AT THE END OF ART and Looking for Billy Conklin

by Alan Pittsfield for ART TIMES

LONDON - How do you respond to the criticism or accolade that Billy Conklin is the new Damian Hirst? It simply infuriates me. Damian’s a nancy boy, art-wise. He’s been England’s answer to Jeff Koons all along. The one put basketballs in an aquarium; the other tosses an old dead shark in. And both have a crew to do all their work for them.

In comes Billy Conklin. All ballocks. He goes after everybody and everything. Now that’s an artist for the 21^st Century. So, why does he have to suddenly abandon London for Detroit? And why is he taking his seminal show IS LONDON BURNING with him? To make sense of it all, let’s talk about Conklin’s show itself and what prompted this body of work. 

On July 7^th there was a terrorist attack in the tubes. People were killed. People were hurt. People maimed. And the next day, other people went on with their lives. But there were changes. Small changes. These other people were affected by not being directly affected. And Conklin wanted to record these imperceptible changes with his camera. A glimmer of sadness carried in the corner of an eye. Of doubt, of anticipation for the future. Even of defiance. He wanted to document their faces and body language in order to be read by a larger audience that, in the end, would come to share these same doubts and anticipations.

To this end, Conklin set up his camera in a butcher shop near Russell Square, where one of the tube stations was hit. He realised he had to shoot within 24 hours of the blasts to full-effect. He spent half the day of July 8^th at the butcher’s shop then moved over to a kabob stand at King’s Cross. Whoever wandered in the door got their picture taken. And got their bloody emotions captured.

Within the week, Conklin had also found out about a terror response exercise held by the government in London. There were 200 role-playing victims in a terror exercise here, feigning a range of injuries, both chemical and from flying debris. A large debris pile itself, complete with crushed cars and a bus, was erected near the Bank Station where much of the action took place. Rumor has it that this simulated attack was happening at the same exact time as the real bomb blasts on July 7^th.

The second part of Conklin’s project includes some of those actors who’d performed as casualties in this terror exercise. He brought them into his studio and asked them to recreate their responses to flying debris and chemical agents and the like. Whatever was their specialty. The resulting images were both horrific and comical at once.

Following the unfortunate incident of July 22^nd, Conklin also invited photographer Stig Eklund to create a portrait of the Brazilian Jean Michael de Menezes being shot in the head. Eklund ended up doing several more portraits, which were a fantastic addition to the exhibition. Conklin then mounted the completed show at the Treadwell Gallery on August 4^th, now titled IS LONDON BURNING. But then the whole thing got gob-whacked from the blue.

First off there was a fight. Two critics went at each other at the opening. Adrian Searle and Mathew Collings supposedly knocked each other about. But it wasn’t about the art, as I heard it. Being more about the hors d’oeuvres. I think Adrian double-dipped something. But the press put a provocative spin to it all anyway. Which got the attention of the authorities, those that could read. 

Three days later, responding to press accounts of the fight and of the show’s contents, police raided the exhibition. Acting in the cloak of night, they forced the gallery director, Louise Bluth, out of bed and downstairs to unlock the doors. They made off with all the portraits and took Eklund’s photo of Menezes getting shot as well. They took it for the actual thing, you see. A la Zapruder. As for the portraits, they told Bluth that several of the sitters were suspected of being possible terrorists scouting locations for the eventual July 21^st attacks. They even made some arrests from it all. Later let go with apologies of course.

And then they gave everything back, only the show didn’t go on. They gave everything back, yes. But they also advised the gallery to shut down the exhibition permanently. Citing the work as inflammatory and anti-Islamic. Louise Bluth gave in to their harassment and threats of further intimidation. And that was that. The work has had a self-imposed ban ever since. It never really had the time to build an audience, yet the press went crazy attacking it all. And attacking Conklin. Cesar Marzetti even wrote a piece accusing Conklin of being an art terrorist. His name went on a list, if lists exist. Whatever, the dust refused to settle and Conklin hasn’t found a gallery since who’ll even look at his work. Let alone exhibit it. Yet no one seems to know exactly what they’re afraid of here. And no one has the piss to question or stand up.

So Conklin transplants his art to America. Detroit, to be exact. The city isn’t on any art map, so his work should be safe there. At the end of art, so to speak. The people there are reported to be generous and unencumbered with the prejudice and temerity of a thriving cultural hub. Conklin had already installed a show titled CENTERFOLDS at Detroit’s Museum of New Art. Its reception went unheralded. So much so, the museum’s director has been encouraged to invite Conklin’s IS LONDON BURNING for a November opening.

His future securely tentative, Billy Conklin will only survive at the end of art.