INTRO / CUSTODIANS

PWB: Hi Graeme, thanks so much for agreeing to get involved..

GB: I like the concept and also found simply swapping anecdotes with you over the phone a cathartic experience as I knew you shared the same drive, passion and dedication.
The time seems perfect for me to reflect simply for my own mental health as I become increasingly aware that my selfish endeavors will be left for my family to re-distribute, or hopefully will become the next generation of custodians. I know I have spent three quarters more time collecting than the time I have left, so this is the final phase which needs careful and erudite consideration.
I will send some thoughts over the next few days (months! – PWB) which may be of interest to your very interesting project…

I know I have amassed an important collection, which is not that unique when there is generous access to finance. What makes my collection unique is that each and every item has been a challenge to buy, thus needing alternative strategies and qualities to acquire. So behind those more expensive items could be a series of perhaps 10 or more other menial deals. So my ‘success’ is really down to longevity, knowledge, passion, networks, dedication, discipline, and inappropriate egotistical priorities and perspectives.

40 YEARS LATE

PWB: Can you say a little about how / when you started collecting?

GB: My earliest memory of collecting occurred as a young schoolboy of about 7, when I had begun drawing animals at a level beyond my age which led to an early interest in Natural History. Chivers Jelly held a promotion where if you collected 5 stamps from the reverse of packaging you could send off for a dynamically decorated, divided cardboard box of fossils and gems. A girl in my class had achieved this long before me and had already shown off her Chivers Jelly fossils to the class. Once I had the 5 stamps and sent off my application, I received a letter from Chivers explaining I was too late and the promotion was closed, which was to leave me with a scar and feeling of loss for the rest of my life.

About 10 years ago I was at a local car boot sale and amongst the paste table ephemera I saw a small vintage box with a dinosaur on it which instantly hit me like a bolt and viscerally burnt through decades into my childhood, I had eventually received My Chivers Jelly fossils 40 years late, and whilst they seemed far smaller and of very poor quality, it is one of my cheapest yet favourite items.

This insignificant crap box of stone chips had controlled my behaviour, fired my imagination and informed my persona and identity for my entire life.

PLASTIC SURGERY

GB: You will observe the classic Hunter Gatherer at work at any Vintage Toy Fair where fully grown and elderly men race around, often with partners trailing behind, as they try to recapture objects which somehow reinforce their identity, memories, influences almost like Plastic Surgery as an elixir to the passage of psychological time.
So these nascent objects are not simply cold tin, alloy and plastic, they also possess a power which resonates with testosterone.

HEADCASE

GB: I have always collected skulls, not because of their connotations toward death, morbidity or spiritualism but because to me they represent pure sculpture and the perfection of evolution.

They are structures and armatures which support life’s essential and most valuable delicate tissues in the most effective and economical manner. They are caskets for the senses, emotions and intelligence.

One of my favourite Paolozzi sculptures is the Head of Invention, which stands outside the original Design Museum.

I love the form based on the head of James Watt but the inscription quoted from Leonardo da Vinci, explains everything about sculpture in a formal sense.  ‘Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous…..’

Skulls like humans and the things which humans create and build also possess a ‘symmetry’ which we often forget to see when we look at it all the time?

GB: So to avoid slavishly following a conventional, rational, logical, and ‘natural’ sense of aesthetics, I like to juxtapose and curate Nature’s sculptural objects alongside Post Modernism, Punk, Art Brut or Contemporary sculpture to create a discourse or dramatic iconoclastic dialogue between incongruous items to supercharge and activate a space.
I prefer the unexpected, surreal, awkward and absurd over conventional themed interior design, yet sometimes focus on collecting multiples of similar objects.

GB: For most, themed collecting or ‘completist’ collecting follows certain rules of what qualifies to fit a pre-determined Aesthetic, period span, particular manufacturer, designer or full set !

My interest with similar items is a conceptual sculptural pursuit to enable a new ‘Symmetry’, where objects are made and start out in the same place, become detached, scattered, deconstructed, chaotically travel, are moved, pushed, and resold many times by random individuals all for different reasons. Then are brought back together after a long journey, reunited with idiosyncratic scars and damage which offer clues to their diverse treatment and experiences.

HAMMER PRICE.

GB: The humble Mallet is an object I have collected more than any other, and probably have more than anybody else. I estimate I have about 4-500 which I realise does not sound healthy or rational.

A mallet is the go between for craftsmen and materials, shaping and being shaped, sculpting whilst being sculpted.

I make sculptures out of multiple mallets to elevate their status from subservience to the visual centre of attention.

I like the contrast of solid Block skewered by long Stick, which could have metaphorical or symbolic overtones of abuse, sex or violence. They vary in colour, patina, texture, size, grain, type of wood and shape, yet are all designed for function.

One advantage is they are of very low value and plentiful, so I do get a regular buzz, but am still very discerning about which to buy.

Other dealers have watched me carry mallets for years and some began to think there was a market demand within the antiques trade when in reality there is none. So I began to see others starting to buy them, then sellers started to increase the price thinking there was new and sudden competitive collectibility attached.

What other dealers do with them I have no idea – once their tent is up!.. and I always smile, wink and nod at others I see buying one.

SURVIVORS

GB: As we all cherry pick our way through life, many are searching for perfection, beauty, status, landmarks or the ‘best’.

I too am guilty of similar aspirations, yet the friends I have collected are all works in progress as am I.

My friends are ‘one offs’, unique, damaged, scarred, honest, unusual, eccentrics, surprising and yet so inspiring.

A chip in porcelain, distressed leather on a chair, cracked plastic, blistered enamel signs and rust on tin toys, often ensures that these items are overlooked and discarded.

I am becoming increasingly aware of the way myself and other collectors are using discernment, prejudice, and exclusion, where, common, utilitarian, broken, and less attractive items are deemed unimportant, yet they are all survivors.

PWB: ‘Survivors’ is so very poignant + I feel like this about the lamps, and will generally buy whatever I can in (almost) any condition.

GB: When I collect pebbles on a beach, sifting through millions of tiny objects, looking for something ‘special’, I know I am actually displaying behaviours akin to eugenics, blindness and discrimination.

So I tend to search for those stones which embody a narrative, a trauma, or display a form which exhibits historical evolution or that defence and self preservation against the erosion of waves by allowing water to pass through it’s middle.

PWB: Whenever we’ve spoken I get the impression that you’re often collecting a few different things at any given time. Do you have a rough ‘manifesto’ that backs up each collection?

GB: Whilst I do have passionate areas of interest and targeted focus, I prefer my collecting to remain fluid, constantly evolving as I learn more about history and human achievement through the objects which remain.

As a life long artist and teacher, I was very fortunate to study at Birmingham polytechnic where some of the best post war artists taught. We were also surrounded by Victorian plaster casts of classical figures which have returned to my attention more recently.

GB: Whilst I will always be motivated by historical artifacts and objects, my main areas of interest are in the Twentieth Century Art and Design fields.

I have amassed what I consider to be the most powerful objects humans have designed and made which chart social, political, technical and cultural change and progress over the last 100 years.

These dedicated areas are Chairs, Prints, Sculpture, Modern Design, Graphics, Advertising, Toys, Lighting and Decorative Arts…

STUDIO 54

GB: When explaining what I do to anyone who asks, I always refer to it as a ‘collection’, however as a life long artist everything I do must have a gravitas, meaning and conceptual underpinning.

I actually perceive what I do as an archive or psychological record of behaviours and actions over 40 years. So the terms ‘installation’, ‘performance’, ‘collage’ or ‘experimental laboratory’, may be more appropriate, but would take longer to explain.

It’s almost like a Big Bang of Human creativity in reverse, where all those I believe to describe 20th Century culture and politics most effectively are drawn and sucked together from around the world in an implosive singularity of mass, where Space is compressed.

My wife always reminds me that there is too much stuff, but I always defend myself by claiming ‘it’s not the amount stuff that’s the problem, it’s purely a lack of space!’

You can see all the Design classics and Decorative antiques given the respectful space they deserve in all the museums Galleries and interior design books and magazines, but here, they are rubbing shoulders in a unique and diverse community to ‘see what happens?’

Studio 54…..’you were never sure what would happen next, but you always knew something extraordinary would definitely happen’…… Andy Warhol

At 54, I feel very lucky to have lived through probably the most interesting and eventful cultural, political and technological period in history.

So born in the mid sixties to liberated free thinking, modern parents, my adolescence and identity informed by Skateboarding, Art and Punk, I have witnessed extraordinary transformations and progress in Space travel, Popular Culture, technology, personal freedom, and witnessed many powerful, pivotal and shocking World events.

I have also received an insight into man’s divisive destruction and ignorance which could ensure that Humans will be a brilliant yet very short lived race.

I want to make a large lifetime Artwork which which represents all of the above, and that is what I am doing…… not simply ‘collecting’.

SOCIAL SCULPTURE

GB: As I work on my Assemblage or what Beuys would term ‘Social Sculpture’, many often proclaim, “I don’t collect anything, life’s about experiences, not materialism and objects !”

This is hard to argue against and I must respect it and sometimes do actually envy it.

However we actually are All collectors.

It might be partners, likes on social media, nights out, things to eat and drink, clothes, money, shoes, jewellery, surgical enhancements, phone contacts, networks, magazines, pleasures, bags, hairstyles, plastics, and fuels.

As organic, fluid, free thinking moving shapes, we surprisingly also all decide to surround ourselves with verticals and horizontals, living in geometric boxes of various sizes. Bizarrely we run towards straight lines for safety when we are actually nature.

GB: We all personalise our spaces with photos,  furnishings and decorative items to represent  something of our status or identities, which familiarity ultimately makes us happy, comfortable and safe.

The main difference with my activity is that I am surrounding myself with items which destabilise, challenge, educate, inspire and stretch me, as I see the word through the eyes of the greatest creative and innovative minds of the twentieth century.

Part 2 continues here..