Liver & Lights No 56 - 58
Thursday 14th - Sunday 24th November 2019
Thursday - Sunday from 11am - 7pm
Thursday 14th November 6 - 9 pm
(A free copy of Liver & Lights No 58 for the first
30 visitors on the night…)
Friday 22nd November 2019 at 7 pm
contact: hanksoake@gmail.com
Liver and Lights is the collective name for the many interelated projects
of the artist John Bently,
including, paintings, mischief, poetry, props,
stage sets, costumes and legendary musical performances
with the band bonesandtheaft, also incorporating
the Liver & Lights series of artists publications,
being 58 volumes in 38 years so far.
The current Liver and Lights project is called
One Shoe Mickey and started out three years ago as a
collection of lost gloves found on the streets of
London and made into a costume.
The costume, when worn by the artist, becomes
transformed into the character One Shoe Mickey,
a heartbroken former refugee.
His sanity seemingly unravelled by the horrors of the Long Road,
he believes the gloves are his lost family.
Renowned filmmaker Chiara Ambrosio
filmed of him forlornly trudging the wealthy Bloomsbury streets attempting to reunite
the gloves with their lost partners, which you can see here:
https://vimeo.com/268938724
Back in his cardboard home,
he makes many paintings of the gloves which he hopes
will help to reunite them with their lost partners.
In doing so Mickey receives a mysterious revelation
that there is a One True Glove somewhere out there
in the city that will unite all the
gloves and heal all the divisions in the world by
melting the borders between nations, creeds, colours and religions.
The band bonesandtheaft, empathising with his plight, r
ecently created an album of songs to tell his story,
with Mickey’s words set to music composed by Ian Mckean.
They also created two books containing all the
lyrics and the paintings made by Mickey,
being Liver & Lights nos 56 and 57.
This exhibition at Hart Club gallery contains all
the paintings made by Mickey and a new book written by
him being
Liver & Lights No 58:The Burger of Truth
…which will be given out Free to the first 30
people who come to the private view on
Thursday 14th November 2019 6-9 pm
Bonesandtheaft will also give a special performance
of the One Shoe Mickey song Cycle
and other favourite tunes on
Friday 22nd Nov at 7 pm
“…..But the most amazing thing is how these books
come to life through bonesandtheaft,
the performance wing of The Liver and Lights Scriptorium,
in which Bently and his band play
out the texts as songs as he enacts these characters while dressed in wonderful costumes” S Bodman AN Mag
“John Bently declaims his compelling poetry
while guitarist Ian Mckean and drummer David Beschizza
Fearlessly zigzag through punk anger and
energy, progressive time shifts and classical
guitar transcriptions of Alexander Scriabin.
Exciting stirrings from the literary and musical DIY underground”
Froots June 2016
“A scavenger of social archaeology” Brixton Blog/Bugle
“A mythical metropolis inhabited by a teeming population of sharply drawn,
richly detailed characters”. Aiden Dunne. The Irish Times
Hart Club is a new gallery in SE1 championing
neurodiversity within the Arts.
We commission original artwork that focuses
on collaboration and celebrating
the intersection of ideas and differences
in artistic approaches and ways of thinking.
Hart Club’s focus is to inclusively represent
neurodivergent artists to make and exhibit w
ork as a means to building confidence, community
and wellbeing. We also work to facilitate
collaboration and forge working relationships
between established artists and talented
neurodivergent artists so as to explore the benefits
of this creative exchange.
