Don't Ring John Today

When the winner for our Fate poster competition was chosen from the entrants exhibiting at Free Range, we were baffled. Who's John? Were we going to ring him? Was the artist, Samson Blond, playing a trick on us? Were judges Wieden + Kennedy trying to play us for fools? With all these questions in mind, we approached Samson and decided it would probably be best if he just talked us through his portfolio.

I will start with the work entitled Hoop (2007). It was a very simple exercise, although physically difficult to complete. What I was doing was jumping through a hoop. The work stemmed from my frustration with universities in the way they operate, and in turn how people may go through the system. This was also where the idea behind the Golden Peanut came from. There was a line in the intro stating that the university is like “an elephant being fed peanuts”. The peanuts in my mind are money. So the golden peanut symbol was born as a joke. An attempt to combine the comical idea of an inedible source of sustenance with value and consumerism.

Shaving (2007)

This frustration carried on through my second year at university. In terms of the academic system it is appropriate to give out green sheets of paper with marks on. The problem for me is how can you mark creativity? I got all worked up and after reading about Michel Foucault's panoptic principle, I started to see the university as an institute, sitting side by side with more sinister institutions like jails and hospitals. This is when and where Shaving (2007) was made. It was an attempt to remove my self in some way. My methodology was to record myself physically removing a layer of my self.

Pissing Peanuts

It was a magazine brief that gave me the motivation to carry this idea further. The brief was simply the word ‘Money’. I’d found another place to get my peanut out. I was able play with the concept in a more superficial way than I had been doing in the heavily intellectual context of “fine art”. The magazine was more orientated towards the world of fashion and sub culture. Pissing Peanuts (2008) performed by Chris Linker was this work. Fittingly it never got published.

Capital

Capital (2008) was the final piece for my degree studies. The work consisted of two posters, the first of which asked the public “what do you think the priority for a university as an institute is?” The second poster was placed in the exhibition space inside the institute and it stated the results of the 100 person questionnaire. The results were that 73 percent of the people asked answered “capital” and 27 percent “culture”. Ironically the university paid for the poster, regarding it as an advertisement opportunity. The concluding gesture to this multi-stage work was the presentation of a 24 carat gold leafed, actual, edible, peanut to the rector of the Farnham University College for the Creative Arts. This brief performance was staged as I received my BA (hons) certificate on the presentation podium, in front of around 1000 people inside Guilford Cathedral.

Collective (2008)

Collective (2008), another poster, was a recent idea, and my submission for the Free Range exhibition. The Golden Peanut Factory is the name of a collective that could potentially become an agency. The tasks the agency sets for itself are to help people coming out of creative institutions to use their skills, meet other people from different fields and to hopefully create a broad and individual style of working together - from organising exhibitions to completing commercial briefs.

And that takes us up to Don't Ring John Today. What's that about?

My girlfriend has an uncanny ability of ringing me when I am down or if something goes especially right. She rings just when it has happened. So one particular evening I was going to visit her. We had organised to meet at her house after work, but when I got there no one answered. So I rang her mobile, but still no answer. I wandered off and first bumped into one old friend and then another. We went out for a few drinks and caught up a bit. Time went by. It was about 2 am and still no word from my girlfriend. I find a phone and give her a ring, this time she was on the other end.

I asked her why she didn’t call when she got in. The answer was: “I was a bit pissed off that you weren’t here and just didn’t feel it was right to call you”. It was only when thinking about this project that I thought about it in terms of fate. I suppose the reasoning behind the slogan was that most of the time we think of actively doing something that will change the situation, though for fate to take control perhaps you have to let go of your power. By her not ringing me, she had allowed that whole night to appear. I met some old friends I hardly ever see. Sometimes by not doing, you leave space for potentially anything to happen.

Okay... so who's John?

This is not a remarkable story. John is not a remarkable name.