A Little Inside Out a Lot of Outside In

‘…I like to do things the wrong way,’ says Gavin Bennett, self-styled wordsmith (poet), photographer, film-maker, songster, performance artist, calligrapher, collector of rubbish and mysterious alchemical artisan.

‘a little inside out, a lot of outside in…’ is a stunning visual collage that presents the viewer of a kaleidoscopic universe filmed in around the artists home in Shoreditch ‘The Museum Of Second Childhood’ (Litter & Chore Inc.), and is the accumulation of years of aesthetic foraging, in which the home of the artist becomes a shrine to the objet trouvée. Bennett’s habitat heaves with a vast plethora of plastic painted detritus, found abandoned toys, the sagging immensity of disbound books, overdrawn and inscribed, strung together with fabric and twine, a labyrinth of visual delight and delirium. Playful, disquieting and epic, the vision of the poet as urban hoarder both dazzles and engulfs, luring the audience into a world on the brink of transformation, excavating the throw away culture of society in a monumental episode from an extraordinary daily life. Clutter presented as curious and engaging ephemera, from mound to monolith through which images and texts grow profusely.

“An acrid stench of fish curry and blocked refuse chutes greets you as you first approach Bennett’s home in a crumbling Victorian apartment block in London’s East End. A window a few floors up is crammed with children’s toys and scrunched-up plastic bags. As the door to the apartment squeals open, the lank figure of an immaculately-groomed 50 year old man appears. Inside, an overwhelmingly cluttered hall is lined with thousands of books, painted over and drawn upon. Netting is weighed down by a collection of found objects”.
“Raw Vision Magazine” Issue 47 2003

Gavin Bennett
Royal Collage of Art 1970’s

Gavin Bennett

1st April 2009