Humanity at Hove, Museum of creativity 30th Nov - Jan 2024
HUMANITY EXHIBITION AT MUSEUM OF CREATIVITY, HOVE.
Only fools
Rewording of the Only Fools And Horses theme tune by Justin Anderson & performed by Xavier.
I take a pony from your pocket
You get the suitcase from the van
If you want to consume
But there ain’t much room
Then Governor’s, What’s your plan?
Cos where it all goes to is a mystery
It’s in the land-fill round the corner,
Or floating in the sea
But here’s the one thing that I’ve had enough.
Why do we all need so much stuff?
La La La La La etc
Closing Theme…
We don’t need
Half priced cracked ice
Miles and miles of carpet tiles
TVs mobile phones
Leave the world to heal alone
Let’s - nurse - the - earth
Nature rebirth.
And not another tracksuit or gadget that nobody needs
The world is watching, world is waiting
Watching and waiting
No Carbon Tax, No Shell & no BP
No Money Back No Guarantee
Black or White, Rich or Poor
Resources go there is no more
God bless Nature Freaks
Viva Nature Freaks
Long Live Nature Freaks
Cest Manifique, Nature Freaks
Manifique, Nature Freaks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhGARU0gyVU
Rewording of the Only Fools And Horses theme tune by Justin Anderson & performed by Xavier.
I take a pony from your pocket
You get the suitcase from the van
If you want to consume
But there ain’t much room
Then Governor’s, What’s your plan?
Cos where it all goes to is a mystery
It’s in the land-fill round the corner,
Or floating in the sea
But here’s the one thing that I’ve had enough.
Why do we all need so much stuff?
La La La La La etc
Closing Theme…
We don’t need
Half priced cracked ice
Miles and miles of carpet tiles
TVs mobile phones
Leave the world to heal alone
Let’s - nurse - the - earth
Nature rebirth.
And not another tracksuit or gadget that nobody needs
The world is watching, world is waiting
Watching and waiting
No Carbon Tax, No Shell & no BP
No Money Back No Guarantee
Black or White, Rich or Poor
Resources go there is no more
God bless Nature Freaks
Viva Nature Freaks
Long Live Nature Freaks
Cest Manifique, Nature Freaks
Manifique, Nature Freaks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhGARU0gyVU
Humanity arrives at Project Ability, Glasgow.
OUTSIDE IN: ARTIST OF THE MONTH September 2023
https://outsidein.org.uk/news/artist-of-the-month/aotm-september-2023/
When and why did you start making artwork?
have always been a maker; things such as Lego, Airfix models, making and painting them, as a boy with busy fingers. I have always had a fascination with flight. Planes were my favourite models to make & watching birds fly. I would enjoy painting and copying pictures of birds.
In my late teens, my mother introduced me to the craft of working with stained glass. We attended an adult education stained glass class together. I was considering enrolling on a higher education course, most probably in stained glass, when I received a near fatal head injury when cycling home one night, at the age of 18.
After surviving a 10 day coma, I spent 2 months intensive rehabilitation in the Maudsley Hospital’s neuro rehab unit. Following this debilitating injury my life became therapy, focus… so my rehab process became an obsession to me, with all my energies directed into relearning & extending my basic life skill’s, from walking, talking, swimming etc. Anything that could allow my body to acquire the skills I needed to help my functions bounce back to something like it once had.
It is difficult to say how much my injury shaped my artistic imagination but it certainly fed it. A fascination with acquiring, expressing & refining my body skills, from balance needed for walking, and other physical activities. I became obsessed with yo-yoing to develop my subtler arm movements, & hone some of the finer motor skills needed for drawing & painting.
Once I had some basic physical capabilities, it allowed me to return to cycling. Which was a big relief to walking, as this hurt my knees & back post the accident and brain injury. Cycling would give me a strong contrast with the fatigue I would & still get. I need regular (2 or 3) naps a day, just 20 mins, enough to lose or go quasi conscious. I imagine it like a battery, when the oxygen builds up, I get the need to dissipate. Then when recharged I can reapproach things with more focus and positive energy.
The London life & heavy traffic was distracting for me at that the time, & not the most appropriate for my rehab, try as I was. In 1980’s there was a lot less support for head injury survivors, pre Headway brain injury charity, that there is today.
It ‘s a long story but I got the opportunity to move to Glasgow, where I could be less distracted and rebuild a life for myself. This involved a life drawing class at Glasgow School of Art, exploring and drawing the Glasgow architectural features & landscapes.
A Glasgow film maker Tom Buzby, a friend invited me to join a Media course run by some Community Service Volunteers for the unemployed which was the first proper course after my accident and a good kick start to my art, as a means of protest oeuvre.
Reading the newspapers on the media coarse about the conditions for staff within the NHS lead me to organise & complete my ‘Recouperation Across The Nation’ cycle ride from Glasgow to London in support of the NHS and the carers who had saved my life three years previously.
What does making art mean to you?
Personally, I have a fascination and there is an appreciation how the body & brain function in coordination, working towards producing art, from what I have forming in my mind. The struggle & joy of making art through a capability of manipulating materials involved to produce something I had imagined, or stimulated by my imagination to make an art object.
With a slower thinking brain injured mind, and having to really work to identify my silent voice, how I really think / feel about something in isolation when I can’t keep up with the normal / working world, is all channelled through the process of art making.
Protest and/or demonstration might be a better way of describing that struggle to find the right words or expression. I’ve always had concerns for a better world and my art / performance allows me to voice these concern in an artistic, more permanent basis & in gallery space which in these days, when the government are working to take away our rights for protest, art is even more important. Presenting a better world with up cycled / made good, better objects, through giving them a new use, and a longer life.
This all goes in juxtaposition to the conspicuous consumption of a modern western world. This led me to the idea of ‘Cohedia’s mind expanding cityscape’, as a depiction of my way a more utopian city could be.
A comical, yet most profound view of my artistic practice I have is down to something I heard on the radio- that ‘cheating death’ was a humorous reason people do socially unacceptable things, like burp or fart out loud, and I thought this could be, given my near death experience, a good reason I make art - because I am a survivor. I have cheated death. ‘The art is to do’, as Marcel Duchamp says.
How would you describe your work, and what inspires it?
It is interesting to be asked to be artist of the month, particularly while the Humanity exhibition is on show in Glasgow, as the city is where I spent a formative period following my head injury. Recovery, is both a personal & about enabling others to realise & live better lives.
Neurology is the infinitely complex processes of our brains that enable us to do so much - to think, cognitions, the disciplined manipulation of our brain’s abilities to enable us to process information to such a variety of conclusions. This in my case specifically applies to making and appreciation of art objects, despite my head injury.
Imagination applied, as a reaction to life’s & society situations and seeking out solutions. Which is why I use waste & found objects and up or recycling them where possible is important for me. It is about giving new life, improved aesthetics to unwanted items and saving the worlds resources underlies all of this for me, as protest to consumerism.
I like to convey messages supporting this vital theme more directly to. Using and
reflecting my inner discussions to the outer world, in something that they want to look at, and see for the first time sometimes, through the art.
I also like to have a channel for some humour in my pieces, even the darker stuff. This can include the use of language / words, particularly within the title’s, and my more conceptual pieces. I find songs titles & lyrics particularly inspiring. All goes back to memories of singing along as an early speech therapy practice.
Do you think about an audience when you create your work? If so, what do you hope a viewer might get from your art?
Making works is my mediation on a subject or concept, & the materials involved. Thinking, expanding & resolving conceptual or practical issues involved in both the messages & aesthetic finish. In stronger pieces my meditations are comprehended by the audience but the real joy is when viewers give their interpretations & new ways of interpreting the work. It is interesting to see what viewers see in my work, whether they follow the makers thinking, or bring something new to the piece. My work is mainly in the area of environmental climate crisis, & as an unemployed outsider artist, the up cycling of found objects really captures that process. Mental Health & disability are subjects I have a rich seam of work around.
What does being an Outside In artist mean to you?
It offers a welcome to the wider art world that I have only peaked at, at times, but opportunities are more consistently there for me with Outside In’s appropriate / suitable demands, support, encouragement & administration.
It’s the company, surrounded by people who I share my prayers with, that after all these years toiling / expressing myself to a limited audience that others can access.
Outside In has lifted me & my work to levels I have only ever dreamed of, but as an outsider artist would have futile attempts, and aimed for but fell short.
For example, the work achieved with the ‘Write Here Right Now Petition’ and performance , it had been in my mind since 2021 but only with Outside In’s support was I able to do it in 2023 and feel very proud of that achievement.
Do you have a standout moment as an artist so far?
Yes, I can think of 3 in the past year
First, is a Xavier White was treated here spoof Blue Plaque on the wall at Maudsley hospital’s Maplin House. It is on the wall outside, just 3 meters from the room where I was an inpatient on a neuro rehabilitation ward for 2 months following my 10 day coma. A good friend Jo would visit me very often there, she later went on to train as a nurse. At the time nursing was my vague career ambition. But as an outpatient I bumped into nurse Graham from the ward, and after telling him about this idea of being a nurse, or an artist - he advised me ‘to do what your good at’ – so it was art.
Second, is the aforementioned ‘Write Here Right Now’ performance at Sotheby’s 2023. I had the idea for a performance with LET’S NURSE THE EARTH world map banner
since attending COP26 2021, again in Glasgow. The banner evolved into the ‘Write Here Right Now’ world map has become an interactive petition piece, where I have invited people to add their messages / signatures in support. And to realise this with Outside In’s support I was able to also involve Laban Dance For Health, a brain injury dance group I belong too, so they came to Sotheby’s to perform with me, which was fantastic.
Third, is the Humanity exhibition and being at Project Ability in Glasgow. This gave me the opportunity to invite some very dear friends from my time living up there in the late 1980’s.
The Abubackers are a family who took me in when I was sleeping on the floor of my studio, which was next door to Ali’s picture framing business and gallery at Maryhill Burgh Hall.
Judith has Downs Symdrome and regularly attends Project Ability for creative classes,
as does Ali, although he goes less often as he has dementia now.
It was very special when Judith tapped me on the shoulder for a hello hug and I turned to see Ruth & Ali sitting behind, listening to the talk. To see them at the afternoon opening was very special as they have done so much for me over the years. My lovely Glasgow family.
Evelyn McDonald arrived in the evening, just briefly, but I got to gift her one of my stained glass pieces – entitle ‘Blessed: Salter & Thistle’. I’d made specially for her, with her Scottish heritage in mind. Evelyn was a very cool business assistant I became friends with while applying for a Princes Youth Business Trust grant & doing the Glasgow to London NHS cycle back in the day. She has kept an eye on me, and monitored my artworks & progress over the years on Facebook but we hadn’t met since last century.
At a big rally for COP26 at Glasgow Green in 2021 I had made contact with the Fire Brigade Union & gifted my Red Alert piece to be displayed in their Glasgow HQ conference room. The FBU were holding their Cuts Leave Scars rally in George Square the day before Humanity exhibition opening on the 25th. For this I made a couple of Cuts Leave Scars banners on the white back of two up cycled. I delivered these to FBU
What are your future hopes and ambitions?
I am currently doing some more work at the Maudsley, working with the mental health nurses, offering up my time with a Caring Shields workshop & I have other title’s on display in the nurses education dept there.
I am also making a piece of art for the Bethlem Gallery administrator. She is leaving after years of service to the gallery & its artists and will be missed.
Local to me is Mycenea House, and as an Outside In ambassador I will be doing some art groups with other outsider artists there, which is another chance to give back. So once again being part of Outside In has allowed me access to places I would never have had the courage to take up.
So thank you Outside In.
have always been a maker; things such as Lego, Airfix models, making and painting them, as a boy with busy fingers. I have always had a fascination with flight. Planes were my favourite models to make & watching birds fly. I would enjoy painting and copying pictures of birds.
In my late teens, my mother introduced me to the craft of working with stained glass. We attended an adult education stained glass class together. I was considering enrolling on a higher education course, most probably in stained glass, when I received a near fatal head injury when cycling home one night, at the age of 18.
After surviving a 10 day coma, I spent 2 months intensive rehabilitation in the Maudsley Hospital’s neuro rehab unit. Following this debilitating injury my life became therapy, focus… so my rehab process became an obsession to me, with all my energies directed into relearning & extending my basic life skill’s, from walking, talking, swimming etc. Anything that could allow my body to acquire the skills I needed to help my functions bounce back to something like it once had.
It is difficult to say how much my injury shaped my artistic imagination but it certainly fed it. A fascination with acquiring, expressing & refining my body skills, from balance needed for walking, and other physical activities. I became obsessed with yo-yoing to develop my subtler arm movements, & hone some of the finer motor skills needed for drawing & painting.
Once I had some basic physical capabilities, it allowed me to return to cycling. Which was a big relief to walking, as this hurt my knees & back post the accident and brain injury. Cycling would give me a strong contrast with the fatigue I would & still get. I need regular (2 or 3) naps a day, just 20 mins, enough to lose or go quasi conscious. I imagine it like a battery, when the oxygen builds up, I get the need to dissipate. Then when recharged I can reapproach things with more focus and positive energy.
The London life & heavy traffic was distracting for me at that the time, & not the most appropriate for my rehab, try as I was. In 1980’s there was a lot less support for head injury survivors, pre Headway brain injury charity, that there is today.
It ‘s a long story but I got the opportunity to move to Glasgow, where I could be less distracted and rebuild a life for myself. This involved a life drawing class at Glasgow School of Art, exploring and drawing the Glasgow architectural features & landscapes.
A Glasgow film maker Tom Buzby, a friend invited me to join a Media course run by some Community Service Volunteers for the unemployed which was the first proper course after my accident and a good kick start to my art, as a means of protest oeuvre.
Reading the newspapers on the media coarse about the conditions for staff within the NHS lead me to organise & complete my ‘Recouperation Across The Nation’ cycle ride from Glasgow to London in support of the NHS and the carers who had saved my life three years previously.
What does making art mean to you?
Personally, I have a fascination and there is an appreciation how the body & brain function in coordination, working towards producing art, from what I have forming in my mind. The struggle & joy of making art through a capability of manipulating materials involved to produce something I had imagined, or stimulated by my imagination to make an art object.
With a slower thinking brain injured mind, and having to really work to identify my silent voice, how I really think / feel about something in isolation when I can’t keep up with the normal / working world, is all channelled through the process of art making.
Protest and/or demonstration might be a better way of describing that struggle to find the right words or expression. I’ve always had concerns for a better world and my art / performance allows me to voice these concern in an artistic, more permanent basis & in gallery space which in these days, when the government are working to take away our rights for protest, art is even more important. Presenting a better world with up cycled / made good, better objects, through giving them a new use, and a longer life.
This all goes in juxtaposition to the conspicuous consumption of a modern western world. This led me to the idea of ‘Cohedia’s mind expanding cityscape’, as a depiction of my way a more utopian city could be.
A comical, yet most profound view of my artistic practice I have is down to something I heard on the radio- that ‘cheating death’ was a humorous reason people do socially unacceptable things, like burp or fart out loud, and I thought this could be, given my near death experience, a good reason I make art - because I am a survivor. I have cheated death. ‘The art is to do’, as Marcel Duchamp says.
How would you describe your work, and what inspires it?
It is interesting to be asked to be artist of the month, particularly while the Humanity exhibition is on show in Glasgow, as the city is where I spent a formative period following my head injury. Recovery, is both a personal & about enabling others to realise & live better lives.
Neurology is the infinitely complex processes of our brains that enable us to do so much - to think, cognitions, the disciplined manipulation of our brain’s abilities to enable us to process information to such a variety of conclusions. This in my case specifically applies to making and appreciation of art objects, despite my head injury.
Imagination applied, as a reaction to life’s & society situations and seeking out solutions. Which is why I use waste & found objects and up or recycling them where possible is important for me. It is about giving new life, improved aesthetics to unwanted items and saving the worlds resources underlies all of this for me, as protest to consumerism.
I like to convey messages supporting this vital theme more directly to. Using and
reflecting my inner discussions to the outer world, in something that they want to look at, and see for the first time sometimes, through the art.
I also like to have a channel for some humour in my pieces, even the darker stuff. This can include the use of language / words, particularly within the title’s, and my more conceptual pieces. I find songs titles & lyrics particularly inspiring. All goes back to memories of singing along as an early speech therapy practice.
Do you think about an audience when you create your work? If so, what do you hope a viewer might get from your art?
Making works is my mediation on a subject or concept, & the materials involved. Thinking, expanding & resolving conceptual or practical issues involved in both the messages & aesthetic finish. In stronger pieces my meditations are comprehended by the audience but the real joy is when viewers give their interpretations & new ways of interpreting the work. It is interesting to see what viewers see in my work, whether they follow the makers thinking, or bring something new to the piece. My work is mainly in the area of environmental climate crisis, & as an unemployed outsider artist, the up cycling of found objects really captures that process. Mental Health & disability are subjects I have a rich seam of work around.
What does being an Outside In artist mean to you?
It offers a welcome to the wider art world that I have only peaked at, at times, but opportunities are more consistently there for me with Outside In’s appropriate / suitable demands, support, encouragement & administration.
It’s the company, surrounded by people who I share my prayers with, that after all these years toiling / expressing myself to a limited audience that others can access.
Outside In has lifted me & my work to levels I have only ever dreamed of, but as an outsider artist would have futile attempts, and aimed for but fell short.
For example, the work achieved with the ‘Write Here Right Now Petition’ and performance , it had been in my mind since 2021 but only with Outside In’s support was I able to do it in 2023 and feel very proud of that achievement.
Do you have a standout moment as an artist so far?
Yes, I can think of 3 in the past year
First, is a Xavier White was treated here spoof Blue Plaque on the wall at Maudsley hospital’s Maplin House. It is on the wall outside, just 3 meters from the room where I was an inpatient on a neuro rehabilitation ward for 2 months following my 10 day coma. A good friend Jo would visit me very often there, she later went on to train as a nurse. At the time nursing was my vague career ambition. But as an outpatient I bumped into nurse Graham from the ward, and after telling him about this idea of being a nurse, or an artist - he advised me ‘to do what your good at’ – so it was art.
Second, is the aforementioned ‘Write Here Right Now’ performance at Sotheby’s 2023. I had the idea for a performance with LET’S NURSE THE EARTH world map banner
since attending COP26 2021, again in Glasgow. The banner evolved into the ‘Write Here Right Now’ world map has become an interactive petition piece, where I have invited people to add their messages / signatures in support. And to realise this with Outside In’s support I was able to also involve Laban Dance For Health, a brain injury dance group I belong too, so they came to Sotheby’s to perform with me, which was fantastic.
Third, is the Humanity exhibition and being at Project Ability in Glasgow. This gave me the opportunity to invite some very dear friends from my time living up there in the late 1980’s.
The Abubackers are a family who took me in when I was sleeping on the floor of my studio, which was next door to Ali’s picture framing business and gallery at Maryhill Burgh Hall.
Judith has Downs Symdrome and regularly attends Project Ability for creative classes,
as does Ali, although he goes less often as he has dementia now.
It was very special when Judith tapped me on the shoulder for a hello hug and I turned to see Ruth & Ali sitting behind, listening to the talk. To see them at the afternoon opening was very special as they have done so much for me over the years. My lovely Glasgow family.
Evelyn McDonald arrived in the evening, just briefly, but I got to gift her one of my stained glass pieces – entitle ‘Blessed: Salter & Thistle’. I’d made specially for her, with her Scottish heritage in mind. Evelyn was a very cool business assistant I became friends with while applying for a Princes Youth Business Trust grant & doing the Glasgow to London NHS cycle back in the day. She has kept an eye on me, and monitored my artworks & progress over the years on Facebook but we hadn’t met since last century.
At a big rally for COP26 at Glasgow Green in 2021 I had made contact with the Fire Brigade Union & gifted my Red Alert piece to be displayed in their Glasgow HQ conference room. The FBU were holding their Cuts Leave Scars rally in George Square the day before Humanity exhibition opening on the 25th. For this I made a couple of Cuts Leave Scars banners on the white back of two up cycled. I delivered these to FBU
What are your future hopes and ambitions?
I am currently doing some more work at the Maudsley, working with the mental health nurses, offering up my time with a Caring Shields workshop & I have other title’s on display in the nurses education dept there.
I am also making a piece of art for the Bethlem Gallery administrator. She is leaving after years of service to the gallery & its artists and will be missed.
Local to me is Mycenea House, and as an Outside In ambassador I will be doing some art groups with other outsider artists there, which is another chance to give back. So once again being part of Outside In has allowed me access to places I would never have had the courage to take up.
So thank you Outside In.
Humanity at Sotheby's
Xavier's Write Here Right Now World Map Petition has been selected for Outside In’s Humanity exhibition opening at Sothebys in January 2023.
‘Humanity’ will be the sixth Outside In National Open exhibition and the first to tour venues across the UK. Showcasing artworks by 80 Outside In artists, the exhibition will highlight the vast variety and quality of works produced by artists facing barriers to the art world.
‘Humanity’ will be on view at Sotheby’s in London 9–27 January 2023 before heading to Project Ability in Glasgow in the summer and then Brighton and Hove Museum in winter.
‘Humanity’ will be the sixth Outside In National Open exhibition and the first to tour venues across the UK. Showcasing artworks by 80 Outside In artists, the exhibition will highlight the vast variety and quality of works produced by artists facing barriers to the art world.
‘Humanity’ will be on view at Sotheby’s in London 9–27 January 2023 before heading to Project Ability in Glasgow in the summer and then Brighton and Hove Museum in winter.
Dance For Health Crew at Humanity, Sotheby's Jan 2023.
Scanning the QR code below will take you to the film of this performance.
Scanning the QR code below will take you to the film of this performance.
Award-winning arts charity Outside In, which provides a platform for artists facing significant barriers to the art world, presents works by 80 artists in a new exhibition ‘Humanity’, at Sotheby’s London in January 2023 before touring to Glasgow and Brighton later in the year.
ART AS A CALL TO ARMS, detail.
This is the sixth National Open exhibition organised by the charity, which was established in 2006 to assist artists facing barriers due to health, disability, social circumstance and isolation. Over half of the works on show are by artists who have never exhibited with Outside In before and many have not previously exhibited at all. 80 selected pieces. were selected by artist Bob and Roberta Smith.