pppfffttt personal advertising / arrempting to rattify and reason 20 years of esculating dissent

 I was recently asked in an interview about my artists bio .... 

do I even have one ? .... jeeezus hundereds of em , I have been doing this mad stint of accidentially boderline controversial shit for over 20 years now , I have been the proprieter of just as many gallery spaces and have written all manner of gibberish in all manner of languages ... for all of them ! 

the original Bio : bravado really ! it had to be I was basically field testing one of the first pop up principles ... ever !! I had a tiny space in a tiny seaside village, that through a series of forcefully bent loopholes I managed to get use of for a little pop up gallery, so I set to work and filled the thing , from cheerful seaside daubs - to what has evolved into the ' signature series ' of watercolour works ( one of the things I am ' best known ' for ) a little something for everybody , and indeed anybody .... 

seething confrontations and foreign adventures all embodied in the work I embellished on the property I was using ' formed a ' brand ' the arts hole , (whch I swiftly rendered as an original and copyrighted piece of original artwork : which is now the ' logo ' )  ..... blah blah blah ,'' quite honestly when people would people would wander in , initially I confessed to being the producer of all of the work present, but this used to confound the ' usual art buyer ' .... so eventually I moved to explaining different styles away under different guises, my first website , I think that was ' theartshole.co.uk ' was produced by a friend of mine , and it was great we took the piratical / smuggler type history of the place and really rolled it into the brand , and the website looked really nice and was full of written content ... I do still have the hardcopy notes somewhere and so will maybe oneday get around to putting that original format up somewhere .. just for prosterity !!? 

so Artsist satements a plenty ... and descriptions and values ascribed to all !

then I wanted to refit a shitty old wharehouse on the edge of Plymouth city to opperate as an art gallery and architectural showcase ... I think at this stage we took down the old website and redid the whole nline thing ... I think this was ' Art By Valerio .com ' and this was a hell of a thing , there were write ups for the ' pop up gallery ' there was a running commentary on the progress of the workshop and workspaces , we did write ups for all of the psudonymns and all of the work styles , the design portfolio ... its was huge and the artists state ment ... around this time was about rejueneating the decaying urban landscape in order to make it economically viable for a more sustainable and progressive future ... and I ended up in an 18 month legal battle , again with plenty of written content ! 

scroll on a few years and I threw some stuff at the royal academy summer exhibition , I carried it up on the train , enormous and pre glazed as it needed to be ... wrote a very compelling truth about the work and my process , only to have one piece stolen and the other refused ! later I sent them some crap ... some real crap and of course they displayed it without question ??!! 

I got myself a little yacht and filled it with paintings and had a go at sailing around the southwest again just running out the format for the pop up initiative, really the boat was too small , and I too inexperienced a sailor ... initially at least , so it was hard going in the little westerly 22 

myself and my first wife decided that Amsterdam held far better prospects for us , than these continual unecessary trials in the completely unforgiving and hostile environment that the U.K had become 

The Arts Hole International Pop up initiative beame a legitimate thing , I ran the gallery in much the same way as I had previously , I was in an antikraak property , i was subletting from two studemts ? I doubt I had a relevent permission to trade from a residential property ? but I needed an income .... so I converted the groundfloor into a little gallery and workshop, it was a lot of fun , I had totally lost fiath in the idea that a website , or etsy or any of that rubbish was going to be better at relaying product , than actual line of sight product procuring 3 dimensional individuals, and was mainly relying on the blog and funnily enough , online dating platforms as a reasonable and rather lucrative means of free online advertising , so just stuck with that 

Then the U.K ... well David Cameron did a very stupid thing ! ( now lets just put this flat and straight!  I am / was pro remain in the union !!?? that does not outright state ... that I approve of the Union ..in its present format ) 

my u.k interests ( cargo containners full of original handrendered and heartfeltly crafted items of artwork and sentiment)  lost a great deal of value .... my wife buggered off to india ..... and ironically enough ( and yes I can see the hmour in it ) the Gallery space in Amsterdam was squatted by refugees , while I was back in the u.k doing a build a dinosaur workshop for children in london ! .... that had had been prebooked prior to brexit , and was now worth a hell of a lot less because of brexit .... 

I did a couple of little pop ups across the u.k and europe, under the guise of '' Brexit Refugee'' before heaing back to the u.k , swapping a painting for a 10 meter yacht, and resuming ' The never ending tour ' 

then In light of all of the mad speculative legislation that surrounding the brexit fiasco , I went and gave heart to a beautiful Slovakian Girl that was living here in the u.k ..... just , well maybe not just , to see how this unfurling ....what a nightmare !! 

I took on another pop up space in the city of plymouth and declared war on the authorities that had not only given me such a hard time prior to my departure .. but were also , presumanly the same administrative block that were ushering in this Brexit nonesense !! 

between spraypainting the city at night and sneaking away to weeklong art expeditions in order to maintain , this crazy little brand that I have managed to cobble together , which has in the face of every adverity I have had to encounter , one way or another has always been my saving grace ... the wife walks out , you find yourself penniless in a country where you dont know anyone ? paint something ... I have always got a swifter return on that than sending out c.v's for weeks 

god only knows how .... but just prior to the lockdown I was in a bizzarre situation, and that is what has led me to the current set of circumstances ! 

..... I should have made a run for prtugal !!!  '

The Arts Hole on a mission

 Painting really can be a pain in the ass , so every now and again it's good and indeed more often than not necessary , to take a year off from your usual pursuits to fight the government .....especially this government 🤬

As part of my lockdown pastimes I seem to have inadvertently ended up doing a couple of noteworthy things 

Get in touch or pop by the workshop at 24 Stonehouse street in Plymouth to find out more or get involved X 

The Narcisist and the Empath

Gosh , the internet has fallen rather short of its original promised potential hasn't it !

Buzz words and mob mentality directed my market driven Analytica, and I am sitting here considering these two ' buzzwords ' in particular at length, relative isolation from this current quarantine leaves ample room for adequate self reflection !

Self Reflection , its actually something of an inherent tangent to my given vocation - sat alone for hours on end, quietly rendering, the thought processes involved , much like the images I render tend to swirl and undulate around some common areas. As I reflect on the blank page that was , the lines rendered so far and the vague direction that path to an idealized completion might take , the person rendering it ….. for whom ….. and of course why ?

It has occurred to me recently based on the accusations of some crazy ex's - that maybe all art is a form of narcissism , after all, what kind of self aggrandizing arrogance would assume , that the thing that I feel the creative tendency to manifest - is worth doing at all ? are my thought processes , my notions so well formed that they presented to the public as ' worthwhile ' ….. to not only be so self impressed and important to not only render a thing and want other people to like it , even buy it , and somehow offer some external validation for my own human condition and all of the crushing self doubts that go with it - by and the sorry desire to be accepted , even recognized by a society that by and large …. I pathologically loathe !!

I guess it can easily be construed as a kind of narcissism - if you take any of the ' internet articles that have clearly been written by embittered women - for embittered women ' as a golden truth , on the same peg though - Art not only a vehicle for shameless self promotion - is a tried and tested means of connecting, of communicating - a great way to note . define and enact empathic tendency

So it really has made me quite cross ! and in many ways still does , when the shamelessly uninformed make rash judgements and decisions based on poor research or a single life perspective and somehow try to apply it as a metric standard to the world based on only that !

We live in a weird time, on the back of some pretty weird precedents , of fake news and propaganda - divisive ideals , in boris johnsons Brexit Britain in Donald trumps age of the charlatan , it can be hard to know for certain which way is up ! ( personally I have never been that keen to jump on the back of another mans cause - jeez I have enough of my own )

I see a lot of broken hearts these days , and some of them … too many of them just seem to remain broken, and it does seem to me to be quite a common factor or dynamic - the girl based on her internet research and a couple of episodes of Jeremy kyle believes she has ascertained the permanent position of ' empath ' or ' lightworker ' or some such other new age bullshit ! and the guy …. well the guy is often typecast as the overbearing narcissist ( from my personal experience anyway ) - and it really does grind my gears- this Nazi style pigeon holing

So Ladies , I am writing this little bit here just for you x

Ever shave your legs ?
vie for jewellery  ?
pluck your eyebrows ?
make up ?
dress up ?
selfie ?

suddenly decided that maintaining your closed little version of happy happy joy joy - keeping your peace , was a more cereberlly attuned means of getting by in a society of this size , by simply cutting out that which might contravene your happy place …. instead of maintaining engagement in discussion, debate and reasoning - within even a hostile environment such as we have built for ourselves

then you my dear are a fucking narcissist !!! - or at least exhibit multiple symptoms of the condition !

just because you well up over little things during your difficult time of the month does not make you a fucking empath !! in just the same way that a penchant for the creative tendencies are not categorical indications of narcissi

These are both temporary states ! for a well rounded and constantly evolving human entity to be prone too

a perfectly flawed human being with aspiration enough to attempt to be better !!!!

for the sake of my difficult middle class ex's that have really missed the point - why don't you take another fucking vacation and think about that sweetheart x  

Censored by the State - but dont think twice its alright !

getting back to this …...


So I have been witness, and even party too some strange times over the course of my short little life time

but it really just takes a few dodgy elections , a rigged referendum , … well two of them I guess , ( plus a series of nonsensical subsequent occurrences ….. a Brexit … a Donald Trump presidency, …. a ...well, I don't even know what to call the so called administration of this so called country at the moment -  from tony blair to Gordon brown to Cameron to thatcher … er I mean may , and now we have Boris

Boris who is now ' taking back control ' of this whole ramshackle shit show that is the ' Covid 19  Pandemic ' !!!

You Know I got back here on the Friday the 13th of March - ever increasingly reluctantly I assure you,  I think that by the Monday , Old Boris had abandoned his whole herd immunity philosophy - and decided that in order to save the NHS , what we all had to do was stay at home, unless absolutely necessary

now that dosent sound so bad right ? we all get a bit of time off … we can chill out at home and do a bit of gardening ….. sit around for grayons art club , drink lots of tea , maybe even spend a little extra time with the kids , sounds alright for sure …..

and if it was optional , then yes it would have been a sufferable nightmare , locked down for the greater good with your immediate nearest and dearest , in your little English country garden …. how nice , how quintessentially british !!

but the dirty truth , as most of the people in this country that actually spend their time in the environment in which they live , and have not yet been completely brain deaded by years of predictable television ' programming ' - and phone screen hypnotization - the perpetual ' boredom breaker ' the virtual masturbation that is rendering an entire generation of would be, and sorely needed revolutionaries … into pokemon go chasing - clickbait consuming over urbanized retards with extra ordinary video game proficiencies

Jeezus fucking wept !!!

who was I meant to be having a go at with this ….??!!

Oh yes Plymouth , Plymouth the city scape that looks like the fall of the soviet union !! this place is an utter joke - every bit of it really , and its a sad shame !!

I have been engaged in and even involved in  the spearheading of a few politically active movements over the past decade or so, and with my transient ' art show ' I have managed to find myself on various social plateau's all around the world , so there is a basis of truth when I render my skewed little perspective ….

and Plymouth , my little Darling …. you are a piece of shit !!

I have recently begun to refer to this place as the arse hole corner of Boris Johnsons Brexit Britain In Donald Trumps age of the Charlatan , and you know having been forced to remain here , festering , under lockdown for the past few months , it has really compounded my position on the matter !!!

At the End of 2019 I was going through yet another little work induced breakdown ( happens a lot :) )  having spent about a year fighting with the local authority about the availability of suitable social backed housing schemes and basic provision - through a direct action ! of course while simultaneously maintaining the usual body of art and design works - I was hoping to sail away to Portugal in the autumn due to my illicit experiences here in this utterly hostile environment - I was just a little too burnt out for the trip , so I figured that I would settle for the interim and re - evaluate in the spring !

now I have been expressly interested in the destruction of the social provision in this country through the mismanagement of successive fools and liars - and so I thought I would have a punt at just testing the social safety net in this country -

I began volunteering with a local  charity that is well established in the area in the field of , mental health issues and rehabilitation - offering various training programmes for individuals with complex needs and backgrounds -

I applied for the short term social supports that most people are ' entitled ' - I approached Plymouth City Council with my plight - and through network of agencies managed to find a viable accommodation option - ha ha ha oh dear !! well I say a viable accommodation option - I was offered a two bedroom flat in a bad neighbourhood in the city centre - an alcholic and his wife in the ground floor flat - a mad Albanain Guy on the Top Floor flat with a history of issues

the building is rotting into the ground and the weather comes in through the roof and various holes in the walls - the two bedroom flat comes equipped with its own ' recovering alcoholic ' in room 2

and its all supposed to be fine because its a maximum stay of 3 months as ' temporary accommodation ' while various agencies are looking at facilitating us into our own accommodations and back into our own lives ……???

8 months now !!! I have been complaining in writing and via the phone , I have dropped into offices and even presented my own survey on the property to no less than 5 different agencies - nothing !! Path - useless !! Plymouths only homelessness prevention charity/ company ?? has threatened more people than I can count with eviction ( eviction from rough sleeping prevention housing - as previously mentioned , documentable squalor ) despite full allocation of housing benefit being received ???  these people are being instructed to pay a top up ? a weekly top up out of the state benefit that '' the government deems the minimum amount a person should be required to live on '' - under threat of eviction !! ?? this is an utter disgrace - not only does this ensure a private landlord safety net in the event of negligence or miscare , but it also artificially inflates the lower end of SUITABLE available accommodation provisions within the city for most of the rental market !!! This Needs To Be Scritinized !!!

I have postulated that there is obviously a racket here in this poxy city that is furthest away from the centre of capitol and commerce - but equal in its seedy corruption and underhand methods !

the game is , if you are a private landlord ,ideally one of those wally's that was sold a ' buy to let ' during that whole scam ! and you cant afford the maintenance on your piece of shit ' investment ' - and or are struggling to let it out in the competitive ' luxury student accommodation ' market ….

then kick it over to social housing - the maximum allocation that the .Gov will pay in housing benefit will easily keep you going ,'' these people are all mental or on drugs any way so they will either not care or fuck it up anyway   '' - this is the facilitation to rehabilitation and the right Path - the Plymouths access to housing !! this ' charity ' that is also a limited company … has had numerous directors since its inception since 1995 - and works closely with the so called council of these parts ( the same council that covers the costs of mount Edgecumbe country park - is covering the company ' British Land ' even though they have been consigned huge swathes of the city - only to be going broke any way !!)

I saw a headline in the local paper the other day  '' Please Save Our City '' a plea from the commercial and social aspects of the city to the laughable central government - for help through these tough times

don't you get it …. you have been fucked like the whore that you are !! British land / Serco / G4S … all of this that has sprung up over the past little while … all of it questionable , all of it dubious … all of it share holder orientated … all with huge government contracts !! and its all gone to shit on private tender !!!

but never mind any of that , old Tudor Evans has gone and built his box - and apparently they have a mammoth and some models that used to hang off the front of slave ships - and the university is just over the road , so they can now at least offer these poor mind fucked - bright eyed graduates , high flying positions in the attraction that no one comes to see ….and as for the Mayflower 400 - fuck you , there was a reason that the ship left this wretched place !!! and it stands to reason that if she were in the harbour now ??

we could have had urban gardens , housing co operatives , urban regeneration - community orientated investments - neighbourhood production and engagement schemes - instead what do we have - some student bedsits - a ' museum ' - a university ( the cost for attendance by the way !!! ) the drake circus mall - the ' barcode ' a statue of a woman on royal parade that has been so weighed down by this unending age of austerity that she is almost doubled over and attempting to steady herself with one hand !!

and We cant say that I haven't tried, in the short bursts of utter frustration that I find myself in in this , the arse hole corner of Boris Johnsosn Brexit Britain in Donald Trumps age of the utter Charlatan , every time I return here , its just more and more of the same !!  ten yeas ago I went to war with this particular authority - all I was trying to do was test an architectural design idea and a few little exhibitions - I managed it in the end , but had a year and a half legal fight with some utterly incompetent administrators in the authority and decided I would be better off in Amsterdam - it cost me a great deal of trouble - and even my first marriage , but I was happy to just cut my losses and run - although at the time there was a very similar case taking place between a guy that had appeared on the t.v show dragons den ! and Plymouth city council no less … in the end I believe he was awarded a fair amount in compensations for his unfortunate experience with a very corrupt and underhand organization , that often tries to hide its ruthelessness, as simple administrative error !!! … I was feeling a little more humanitarian than that , and was more than happy to just be rid of dealing with the organization that had no money ! and I wonder if I had hit these pieces of shit there and then for compensation …. if their attitude towards me since might have been different and instead of constantly trying to cover for their previous ' mistakes ' they just acknowledged it and collaborated past it

tens years since … ten years of political nonsense . homes under the hammer and stags estate agents

In Amsterdam for a while the exhibition's title was ' Brexit Refugee ' - and of course in hindsight  it was worthy of the controversy it caused me ! I am sure that I saw a real hit from the populist markets back home !

but I find myself  back here again ,literally trapped this time !! and I have to wonder , under these current circumstances , just another chapter in this unwinding series of circumstance - with art as my only means of defence -

am I being persecuted here ? is this really just a haphazard series of ' bad luck ' scenarios in this ridiculously hostile environment ?? … I thought that If I worked hard , I was supposed to get ahead ! if I was innovative and entrepreneurial and tenacious , then eventually all the hard work is supposed to pay off right ?

well apparently not ,

maybe this country is just a hostile environment now - a political class - a millionaires class - an upper middle class - a middle class -  a working class ….a benefits class..... and me, the rebellious class ??

but maybe , just maybe … I have accidentally slid myself into a position of  public influence … and just maybe I have been , mad enough / clever enough and articulate enough to call some pieces of shit out on their game at some crucial junctures !

maybe somewhere along my travels  I fucked someone's daughter and they just got moody about the hippy influence I had on their genetic spillage  ??

maybe that weird Dominic cummings creature is trying to throw  some Jacobs ladder inspired Analytica at me ??

but what ever the reason and I am not the only one being hit hard for it !

A Beautiful One Bedroom Apartment Available

in Plymouth ? …. you have got to be joking ?

In the U.K in general ….. incredibly unlikely !!!

Jeeez I have really come to utterly detest this Concrete carbuncle of a so called city … Boris Johnsons Brexit Britain's Ocean City - Mayflower 400, harrumph and some bunting ….. or some such utter hogwash and pomposity, with a very polished accent and meticulously turned out in tweed with a media degree … fucking jeeezuz wept where was I going with this ??

Oh , Yes , Property … or the distinct lack thereof , or so it seems at least !

'A nice one bedroom apartment' … it just does not exist , it simply isn't a thing ! certainly not amidst the shambles that is the Plymouth's sad excuse for housing stock !but then by and large I think that is a general rule of thumb for most places really … ever been to London ? where people think that it makes some sort of sense to accept a retail market that offers single bedsit style dwellings without windows for a staggering 300k - 400k ….. Insane !! all because Margaret thatcher kicked off this demented notion that there are properties … and they are all on a ladder … and if you get on at the bottom then through slow progressive steps you can ' ascend ' your original lowly position ?? …. didn't they sell us the same shit about working hard and getting ahead ?? and now boris Johnson and Donald fucking trump run the whole free world … during a global pandemic !! by working hard and getting ahead … yeah I am sure they both started out with a single room in a shitty shared house and through grit and determination , became the ' men ' they are today!!!! …

it stands to reason that all animals have requirements of their environments ….. air, water , nutrition

whoa !! is that correct though ? because it also stands to reason that all things just adapted to an ever changing environment ever since it smudged its way out of the primordial ooze ….

ooze !! so we are back at the original point I was making !! about the Plymouth housing stock and the ever spouted delusion that a human should want to live in a ' dwelling ' with no garden , fuck all scenery - bad plumbing - dodgy electrics and a perpetual damp problem - in these economically emaciated corpses of what capitalism once tried to be - these dead cities …. this utterly decayed city in particular, Plymouth ….in this arse hole corner of boris johnsons Brexit Britain in Donald trumps age of the charlatan !!

stunning - luxury - modern living ( t.v and bed are your only furniture right?)one bedroom apartment available - no parking - no garden - no smoking - no pets - no dss - no self employed - no retired - 6 months deposit and two months rent in advance … only £900 per month

personally I think that humanity can only do as well as it can with the tools that it has at its disposal - personally I think everyone should have the option at least to have and maintain a decent library - of course we are in the digital age - so as well as hard copy literature - of course there should be scope in everyoneslibrary for the digital element that we have evolved to accept as ' normal '

I think it would be advantageous if everyone had a garden … and an actual garden here guys , come on - a means of permanently social distancing if you like - and no a tiny little balcony just isn't going to cut it !

Livestock !! fucking right everyone should have the means to retain the option of having and keeping livestock

so you can take your poxy notion of Chinese spatial allocations for the general public and fuck right off with it !!! some asshole thought they could treat the inevitable property purchase power of every adult human as something to bolster an economy against - and it turns out it was a fucking huge mistake !!

so take your tiny one bedroom apartments and you can flush the fucking lot into the sea - actually you know what don't even do that ! the plastic content will only be depressing !!!

the Arts Hole Pop Up - Covid 2020 - Treehouse 2.0

How does a little thumbnail sketch become a full blown manifestation ? 

Trapped at home during an international pandemic …. an unprecedented global event , where the worlds governments have managed to curtail the population into thinking that what ever nonsense comes as a piece as written ( or even uttered ) legislation , should be heeded without question of face the doom of us all ….. does this all not seem a bit much ? 

aside from the notion that this was probably a human engineered mess from start to finish …. 

what can you do with yourself ?when you are consigned to a piece of shit building as a temporary emergency measure …. 

in a dilapidated part of town … in a town that you think should have been bulldozed 20 years ago …..

in this particular corner of boris johnsons Brexit Britain in Donald trumps age of the utter charlatan  

well re ruralisation of course !! 

' Where have you been my blue eyed son ? '

and where have you been my darling young one ?

The Original -The Arts Hole - International Pop Up Initiative - 

an Original Artby Valerio Creation - est Summer 2005