The Peoples Museum of 1962 - Rex Wells B.A.S.E logos 1962-1977

Today !

The Artist Discussion Group

Time:21:00

Location: McDonalds, Bethnal Green Road,

The People's Museum of 1962 - 2054 Logo

The Peoples Museum of 1962 - Rex Wells B.A.S.E logos 1962-1977

The Peoples Museum of 1962 - Rex Wells B.A.S.E logos 1962-1977

The Peoples Museum of 1962 - Rex Wells B.A.S.E logos 1962-1977

The Peoples Museum of 1962 - Rex Wells B.A.S.E logos 1962-1977

THE MINISTRY OF PROGRESS PRESENTS 'THE ARTIST DISCUSSION GROUP'

The Artist Discussion Group will act as a facilitator to debate and discussion. Held monthly on the same evening as Time Out’s First Thursday initiative, the group will present an opportunity for practicing artists and critics to meet and brandish their thoughts and ideas around a table.

Hosted in a local McDonalds restaurant, it is The Ministry’s intention to stand away from any firmly ingrained myths that portray the artist as bohemian, tortured, a beatnik. The Artist Discussion Group is a platform for a very open – and public – debate that will attempt to find place for artistic practice in the pace of the here and now (and not in the docile bourgeoisie of the coffee shop, or the hazy-eyed stupor of a back-street boozer).

The Peoples Museum of 1962 - Rex Wells B.A.S.E logos 1962-1977

The Peoples Museum of 1962 - Rex Wells B.A.S.E logos 1962-1977

The Ministry Of Progress presents In House Artist Statement

The People’s Museum of 1962 is the centrepiece of my practice. Envisaged as a fictional creation, it was originally established by James Wyndham. The museum has four directors, each living simultaneously in a different time and each one named James Wyndham. The museum exists between the years 1962 and 2069. Its main purpose is to archive and preserve the forgotten histories of the ordinary people of Great Britain and its colonies.

The museum’s exhibits are an attempt to raise questions of how we would perceive a Britain of the future and the role of the inconsequential individual within this wider society. It attempts to explore the themes of class conflict, nationalism, colonisation, eccentricity and scientific achievement.

The work is born from extensive periods of research. There are individual elements comprised of fact but, as you may probably be able to guess, the work also draws heavily from fiction. I use distorted presentations of the truth to distance the viewer and, in turn, raise questions about the subtext of the work and its origins in truth. The work also explores human nature and how we ascertain truth from situations from the way in which they are presented to us.

I aim for the work to give the viewer an insight into a modern idea of utopia. I want to offer the viewer impossible scenarios in order to ask them to revisit past ideals – especially the rebuilding of British society – and use these as metaphors for how our new global society functions. I want to pose the question: what would be possible if these things had really happened?

dogs

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=44215931

THE MINISTRY OF PROGRESS tonight

IN HOUSE PRIVATE VIEW:

Come along for the private view on Thursday evening. Doors open at 6pm, with the performance of Things Become Art In A Space Where Powerful Ideas About Art Focus On Them.

DIRECTIONS:

83A Parkhurst Road, London, N7 0LP.

The nearest tube station is HOLLOWAY ROAD on the PICADILLY LINE. It is a 5 minutes walk from the station. Upon exiting the station, turn immediately left and walk along Holloway Road. Look for the pub “Big Red” and Carpet Right on you left. Take the left at the traffic lights: Parkhurst Road. 83A is about the fourth or fifth door on your right, immediately before a barber’s shop.

If you’re taking the bus, the nearest stop is HOLLOWAY NAG’S HEAD. You can take the 17 from London Bridge station or the 91/N91 from Trafalgar Square.

There will be beer.

http://afallofmoondust.wordpress.com/

see you thursday night at 6pn

Dot Boson-Higgins Documentary

Dot Boson-Higgins was born in Wamego Kansas in 1894. Orphaned as a child, she was brought up by her aunt and uncle.

Not much is known about her early life, but at the age of 14 she was sent by her aunt to Ferncliff Asylum, Kansas. Boson-Higgins had been suffering from a series of complex delusions since the age of six.

One psychiatrist’s report states;

“ Dot has told me that she has found the scientific formula to travel to another world, which she refers to as a parallel universe. When asked about this universe she can explains it in minute detail. Her creation of scientific terms and the complexity of her descriptions, lead us to believe that her delusions are of a most severe variety, however we believe that an intensive course of the revolutionary Electroconvulsive Therapy could help keep them under control.”

After six months of electroconvulsive therapy, Higgins’ willingness to voice her complex theory had diminished to the point that she was regarded as sane by her psychiatrist and released.

In fact, Higgins’ aforementioned delusions had diminished because she had found another way to voice her theories. She had been writing them down, and by the time she was sixteen she had penned volumes of text describing the foundations of quantum physics, including the first documented example of the form and purpose of the atom. All but one of these books was discovered by her aunt and destroyed.

A short time later Higgins moved to England, married a naval officer, Percy Higgins, with whom she had six children, and lived as a housewife in Plymouth until her death in 1985 at the age of 90.

After Percy’s death six years later, the house and their belongings passed to their children and grand children , it was then that Higgins’ remarkable secret was discovered.

Her grand-daughter, speaking in 1992 said;

“ Behind a wall in Gran’s pantry, we found a secret door. Behind it, there was a room, quite small about 7 feet across. In the middle she’d set up a writing table and put shelves up on the surrounding walls. One set of shelves were completely covered in books and the others were covered in all sorts of green ornaments.”

Most of Higgins’ books contain extensive theories on the generation of wind vortices, presenting the mathematical formula for air currents in a tornado. Higgins had discovered that under the right set of conditions, it was possible to use channelled air to transport objects through four dimensional space to parallel universes. The theories are so complex that many of them are still being deconstructed by physicists around the world.

The museum was offered the collection by the family in 1994, and we are currently cataloguing and transcribing all of the information contained in the room.

The most compelling twist in the tale is that experts now believe Higgins may have accidentally visited one of these parallel universes as a child. A neighbour of author L Frank Baum in Kansas, the young Dot seems to have relayed to him tales of a strange land she called Oz, a land that until now was believe to be Baum’s fictional creation. Higgins drew maps of Oz and detailed landscapes, as well as drawings of the people of Oz. All of the objects found in the room are green. Each one was numbered and the numbers are listed in a book alongside names, which on closer inspection were revealed as characters who appear in Baum’s novels - characters that some now believe could be real people.

There are 200 objects in the collection and the museum is currently recreating Higgins’ laboratory, with the help of her family. The exhibit is due to open in spring 1999.

The Ministry of Progress presents

IN HOUSE

10 days to go!!!!!!!!!!!