Assemblage

“Strangeness is the indispensable condiment of all beauty.”
Baudelaire

William Blanchard started his career as a musician with his first band Bruce Wayne and the Batniks (1982-89), a time in which he had a rock and roll epiphany involving sex and drugs, in which ‘God’ gave him the name ‘Wildcat‘ which he has used as an artist and musician ever since.

Wildcat Will has taken inspiration for this exhibition from Joseph Cornell (1903-72) who created ‘poetry from the commonplace’ especially with his boxed assemblages created from found objects, and the west coast artist Wallace Berman (1926-76) with reference to the privately made and published issues of ‘SEMINA‘ whose contributors included Antonin Artaud, Charles Bukowski, William S Burroughs, Marion Grogan, Stuart Perkoff, Jean Cocteau and Allen Ginsberg. Inspiration was also drawn from his collages and work with esoteric and mystical imagery using the early mimeograph machines.

Wildcat Will formed the Sandals 1990-95 (London Records) an art/music/poetry collective, which included paintings and installations in galleries and clubs in London, L.A and Tokyo. from 1995-2002 ‘Wildcat’ played drums for Beth Orton (Heavenly Records), touring on and off for 7 years and recording the albums (Trailer Park, Central Reservation and Daybreaker), he played drums for Dot Allison, The Aloof, and more recently Whitey (1234 Records) 2003-07.

‘Wildcat’ has worked and collaborated with Jagz Kooner (Sabres of Paradise), Death in Vegas (Contino Sessions, Satan’s Circus), Andrew Weatherall (Two Lone Swordsmen)David Holmes, Primal Scream and James Lavelle. recent projects have included co-producing, writing, playing drums, guitar and synths on the new album by his long term partner Siobhan Fahey (Bananrama, Shakespear’s sister), drumming for The Wolfmen(Marco Pirroni and Chris Constantionou (Adam and the Ants)) session work on Dirty Stop out – Agent Provocateur creator Joe Corre’s new band with Mick Jones (The Clash), and last year with Le Volume Courbe and Arthur Delaney (Young and Lost). ‘Wildcat’ is also writing and producing music as part of a duo with Matty Skylab known as The Electric Moccasins of Doom (Heavenly Records) and writing music for television, advertising and films (Wildebeest Music).

‘Wildcat’ also works as an international DJ and for the last 20 years has played for the likes of Bentley, Dunhill, Tommy Hilfiger, Harvey Nichols, MTV, VH1 and LGSony. The last couple of years has seen him do gigs and parties in Berlin, London, Barcelona, New York, Mexico City, Sweden and Moscow at various nondescript bars, clubs, dives and shitholes.

Wildcat Will has returned to making art after an enforced hiatus and this is his first solo show in London for 5 years

www.myspace.com/wildcatwillspace

Assemblage (Post show by Robert Harder)

William Blanchard aka ‘Wildcat Will’

24th April – 6th May 2009