William Longden

Banska Bystrica Bananaskin

27/06/08

I nearly slid right down this grid
Slavonic style, in passing by
Not seeing a banana hid
Just freshly peeled and thrown aside
Awaiting some fool foot to ssslide
But fortunate for me
Another set of eyes did see
And shouted out alarmingly
‘Watch out for the banana skins’
At which indeed I did
And thankfully erect
I then took time sufficient to inspect
The empty yellow skin
Which seemed so close to falling in
Yet hovered as a flying fish
Arisen from the darkened depths
And clung to cling in desperate bid to keep from falling down the grid
Of course I could not let it pass, it would have been a shame
Looking forlorn and so outcast, I pictured it that it might last
Forever in its slipperiness before its slimy time slipped past
And here send it for you to view
A slive of slippery slobber set to get your salivarous tongue to whet
And chew just like the Zulus do
When chewing spit.

I have done a lot of work with Jac, to see those images go to:
https://jacdepczyk.com/search/images/for/longden/

Art criticism is a minefield. Art history is boring to those who are not devotees. In essence one can only say "I know what I like", attempt to explain why, and then situate this subjective opinion in a system of cultural and antropological references which may reassure those readers and gallery-goers (and purchasers) who are short on moral fibre.

William Longden was born in 1952 and from the age of four he claims to have become an artist. At any rate he appears to have been well supplied with materials from an early age and his whole education seems to have been art oriented: private tuition with a 'beatnik' (sic), Manchester High School of Art, Bristol College of Art, Manchester College of Art, Wolverhampton College of Art, Canterbury College of Art, Olaria Ceramique, Portugal, Goldsmiths' College and London University!

With occasional pauses the process seems to have gone on for twenty-four years. In my experience few people could have survived so much art education intact. Yet its effect on Will Longden is almost imperceptible. Like Alfred Wallis in St.Ives, the tutors and artists he met seem to have done him little, if any, permanent damage. (I met him in Canterbury). It is possible to see in his work affinities with artists and tendencies which have been current during the present century, but in conversation he appears genuinely unaware of them. I doubt if he has read Huizinga's Homo Ludens, yet he embodies in full its meaning for the artist. He seems to have preserved intact the qualities that made him decide he was an artist at the age of four. I suspect that Dubuffet would have welcomed his work into the 'Art Brut' collection on the same terms as art by lunatics and children, the Facteur Cheval, Pic-Assiette and the many child-like but extraordinary artists to whom he has drawn our attention. The distinction is that the ludic and scholastic nature of Longden's work is not unsophisticated. He is part of a tradition including Arman, Paolozzi, César, Tinguely, Spoerri and many others including most of the rest of the French Nouveaux Réalistes, whom, I suspect will one day be seen to be more important than Pop-Art.

(...)

Running through Longden's work is this element of subversion (and an artist is not an artist if he is not a subversive); there is the ludic element (and play is not a play if it is not subversive); and a strand which I can only describe as occult. This causes me some trouble as I like to think of myself as a rationalist; I have however read widely in alchemic texts and I am aware of the theory of resonances, now updated by someone I regard as charlatan, to be called morphic resonance. If there are Ley lines of the soul, Longden is mapping them.

Ralph Rumney 1989

go to >joyofsound.net

The Shoetree

13/07/08

Some say these loafers are just hanging around
The fruit of endless hours hung between heaven and earth
Treading the ether in timeless pursuit
All ripe and suspended as pensive thoughts
Awaiting a meaning of purpose to release
Without cause to neglect
Without rhythm to beat
No task to perform
No outcome to seek
Each one of a pair
Each pair a duet
A soulful chorus of footloose feet
Their motion of silence a harvest of neglect
By seasons unchanged
Of reason undressed
Between coming and going their lingering call
Echoed in the echoes of those dispossessed
In waiting without waiting
For the fall

Ophelia

12/05/08


Given to the flowers
Such brevity of life and love
This song of youthful tragedy
Sings madness into blissful tears
In stealing death from life’s embrace
In luring life from deaths domain
All in one long enduring kiss as scent upon a dormient breath
By seeking or not seeking such
By being or not being
Such broken-hearted dreams as this
Bring blessings wrapped as grim remorse
Yet bear no matter for concern
For as the river comes to flood
As sure the flame of passion burns
No time be lost in sad remorse
That will not by loves love return.

Time Peace

1/5/08

Some times we measure by the tic and others by the toc
Elsewhere we seek to set our watch by the face of the dandelion clock
With a single breathe, just one big puff
To free this time is quite enough
And as with all that’s once begun
In the blink of an eye its been and gone
So with each moment come to pass
As grains of sand in an hour glass
When all time pent is spent and run
Then left behind is time undone
And in so being best of all
In being of no time at all.

The Nest

20/02/08

I built me a nest in which to reside
Its walls full of holes its roof full of sky
Upon floor lined with feathers and moss I do sleep
So to bath in the light of the moon and the sun
I dance with the stars in the theatre of night
And sing with the chorus at dawning and dusk
In treetops and hedgerows and bushes and copse
In drainpipes and gutters and chimneys and stacks
I build me my nest with the coming of spring
And settle my eggs ‘til they’re ready and ripe
Then I race to bring food for my chicks as they hatch
To dine them on budlings and earthworms and grubs
I nurture my young in this chalice of light
As to summer I watch them arise
When as fledglings they flutter and flounder to flight
With hearts filled with glee as they race through the skies
Singing their hearts to the freedom of life
As I watch to delight in their joyful refrain

Conch

5/4/08

I am but the shell of myself
And as with a song from the lips of a conch
Through the ocean of sky I am issued and spent
Into rain shed to fall upon mountain and plain
That the silts might be formed to be scribed into name
And by time set in place as the substance of space
In this shell of myself so become.

Buzzy Bee

30/05/08

I saw a bee
A bumbley bee
Amongst the blue flowered comfrey
Collecting pollen from each bloom
To the sound of a bizzy bee buzzy bizzing tune
Bizz bizzy buzzy buzz buzz buzzy bizzzzzy
Buzz buzzy bizzy bizz buzz buzzy bizzeee
With yellow pollen stashed and stuccoed to each thigh
To satiate the Bumble Queen of the bizzy bee bumbling hive
Then loaded full as could be a bizzy bee
This bee headed home bizzy buzzing busily
And after dizzy jiggings jigged at the bumbley bee hive door
This bee ate honeycomb cakes for tea
Then buzzed off dizzily to find some more
Bizzy bizzy buzz buzz
Buzz buzz bizzeeeeeeeeeeeee
Buzz buzz dizzy bizz
Buzzy buisy bee.