Michael Blackburn's ART ZERO

THE BLACKBURN ARCHIVE

What you'll find here is a (considerably incomplete) list and brief description of texts, photos, projects, objects and other fallout, including both private and commissioned works, past and present, completed, abandoned, lost, unfinished, ongoing and perhaps even destroyed.

What you'll find here is a (considerably incomplete) list and brief description of texts, photos, projects, objects and other fallout, including both private and commissioned works, past and present, completed, abandoned, lost, unfinished, ongoing and perhaps even destroyed.


ABSTRACT DEPRESSIONISM, Performance Art by THE ANGSTROM UNIT 1978

A set of rescued photos of a piece of performance art by The Angstrom Unit at The Breadline Gallery, Rodley, Leeds, in 1978. Participants included myself, Geoff Matthews (wearing jacket and torn vest) and Paul Buckton (wearing boiler suit and woolly hat). The photos were taken by Mike Wood and have been digitised by Geoff Matthews.


THE AUSTRALIA BOOK

Notes regarding a boxed piece composed of documentation collected during a trip to Australia in February 1999. Photograph of a photograph featuring the artist's shadow in a swimming pool. Unfinished.


AN AUSTRALIAN TRIPTYCH

Australian Triptych is a short video comprising three static hand-held shots. The final video was shot on a camcorder from the original raw VHS footage on screen, and a soundtrack added. The final piece lasts 2:58 mins. Original footage shot in Australia, 2001. Finished, 2006.


CHIPS WITH HITLER: 6 METAFICTIONS

A limited edition pamphlet of 6 Metafictions (10 copies), published via Sunk Island Publishing in June 2002. Out of print.


DROWNING DANTE'S BOOK

A combined Broken Book, performance piece and video (2005).


THE FORGOTTEN CODES OF KING ARTHUR

On the beach at Seaton Carew, June 2001.


THE FOUND COIN COLLECTION

Between August 2000 August 2003 I collected all the coins I found on the street. Completed at £15.56.


HIGH WIND WITH CAR ALARM

Listen to High Wind with Car Alarm, recorded in the morning of 8th December 2000: two .wav file versions are available. The first is the short version (approx 13 seconds); the long version is about one minute.


HOMAGE TO JOSEPH BEUYS

Homage to the legendary German performance artist whose works include Explaining Pictures To A Dead Hare and Honey Pump At The Work Place. Short found text in Positive and Negative Versions. Works under Internet Explorer, but not Firefox.


THE LAST OF HARRY

I produced The Last Of Harry when I was Writer In Residence On The Internet in 1995, co-funded by The arts Council and Channel. It's the first hypertext project I made. It is also one of the first such projects in the UK. And it's another unfinished piece.


HARRY'S HAND MAGAZINE

Details of Harry's Hand, a poetry magazine I set up and ran 1987 - 1990. Writers published include Ken Smith, Brendan Cleary, Sue Dymoke, Martin Stannard, Judi Benson, Peter Finch, Rob Etty and Caroline Price, among others. Plus the first UK publication of Ian McMillan's 'The er Barnsley Seascapes'. By the time I wrapped this up, Sunk Island Review was already underway.


FROM THE LIBRARY OF BROKEN BOOKS

Books treated in a variety of ways to transform them into sculptures. Commenced 10 Feb 2002 and intermittently ongoing. Details of books can be found in The Library.


THE LINCOLNSHIRE GRAILS

This ongoing project was originally conceived in the winter of 1998 when I was working for Ordnance Survey. It is a photographic record of 'grails' discovered in the Lincolnshire landscape. Grail is interpreted in a purely personal way. 'Ongoing' in the same way as the apple tree project.


LUSTRATION

Two images of a Lustration performed at Binbrook on an old millwheel. Lustration being a process of cleansing or purification.


MARKING THE CURRENCY

Using home-made ARTZERO rubberstamps I marked various sterling notes before passing them back into circulation (2001).


METAFICTIONS

Fictions, fabulations, hallucinations, borrowings and outright thievings - that's the essence of Metafictions, 20 of which are published as an ebook under the title, Black Swan Of Trespass. A blog of new flash fictions/metafictions is underway at Alien Waters.


MIKE FABULOUS AND HIS FAMOUS FRIENDS

This piece was commissioned by Lincolnshire County Council in 1998 for their SHORT STORIES website, constructed and edited by photographer Chris Goddard. Take a look at Fabulous and celebrities such as Nigel Planer and Colin Dexter, plus an article about the man himself.


ONE HUNDRED APPLE TREES

The aim of this project is to photograph one hundred apple trees in the county of Lincolnshire and exhibit them on this site. Commenced in spring 2000 and ongoing. Starts with a stunning view at Tupholme Abbey. It's taking a long time, this one.


OS NOTES

Brief description of a boxed piece produced from work with Ordnance Survey in 1998/9.


ROMANCE AT THE MAC, BROKEN BOOK PERFORMANCE, 2005

Photos of performance in which I produce a Broken Book, A Glastonbury Romance, at Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) in Birmingham, July 2005.


THE PHOTO GALLERY

Each week for two years (2000-02) I placed a different photograph on the front page and then archived it in The Photo Gallery. View such images as Follow the River, Starfield in Midstone, The Artist Performs in a Bookshop, Klaus and the Butterfly, Udjat Eye, A Sloping Field of Wheat, etc.


THE POETRY OF MICHAEL BLACKBURN

The Ascending BoyThe Ascending Boy, poems by Michael Blackburn, copies available on Amazon UK

My most recent book, The Ascending Boy is available from Amazon.co.uk or Flambard Press.

'lean and intelligent...this is a rich and beautiful book' - Tim Cumming in Billy Liar

Everything else is technically out of print, though I still have a few copies of most titles.



The Poetry Library at The South Bank Centre now has an online archive of work from various UK literary magazines, some of which include my work. You can read the following:

'Soldiers On Exercise' in The North (1986) Printed in the very first issue of The North, this poem later appeared in The Prophecy Of Christos (1992).

'The James Brothers: A Triptych' in Dreamcatcher 8 (2001).


The following poems are on this site:

- ANDY & ME A hypertext poem about Andy Warhol that doesn't require you to do anything but watch the pages change by themselves.

- OBSEQUY FOR QUEEN HATSHEPSUT Short poem with image, applying words of Walter Savage Landor to an Egyptian queen.

- RETURN TO ESKELETH Originally commissioned by The Poetry Society of Great Britain as the Eastern Arts region contribution to their Online Poetry Map back in 1996 or thereabouts and only viewable now on this site. It's an early example of a very simple hypertext poem without images. Eskeleth is a place in Arkengarthdale, a small valley running off Swaledale in North Yorkshire.


PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A CYBORG

A hypertext work in text and image concerning the purely digital existence of an artist. This can be viewed as a hypertext book or as an automated slideshow. Cyborg exists in a variety of formats: as a digital work online and on CD; as a 'script' or 'score' for a performance piece; and as a visual installation. It received its first UK representation as a performance at MAC in Birmingham, 2005, and was presented in its first full UK installation mode at Lincoln University in May 2007 as part of the Lincoln Book Festival.

Cyborg was created with funding from Arts Council East Midlands in 2004.


ROGER'S JACKETS

Dr Roger Meredith models five of his outdoor jackets in a field outside The Poplars in rural Lincolnshire. Sartorial practicality at its bucolic best.


THE STRANGE CASE OF EDWARD HOPPER'S PAINTINGS

My own brief view on the work of Edward Hopper.


SCULPTURES FROM EVERYDAY LIFE

Temporary sculptures are made from materials found to hand, documented and then lifted within a short space of time, sometimes minutes. The environment of such works is necessarily 'impure', that is, without the well-lit, clear views and aesthetic framing of a gallery or allocated public space, and exposed at the same time to the depressing changeability of the the British weather. An open-ended series, commenced June 2001.

Sculpture #1 Occult Aztec
Sculpture #2 Durer's Black Swan
Sculpture #3 Books: Rain or Shrine?
Sculpture #4 The Missing Manager


TRINITY RIVETS

Photograph of three large rivets found on the Linconshire shore. Father, Son and Holy Ghost.


WATCHING TV WITH THE SOUND TURNED OFF

A series of 10 photos taken directly from tv. No#1. No#2 No#3 No#4 No#5 No#6 No#7 No#8 No#9 No#10.


WHITE TRIANGLE

In August 1999, with the help of Dr Geoffrey Matthews, I constructed a white triangle on a hillside in Lincolnshire. The triangle was composed of materials found on site and remained in situ for one month before being lifted.