto....late 2010

surreal text is alive and well just as the equisite corpse...............
texto con text is another madcap venture into the world of random text....culled from the press....and other sources....it has its beginnings in automatic poetry.....the surrealists played many such games of chance...it is difficult not to censor.....i like the collisions of images invoked....thrown up..some will be more poetic than others...but who is to say....at the moment they are four liners...if you would like to join in then feel free to do so......charlieholtart@rocketmail.com

                                                                   

 apollinaire....breton et al......intended to free words and images from the constraints of logic and order and known sense....substituting chance instead of a predetermined outcome....chance encounters transgress deuctive laws... they transcend logic....surrealist play is more like provokative magic.......tristan tzara advocated....to make a dada poem.....take a newspaper...a pair of scissors......choose an article....cut out the article.........then cut out each word....put them in a bag......shake gently.......take out the paper individually....stick onto another peice of paper....the poem will be like you....this is a variant....using headlines...

croston studio...clearing out junk and finding things...and people

for the past few days i have been busy sorting out my studio in croston....in preparation for a refettled roof....i have unearthed some junk and also some interesting forgotten memorabilia...well thats what i call it.......30 plus years of detritis.....my life like flotsam and jetsam....floating buy....questions like why did i keep this....their must have been a reason.....the reasons are now covered in dust and cobwebs.....some long lost but some still vibrant....hear are few examples of this lost world.......

date around 1974..note the kipper tie...ive still got the pink cord wrangler jacket.....no glasses......

do you rember slide film........found this stuck to a window...the do it yourself slide viewer....what do we do with them now....they are prehistoric monsters...from not that long ago....these are images of digital prints...quirky or what...i took pictures using slide film of digital images...the mind boggles.......

oh mani padme hom...a tablet made for a show in rochdale after my trip to the himalays in 97....i made a mani wall with the help of derek boak a frfiend who was also involved with anthony gormley on the field project for tate liverpool...the kids in his school made the figures.....the prayer is sitting on an old litho stone...that i use for mixing inks on...it still ahs old images impregnated on the surface....it is a glimpse of the history of images that once covered the stone....

flyer of sam holts.....now of copyright fame...international djs....sam and gavin...one his very early gigs in manchester with ian richardson.......these 2 started in ians garage in croston....sam is the middle one doing some kind of curious dance routine......they where probably paid  a fiver each or a few pints of beer....i think it was @ joshua brooks or the boardwalk....this where he is now
http://www.defected.com/events/artist-detail/Copyright/11/1

plus a new tune....buy it now.......http://soundcloud.com/defectedrecords/copyright-nobody-forthcoming-defected?utm_source=soundc

    an early ticket for 2 aspiring djs sam holt and ian richardson.....they started their dj ing in ians soundproofed garage in croston..lancashire

this fell out of a book when i was sorting....its about 3 x 2 inches........it relates to some ideas i was playing with around 1965......moses and his tablets....standing on top of a hill.........there are some etchings lurking somewhere........

a fragment of a street poster from venice circa 1975 ish.....now why did i pick it up......more interesting why have i kept it all this time?...........my current work....collages from street posters......see below..

the moral here ......is dont throw it away....you never know......there is always a reason..........