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2 LATEST ASBO FIGURES - P.12 * OCCULT ANNIE - P.11 CONT.. FROM FRONT PAGE The texts in his paintings are first written on a computer and enlarged. A laser cutter is used to make a stencil of the texts, which is overlaid on the canvas, and Semple paints through that in layers of acrylic. Passages of loose ’bravura’ brushwork are interspersed within a razor-sharp, relentlessly uninflected graphic style. If you asked Stuart ”What is that makes your paint so matt, so flat?” he would tell you that he works with the manufacturers to design the formulae for some of his paints, with an eye for banal and opaque hues, and a smooth consistency which makes brushstrokes invisible. There are other ways in which Semple is a pop artist. His art has the feel of pop music - and not simply because he uses lyrics from pop songs. He sees each exhibition as an ‘album’. He’s on the ‘cover’ in one painting, “Would the Real Stuart Semple Please Stand Up?”, whose theme is also saturated with the teenage identity angst of the Top Twenty (the picture’s title is a quote from Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady”). There’s a love song - “Killing me softly (with He sees each exhibition as an ‘album’. He’s on the ‘cover’ in one painting her sound)”; a couple of tracks about contemporary British society, including “This land…was built for you and me”, QUIET DESPERATION / THE ENGLISH WAY, Acrylic, charcoal, graphite, vegetable dye, paint marker & spray paint on canvas, 120 x 120 x 7 cm, 2010 HAPPY HOUSE BY SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES, 1981 This is the happy house - we’re happy here in the happy house oh it’s such fun. We’ve come to play in the happy house. And waste a day in the happy house - it never rains. We’ve come to scream in the happy house we’re in a dream in the happy house. We’re all quite sane. photo by Jos & Hedwig with its out-of-shape swinger and saucy messages; there’s the rousing anthem of “Walk Unafraid” and, finally, moments of autobiography. ”Poundland” shows the moment when Semple was violently attacked, aged 17; “Quiet Desperation” hints at another incident, when the artist found himself surrounded by scores of magpies, but, fortunately, was able to escape without injury. One day, I am convinced, the contemporary art world will resemble the culture of pop music. There will be a lot more of it about. You’ll donwload it on your mobile. Artists will have images like bands. Best of all, it won’t have to be weighed down with the excessive theoretical baggage, which it seems obliged to carry today. (In fact, I would prefer it my text were viewed not as a catalogue essay but as sleeve notes) The pictures have a new mood, different from the work Semple was making two year ago. Then, Semple was swept up on the giant wave of the contemporary art boom. He sold pictures from Berlin to Hong Kong. He had assistants. He flew first class. He flew his friends first class. He hired a publicist. His galleries wanted to send his pictures to auction, to boost his prices. He declined the offer. Today Semple and most of the rest of us live in a different world - yet not one that is defined one-dimensionally by economic collapse. If you asked Stuart, ”What is that makes today’s Britain so different, so melancholic?” he would tell you that it was the sensation of change of circumstances but not of attitudes, of emotions disconnected from events, of after as before. In ”Comfortably Numb” we are in a permanent and pleasurable state of experiencing the loss of our innocence there’s a graveyard in the bottom part of the paintings with crosses adorned with memories and losses, not only the very recent ‘Our Price’ and ‘Borders’ and “Last Orders”, but somewhat older stuff - the VHS tape, ‘Cool Britannia’ and, curiously the Belgrano, the Argentine warship that we sank in the Falklands War in 1982, with the loss of 368 lives, allegedly as it was steaming away from the war zone. The question is not so much what do these diverse events, technologies and brands have in common, but what is the effect of bringing them together? Semple creates a calculatedly diffuse and illogical mood of nostalgia, fusing the demise of Thatcherite jingoism and a puritanical Britain (the Falklands War and end of pub closing times) and the implosion of capitalism (indicated with great banality by defunct high street chains). He invokes a world of instant, This is the happy house - we’re happy here there’s room for you if you say “i do”. But don’t say no or you’ll have to go. We’ve done no wrong with our blinkers on it’s safe and calm if you sing along. This is the happy house - we’re happy here in the happy house. To forget ourselves - and pretend all’s well there is no hell.
artificial nostalgia, where technology moves so fast, that the only permanent sensation we have is of a melancholy for the past. The counterpart of the modern narrative of rapid technological progress and permanent cultural innovation - of news (the new) on the quarter hour, every hour - is that anything more than 15 minutes old is history, in the form of repeats or archive. The media are already organising how they will repackage today as yesterday tomorrrow. That yesterday is always quaint, backward, simple. Today we are in a permanent and pleasurable state of experiencing the loss of our innocence. We love being told and sold that sensation - the documentaries on BBC4 with their archive footage histories of women, lefties and folk music are archetypes. It is, in the words of an old cliché ’the warm bath of nostalgia,’ but a nostalgia that is accelerating towards our present, surely in danger of overtaking it. Above the graveyard of ”Comfortably Numb”, a female figure stands proudly, paradoxically, hands aloft, wearing boxing gloves, in a posture of victory. Cartoon eyes, surely from a Nickelodeon series, dot the pictures, and the horizon is marked by the skyline silhouettes of typical terraced houses. Semple has scrawled a line from a song ”Nothing It’s Semple’s ability to describe this contemporary moment which makes his Pop Art so different, so appealing ever happens” above the huge skewed word ”Happy.” It’s about a world where everything has changed and nothing THIS LAND... WAS BUILT FOR YOU AND ME, Acrylic, charcoal, paint marker & diamond dust on canvas, 120 x 120 x 7 cm, 2010 has changed at the same time. There’s still glamorous models and a sprinkling of diamond dust in Semple’s paintings - but this time they are surrounded by images of recession. Like the T-shirt in his multiple-self-portrait says, ”Gordon Gecko was wrong.” We are at the moment before impact. Roadrunner is still running as hard as he can, but he hasn’t noticed he’s gone way out over the end of the cliff. Similarly our mindset and moods have not yet registered the bad news we have been watching and listening to. It’s as if everyday we are reading our own obituary in the newspaper. It is Semple’s ability to describe this contemporary moment which makes his Pop Art so different, so appealing today. On the large bottle of tomato ketchup in ”Quiet Desperation” Semple has replaced the Heinz logo with another word: Wait. Yes, folks, just wait. Ben Lewis is an award-winning documentary- film-maker, author and art critic. His most recent documentary “The Great Contemporary Art Bubble” was shown on the BBC, Arté, ABC-Australia and numerous other TV channels across the world, and screened at film festivals in Montreal, Vancouver, San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Copenhagen and Derry. Ben’s other film credits include the mutli-award- winning series “Art Safari”, and the documentaries “Hammer and Tickle” and “The King of Communism.” Ben writes a monthly column on art for Prospect and contributes art criticism to the Evening Standard, the German magazine ‘Monopol’, the Sunday Telegraph, Times, Sunday Times and FT. His first book “Hammer and Tickle: the story of a political system which was (almost) laughed out of existence” will be published in May this year. 41 - 42 Berners Street, London, W1T 3NB, UK info@mortonmetropolis.com mortonmetropolis.com 5
Page 1: BEN LEWIS * RIP COOL BRITANNIA * ST
Page 5 and 6: What are your main concerns about t
Page 7 and 8: THE REAL STUART SEMPLE, Acrylic, ch
Page 9 and 10: ALBUM REVIEW BY EMMA EDMONDSON LIFE
Page 11 and 12: TIME FOR ANOTHER COFFEE COFFEE COFF

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