This and That
Sightings of Spare in Contemporary Culture
Bulldog Breed, Made in England (1969)
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
There are very few instances of Spare’s work influencing musicians before 1970, but Bulldog Breed was one such example. Released in 1969 by Decca, the album is now a rarity. In a post on the Fulgur Yahoo Group (now closed) musician Rod Taylor described how he came to include a track on the artist:
“Well you certainly hit on a rare one there! As a matter of interest “Austin Osman Spare” was an acquaintance of my Grandmother. She had been been friendly with Austin and had been given many of his works! Before Gran came to London she had been a tutor at Bristol University (Piano and Art) My Mother also became interested in his Art as she herself was an artist. I recall that she worked just up the hill from Brixton at a place called Skolniks - they were involved in commercial artwork somewhere around “Streatham high” as it was called then! Not too far from where Austin used to live! “My Mother and I went over to Ilford to see an Auntie of mine and as a child I was introduced to a world of Canvasses and painting - mainly Austin’s. This was shortly before my Mother had a very bad breakdown. I suppose I would have been about seven years old at the time. Everyone in my family was a bit artistic and even now I do the odd portrait or watercolour. I inherited a lot of prints and sketches of Austin’s work, but with the passage of time they were lost (I think I left them in a bedsit in Ilford just round from the Bus station, 1969!) This was at a time when Bulldog were merging with T2! Keith Cross had turned up on the scene, most of my equipment had been stolen and I suffered a setback financially (as musicians do). I did a runner ‘cos I couldn’t pay the rent! “Austin lived in or around the Brixton area and was a good wartime painter but in later years I believe he suffered very badly with illness losing his limbs (gangrene) and dying somewhere about 1956. He had a belief that art should be within the reach of the common man. As to his involvement of the occult I really don’t know too much about that- that was just how the lyric panned out. “I suppose you could say that he was a little influenced by William Blake and I am not too sure of his relationship with Crowley! “I was sharing a flat with a friend of mine just off Wanstead High Street and Bernie Jinks, Robin Hunt (whose family lived round the corner - Nightingale lane) and numerous young ladies would come round for a bit of music practice! These two guys were always the ones with women in tow! I think that Robin, Bernie and I were sitting around on one such afternoon and since the pressure was on to write some material for the LP, for some reason Austin’s name cropped up and we all worked it out from there! It was probably the introduction of the Artwork that inspired Robin to work on the Lyric! I had already got some idea of a Guitar part and with Bernie’s’ input the song came together in a very short time!”
Thanks to Philip Legard for this information.
BUY IT HERE
Coil (1982-2004)
Coil were a cross-genre, experimental music group who worked in such forms as industrial, noise, ambient and dark ambient, neo-folk, spoken word, drone music, and minimalism.
Formed by John Balance (sometimes credited as Jhonn Balance) and Throbbing Gristle and Industrial Records co-founder Peter Christopherson (aka ‘Sleazy’) when both left Psychic TV. Influenced greatly by the art and writings of Austin Osman Spare, Coil originally performed live as Zos Kia and on another early recording as the Sickness of Snakes. Over time, Coil’s line-up has included Stephen Thrower, Rose McDowall, Drew McDowall, Danny Hyde, William Breeze, Thighpaulsandra (of Julian Cope band and Spiritualized) CoH and Ossian Brown (Cyclobe) with live contributions from Cliff Stapleton, Tom Edwards, and Mike York. In 2005 Peter Christopherson announced on the groups’ record-label website, Threshold House that Coil as an entity ended with the death of its founding member, Jhonn Balance. Jhonn remained a passionate and dedicated supporter of Spare’s work and through the music of COIL the artist was introduced to a new generation.
Edited extract courtesy of Wikipedia
(W)Holesome Products Inc., Phantom Investigators (2002)
Phantom Investigators was a 13 half-hour episode children’s series, commissioned by the Kids! WB channel (Warner Bros) and produced in San Francisco by my production company (W)Holesome Products Inc. The series was created by myself and co-directed with my partner Josephine Huang. The series began airing in May 2002 in the US but only lasted one season. We managed to get some rave reviews however (LA Times called it: “This wildly inventive treat…some of the most wonderfully inventive animation to hit the small screen in a long time.”) The series was distributed globally by Sony and aired for the following 18 months in: Australia, Canada, Austria, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, New, Zealand, Korea, but was never picked up by any of the UK channels (much to my dismay).
The premise was that a supernatural world does exist along side our own, affecting the events in mortal’s lives for good and bad. Children are more open to this reality than most adults and know that when they hear mysterious sounds coming from the basement it’s time to call the ‘Phantom Investigators’ (four psychically powered children who run an after-school investigation/assistance service for kids trying to cope with supernatural crises in their lives).
The show used an unusual blend of stop-motion (puppet) animation, sophisticated live puppetry and live action (used for some of the human ghosts as you can see in the frat boy still). Stop motion has a long history in the SF area - Tim Burton’s animated films were made here (Josephine animated on Nightmare and Peach) - but we ended up having to pull in animators and model builders from all over the country for our 100 person team. During production (which took 18 months) there were 26 shooting stages permanently in operation.
The episode secretly guest-starring AOS was entitled “Omega Pizza Pi” and involved a closed-down frat house haunted by the spirits of former members of the fraternity who were being forced to submit to humiliating hazing rituals by a demon named Mozzarethulu (whose body was made of rotting cheese - it’s a complicated story). AOS’s portrait hung on the wall in the hallway and was featured in the background of about ten different shots throughout the episode.
Many thanks to Stephen Holman of (W)Holesome Products Inc. for providing this information and the images.
A Psychogeographical Guide to Spare’s London (2006)
First appearing to the world on the web-media mecca YouTube, amateur film-maker Jamie Gregory has this to say about his evocative visual tour of Spare’s city:
The genesis of the ‘Spare Places’ project had two main causes at the time and myriad auxiliary conditions; the causes being a wish to commemorate the fiftieth year of the death of Austin Spare, artist and psychic, plus the discovery that my new digital camera had a video function. The decision to take a psychogeographical slant to the film was the result of a growing personal interest in how the spirit of place (genius loci), affects the people and activities which take place within the area. The assumption is made that echoes of that spirit can be found in the associations connected to a place, its name, its history its legends and mythologies. As one psychogeographer remarked such investigations reveal a deep topography, in the case of London, quite literally ‘under the feet.’
The film project took this matter in reverse, by concentrating on the life of a man who moved about quite a bit to see what resonated between man and place. By simply visiting and filming randomly and later researching the area and noting associations with symbols captured on camera these affinities were revealed. The karma of animals which still pervades Smithfields, Spare’s birth place, the Cock Lane ghost and early spiritualist phenomena, his apprenticeship to stained glass production within a stone’s throw of a church dedicated to the patron saint of that profession. Of course such things prove nothing as tens of thousands were also born and raised in such places with no discernable effects upon them but this is not science - rather imagination.
It is the power of that imagination to create worlds between the facts which, if effects are any measure of reality, must therefore be just as real. There is no doubt that Spare’s vision of eldritch worlds and astral zones evokes a movement within the hearts of men and women both past and present, and if the increasing interest is anything to go by – into the future as well.
Thanks to Jamie Gregory for proving this information and the movies.
An Interview with Austin Spare (2009)
A new psycho-geographical odyssey!
- Terms & Conditions
- Powered by WordPress
- Site by SL Taylor