Hi, my name is Martyn Lacey, I am an artist from the "Great" little island of Great Britain, the "Great" just means big, as in stolen! Don’t get me
wrong, I do not hate or despise my own country, I have just learned to look at it minus the frills of blind patriotism, dishonest history and, with a
wry smile and a shake of the head. I suppose that is the way I also look at
the world and, in turn this affects the art that I produce. Personally I
think this is not a bad way to be in a world that tries to tell you who you
are and what you should be thinking, doing or wearing and even seeing. I
have to make a conscious effort not to be a toy of the Corporate engineers,
spin doctored politicians and vested interest "news" conglomerates. Firstly,
before I go any further, for my US audience, NO! I am not a Commie, I just
try to have a few social values that don’t f**k up other people or the
planet. (not that lots Americans do not have these same values)
Most of my work revolves around a political or social nature, if not
directly then indirectly. For this I am mostly indebted to George Glenny a
"left wing" art tutor at the Berkshire College of Art & Design, who helped
to open my eyes. In the 1980s Britain of Margaret Thatcher, George was
holding on to his job by his finger tips. My first lecture with George on
"Understanding art and design" in a media sense was to be about the European
Bader Mienhoff "terrorist" group. He just felt, as I do, that people working
in the media should have a broader understanding of what is usually
presented as black and white truth.
I suppose, in a small way I like to see myself in competition with the
Corporate and government crap mongers of this world. I also know that I and
a few other people will eventually be fenced off and restricted to a small
dark corner of their Corporate playground but, it will not stop me fighting
back with images and words that start to look at the shades of grey in
between the black and white.
When I started to see inside the commercial art and media world at college,
I liked the idea less and less of going into advertising or graphic design.
I did not even know what graphic design was when I went for my interview at
the college, I had wanted to do a two year pre-qualifying course where I got
to do just about everything on the art menu. After which, you could choose
an area of expertise. The college principal would only offer me a graphic
design course, so I accepted. George informed me years later, after I had
left the college, that the college principal was just juggling his course
figures, he did not give a monkey’s for what would be best for me.
I also don’t care for the elitist art world or markets. In England the
system is mainly run by middle class gallery owners and, if they don’t like
your accent or your work you don’t get to exhibit. Plus, a lot of my work,
tends to make people think and, doesn’t give off a happy feeling. I gave up
trying to compete with vases of flowers and pretty landscapes years ago.
I suppose I could upset a few people here but, hey it’s a free world ain’t
it ? For instance, I find
some things very hard to deal with, it really
upsets me and makes me angry. Then again I am at a disadvantage because I
have been out into the world, the other world, that 90% of westerners will
never see. I can report back that it is not a pretty sight, guilt should be
felt.
OK, lets talk about amoral insanity (greed) as opposed to just nuts or odd.
When I log on to a certain art data base where I have some paintings for
sale, I see someone’s work alongside mine, with a price of $10,000 !!! Jesus
F !! Now if anyone out there could give me a rational cohesive explanation
of why some guy should even ask that sort of sick money for what would be a
couple of days work, I am waiting to hear from you. Or come to that an
explanation of why some "more money than sense" as my old dad used to say,
individual would want to spend that amount, and insanely more, again I am
waiting to hear. Bare in mind the very large proportion of the human race
that die for want of a $10 vaccination and the people who cling to life on a
$1 or two a day.
eg. On the African Sudan Ugandan border, while eating the only thing on the menu
at an African bush "Hostel" I left some food on the side of my plate. The
Sudanese refugee I was travelling with asked if he could have it. He had a
certain look on his face and instantly, I felt like sh!t. Members of his
family had starved to death in the Sudan. I tried to explain that we in the
west had a bad habit for wastefulness and greed. He didn’t really
comprehend. When I started to tell him some people paid thousands of pounds
to have "medical" surgery, that the stomach is stapled up, and the jaw wired
to prevent gluttony, he laughed out loud, very loud. He might have had
nothing much left in this world, but at least he hadn’t gone mad!! This
critique does not include the people who do have genuine physiological life
threatening weight problems.
In the 80s I worked voluntarily for the Nicaraguan Solidarity Campaign
against organised US terror in that tiny country. I had made some sort of
decision to start using my art skills for something other than pure visual
pleasure. For me this experience really opened my eyes to the world view I
had been spoon fed since childhood. I also learned exactly who the CIA was,
it’s history and about the hypocrisy of the US government having the
copyright on the words, terrorist, freedom and democracy. As an artist I
must admit that I struggle with some of the shades of grey I encounter, and
how they shift to merge into different shades, given the expediency of a
given situation.
I have found this out on so many occasions in the past. While working as an
art 
technician at an Oxford college I took two months out in 1992 to go and
work in a refugee camp in war torn Yugoslavia, taking art activities with
kids in Croatia. When I arrived at UNHCR in Zagreb the Croatians told me to
bugger off! The Croatians were trying to give the impression that
everything was back to normal to try and get the tourist trade back. Sh!t,
the Croatian town of Slavonski Brod where I had to go, had had 12,000
artillery, mortar and rocket shells fired into it in four months! The twin
Bosnian town over the river had almost been flattened by the Serbs. So I
ended up working in a Bosnian refugee camp where nationalist politicians did
not set the agenda. After weeks of listening to horror stories and seeing
for myself what was going on I started to put my foot firmly in the Bosnian
camp. I was supposed to write an article and take photos for the college
back in England, who had set conditions for some meagre support. It was then
that I started to live more and more at the frontlines with a fighting unit
of the HVO Bosnian-Croat army in and around the almost besieged Bosnian town
of Bosanski Brod. My painting "Sarajevo surrounded" is actually more about
Bosanski Brod but, I got fed up with people asking "Bosanski where?" At the
end of the day an artillery shell is an artillery shell, and a bullet a
bullet and death is death. Because the western media circus concentrated all
their efforts on Sarajevo no one ever heard of the many other Bosanski Brods
in Bosnia. In Sarajevo the Serbs and Bosnian-Serbs put on a daily
performance that would guaranteed the western "news" media a return on their
financial outlay. Not many journo’s ventured into the backwoods where the
Serbs got on with the grisly game of ethnic cleansing virtually
unphotographed and unreported.
After Bosnia I gave up my job as art technician in Oxford and travelled to
Uganda in Africa. I had some contacts on the Ugandan-Sudan border in the
refugee camps and wanted to get something going to enable the kids to do
art. Hopefully in the refugee camps. I soon became disenchanted when I found
out the western funded education recourses wanted me to teach A-level
western standard art. This disturbed me because I wanted the kids to do
their own art, African art, not more indoctrination into western standards
and ways of doing things. Besides the funds did not exist for such a luxury
as art in the camps but, the 10s of thousands of $ spent on one scrap of art
work in the west would have kept me going for years. I love African art and
firmly believe the Africans should do things in an African way. They were
doing pretty well before western capitalists and missionaries came along and
f#*#ed them up. It took people like Picasso to realise that African art had
something special, and still does.
Disenchanted with western lifestyle and values, a couple of years later I
travelled down through Senegal into the Gambia and lived a spartan existence
in a neighborhood just outside of a town called Serekunda. The main aim
being to continue my book about the causes, results and the hypocrisy of
western governments during the Bosnian war. I am not a prolific artist that
concentrates on one media. I have switched between mainly pastel and collage
work, ceramics, photography, and a little writing. For me personally, art is
a state of mind, and more than logos on cereal box’s and paintings to match
the drapes, but that’s only me. Art for me is not always about the end
result, and it is certainly not about wealth or fame. It’s about one of the
only things I have to offer that can make any difference on any level no
matter how small. It’s also about the thing that has led me to places where
your legs turn to jelly and, your heart to stone. It’s about the people you
meet along the way that give you inspiration, vision, a life.
If Van Gogh was supposed to be mad, what is the man who pays $24 million for
one of his paintings?
"To think about events realistically, in terms of multiple causation’s, is
hard and emotionally unrewarding. How much easier, how much more agreeable
to trace each effect to a single and, if possible, a personal cause! To the
illusion of understanding will be joined, in this case, the pleasure of hero
worship, if the circumstances are favourable, and the equal, or even greater
pleasure, if they are unfavourable, of persecuting a scapegoat, Aldous
Huxley."
Martyn Lacey
He can be reached at: Martyn Lacey's Mailbox
Please Visit Martyn Lacey's Home Pages
