Tyke Day Parade. North Street, 1963. Ed O’Donnel on trombone, Glen Baxter providing the transport, Bernard Wild on the drum and Cliff Wood pounding the pavement. (c) Glen Baxter archive.
I was born in Hunslet during a snowstorm. My father was a welder and my mother worked in the canteen at Coghlan Bright Steel, Hunslet Forge. My parents came to an open day at my nursery when I was four. They spotted three trestle tables filled with tiny clay figures. “Which ones did our Glen make?“ asked my mother. “These two tables,“ answered the teacher. Alarm bells were clearly ringing. I went to school in Low Road, then after taking the Eleven Plus exams, I followed my brother Alan to Cockburn Grammar
School. Under the tutelage of a wonderful art teacher, Mr Newton, I gained a place at Leeds College of Art in 1960. In order to pay for all the art materials, paper and paints, I worked at Leeds Market on Saturdays. My greatest influence at college was life model, jazz trombonist and raconteur Ed O‘Donnell. Ed had a fantastic collection of old 78 records and it was here I first heard the music of Jelly Roll Morton, Scott Joplin and countless other American pioneers. I left art school in 1965 and, unlike Billy Liar, I caught the train down to London. Glen Baxter, 2019
Installation: Glen Baxter, Unhinged in Hunslet, 2019 (c) Nat Wood
Curatorial Foreword Catriona McAra Alongside fellow second-generation surrealists, Patrick Hughes and Anthony Earnshaw, Glen Baxter (b.1944) ranks as an important contributor to 1960s avant-garde activities in Leeds. Though Baxter has had an extensive career to date, publishing widely and exhibiting internationally, this is surprisingly his first solo show in his home town. Baxter is known for a witty repertoire of visual narratives, using text and image to tickle and provoke. Often the image caption will nuance the visual joke, and vice versa. Absurdity and exaggeration are two strategies deployed by Baxter. For instance, a “dangerous safari” turns out to be a relatively benign, domestic adventure, with two hunters in pursuit of a cuckoo clock. Imagination and ludology are never far away in the world of Glen Baxter. Tofu and suet provide the amorphous cuisines of choice in this universe. Meanwhile, an emphasis on hapless, avuncular relatives may strike an empathetic chord with many
viewers and readers. Uncle Henry and Uncle Gilbert are questionable philistines in Baxter’s family tree, best thrown to the lions or fed to the tigers. Often avant-garde heroes such as Alberto Giacometti and Jasper Johns make cameo appearances in his work. In doing so, Baxter presents an educated form of intertextuality, recycling existing cultural touchstones in order to displace their meanings and unsettle our expectations. The surrealist notion of the marvellous located in the everyday is the mood Baxter tries to channel in his own drawings, a feeling of the uncanny (or unhomeliness). On a surface level, Baxter’s drawings may remind one of René Magritte’s visual trickery or the contraptions found in Heath Robinson’s picturebook illustrations. But on further investigation, Baxter’s oeuvre is much closer in character to the black humour of Edward Gorey and Max Ernst. For example, Ernst’s preposterously titled
collage novels, such as Une semaine de bonté (A Week of Kindness) (1934), borrow from Victorian engravings and magazine advertisements. They toy subversively with the visual culture of Ernst’s Wilhelmine childhood. Though Baxter emerged in an entirely different political landscape, something similar occurs in his work a half century later, an unhinging of the banality of the post-industrial, northern community in which he grew up. That Baxter was a frequenter of the local cinema in Hunslet should come as no surprise. As was the case for many surrealists, Baxter is drawn to the American Western genre. Such filmic backgrounds provide recurrent settings for Baxter’s characters, and his cowboys are frequently engaged with the challenges of art-making. My favourite fact about Baxter is that his debut show took place in the legendary Gotham Book Mart in the heart of New York
City (1974). I was fortunate to catch the very tail end of this surrealist institution as a student in 2007, a few short months before it shut down. My experience of the bookshop will forever be a window display shrouded in shutters, but I like the idea that Baxter becomes a primary representative for this surrealist moment, the keys to a now absent space. During an epoch when surrealist techniques feel more relevant than ever, one is rewarded for time spent with Glen Baxter’s prolific output.
Police investigate an outbreak of surrealism in Leeds 2019 Archival digital print 45 x 52 cm Edition 46 Front cover image (detail)
Derek was always insisting we try out new restaurants 2018 Ink and crayon on paper 79 x 57 cm
Tension at the Jasper Johns Retrospective 2018 Ink and crayon on paper 39 x 26 cm
At the first sign of summer we set off for a family picnic on the moors 2017 Ink and crayon on paper 57 x 79 cm
He continued to threaten me with more butterflies 2017 Ink and crayon on paper 79 x 57 cm
For Big Red, it was just one still life too far 2016 Ink and crayon on paper 78 x 57 cm
“How about I throw on another Baxter?” drawled the connoisseur 2015 Ink and crayon on paper 79 x 57.5 cm
I had been allowed to accompany my Father on one of his most dangerous safaris 2014 Ink and crayon on paper 58.5 x 80 cm
I could just make out the tell-tale signs of warm suet glistening in the late afternoon sunlight 2014 Ink and crayon on paper 26 x 39 cm
Mr Elliott seemed only too happy to share his thoughts on contemporary art with us 2013 Ink & crayon on paper 79 x 57 cm
Father had devised a daring plan, keeping us constantly on the move to avoid paying rent.... 2013 Ink and crayon on paper 36 x 26 cm
Rumours that tofu is being served as a main course spread quickly across the West Riding of Yorkshire 2013 Ink and crayon on paper 26 x 39 cm
Traces of our suet led Yellow Cloud straight to the Yorkshire camp 2012 Ink and crayon on paper 26 x 39 cm
Police investigate an outbreak of Surrealism in Leeds 2011 Ink and crayon on paper 78 x 57 cm
Teach yourself signwirting 2011 Ink and crayon on paper 76.5 x 56 cm
The minute Uncle Henry arrived, my instructions were to release the tigers 2010 Ink and crayon on paper 54 x 79 cm
Uncle Ben was always keen to point out the importance of attention to detail 2008 Ink and crayon on paper 78 x 57 cm
“We don’t exactly hold much with Chiaroscuro right here in El Paso, Stranger” Warned the Deputy 2005 Ink and pastel on paper 78 x 57 cm
“Would you care to explain this slightly foxed copy of ‘Pride & Prejudice’ we found in your saddle bag, stranger?” Drawled the deputy librarian 2005 Ink and pastel on paper 78 x 57 cm
I spent any happy years helping my Father to supply every restaurant in Brussels with quality toothpicks 2002 Ink and crayon on paper 77 x 56.5 cm
My scientific education had been placed in the capable hands of Great Uncle Albert 2001 Ink and pastel on paper 78 x 75 cm
Things were going quite smoothly until we hit the third Giacometti 2018 hand-tinted gravure 34 x 39 cm Edition 29
Trouble in the Design Museum 2001 Letterpress gravure hand tinted 39 x 35 cm Edition 50
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Glen Baxter Unhinged in Hunslet Vernon Street Gallery 1 March – 11 April 2019 Glen Baxter glenbaxter.com (c) Glen Baxter, Flowers Gallery, Catriona McAra, 2019 Co-ordinated by Amie Conway Designed by Affly Johnson
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