LIVE POETRY by internationally renowned art critic, reviewer, poet, fiction writer, harmonica player and practicing artist Richard Dyer

Thursday December 2nd 7.30-8.00pm

CHARLIE SMITH london
2nd Floor
336 Old St
EC1V 9DR

020 7739 4055
http://www.charliesmithlondon.com/

CHARLIE SMITH london's first live poetry performance: 'Paperless Poetry: poems on Love, Death, Sex and Alcohol'.

Dyer will recite his poems in the gallery space, creating a dialogue with the lyrical paintings of Dominic Shepherd, where "the hallucinatory and hypnogogic imagery of Dyer's visceral and erotic poetry" (AMBIT magazine) echoes the shifting imagistic universes evoked in the paintings of Shepherd.

This will also be a chance to view 'Lucifer Rising' in its final week and to informally discuss the show with the artist.


Richard Dyer: Biographical Notes

Richard Dyer is Assistant Editor at Third Text: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture; and Art Editor of Wasafiri, the magazine of international contemporary writing. He was News Editor and London Correspondent for Contemporary magazine for over ten years.

He is a widely published art critic, reviewer, poet, fiction writer and also a practicing artist. His critical writing has appeared in Contemporary, Frieze, Flash Art, Art Review, Art Press, Third Text, Wasafiri, PLUCK, The Independent, The Guardian, Time Out, Citizen K (London Correspondent), Rapid Eye, Performance Magazine (Assistant Editor), The Jewish Chronicle and many other publications and catalogues.

His poetry and fiction have been published in Contemporary, Ambit, Moving Worlds, Le Gun, Victoria, / seconds, Die Ausensites des Elementes, Junger Welt and Cronica Latina. He has read at events associated with the Galway Literary Festival in 2000 and 2005, and the Hackney Literary Festival. In October 2010 he read with John Cooper Clarke in Galway. His first poetry collection, A Western Journey, in collaboration with the painter Jim Kavanagh, was published by Arlen House, in October 2006. In November 2008 He wrote a second collection of poems with the same artist on the theme of the Irish peat bogs: ‘Bog Land Scapes’, which was released as a DVD of readings, interviews, film and photography containing a booklet of the recent poems, it was launched, along with a major exhibition of Kavanagh’s paintings, at the Galway City Museum. He is currently editing his latest collection of poems, The Romance Engine.

Publications include: Electronic Shadows: The Art of Tina Kean, (Black Dog, 2004); Dan Hays: Impressions of Colorado (Southampton City Art Gallery, 2006); Riddled With Light: Corpus Lumen: Susie Hamilton, 1996–2006 (Paul Stolper, 2006), Zineb Sedira: Saphir (Photographer’s Gallery, 2006) and Transitive Transduction: Breaking the Integument in the work of Tony Bevan (Ben Brown Gallery, 2006). His latest publications are Controfacciata: Solid Water, Liquid Stone, on the work of German photographer Matthias Schaller, (Ben Brown Gallery, London, 2008), Keith Coventry: Deconstructing the Modernist Utopia (Haunch of Venison, Zurich, 2008), Making the (In)visible in the Work of Mark Francis, (Lund Humphries, 2008), Painting: The Essential Verb, (Jerwood Foundation, Contemporary Painters Prize, 2008), The Descent of Man: Wolfe von Lenkiewicz (All Visual Arts, 2009); Clement Page: Screen Memories: Picturing Lost Time in the Watercolours of Clement Page (Kuckei + Kuckei, Berlin, 2009); Art on Demand: Custom Colours and Materials: Sébastien de Ganay, Abstract Works Catalogue, 2008–2009 (onestar press, 2009); Demi-Monde: Alexander de Cadenet, (F-ish Gallery, 2009) and Valérie Jolly: Infra-Thin, (Alexia Goethe Gallery, 2010). He is currently editing his selected writings on contemporary art: Squinky Sinks and Soapy Tropes: Twenty-five Years of Selected Writings on Contemporary Art.

Richard Dyer’s artistic practice ranges from photography, text installation and painting to constructions and sculpture employing mixed media. His extensive series of watercolours explore the soft space between the abstract and the figurative, the organic and the manufactured, articulating the beings which inhabit the matrix at the periphery of consciousness. He has developed, or ‘observed’ the flora and fauna of an alternative universe of painterly entities and recorded them in the fluid medium of watercolour.

From 1988–1997 he curated a series of exhibitions under the title of ‘The Arts Registry’ in a variety of venues, from private members clubs (Fred’s, Soho, two year programme) to the Mall galleries (‘Celebration’: 35 artists), The Horns Gallery, (Bermondsey: 8 artists and auction). He helped to organise the major conference held at Tate Britain in 2008: ‘What is British Art?’ which came out of a special issue of Third Text. He is involved in the production of a major publication with the working title of The Whole Story, which aims to tell the complete history of post-war British Art and which will also be a Tate conference and exhibition.

Although generally known as an art critic, poet and artist Richard Dyer is also a professional blues harmonica player playing under the title of The Critical Harp. He has played with The Blockheads at Ronnie Scott’s in Soho, London, in Berlin at the famous punk club Wild At Heart, with Maxi Geil (recently signed to Fred Label records) at Sketch and the Great Eastern Hotel and at The Café Royal with Claire Nicholson. He played with The Ken Ardley Playboys (artist Patrick Brill, aka Bob and Roberta Smith’s band) at the Hackney Empire, The Serpentine Gallery and at the re-opening of Beconsfied Gallery. He has also played with the pianist Kenny Clayton at the Colony Room Club and Gerry’s in Soho, with Louie Hoover at the French House, at The Groucho Club and regularly at Jazz After Dark. He played with the members’ band at the party to celebrate twenty years of the Groucho. Previously he has played at The Hammersmith Odeon, Manchester Apollo, Barrowlands, Glasgow and the Camden Palace. He has also played at many private parties, gallery openings, the Venice Biennale Australia party, live on Bloomberg/PS1 radio on the Bloomberg party boat on the Grand Canal and at the opening party of Documenta 12 in Kassel, 2007. He often combines music and poetry in his performances.