JAMES CAUTY CRUSHES £4000 CAR - WHY?

[Silky]

"UNTITLED": Oil and crushed metal on tarmac will be on public display
at the junction of Station Road and North Street, Portslade, Brighton
from Monday 3rd July.

The art will be dumped at 2 pm if you wish to witness the event.

The Bad Car Bad Art commemorative stamps will be the CNPD's Stamps of
the Month for July. Date of issue 1st August 2006.

Read a full account of the car crushing bad art experience by Miss
Pokeno here www.cnpdonline.com


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What you need to know about James Cauty and the CNPD

James Cauty was founder member of wild pop groups The Orb, The JAMMS,
The KLF and art do-gooders The K-Foundation. He also founded the
Blacksmoke Organisation, an eco-friendly post-terrorist peacenik art
collective, but he resigned his post there in 2005 to spend more time
with his stamp collection.

Since the inception of the CNPD in October 2005 James Cauty has been
working closely with the aquarium, London to bring the world the finest
in iconic, iconoclastic and topical stampage. This stampage takes the
form of real stamps, first day covers and limited edition prints.
Through a series of cunning marketing ploys including rigged pricing,
small and cheap editions, and the deletions of popular images, a highly
collectable art form has been established where serious collectors can
get rich fast.

James Cauty UK artist 1956 Liverpool
1987-2324..the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (sample happy Scottish rap
with antlers)
1989-1991...the KLF (a brit award buried at Stonehenge, bad crop
circles and a wicker man)

1993-1995...the K Foundation ('money' a major body of cash and a box of
matches)
1996...K 2 Plant Hire Ltd (orange high visibility jackets and
containers)
1997-1999...Advanced Acoustic Armaments (home made sonic weapons and a
dead cow)
2002-2005...Blacksmoke (stamps of mass destruction)
2005- The CNPD (Cautese Nationál Postal Disservice) the glorification
of stamps.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE AQUARIUM

Far from the bright lights of the White Cube and Victoria Miro
galleries, in a small intimate shop on a quiet Georgian walkway in
London, the aquarium, home to the finest and roughest in art and
publishing, brews its own unique brand of anti-art art. Though its
walls and display cases are full of original works of art, owner Steve
Lowe shies away from the classification of art gallery, hoping to avoid
being associated with the preconceived expectations of such places.
With a remit somewhere between a non-sectarian approach to creativity
and a quest for the approachable and attainable in art, the aquarium
prides itself on actively assisting in the production of the art and
ideas of it’s artists. With no real sense of boundaries or care for
what’s current in art, the aquarium has produced novels and records,
handmade books, t-shirts, jewellery, limited edition prints, wallpaper,
bed linen, internet sites, art multiples and most recently stamps; all
working in conjunction with a series of innovative exhibitions in the
small gallery space.

The aquarium opened in June 2003 and is now host to a small but diverse
band of eclectic talents and “artist/rebel mavericks,” including the
great refusenik Billy Childish, world wide cult icon known for his
prolific painting, poetry and song writing; Infamous post art stamp
maker and career nihilist, James Cauty, best known for a string of
music chart toppers with the KLF and later cementing his place in
history by burning a million quid as part of a K-Foundation action; and
Situationist druid, Jamie Reid, prominent for his iconic designs for
the Sex Pistols, to name a few. The aquarium has become a legitimate
home to alternative, underground and rogue art and artist, one of the
few in the UK. Lowe believes that the world needs alternatives to the
homogeny of mainstream culture and bankruptcy of contemporary fine art
practice. He intends for his space to be just that, not by replacing
the mainstream, but rather by offer a side dish in the form of an
insidious interloper. Lowe in collaboration with his artists are
working toward consistently developing and offering a style of art
which embodies independence and integrity while remaining actively
creative, accessible and affordable.

the aquarium’s customers include children, plumbers and a celebrity.


Steven Lowe
The Aquarium
10 Woburn Walk
London WC1H 0JL

0207 387 8417
www.theaquariumonline.co.uk

[Silky]

Car Crushing... a bad art
experience with James Cauty by Miss Pokeno
Jimmy bought a second hand car from a dealer in Portslade.

Portslade is chav central on the fringes of Brighton.

The car cost him £4K which is a lot of cash when you’re trying to earn a living from making art stamps like he is these days.

Within two hours of handing over the money the car started leaking oil. Loads of it, all over the road. So he took it back and after a week of lame excuses and sad stories the dealer gave it back to him with the gearbox taped up and no oil leaks. Two days later the whole damn engine started leaking water.

At this point Jimmy realised he’d been sold a lemon, took the car back and said: “Hey, you sold me a lemon so you can have this car back. Just give me my cash and I’ll go somewhere else and buy something that works like a car ought to.”

The dealer said: “Forget it.... Go make lemonade... You bought the car so you gotta have it... And no you ain’t getting any money out of me cos I don’t have it anymore.”

So Jimmy said f**k you and left the clapped out car on the side of the road outside the dealers shop thinking the guy might have some sort of cosmic epiphany and send the cash by return post. Eternal optimism is one of the things I love most about Mr Cauty.

One month and alot of trains and buses later, Jimmy decided to take the man to court cos he couldn’t bear the idea that some bastard could just sell nuts cars and get away with it. So he went online, filed his case and waited for the letter to come from the court saying he’d have his day. Another month went by and still nothing had happened. Jimmy hates it when there's no action and he hates it more when mean bastards get away with things they shouldn’t. So late one night he decided just turn the whole situation around and make the car into something else. Transform that truly worthless piece of crap into a really cool piece of art and then offer it back to the dealer for £4K. A bargain price for a truely fine example of car crush sculpture. Like the Bhudda boys say: “Conquer that sad miser with generosity”

Figuring he had to destruct the car before he could transform it, Jimmy spent a couple of days hanging round with the old blokes down at the scrap metal yard on the sea front near Portslade. They have a huge demolition plant and if you’ve got it they can crush it. He told them the story about the car and watched the way all the old metal scrap went into the crushing machine and came out in big neat blocks with curved edges and sharp corners. The guys at the yard said sure they’d crush the car for him, so he had it towed down there and made an appointment for 2 o’clock on the following Wednesday to turn the useless car into something useful... Something real beautiful... Some glorious car crash crushed sculpture. He had high hopes.

So now its Wednesday and we’re driving down from London to make our date with the scrap men. It s a stinking hot day and we drive fast round the M25 with the radio playing static talking about how great the car is going to look when it was all compressed, cubed, sliced and rearranged. Jimmy still doesn’t know quite what he's going to do with the finished masterpiece but he has plan A, B and C. All of which could land us in jail if we don’t play our cards right.

We get down to his workshop in Brighton early and he starts ringing around trying to find a tip truck to transport the finished piece back to his place. There aren’t a lot of tipper trucks for hire in Brighton so we end up driving to Lewes ten miles away where we finally find one big enough to carry the two tons of dirty metal we’re expecting to take home. We leave my car in Lewes and drive the truck back to Brighton, making it to the scrap yard just in time for the last dance.

The scrap yard is wild. A couple of acres on the docks piled three stories high with filthy metal mountains... washing machines... wheelchairs... crates... car bodies. Its crawling with neanderthal men covered in tattoos, dirt and flab that maybe their wives once knew as muscle. We aren’t allowed to take photos and we definitely aren’t allowed to film. All we can do is witness.

No-one can hear much of what’s said cos there’s just a continuous roar of trucks in and out dumping and collecting scrap, but we manage to get hold of the guy who’s our connection and he escorts us like a hot date to the front of the queue. We see Jimmy's car gleaming in all its very *friendly* personty thoroughbred glory at the far end of the yard. Above the car looms an enormous claw on the end of a 100 foot cold metal crane. Word’s gone round the yard that there’s this crazy artist that wants to turn his four thousand quid car into some sort of art nuts, so everyone downs tools and comes to watch the crushing. It’s starting to feel like there’s a gang rape about to happen.

Eventually one guy shouts out a command and the huge metal claw arcs across the summer sky and lands with glorious precision on top of Jimmy's car. It pauses for a moment, teasing and twitching.... and then the claw shudders and heaves and rips into the sides of the car; Squeezing and tearing the body. The skin punctures like a tin can... So easy... So sweet... Next the claw just picks the entire two tons of car up and lifts it with gentle grace into the metal crushing machine. I look over at Jimmy and he’s laughing, and then the bloke standing next to him starts laughing, and then we all start laughing uncontrollably and it just feels great. One of those perfect moments in time. Hallelujah.

Ten minutes later the car emerges out of the crushing machine and it looks like crap. It doesn’t look anything like we’d imagined. No-one’s laughing anymore and Jimmy looks worried.

Its nothing like that beautiful compressed sharp edged cube we’d wanted. What we see is a huge long piece of partly compressed and half heartedly mangled metal, plastic and vinyl. Dirty old rag bits hang off it and flap around. It just looks like a piece of nuts... Rubbish. It don’t look like art.

Jimmy inspects it and tells them it looks crap so they put it through the crusher again. This time it comes out a bit better, but still nothing like we’d imagined. So he gets them to cut it in half and puts the best half on the back of the truck. Jimmy pays the money, gets a destruction certificate and we drive out.

We’re both confused. Pissed off and feeling ugly.

We start driving along the sea front with the mangled , abused car block on the back of the truck and we've only gone about 500 yards when Jimmy suddenly bangs his hand on his chest and starts groaning.

“nuts... I’ve got this big pain in my chest and I want to throw up.” he says.

His face has gone white and it’s obvious something is seriously wrong with him. We pull the truck over to the side of the road and I get him to lie down on a bench telling him to just breathe long and slow but thinking oh Jesus he’s having a heart attack and I’m going to have to get that stinking hunk of metal off the truck all by myself.

We call the NHS Direct line on his mobile and some nurse talks him through what’s happening to his body.

She says “Oh maybe you are having a heart attack. Call a cab and go directly to your nearest hospital.”

At this point we abandon the entire art project along with all the other harebrained plans he has. We leave the truck with two wheels on the pavement pointing in the vague direction of France, and take a cab to the A and E at the Sussex County Hospital.

Next thing you know they have Jimmy on a stretcher wired up to a cardio machine and doctors are taking blood samples and making him piss into big glass bottles. They can’t figure out what's going on with him and we don’t tell them where we’ve been or what we’ve been doing, so they say he has to stay all night in the observation ward.

The place is a suburban war zone. Cracked out boys with heads split open, screaming at the nurses... Old ladies shouting for bedpans and some woman opposite moans and moans in pain every thirty seconds like she's auditioning for a lead part in a snuff movie.
We spend the whole night in half sleep lying on a narrow bed too scared to take our boots off in case someone thinks we might want to stay for longer than we have to.

We wait for the results of his blood tests.

We wait to make sure he's not about to die of a battered heart.

Its scary as nuts but we giggle just to pass the time anyway.

In the end a late night doctor says everything looks fine and he can go home. So we do. Pick up the abandoned truck which is exactly as we left it and dump the crushed car in the early morning light outside Jimmy's workshop. As we’re washing the oil out of the back of the truck with buckets of cold water and detergent I tell him it feels like we are washing away the traces of some dirty murderous crime.

He says “It’s just art babe - art always feels dirty."

[Silky]

Jimmy! hope your ok?

Take it easy for a bit No car crushin for a few weeks ;D

[martin]

Went to Portslade today to see Jimmy and Gimpo deliver the 'bad Art' to the 'bad car' dealer.

Never seen so many people with cameras (video and still) suddenly turn up in a quiet town ;D

I'll post some photos when I sort them out..... but it was good!

[martin]

more info and photos up on the website....

www.cnpdonline.com/stamp-of-the-month.htm#

"Untitled: Oil and crushed metal on tarmac" is now on show outside County Cars of Sussex, 2 North Street, Portslade, Brighton until Friday 14th July.

Mr Berryman, owner of County Cars, was on holiday when the exhibit opened on Monday 3rd July. Mr Cauty was therefore unable to finalise the art deal, but will make another attempt when the artwork is due for collection on the 14th. It is also rumoured that Steve Lowe, director of the aquarium and art dealer, will be there with a pocket crammed full of cash in a bid to buy the piece off Mr Berryman, second hand car dealer. It could be an historic moment.

[Silky]

Great stuff Martin ;D

Cant wait for the next installment

[Silky]

Did anyone get any photos from outside the dealers? ;D

Could you post them up on the forum pleeeeaaasseeee? ;D

Thanks ;D

[martin]

yeah yeah I did. Just have a MASSIVE back log of photos to sort out......

admin said:

Did anyone get any photos from outside the dealers? ;D

Could you post them up on the forum pleeeeaaasseeee? ;D

Thanks ;D

[martin]

at last.....

;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

[martin]

more....

[martin]

there are more but photobucket is giving me gip.... I'll try again later

[Silky]

Brilliant work Martin ;D

[martin]

the final installment of the saga is up on the webiste...

f*** knows if I understand it all but it is funny and the pics of all the cash etc made me larf. I don't imagine a small car dealer in a small town has ever had a customer like Jimmy before! ;D

www.cnpdonline.com/bad_art_info.htm#bott

The Holy Communion ... the conclusion of the bad art experience with James Cauty by Miss Pokeno

In the intervening week two things happen. First the council says they will not extend Jimmys permit to keep the crushed car masterpiece on the side of the road and secondly the dealer makes it clear that he is open to negotiation despite being completely baffled by the whole scenario. By now I’m starting to feel really sorry for the poor car dealer. He has just never dealt with the likes of Mr Cauty before.

A phone call ensues and Mr Colin Berryman,the car dealer, accuses Jimmy of loosing him 1.5K in buisiness over the last week. This seems reasonable until Jimmy points out that perhaps he lost the revenue simply by being on holiday for the week. To this Mr Berryman has no answer so agrees to meet Jimmy and Steve the following Friday at 2 0’clock to sort the whole matter out once and for all.

Friday comes too soon and I have to regretfully decline Jimmys invitation to accompany him on this, the final journey. So in between supervising the distribution of several tons of ready mix concrete in London and trawling the sales racks at Harvey Nics looking for mecca I track Jimmy’s exploits in Brighton by phone and text.

The texts from him to me go something like this:

7:00am…Making breakfast for kids and Gimpo
8:00am…Got kids to school...first in the playground...sad
8:10am…Daisy (Jimmy's daughter) is sick…no school. She's with us on the truck
9:46am...Picked up a lorry and we’re driving to Crawley to pick up a crate to put the car in
10:21am…Lost in Crawley
10:30am…Crawley is not a good place to be lost in
11:02am…Got the crate…nuts its big!
11:29am…Daisy has figured out I spent almost 3K on hire cars since January…f**k!
12:55am…Got Steve from train station.
1:10pm…In caf having premeeting meeting
1:48pm…County Cars here we come!

And then I hear nothing. Dead line. No texts. Nothing.

I’m on the 137 bus by this time heading back from the promised land with nothing but a pair of black lace designer knickers that are two sizes two small and all I can think of is what the hell is going on in Brighton and wishing I was there. At 2.30 he rings me and shouts "I got the money!"


He's shouting so loud on my phone that the whole bus load of people can hear him and I’m shouting back and people start looking at me and shifting uneasily in their seats, but I don’t care because his excitement is like an infectious disease that I really want to catch.

"So what happened. Tell me what happened" I say

"Well, me and Steve and Gimpo went into the car dealer’s office and we sat down at his table and its all very friendly. He said he didn’t have a clue what we were on about, but yeah ok, he’d give me 4K for the piece 'cos he doesn’t really want to go to court and neither do I. Trouble is he didn’t have any money on him. So then Steve said he’d loan Mr. Berryman the 4K so Mr. Berryman gave me the cash and Steve got an IOU. Then Steve gave the IOU back to Mr. Berryman and got the Bad Art piece in exhange. Well anyway…we all got confused especially when at the last minute Steve decided to charge one pound interest on the loan. But it was great…cash everywhere…all over the table. It was like some weird game of poker and I’m not quite sure how it happened but I won the jackpot."

"So then once I had the cash in my pocket we all went out onto the pavement, put the crated up car art on the back of the lorry and Colin was patting me on the back and we were all shaking hands and I’m even thinking of giving him an Artist of the British Empire medal.”

"Hey Jimmy that’s so fantastic. Congratulation!" I say.

We have a moment of reverent silence on the phone. The sun shines down on the 137 bus in London. The angels rise in choral exhaltation above Mr. Berrymans car dealership in Brighton. For one blissful, sweet moment, all is at perfect peace in the world of the CNPD.

[Silky]

arrrhh, brilliant! ;D

I wonder how long County Cars will be trading for? I give it a month before they change their name ;D

Well done Jimmy! ;D ;D ;D

[bcal]

Cool photos, nice one. Check out Gimpo rockin an Inspiral Carpets t shirt!! Not seen one o them in years.