Warehouse of Horrors

8/9/2019 Warehouse of Horrors

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EMBASSY presents


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ALEX HETHERINGTON

Falkirk Voodoo King Kenny

2008


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EMBASSY present Warehouse of Horrors an exhibition that brings together

the work of 14 artists from a broad range of backgrounds who have different

approaches to their practices. The uniting factor in the work is an embedded

inuence of horror in both a literal and an abstract sense.

This project has been developed over a 15 month period, starting with a

screening of 5 artists work that took place in October 2008 in a caravan parked

outside the Collective Gallery for one night. The screening featured the works ofBeagles and Ramsay, Alex Hetherington, Alan Holligan, Juri Ojaver and Catherine

Street, most of whom are in the exhibition. Since then I have been working

with a group of artists and curators developing this exhibition. The show is in

no way conclusive and is not attempting to develop a new critical framework

for discussion on the interstitial relationship between art and horror. Instead, it

is hoped that it will bring together a diverse group of interesting works that all

deal with horror in a broad sense. The project is informed by a personal interest

in horror, specically the cheaper end, and how this low brow cultural form has

infected the rareed world of ne art.

For this exhibition the work is installed in an approximation of a set for a low/no budget horror casting the visitor as protagonist in a loose narrative structure.

The gallery is subdivided into separate areas working with the extant architecture

of the space and the phenomenological characteristics that it inherits from

the collective memory of the warehouse as a site for violence and abjection.

This structure has been built in collaboration with several of the artists and the

EMBASSY committee.

EMBASSY would like to thank all the artists and writers who have worked with

us on this project, The Mobile Picture Salon (Ewan and Jo Sinclair), Glasgow

Sculpture Studios, everyone at Galerie Guido Baudach Berlin, Ruby Stiler at

Studio Breuning and everyone at +44 141 gallery and Studio Warehouse Gallery.

Benjamin Fallon

20 / 10 / 09


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Just as every age gets the art it deserves, so every epoch gets the monsters

it deserves. Horror lms and literature are well versed in channeling and

allegorising social fears and moral panics. In the early 19th century Mary Shelleys

Frankenstein voiced anxieties regarded the folly of scientic rationalism, and its

potentially sacrilegious consequences, while the 1950s saw an army of freaks,

monsters and super humans unleashed by the power of the atom.

In 1968 George Romeros seminal Night of the Living Deadunleashed the zombie

as a particularly potent, monstrous allegory of contemporary dread. As the green

grey faces of Romeros zombie legions lasciviously ripped esophagi out of thebodies of reasonable people, it was clear the multitude of undead just couldnt

be reasoned with. Whatever the cause of or motivation for, their uprising and

unceasing appetite for esh, it was quickly clear that the zombies consciousness

was numbed and dumb. Rationality had been switched off and the body ruled.

Apart from a well aimed shotgun shell to the head or as amusingly showcased in

Dawn of the Dead, the imaginative use of a helicopter blade to carry out cranial

surgery, zombies were, despite their often comically slow progress, unstoppable;

their hunger, their desire, their appetites were endless. Zombies were never

satised, seemingly because what they ate always left them wanting more.

Unsurprisingly numerous critics were driven to note how the zombies, especially

in Night ofand Dawn of the Dead, functioned, in their nightmarish, ravenous

disemboweling of all that was good, wholesome and white in American culture,

as class avatars and allegorical gures of consumer alienation and the numbing

effect of popular or mass culture. As legions of zombies shufed towards the

properties and bodies of decent people, critics were want to describe them in

their massed ranks, as appearing like an awakened proletariat arisen from their

historical slumbers - the worst kind of nightmare for the bourgeoisie. So in the

gure of the zombie respectable middle class fears about the potential revenge

of the working class surfaced. These were combined with anxieties about the

impact of mass culture and consumerism upon the very same sleeping proletariat.

First generation zombies like Romeros were then, the spectres of modernity,

the massed industrial working class impacted upon by the apparently negative

effects of what the critic Theodore Adorno referred to, as the culture industry. If

the zombies retained even a tiny vestige of their human consciousness, it would

probably have been endlessly playing My Boy Lollipop as they chewed on

human liver.

Zombies functioned as ctional versions of the brain dead morons engaging in

anti social behaviour, whose appetite for sex, drugs, alcohol and instant food

blighted the good life of decent, responsible, rational people in the suburbs. The

kind of alien others, that, like todays immigrants, needed, politically, to be drivento places out of sight and out of mind. In America when Romero made the Dead

trilogy he probably had in mind the inhabitants of city projects such as the black

underclass of Chicago. In Britain today we might think of the prison boats or

disused army barracks where illegal immigrants are housed or corralled. The

zombie presence was uncomfortable then, precisely because of its materialisation

and reminder of these invisibles .

John Beagles


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The critical respectability and political bite (sic) of the early zombie rested then,

on this reading of them as subversively staging a political subtext about class

exclusion (and possible revenge) and the alienating capacity of consumerism and

mass culture. That this reading has lost much of its resonances, and become

rather lumpen in its application can be seen in Romeros return to the zombie

genre in Land of the Dead(2005). This is a lm that suffers from both Dennis

Hopper (a kind of Hollywood zombie), and an allegory that like a zombie attacking

you with a severed leg, repeatedly batters you about the head until you get it (zombie = underclass). It is also founded on a rather out dated Marxist model of

class stratication that is often inadequate in detailing the contours of todays

neo-liberal, consumerist capitalist debt ridden network.

Thankfully in the more imaginative re-workings of the genre, there have been

several attempts to reanimate the zombie as a ventriloquist for the kind of

pathologies bred by todays consumerist-capitalistentertainmentnetwork. One

clear sign is the way Zombies have recently speeded up and become more

frenzied. In both28 Days Later(2002) and the remake of Dawn of the Dead

(2004), sprinting has replaced stumbling. Rather than existing in a shufing esh

hungry trance, zombies now appear more like over animated children whovescored some pure aspartame. The hyper zombie may be consequence of CGI

developments, but as with all capitalist innovations it has alternate effects.

The speeded up sprinting zombie functions as a rabid allegory for our times,

a shorthand for the impact of an explosion of information. One that bombards

and bedazzles our minds and bodies with a seamlessly ever rotating, revolving

vista of new pleasures, new experiences, new products, new information. The

running zombie of28 Days Lateris then, an hyper allegorical gure for consumers

plugged into the entertainment-control circuits of hypermediated consumer

culture who are too wired to concentrate, and who are terrorized by the tyranny

of the now. If rst generation zombies represented fears about the slumbering

mass of industrial workers, the new breed are post-Fordist, information societyfacilitators the monstrous return of call centre workers from Dartford. Those

for whom the hedonistic treadmill of consumerist, nowist society hasnt led to a

better life.

As is increasingly becoming clear, with each new report on mental health

problems in western societies, these frazzled minds and bodies are not alone,

in fact, they are legion. The distracted consumers obsessed by the 24 hr

incoherent, gabble and stonk of TV, texting, the feverish, perpetually surng,

gadget addled, virally corrupted sky box watching, i-pod, i-phone i-me me me

me obsessed, sunlight avoiding creatures, are more likely to suffer from chronic

depression and anxiety disorders, than feelings of well being and fulllment.Gratication is, after all the one thing that consumerism is structurally forbidden

to deliver a satised customer would be a customer with no appetite for further

purchases. Or in zombie parlance, no hunger for more esh.

Now while I like the fact Zombies have, in evolutionary terms, accelerated, I think

its the wrong allegory for our times. Sure it works quite well as expressing this

kind of articially stimulated pathology, where the need for speed leaves people

on the brink of spontaneously exploding, from the pressure and anxiety of having

to be up to date and continually evolving (constant reevaluation of the life project).

Where the continual commodication of the self as a brand to be marketed within

the culture of social networking, must be carried out with a rapidly receding safetynet (deregulation reversing the idea of society or communities caring for those

who fail failure is now personal its your fault). But even the feverish zombie

misses the mark. Partly this is due to the demands of producing entertaining

action based spectacle. But its also a problem about identifying the right

consumerist pathologies.


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It seems to me a better allegorical role for the zombie would be that it just sits,

is inactive. What Im thinking of is a blas zombie, touched with a hint of the

melancholic. The blas zombie is a zombie who is incapacitated. This isnt about

an inability to make a choice, like the strung out consumer whos overwhelmed

with forty different types of cheese and shuts down. No, this is more about

disentanglement from being attached to anything specic. So its not a case

of the Zombie who cant determine between the living dead and living, whose

capacity for exercising the only job of zombie differentiation, the basic evaluation

between cold brains and warm hearts has been rendered incapacitated. Its

worse than that; its a zombie who cant even be bothered to attempt this basicact of differentiation.

Various writers have recently referenced similar pathological states of impotency

and passivity. The blogger K-punk, writing about the generation of teenagers

he works with, refers to them as suffering from reexive impotence (they know

things are bad, but more than that, they know they cant do anything about it),

while the philosopher Simon Critchley has used the term passive nihilism.

In a similar vein, the octogenarian writer Zygmunt Bauman writes about the

impact of our techno-infotainment culture of information saturation in his book

Consuming Life. After referencing the fact that the last thirty years has seen

more information produced than the previous 5,000 years of humanity, Baumannotes the consequences of being exposed to this constant rolling news culture of

knowledge bites:

We may say that the line separating the meaningful message, the ostensible

object of communication from background noise, its acknowledged adversary

and most noxious obstacle, has all but been washed away.

In Baumans conception the cascades of de-contextualized signs more or less

randomly connected to each other are increasingly putting us in the position

where the capacity to deal with the weight, variety and volume of information is

at breaking point. As he notes the task of ltering is increasingly outgrowing thecapacity of our lters. The amount of information being distributed at high speed

makes it increasingly difcult to create narratives and developmental sequences.

The effect of this Niagara of information babble can, according to Bauman, be

described as a kind blas attitude to knowledge, work or even lifestyle. In using

the term blas Bauman is deliberately referencing the German sociologist Georg

Simmels use of the term when describing the forms of alienation produced

by modernist culture. For Simmel the incapacitating effects were primarily the

consequences of a money-orientated culture:

the essence of the blas attitude consists in the blurring of discrimination. This

does not mean that the objects are not perceived, as is the case with the half wit,

but rather that the meaning and differing values of things, and thereby the things

themselves, are experienced as insubstantial. They appear to the blas person in

an evenly at and grey tone; no one object deserves preference over any other. All

things oat with equal specic gravity in the constantly moving stream of money.

Bauman updates Simmels idea; this time the half light perception of everything

in a evenly at and grey tone owes less to the explicit operations of money,

and more to the omnipotence of, and our exposure to, a saturated market of

information, pleasures and spectacles in our social network (network having

replaced society or community). For Bauman the kind of effect this exposure has

is also akin to a melancholic state. Drawing on the work of the sociologist Rolland

Munro, Bauman outlines how the melancholic state, stands for disentanglement

from being attached to anything specic. To be melancholic is to sense the

innity of connections, but be hooked up to nothing. In short melancholy refers

to a form without content, a refusal from knowing just this or just that. For


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Bauman this contemporary reading of the idea of blas, stands in for a generic

description of the afiction of the contemporary consumer within society.

Dont Stop youll never get enough

Michael Jacksons death prompted many reactions. Hypocritical celebrations

(god bless the pederast) and the kind of multi channel over saturation of

infotainment Bauman describes. For my act of reverence I watched the making

of Thriller documentary. Apart from the pleasures of seeing Rick Baker explain

his art, it also features brief glimpses of the dancers from Thriller, in full zombieuniforms backstage. Memory had convinced me that there was a particular shot

of a zombie sat in the canteen, looking bored and staring at a can of coke and a

KFC chicken leg. I was wrong; it turned out the zombie was smiling while eating

the chicken leg. Not what I wanted, but it set me off writing this, so for once faulty

cerebral channels were useful.

So, with this fabricated image of a Jackson zombie listlessly staring at a can

of coke and a KFC in mind, I propose the making of Blas Zombie. What I

envisage is a zombie movie lled with a cast of distracted, ennui consumed

zombies, whose look will be familiar to those devotees of numerous, rather

indulgent French art house movies. Nobody eats anyone and nobody bothers togrunt or moan (theres no soundtrack music either, just the occasional pavolvian

sounds from mobiles, computers, ineffectually calling to arms the now gadget

bored inhabitants). The action consists mainly of a great deal of passive, listless

inactivity and portentous distracted looks between slumped zombies, locked

inside nondescript interiors (decorated with Ikea furniture), lled with silver

gadgets and lcd TVs (none of which are on). Watching Blas Zombie should

hopefully generate the same levels of psychological pain and suffering that

physically would be experienced from having gaping mouths gnawing at your

own scarlet esh.


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ALAN HOLLIGAN

Mother, my mother she isnt quite herself today

2008


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The most merciful thing in the world is theinability of the human mind to correlate all its

contents. i

H.P. Lovecraft

All the things that I know but which I am not at

this moment thinking, 1:36pm, June 15th 1969

Robert Barry

What character do we attribute these things that

lie outwith our capacity to cognise? The germ of

horror lies in a desire to materially manifest thisblindspot in our ability to cognitively understand,

the generation of forms to account for our

worst fears. What however is the role that these

manifested objects play in relation to that unknown?

Edmund Burke describes horror as a component

of his philosophical distinction of the sublime in

Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas

of the Sublime and Beautiful, in which our fear of

powerful forces of nature become a device with

which we can empirically apprehend the sublime.

That which is considered to be beautiful (the artworkamong them) belongs to a different order of objects,

benign by comparison. A further distinction posited

by Immanuel Kant is that these sensations do not

constitute sublime feelings but instead make us

actively aware of this inability to comprehend the

sublime.ii

The development of such concepts into what we

recognise as the cultural phenomenon of horror

however was largely due the contemporaneous

emergence of a literary genre dealing with ctionalmanifestations of the supernatural: the gothic novel.

Key motifs, characters and locations, introduced by

authors such as Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, and

Mary Shelley would eventually solidify into a number

of conventions from which our current understanding

is derived. The employment of conventions such

as the ghost, the vampire, the castle, and the

graveyard by modern horror ction, several distinct

generations of horror movies, and sub-cultural music

genres such as horror punk has now reached a level

of saturated ubiquity. Despite this, it is arguablethat the increased orthodoxy of these conventions

contributes to an equal diminishment of any one

authorial precedent controlling their presentation.

With each re-employment these motifs take on a

greater mutability as elements within our collective

imagination, their uses becoming less prescriptive.In setting itself the task of producing rather than

describing the condition of fear, an unthinking

state in which rational thought is suspended, it is

important to note horror as a cultural phenomenon

distances itself from the enquiries of Burke and

Kant. It is this embodiment of the anti-intellectual

that has led to horrors characterisation as puerile,

sensationalist and its consignment to the periphery

of mainstream culture.

In analysing whether contemporary visual arts useof horror favours either its role as a philosophical

category through which we can apprehend the

sublime, or a transgressive yet widespread mode

of cultural production, a strong tendency towards

the latter is immediately apparent. Artworks

referencing horror revel in the conventionality that

access to this wellspring of pre-fabricated romantic

motifs provides. To what extent though can the

artwork embody any of the conditions of horror

as established by other disciplines? Visual art can

neither replicate literatures narrative facility, theimmersive qualities of cinema, nor even musics

effortless subordination of content to style.

Furthermore the recurring pre-occupation with its

own critical self-denition that has marked visual art

for well over a century runs contrary to horrors own

natural resistance to critical qualication. Even the

most shocking of imagery is deadened by the self-

criticality of this presentation, the result ultimately

framing aesthetic limits as much as eliciting a

visceral response. As such artwork dealing with

horror always has somewhat the appearance of aremaindered prop, the impression of a trick exposed.

Given these conditions it would seem art is more

eminently suited to another task: the negotiation of

the edge along which the romantic outpourings of

horror as a cultural phenomenon and the cerebral

testing of our cognisant limitations intersect.

For Robert Smithson an artists adoption of the

low budget mysticism iii of horror movies formed

part of a wider democratization of sources that

characterised the most ambitious art practices ofhis time. This tactic of reecting on other methods

of cultural production was a means of evading

an increasingly trenchant formalist discourse,

epitomised by the concept of an artworks

presentnessiv. In this scheme horror contains

Neil Clements


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the romantic appeal of the inaesthetic object.This inaesthetic object is not to be mistaken as

transcending aesthetic considerations but rather

is dialectically opposed to an order of benign,

aesthetically pleasing objects. Smithson realised

that to counter the benign other concepts of time

in which the artwork could operate needed to be

introduced. The most practical method was to cull

these from less reputable sources.

PAINTING IS DEAD Death can be refreshing so

I started engaging in necrophilia approachinghistory in the same way Dr Frankenstein

approached body partsv

Steven Parrino

The concept of the undead allowed Parrino to re-

dene his position to the perceived death of painting,

permitting its continuation in theatricalised undeath.

In his trademark works the abstract painting is

presented as an abject ruin, its support shattered,

its surface lacerated. What is crucial to note is

that Parrinos subjection of his canvases to thesemacabre distortions is in opposition to a preceding

theme of hermetic self-denition. We encounter

one of these zombie-like creations as a remnant of

a violent act, after the point of trauma. A negative

inscription onto a pure surface. Can we use this

observation, our perpetual arrival following the act,

to establish a temporal reading of horrors relation to

the artwork?

Devendra Varma makes the distinction between

between terror and horror as what separatesthe awful apprehension and the sickening

realisation vi respectively. Through this we can

separate the two into that which precedes, terror,

and that which follows, horror. Horror in Varmas

sense is a malignant dread that follows the unveiling

of the act in all its grisly details. We could liken our

interaction with the artwork using the same logic of

exposure, that of stumbling against a corpse. vii The

object that remains, spread all over the room, is only

negatively demonstrable of any unknown that might

lie behind it. The lights are out.

i Lovecraft, H.P: The Call of Cthulu Necronomicon, the

Best Weird Tales of H.P Lovecraft, p.201

________

ii We cannot determine this idea of the suprasensible any

further and cannot cognize but only think nature as an

exhibition of it. Critique of Judgement p.128

_________

iii Entropy and the New Monuments The Writings of

Robert Smithson p.14

__________

iv The presentness of the modernist painting was discussedin Michael Frieds essay Art and Objecthood which railed

against the durational aspects of minimalist art. Smithsons

response was published in Letter to the Editor, Artforum

October 1967 and focuses on what he viewed as Fried

awed conception of an artworks temporal qualities: Non-

durational labyrinths of time are infecting his brain with

eternity. The Writings of Robert Smithson p.38

__________

v Steven Parrino: The No Texts, p.43

__________

vi Varma, Devendra: The Gothic Flame p.130

__________

vii ibid


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NEIL CLEMENTS

Forced Comparative,

2009


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CATHERINE STREET

untitled

2008

LYNDSAY MANN

Scissors, from Paper Rock Scissors

2004


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BEAGLES AND RAMSAY

Pudding

2008

MARC BIJL

Statement (Im too sad to kill you)

2001


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My name is Andrei Negura. I was born in the hamlet of Mingir in the Hincesti

region of central Moldova. I arrived in this country in August of 2008 on a scholar-

ship to study ancient philosophy. Within the rst month of my stay I sold my index

nger to a witch for more money than I could earn back home in a lifetime. This

macabre transaction was the catalyst for a terrifying sequence of events culminat-

ing in the appalling circumstances I currently endure. It is 6:30 am on a bitter De-

cember morning. Outside in the street a legion of dog-headed villagers are hurling

debris at the windows of my lodgings. They are crapping on the lawn and posting

vile communications through the letterbox. Judging by what I have witnessed over

the past twenty-four hours I believe I may be the last human left alive in Bridgend.

I have no Internet connection, the TV is analogue and the phones are dead. Thecat and I are sharing a pouch of Sheba.

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I was taking a walk along the canal on a Sunday afternoon reecting upon an

intense week of introductory lectures and social events when my reverie was

abruptly broken by a vociferous stream of curses accompanied by the high-

pitched squeal of a furiously revving motor. I followed the noise to its source,

round the corner and under the bridge. There I discovered a portly old woman in

a mobility scooter. Her vehicle had apparently lost control and was now rocking

dangerously on the precipice of the canal. Leaping to her aid I dragged her backonto the towpath and returned the shopping that had spilled from her basket. She

thanked me and invited me to tea at her sons house in the neighbouring village. I

had nothing better to do and generally enjoy meeting new people so I accepted.

At her suggestion I mounted the rear of her cart and we set off.

Along the way we chatted and she became very animated when I mentioned my

studies. Apparently her son fancies himself as an alchemist of sorts and spends

a lot of time poring over obscure philosophical texts. He would be very keen to

meet me. She further implied that our serendipitous encounter would prove to be

enormously benecial for both parties. I admit that at this point I felt a slight chill

down my spine.

She brought me to a small, cosy-looking home on a street of identical houses

and her son (Robert?) greeted us at the door. He was pasty, bald and had a large

misshapen head that looked like a potato. His expression remained blank as

we were introduced but his deep-set eyes twinkled with malicious humour. He

thanked me for helping the crazy old bitch and I was ushered inside. From that

point on I recollect nothing other than intense emotion, a feeling of great warmth

and belonging as if I had returned home to the bosom of my family after a long

absence. And, although this may be a consequence of hindsight, I remember that

there was the distinct aroma of dog.

The next thing I recall I was standing outside on the porch grinning into the dark-

ness. I felt elated and slightly tipsy. My right index nger was missing and in my

left hand I held a check for a ridiculous sum of money.

Norman James Hogg


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The stump healed impossibly fast and there was no pain whatsoever. For the

sake of appearances I took a few days off university and wore a bandage for a

week or so upon my return. My injury (related as an accident at the warehouse

where I work two nights a week) drew a great deal of sympathy and proved to

be a fantastic icebreaker at parties. This, combined with the fact that I was now

tremendously wealthy, fast-tracked my popularity. Never have I enjoyed such a

rich and varied social life. I received a rst for my term paper and was nominated

class representative. In short, everything was rosy. I vowed, then, never to leave

Scotland.

But then the cat brought in something truly outrageous.

I heard her low growl while using the bathroom. I hopped to unlock the door while

pulling up my jeans and stepped into the hallway. When I saw what she had in

her mouth I passed gas and fell heavily against the coat rack. The resulting clatter

caused her to bolt and let go of what at rst I had taken to be a long length of

intestine. Yet it seemed alive. While one end of the pinky-grey tube was caught

in the door to the landing, the rest was twitching spasmodically and spraying a

dark uid along the skirting board. As I lay there paralysed and gaping, the cat

resumed her attack. I shooed her, stood up and backed off.

Sounds from without drew my eye to the door. There was something moving on

the other side. I started forward then paused. Opening the door would release

the foul limb that was for the moment trapped. I went to the kitchen and returned

with some makeshift weaponry. I deftly trod on the end of the thing, immobilising

it and then, using a rolling pin, hammered a kitchen knife rmly through its middle.

It squelched and spewed some tepid gunk up my arm but made no other sign of

protest. Armed with a broom handle I stepped through to the landing.

The eshy tube continued in slack loops across the carpet. It was slightly thicker

now with obvious muscle groups exing lazily beneath the greasy dermis. I

jumped as it suddenly stretched taut across the full length of the hallway, the farend pulled atly around the corner of the communal stairwell. As I sidled past with

my back to the wall I observed with disgust, coarse blond hair sprouting errati-

cally from its pallid surface. Even more disturbing were the small brown freckles,

increasing in frequency, towards the terminal end. I reached the stairs, glanced

down and there, lodged in the cat ap, was the possessor of the nauseating ap-

pendage.

I can hardly bear to describe what followed. The body was bulbous, shiny and

slate grey. It shimmered and wobbled like a colossal balloon full of water. As I

stood there it gradually oozed from the ap and opped back and forth on the

tiles. Crouching low, holding the broom handle at arms length, I approached. Igot within an inch of giving the damned thing an exploratory prod when, without

warning, it ruptured explosively.


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I was partially blinded by a wave of hot, sticky gore. Wiping my eyes unveiled

haemorrhaging clumps of steaming tissue, coating the walls from oor to ceiling.

Though convulsed with horror, part of my mind still performed a gruesome itiner-

ary; clumps of hair, irregular rows of teeth, numerous malformed eyes, a nger,

a nose and a still apping tongue were all recognisable amongst the tumorous

remains. For the most part the organs were obviously canine. The nger, however,

was undoubtedly human.

I worked through the night to mop, scrape and bury the monstrous leftovers. At

dawn I got in the bath, drank a bottle of Vodka, vomited, fell asleep and nearlydrowned. I was reminded of my father at home and enjoyed a blessed interstice

of calm.

It took some time to recover from that episode. I missed lectures for a month.

When I did turn up I was usually inebriated and randomly handing out bundles of

cash. When sober my mind xated on the witch (what else could she be?) and

her son. What had they sent me that day? Was it a sick joke, a deranged gift or

maybe a warning? The recurring thought most repugnant to my unravelled mind

was the recognition that somehow I had disposed of my own esh.

A few more weeks passed without event and I began to feel a little saner. I re-satsome exams and even managed to excuse my bizarre behaviour to tutors and

friends. I reigned in my expenditure, drank with moderation and stayed clear of

old women. I was coasting along nicely again, until yesterday, when the dog-

heads attacked.

It should have been a joyous day. I had noticed posters in my local pub advertis-

ing a jousting tournament being held in a neighbouring town as part of Home-

coming Scotland. The Society for Creative Anachronisms would be performing

and, having attended meetings at university earlier in the year, I was asked to help

with the food service. Lodging locally, I got there early to assist in preparing the

catering stands. It felt good to be involved.

The event started well. I had a great view from my burger hut on the north range.

The sun was shining and the palace grounds were heaving with tourists eager to

enjoy the ensuing spectacle. A slight breeze rufed the heraldic ags surrounding

the jousting grounds as King James introduced the rival feudal clans who would

do battle that day. The crowds cheered at the thundering of hooves and resound-

ing splinter of balsawood against steel. Children with plastic swords performed

their own duels and faked numerous elaborate death sequences.

At a lull in the proceedings a hungry and impatient queue formed in front of me.

Having developed a strong phobia, I found myself compelled to lift each raw patty

to the sunlight and carefully check for anomalies. It was just after such an inspec-

tion that I noticed a familiar grey-haired gure staring at me from the reed-beds

by the loch. Behind her a large pack of dogs sat patiently in the water, only their

heads showing above the surface. I motioned to point but, due to my missing

digit, succeeded only in raising a st. Then, as if at my unintentional salute, all hell

broke loose.

The rst wave of dogs burst from the water. They scrambled through the foaming

shallows and leapt to the bank. As they rose to full height a terrifying deformity

was rudely unveiled. Their snarling countenances were carried upon the torsos

of men! Startlingly naked and with a blade in each hand they tore into the now

screaming masses. Jaws locked upon throats and knifes plunged indiscrimi-

nately into the defenceless esh of man, woman and child. Blood began to arc

through the air and startled horses trampled over the eeing spectators. A troupe


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of knights, led by the King attempted to make a break towards the eastern gates

only to be borne down and savaged by a second wave of dog-heads emerging

from the old moat. A third wave made straight for the armoury display to hastily

procure crossbows and dispatch individuals who had escaped the blind chaos

at the centre. Yet another group of attackers carrying petrol canisters mounted

horses and began setting the brightly coloured tents alight. A serving wench, her

smock aame, ran shrieking from the mead tent, scissor jumped from the jetty

and smacked heavily across the foredeck of a sailboat. A furry head rose from the

loch and dragged her under.

Horses galloped up the slope towards me. I dived through the serving hatch as a

aming torch burst through the door. Under cover of smoke I scrambled towards

the throatless corpse of a squire. I pulled the most substantial looking Claymore

from his leather scabbards and tumbled behind a dying mare. As I lay huddled

on the scorched earth a suspicion of complicity nagged at my guts. Furious at

my entrapment I hurtled into the fray, intent upon slaying a few of the abomi-

nable hounds before attempting escape. I swung my sword furiously at the rst

I encountered and his bloodstained noggin vectored away from his still running

body. I decapitated two more before the futility of my actions hit home. I watched

spellbound as my rst victim plunged his st into his neck cavity and began tug -

ging at something inside. I recognised the bloated grey sac from my cat-ap assoon as it popped into position upon the shoulders of its host. Instantaneously it

began to morph, sprout hair and coagulate into the head of a Labrador. I glanced

behind me to see the others rebirthing themselves in the same hideous manner.

Acting on instinct I dived at their naked midriffs, tackled them to the ground and

pulverised their still soft cranial pods under the soles of my walking boots. These

two stayed down. I had found a method of permanent dispatch. I spun round in

search of allies to whom I could communicate my discovery. There were none. All

had been slain and my foes had swiftly departed. I was left alone with the stench

of smoke and butchery saturating my nostrils. My ears burned with the echo of

distant barking and the murmurs and screams of the dying.

I dragged myself wearily back up the slope to the car park, slipping occasionally

in pools of clotting blood. I pulled a corpse free of a mountain bike and wiped iri-

descent matter off the handlebars. As I cycled home along the canal I passed nu-

merous isolated scenes of violent slaughter. A melancholic howling wafted across

the valleys of Midlothian as I bunny-hopped through the cooling rejectamenta of

this apparently consummate massacre. Reaching my house I fell exhausted upon

the oor of the living room.

______________________________________

All has gone quiet and I lift myself to the window. She is parked on the lawn. Dog-

heads lay supine all around her, chewing quietly on choice sections of carcass. I

hoist open the window and scream torrents of abuse in my native tongue. Lifting a

hand to placate me, she replies calmly in perfectly accented Romanian. My family

have come to visit. She gestures towards the large tarpaulin bundle writhing by

the side of her scooter

Fictionalised by Norman James Hogg.

Taken from the diary of the late Andrei Negura.

October 2009


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AIDA RUILOVA

Oh No

2008

EMMA PRATT

My Dead Cat Keeps Telling Me To Do Things I Shouldnt

2008


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JONATHAN OWEN

untitled

2009

PAUL MCCARTHY AND MIKE KELLEY

Heidi

1991


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OLAF BREUNING

Bully

1999


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CHRIS WALKER

Dolphin Head

2008


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This catalogue is printed in an edition of 500 to

coincide with the exhibition

EMBASSY presents

curated by Benjamin Fallon

1.11.09 - 15.11.09

+44 141 Gallery

SWG3

100 Eastvale Pl,

Glasgow,

G3 8QG

www.swg3.tv

A presentation by the EMBASSY gallery

EMBASSY

the Roxy arthouse

2 Roxburgh Pl,

Edinburgh,

EH8 9SU

www.embassygallery.org

the EMBASSY is:

Angela BeckBenjamin Fallon

Horman Hogg

Shona Macnaughton

Francesca Nobilucci

all images are copyright of the artists

Marc Bijl appears courtesy the APT, Berlin

Olaf Breuning appears courtesy Metro Pictures, NY

Neil Clements and Jonathan Owen appear courtesy

of Doggersher, Edinburgh

Aida Ruilova appears courtesy Guido Baudach,

Berlin and Salon 94, NY

the Embassy Gallery LTD is registered in Scotland

Company Number: 259872

Charity Number: SC035780

Project supported by


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Warehouse of Horrors

Documents

Transcript of Warehouse of Horrors