Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Found In An Old Blue Folder #1

I was sorting through some old folders and boxes at the weekend. Most of it was stuff that came over from the UK 10 years ago. And most of it hasn't seen the light of day in all those years. There was one blue card folder with a selection of oddities that covered lots of old enthusiasms and old friends and collaborators. Amongst them was this:

Bombardments #2 a graphic score for percussion by Robert Moran from 1965. It was given to me by a long ago mail art collaborator, painter John Upton. The score is suffering now and one quarter had become entirely detached at the folds. It lived for many years in a frame on the wall of my house in Gloucester. It ought to go back into a frame again I think if I can repair it.

As for Moran he's  happily still around. 

Alas John Upton is not having died in 2005 but happily at least a little of his art is available online


I should perhaps consider a raid into my own mail art archive to post some more of his work. He was a marvelous correspondent and raconteur. He was also wonderfully generous both with his art and just...stuff. On discovering my interest in improvisation and chance operations in music he presented me, in addition to the Moran score, with a programme from a Royal Albert Hall concert by John Cage and Davjd Tudor in 1972 and a copy of Michael Nyman's book Experimental Music; Cage and Beyond. The latter came from a book sale of excess stock at Ayr County Library and was declared surplus to their requirements in February 1993.
So yes as winter approaches I'll add a couple of posts more on the contents of that old blue folder and then dig into the mail art archives for John's work, other correspondents and perhaps some of my own less embarrassing items.