FUEGO II by A Purple Pig Production.

Boamah

KoямБ

"FUEGO II"

Kofi Boamah

Â© All work courtesy of Artist Kofi Boamah

"FUEGO II" KoямБ Boamah

contents 7 introduction by Harry Gallon

56 Exotic Forays into Light (Waiting) 58 Studio Views 88 That Night — 1974 106 Schisms — 1953 - 1975 109 Kingsland Road 01— 02 116 The Value of Bodies 117 Opéra of Tombs 130 Selected Exhibitions & Bibliography 4

'Warhol, Picasso versus Basquiat, Boamah' crayons & oil pastels on card 594 mm x 841 mm 2019

'portrait 2019'

introduction

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by Harry Gallon

The world feels heavy, its colours dark, its oxygen levels diminishing and within the vacuum a vast cloud. It is rolling. Pouring rain and smacking lightning on a muscular palette that humidifies the air around us in anticipation of a storm. The work you are about to see is presented by Kofi Boamah less as a dream-sequence, more as a nightmarish acid trip that rips apart screaming bodies, their aching creases and sensual ripples, then stitches them back together before the come down starts. Boamahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s objective is honesty: exposed, raw and indecent. Mouths wide open,

screaming in disarmed silence. Breasts as fruit. Dicks as hanged bodies. Bodies which smell of sweat and salt and seminal fluid. Bones that twist miraculously, shivering in contortion with both pain and ecstasy.

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The tool with which Boamah’s work strikes most is texture. The colours seem to rise from their canvas and spread out into broad plains and gentle inclines. The lines rise as ridges did when Earth was fire and rock erupted from inside vast cracks like mouths inhabited by innumerable of teeth. Eyes streaming with emotion but tongues that find speaking them unfathomable. Boamah paints a mirror that reflects our own textures. Our own outlines. Our own shames and our own countless half-measures in the shape of other humans. 1. Boamah’s humans are twisted abominations: they are caricatures of skeletons; people exhibited in their truest form, as each a single broken bone erupting through the pith and tendon, skin and sinew, of a collective body conducting erotic liaisons in public reverie. 2. Boamah’s humans are tender creatures: soft and vulnerable. Naked, wet and 8

sensual. They want to burst forth, but not just as cracked bones and raw flesh and childish mountains. They radiate pleasure and understanding like breath. Warm on a cold morning. Condensing and reforming without the physical limitations of skin and cells. Blood reds, migraine purples, quenching blues, melancholic blacks smack their skin from behind, highlighting their grinning mouths and spread legs, erect penises and free breasts, and forming the backdrop of a universe thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s right outside your door. A world deconstructed and set aside as base ingredients, from fingernails to hair follicles, self-consciousness to intestinal parasites. Boamah illustrates the gum on the pavement. The crisp packet blown under your garden gate. The hole in your bin bag torn through by a fox. The cough and the burp and the sniff and the smirk of your neighbour fucking with the curtains open. His subjects want to welcome us with trumpets and lifejackets. Demonstration, agony and a big fuck-you to fucked up society. They want to share with us their remedy, their comedy, their gravity, and ease our despair by reminding us of all the missed beauty.

'couple sex wrestling naked in park' oil pastels on card 594 mm x 841 mm 2019

'a study of Caravaggio's Salome with Head of John the Baptist (1609-10) over Biggie Smalls' oil on canvas 120 x 120 cm 2019 11

'portrait of Scott Manley Hadley' crayon on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019 14

'it's Duchamp's Plateau [Latrine BBW]' oil on canvas 160 x 120 cm 2018

'figures in a dream' oil on canvas 150 x 120 cm 2017

'wrestling in the park' oil on canvas 150 x 100 cm 2018

'muscular female' oil on canvas 150 cm x 120 cm 2018 22

'two females' oil on canvas 150 x 110 cm 2016 24

'the bends' oil on canvas 120 x 120 cm 2019

'ode to Baselitz' industrial paint & oil on canvas 160 x 120 cm 2018 28

'ode to Baselitz' (detail)

'portrait of mania' oil on canvas 80 x 100 cm 2018 31

previous double page spread: 'expensively cheap' oil & oil pastels on card 594 mm x 841 mm 2019

'black female drops soap in bathroom' oil pastels on card 594 mm x 841 mm 2018

'the attempt' oil on canvas 150 x 110 cm 2018

'black female dancer on Shoreditch' oil pastels on card 594 mm x 841 mm 2018

'black female pole dancer on Shoreditch' oil pastels on card 594 mm x 841 mm 2018

'memories of Picasso (orgy)' industrial paint, acrylic & oil on linen 160 x 140 cm 2018

'the kif den' oil pastels on card 594 mm x 841 mm 2018

'sketch for kif den' crayons on paper, 21 x 29.7 cm 2017 43

'graffiting young Picasso' oil & oil pastels on canvas 80 x 80 cm 2017â&#x20AC;&#x201D;2019

'the female butcher, human bodies' (sketch) crayon & old pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2017 46

'the female butcher, human bodies' oil on canvas 100 x 150 cm 2019 47

'gay farmer' oil & acrylic on canvas 150 x 120 cm 2016 49

'elements of apricot' oil pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019 50

'notions of pomegranate' oil pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019 51

'the insane therapist', oil & oil pastels on canvas 100 x 160 cm 2019

'dick drunk reverie' oil & oil pastels on card 594 mm x 841 mm 2018

'it's Salome at Hackney (taken dick)' oil pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019 54

Exotic Forays into Light (Waiting) She had just finished her second novel, which one critic deemed sullen and moody. She saw it as melancholic however and emotionally sprawling. Which perhaps reflected in the life she led: small but rather big, in terms of feelings. For she rarely left the apartment she shared with her girlfriend Lily. Though Lily, one night in November mentioned that she was thinking of moving to Paris. She started to feel accosted and as if she were given an ultimatum and one that amounted to her thinking that the upheaval would just be too much to bare.

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Lily demands that she think about her decision. A week passes and she had barely written anything: just small paragraphs of a few stories that had lingered on her mind. Instead she had become obsessed with the news of a Mexican con man that had moonlit as a tight rope walker. She became infatuated with the photograph in the news of his face: a strong chin, gaunt piercing eyes, she thought. She delighted in all the details and the revelations of new facts related to the case: throughout the week it was able to maintain a freshness. And by the Saturday she had researched where the Mexican man had been in-prisoned and written him a letter, in Spanish, because she knew the language from her Grandma's teachings when she was younger. All this annoys Lily who realised that the decision to travel to Paris had been sidelined by other ridiculous things, Lily said that Saturday evening. That Monday after Lily had stormed out to her parents home, she received a letter from the Mexican con-man. She knew it was a response from the strange stamp and the written address: all scruffy blue writing. For a while she just looked at the letter, staring at the whiteness, thinking about what could be inside. This lasted all morning until Lily arrived and asked her what she had decided. She made some appeasing statement that alleviated Lily's worries, as she moved a bag back into their bedroom and moved out for the gym. The letter sitting in between an Elle magazine on her desk. She started to rationalise certain episodes. The letter being absurd. The letter being poetic. The letter asking to meet her. The letter being a love letter, as she did, crazily, send her picture to him with the drawing she scrawled on her arm of him. Or even the letter being dramatic. She wanted this feeling to linger, though toiled with temptation. Lily arrived back from the gym as she stood at the window thinking. Lily, in a mood, started kissing and touching her but she could think of nothing else. Especially so when four days later Lily started to kiss and touch her again she had started to think more and more about him, his body, the words, the things he had done. She felt a fraud, as if a chief lesbian would 56

appear out of the woodwork and ridicule her, perhaps slap her with a hot pink dildo whilst perhaps holding this letter. Lily would catch on sooner or later, she thought. Her mind was elsewhere and she knew she couldn't hide it anymore. But where was it? That afternoon she booked a flight, packed a bag and left. The flight seemed anti climatic, as if just crossing the road, for the speed at which it was all occurring: idea to happenings. Cognac in hand over the in-flight movie, The Godfather. She wasn't really watching the movie, merely seeing it through her eyes over chaotic voices in her head. Close to the end of the flight, the passenger next to her, a female with rather larger breasts, she thought, asked her about her holiday. She stuttered around the words: friends, sight seeing and then friends again. As the letter came back to mind and then his face and now his body. She hadn't even remembered to pack toothpaste. She entered the room. The screen sat in front of a cool plastic chair. She took a seat and waited, clutching at her stomach. The wait seemed forever, she thought. But it could have been ten minutes or so, before a man appeared across from her. Protruding cheek bones on top of a languid and tall silhouette, olive skin. They both looked at each other for about a minute, neither reached for the phone. He picked up first, and she then followed. Isn't this strange? As if enraptured nothing else seemed there, just this man and his deep voice, his eyes against her skin. She felt a little put out momentarily by her low cut chestnut top, her cleavage clearly displayed. Moving her right arm against her chest ever so slightly, until she decided not to, as if more than slightly aroused, she watched his mouth move as he spoke about owning up to his crimes, the tangibility of his breath, she wrote that evening, mixed with the distance seemed romantic, sexy. She told him that she was seeing a friend that week and that she would visit again in two days time. He then said something that moved her even more: Am I just a little hobby for you? She moved her right hand up to her mouth and looked him right in the eyes, as if she could fuck him right there and then and said: Just wait...

'an abstract cubist without the lines (bindlestiff)' oil on canvas 60 x 80 cm 2019

'two women in notepad' oil pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2016 63

'recurring dream' oil & oil pastels on canvas 100 x 150 cm 2019

'sketch for recurring dream' oil pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2017

'after Gorky' oil pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019

'candle lit rain' oil on canvas 24 x 30 cm 2016â&#x20AC;&#x201D;2019

'portrait of Saul Adamczewski' pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019

'she smoked Crack clumsily from a bottle', oil pastels on card, 594 mm x 841 mm 2018 73

'child's play 22', oil & oil pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019 75

'the human savagery of a naked refugee on a boat' (sketch) oil & oil pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2018

'an adventure & journey' oil & oil pastels on card 594 mm x 841 mm 2017â&#x20AC;&#x201D;2019

'faces ยง2' oil & oil pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019

'naked black female saxophonist at Nazi party (Naima)' 2019 oil on canvas 120 x 160 cm

'the bus driver' oil pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019

'the old man' oil pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019

'the human savagery of a naked refugee on a boat' oil on canvas 120 x 160 cm

That Night â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 1974 It seemed strange to Rodrigo, that each element of the situation, separate, seemed ordinary but in totality the wood fell far too many feet from the tree. He got up and moved towards the bar's exit. At least Ernesto would pick him up, he thought, after all this. I arrived just before Ernesto pulled up and we both got into the car.

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Rodrigo seemed in a panic, his curly Guibert-esque hair more messy than usual. Making strange sentences as, Last night's Poetry night seemed strange. Alia seemed strange. I was inadvertently looking at him through the rear view mirror, watching Rodrigo's eyes move left from right as words left his mouth. Hey man, calm down, said Ernesto, Alia wants all this collaboration stuff, you know how things have been going, you've been there. As soon as we reached Nando's Rodrigo got out and walked fast up the driveway without saying goodbye. Ernesto made some comment about wanting to smoke a joint and off we went. There was a little traffic after the roundabout, but we didn't bother with meaningless small talk as years ago on a greyhound from Mexico City to San Diego we had come to a silent agreement, words were nothing but a virus as Burroughs said. Nothing but a virus, said Ernesto whilst he sipped a Coke and I wondered if I should tell Rodrigo about fucking Alia that night. Faces came out the air like Basquait's portraits, all out of the lines and colourful. As we drove I started to remember that greyhound more and more. Especially so as we were confronted by a juggler, I could smell his eyes. He jumped up against the car's bonnet and surprised us both. When Ernesto realised what was happening he looked at me and raised his right eye brow. Ignoring the juggler, who was speaking some incomprehensible language. It was a long drive so it was best to start some conversation, I thought. And so we started to discuss Gramsci and then Allen Ginsberg. Ernesto always felt strongly about Ginsberg's lack of style, whereas I saw this as the very essence of style, attitude. A fuck-you to society. Regardless, said Ernesto, nothing compares to Borges, even when he's bad, he's good. A silence shrouded the car. What are we going to do about Rodrigo? I said. As it was beginning to be more than a passing occurrence these flights of fancy. A few weeks prior after seeing some George Grosz drawings he started to morbidly cut into his thighs, I remembered as I asked 88

Ernesto what we would do. I need a joint, said Ernesto, when we get there I want to lay down, smoke a joint and let my balls hang. We pulled into the driveway just after midnight, we reverted into our usual mode of conversation after Ernesto mentioned the joint.

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Blood The situation seemed inordinately strange, as we all the night before had decided. It was eleven to two. Franco would take four bullets at the gathering in Madrid. All in the name of backed up injustices. So Rodrigo was right and wrong at exactly the same time, as it was strange but not for us, as we had meticulously planned each detail for weeks on end. Our poetry had blood in it. It seemed summed up by Ernesto so well, Poetry without action is nothing. I watched him smoking his joint at the edge of the balcony, whilst Cristina spoke about what she had been reading to act as if tomorrow wasn't the day, but just another day. Mentioning Lorca and then Shakespeare before asking Ernesto if he wanted to fuck. Ernesto took another puff and said later. If anything was to worry about, it was definitely Rodrigo, blood has strange effects on hands, it doesn't really wash off, I thought. It would seem strange but death is sometimes the only option, said Alex as she moved towards the plants, touching the leaves before staring back at me. Something awfully poetic about a gun in the hand's of a man with a flower in his ear. The Commo's had style, I thought that morning whilst I watched Ernesto get dressed, dick hanging out, pink shirt buttoned to his protruding chest hairs. Rodrigo mentioning something his Grandma told him. I sat mostly consumed with the idea of change, and what would happen next? We then all gathered in the kitchen, the morning light cascading onto our foreheads. Patric speaking as usual about what Commo's means and what it should always mean. The gun in Ernesto's bulging pocket, flower still in ear. And it seemed strange that we cast lots to decide on this form of action. It seemed surreal. We arrived to the parade at about twelve, with the idea that it was all planned out. I was to sit in a restaurant just off the centre with a change of clothes. I arrived to the restaurant and ordered Paella, even though I knew I couldn't eat it, over 89

all the antics occurring. Fish over justice, blood, visceral motion. Just too much. The clock ticked as if slower than usual, minutes, seconds, milliseconds. The waitress, had ringlets and smooth olive skin, the Paella a little too salty but how was I to know, the smell as if I had run a mile, all metally and coarse. I was breathing hard, but hiding it well, as the waitress kept coming over and flicking her hair whilst asking if everything was alright? We're about to commit an assassination, otherwise the Paella is fine, I thought with a smile. It's strange how a feeling of nothing surmounts when expecting a fully thronged something. I just wanted news that it was done and that Ernesto was somewhere hiding out safe. News trickled slowly however, the waitress' father appeared from the kitchen shouting and gesticulating. They tried to kill him, he started as he made concentric circles near the kitchen's entrance. They tried to kill him! The waitress smiled at me before moving her father into the kitchen out of sight and asking him what was going on. I looked at the clock. Tangier Exile is a place situated by forlorn characters, it's like sitting on a tectonic plate moving against molten lava, ready to overflow at any given moment. A memory unable to be attained, a person, a feeling. Creatures of habit. Cristina walked the dusty streets wearing a burqa, mostly for paranoia. Our sex life a mere substitute for the passion that I admittedly wouldn't want to try and emulate. Ernesto's face in her almost consistently wet eyes, sifting through the world poetry and then the torture of the happenings. It would seem best to buy the Tagine, I don't think I'm up to cooking, she said whilst playing with her black burqa. Patric would enjoy it either way, I said, as if that were the matter at hand. Voyage From Algeria Patric had gotten into a mess in Algeria so he was glad to be in Tangier, I could tell by the relief in his smile, all dramatic hugs and hand shakes that did little to illustrate his inner world. The turmoil. It had been a whirlwind since the attempt. We then sat down in the small apartment in a short silence that disturbed me. I momentarily tried to speak as if it were normal, but it wasn't, we were all shaken up, dispersed and on edge. I saw a single tear roll down Cristina's face as she placed the tea on the table, and took a seat.

'the cleaner' oil pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019 92

'adam & eve in the garden' oil & oil pastels on card 594 mm x 841 mm 2018

'the gestapo (after Westside Gunn)' oil & oil pastels on card 27 x 32 cm 2019

'flagging after Jasper Johns' oil on card 34 x 24 cm 2017 99

'faces in Condo & Picasso' acrylic on card 60 x 80 cm 2018

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'cone head' pen on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019

'clown intrude'

pen on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019 102

'voodoo face' pen on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019

'this Granny got her gun' pen on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019

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'faces from Paris & Toulouse' oil and oil pastels on paper mounted on canvas 100 x 100 cm

'witch doctor around a fire' pen on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019

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'self portrait on red' oil on card 40 x 60 cm 2018 105

Schisms â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 1953 - 1975 The same Grosz illustration was posted up on their living room wall (End of the Line, 1913), and had been sat there for years. A grotesque scene Belladonna would often comment on, with a smirk when a person would visit. He loves it, I don't know why... It would seem strange to write on Belladonna here, whilst Simone did what he did throughout these years, but Belladonna is where the primal scream sits most jaggedly. Most outrageously. Like blood on the necks of choir singers at an altar. Simone would do what he would do, but Belladonna's time spent was unusual in lieu of this. Simone one thing, Belladonna another. She would, most Tuesdays and Wednesdays, light a prayered altar, through the window her neighbours could watch. Burning incense, speaking a prayer her mother had taught her, though to which God? Though this procession of occurrences prevailed there were too many other particulars to deem Belladonna ignorant: claret on shirts, late night entrances, and that's not to mention a thing as their own sex life. Asphyxiation, scatology, water sports. Even in her ageing this continued throughout the years with constant bruises on thighs, swollen eye sockets... burning the candle at both ends, along with the matches, the entire house... In the regard of cleanliness Belladonna would speak of how Simone liked things clean over the years, perhaps a significant aspect of his character. Remnants of cubism, functioning like clean blocks of systems, surmounted to govern their lives, though the paint very much orchestrated in tandem on the canvas of all this. The deaths were too plentiful to mention spilt wine on washed off collars. A total of thirteen women all holed up at the edges of the village in disparate places. The guile of it all...

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Kingsland Road 01 “The Queen is Dead” — Hubert Selby Jr., Last Exit to Brookyln And it just happened that they were on Stonebridge Gardens sex wrestling naked. Lucia was always down for shit like this: knocking a man’s masculinity and all that poetic stuff that gets some women off. I’m not sure how the naked part came about, though Benzedrine was involved so perhaps that. The lamppost shone light against them shit-talking, whilst the overground train went by into the night’s abyss, I won’t pull on your tits, said Bambi with a smirk that irked Lucia even more, who was G’ing herself up whilst taking off her blue knickers, jumping on the spot. Bald head glistening in the darkness. Aint as if you can handle your stuff. I stood next to the bench holding my Bible in one hand, and a bottle of Teacher’s in the other. An overeducated bum, I thought looking at myself stood where I was as if another person, a film. Script written by? Lucia got him into a headlock first, her pussy lips gripping against his dirty left hand, finger nails black from a few days without showering, just loitering around Kingsland Road, mainly.

Kingsland Road 02 Lucia’s Left Tit I felt around in the dark, and came across Lucia’s left tit. We had spent that evening watching Betty Perkins videos and having this deep feminine voice alternate between consciousness interchanging: anxious to deeply relaxed, anxious to deeply relaxed, back and forth. The LSD felt all warm and fuzzy too, and it had Lucia at the Balcony talking about some experience where she was apparently in a squat somewhere in West London and a guy, Herve, kept singing Tom Jones’ I’ll Never Fall in Love Again, as if he knew the world were about to end, like the stars would fall that night, she said whilst Bambi was stood near the living room door swaying side to side, and then he fell to the floor up against a painting that seemed to be speaking to me: Go into the night, go into the night! I’m not too certain how, but we ended up in the park, not sure why. And then we made our way to Lucia’s, stumbling about all the way there, where we fell asleep, with Lilly in the other room working on her new novel, Apricot Hue. But soon I woke up and felt around and on Lucia’s let tit, it felt all velvety and I kept imagining that it was speaking all religiously: Drink this juice for you have sinned! Drink this juice for you have sinned! So I began to squeeze this left tit, after a few seconds it began to lactate and soon into my mouth, running down my bearded chin, before Lucia woke up and queried: What you doing on my left tit? 109

'Domi' oil on canvas 50 x 70 cm 2019 110

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'the smoker & a lady' crayons on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019 112

'the strip club dreams' crayons on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019 113

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'portrait with blue & purple' oil pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019 115

The Value of Bodies We promised we wouldn't upset each other by speaking: it (our relationship) would instead have to be the manifestation of actions replacing words. So days were spent, strangely for two wordsmiths, in what first seemed an inarticulate mass of nothingness. Slipping into thoughts of desires and needs, I wondered of the need for the whole thing, but only thought that this weird "thing" was having no true affect. As it went on for a while, spending days on end in silence because we both agreed, after having read each other's book's: 'Mangoes as Fingers' (mine) and 'Pedigree of Chumps', respectively, that we had said more than enough and that the world didn't need anymore misspoken words. I told a friend about this arrangement and they looked at me flabbergasted and as if they had pulled a hernia: all bogle eyed with flustered cheeks... Then it turned into chins full of chocolate wiped silently, time spent looking out of windows at the rain together, eccentric outings where it was as if role's were secretly devised and antics were stoked by some weird semblance of communicating something beyond everything we had already realised we had spoken through our works and the conversations we had had. One night we ended up with two macaws and a cat. Which is a rather long story that amounted to the thought that perhaps it's love?

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Opéra of Tombs “The emptiness of our boredom met with the emptiness of these supposed signs.” ― Witold Gombrowicz, Cosmos

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Romenach Alderov nursed a pint in a public house in Stoke Newington—whilst Pinochet was being arrested: these rather frantic happenings occurring on the flashing screen a few metres away from him. Though he hardly noticed, instead he thought about the capriciousness of a woman he only knew as “Lulu”. Feint disclosures amounting to abstract memories. It was hardly as if the world was a distant place to him, no rather on the contrary Romenach had simply had enough: he had decided earlier on that day that this would be his last day on earth—and it was like a deep laughter that consumed him: a feeling amounting to leaving a cinema half way through a film that you can’t sit through, or a disappointing meal, he wrote that morning in his boxers at the kitchen table as if he wasn’t contemplating death at all, but something altogether different. The cold beer poured down his gullet whilst the news anchor continued to excitedly explain Pinochet’s arrest, the barman, Keith, on the edge leaning against the bar, two eyes transfixed. The night before he had explained to Reinaldo how he came from another time—Postwar Yuguslovia and that it was a time that he felt consisted of this obsolete feeling of living in cramped conditions, with inordinate rationings that all lived under the auspice of Communism. He perhaps understood “the banalities” in ways that other people had never envisaged: the deep fabric of multiple experiences woven into a philosophy that at one point saw things from a completely different perspective: though for years he had been chairman of CVA, the infamous group known for rioting and political upheavals mostly in the UK and in Spain too. Though with a brief look at the screen, and then at Keith, Romenach felt it was all meaningless: and he also wrote this in the morning, that regardless of what occurred… though again he didn’t finish the thought, he just poured the rest of the beer down his gullet and stood up. If today was to be his last day, it would only be right that he take it in: breathe it in and out and then in again as if the wind blowing a plastic bag across an empty street… On the street he noticed a Jewish man talking with an Asian looking man about something that seemed dramatic (all gesticulations) next to a few birds flocking around a few discarded pieces of bread. The fog causing a distance that distorts the figures as he walked past and away down the street towards Dalston, looking back, thinking about “Lulu”. Interwoven into the fog was a wind that blew heavy wind across his face as street 117

cleaners stood on the corner of the street chit-chatting in loud guffaws. Exiting the off-licence, he decided that he would watch a film at the Cinema at Dalston. The ticket seller told him that the film ‘The Big Lebowski’ would play in half an hour and he looked at his watch, by habit, as if he hadn’t made “this decision”. This made him laugh momentarily; the absurdness of it. The ticket seller looks up at him with a confused squint that perhaps would invite an explanation, but today was not that type of day, he thought.

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After he bought the ticket he loitered around, walking slowly and whistling—a trait he owed to his mother, who was a rather famous Yugoslavian pop star in the 20’s. He stood close to the window now, and looked onto the foggy street at all the people going to and thro, perhaps to Dalston market to purchase old new meat, or to the shopping centre or perhaps to their mistress’ flat, he thought in wonder. A woman stood close by staring as if into the same abyss, so perhaps it’s his flippant mood that has him start a conversation: These preludes to destiny. Like orgasms withheld… O, okay, are you some type of poet doing some research at the Cinema? she took a step back and played with her stiff black collar like she was not expecting a response. Though contemplation of death consigns a person to a peculiar disposition. In a way Romenach was a sigh in physical form: distillations of hopelessness summoned to a Cinema to watch a film he expected to just help him kill the little time he thought he had left. Perhaps this produces an honesty, this feeling. It’s not always a good way to classify a person, what they do, perhaps food could be a better way of categorising someone, as it happens at least two or three times a day… They then started talking about the film that they were both about to watch and then she explains that she was a performance artist and that she was taking a break, though he wondered of the type of break because when she spoke she stuttered, leading him to think that perhaps she meant break in the holistic sense of the word as opposed to a two hour break to just watch a film. Regardless I’ll be taking that big break soon, he thought as he watched her buy a Coke. Staring at the back of her head, hair wrapped tightly in a bun, neck exposed. They walked in silence towards the theatre, before Romenach started yelling: The precipice of chaos is actually closer than we can imagine! She started walking faster now ahead of Romenach, but before entering turned to look at Romenach, still yelling. Why are you shouting? he ignored her, opened the door and walked in to sit down in the dark. She sat at the front, mostly because it reminded her of being a child and this was a feeling that she wanted to savour, for her breakdown was quite severe: or is severe, depending on perspective. During the film she can’t stop thinking about the words Romenach had been yelling, and starts to look towards the back of the Cinema to find him. After a few minutes of gazing 118

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she finds him sat next a blonde haired woman with rather large breasts. She got up and walked to where he was sat and sat next to him, the blonde haired woman the other side of her now. What was you shouting before? she whispered. He failed to answer her, instead staring at the film. After the film ends and the credits were rolling Romenach walked to the exit next to her. They walked down Dalston towards the Market side by side with her making slight glances at him. Perhaps her vocation has deemed her intrinsically curious? and it’s perhaps not known who was following who or whether they both were simply at an odds with the world around them, as they had reached Kingsland Road and neither were talking, until she said: This precipice is closer you said? After a few hours they had discussed a multitude of things: reality as mere perspectives, a Mexican Con man living in Quintana Rue, the insanity of performance art, the increasingly heavy fog… There seemed an unhinged energy to their conversation that displayed no real formalities: speaking over each other on numerous occasions, non-sequiturs that belied Romenach’s decision of which he didn’t tell her of. She found him to be intoxicating and on an edge she wanted to observe like peering over a mountain’s ledge, and he felt consumed by distraction. They would have departed from one another on any other day, but as things stood, hours after they had met at the Cinema they were both consumed and over some noodles they continued their conversations. She shared her past happenings in the performance art world and he riffed on what she felt were poetic refrains she would have to replay again in her mind later in order to truly understood all of his words. After they had finished their noodles, walking behind Shoreditch Church, they sat on a bench and soon they were fucking in a franticness. On the high street she coaxed Romenach back to her flat as it seemed to her that after having sex it was perhaps stupid to wonder of her own safety, plus she also believed in animism and that there was a spiritual aspect of sex. They then had sex a few more times interspersed with hours of random conversations, and she was at the foot of the bed watching him sleep, before an alarm goes off on his watch. Romenach woke up by this and she asked him what the alarm was for: confusedly he came around, sitting upright against the leather head rest and shaking off sleep as the news on Pinochet played in the background into the brown and gold papered bedroom, to realise his vow. He looked at her naked breasts, closed his eyes and continued sleeping...

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'priest & naked nun' pen paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019

'threes faces Carlos Fuentes' pen on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2019

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'two figures in crayon' crayon on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2018 123

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'portrait of ĂĽsa Holst' oil pastels on paper 21 x 29.7 cm 2018

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'a man as he missed the station' oil & oil pastels on canvas 30 x 20 cm

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'the Estactic reformulated ยง13' oil & oil pastels on canvas 150 x 120 cm

'12:44 there's a knock on my door' oil, oil pastels & pencil on canvas 120 x 160 cm 127

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Selected Exhibitions & Bibliography Selected Exhibitions 2019 — Roots & Rifts — Espacio Gallery — Group show 2018 — 2019 — VII. The Chariot — Hundred Years Gallery — Group Show 2018 — Context Free — Espacio Gallery Gallery — Group Show 2017 — Lucid Documentary — Unit 5 Gallery — Solo Show 2014 — Subito Carceris = (an improvised prison) — Hundred Years Gallery — Group Show Talks / Presentations 2018 — Kofi Boamah, Robert Robertson & Abdul Azeez in Conversation — Hundred Years Gallery Books 2018 — FUEGO — Monograph of paintings and writings 2018 — Self-titled (Mango) — Monograph of photographs and writings 2018 — Notebooks… — Monograph of drawings and writings

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