Toby Sings 

Sister Rex and Brother Regina at the Sink

The Sink at the third Chutney Preserves Camberwell Green 2009 

Sister Rex and Brother Regina are available for hire for most occasions

 

Also see http://chutneypreserves.blogspot.com/

Recent Events

SON OF STELLA AND GEORGE

                                     A house was constructed in Peckham Square where six grave stones were painted as part of a festival of village idiots (curated by Mark McGowan.)

                                                                                                          Photo of event Sarah Sparkes

CCE CULTURAL CAPITAL EXCHANGE - ENJOY PARADISE    

A collaborative work involving video, posters sculpture  -Andrew Cooper, Dean Kenning and Sarah Sparkes.

                                 

   Still from information film

 Transzendenz Inc. April 24th - Mai 24th 2009 Hospitalhof Stuttgart Curated by Heiki Kelter and Rene Luck Hart

An ongoing hanging at the F-ish Gallery-45 Robertson Street  Hastings 

 As part of the Dark Times curated by Paul Sakoilsky http://www.f-ish.co.uk/paul_sakoilsky_show_2.

STELLA AND GEORGE'S SPOT

Stella and George have appeared in Ghosts in St Johns Bethnal Green

The Forgotten Bar-Berlin

The toby jugs and their holiday plates went to Berlin on Sept 29th for JERRY LEE LEWIS-NIGHT. This show was the final at the Forgotten Bar Project before closing. The Killers music was played exclusively the whole night intermingeled with various sounds emerging from the works in the show. Curated by Heiki Kelter and Rene Luck Hart

COMPOSTING MAN

Compost man laying on Camberwell Green during ‘Chutney Two the Rot Sets in’ (Curated by Sarah Sparkes and Marq Kearey. Sunday June 22nd 2008.)
People were invited to lie inside to watch a film in order to compost themselves on a Sunday afternoon.







You can view more photos of the activities of Compost Man and the works and activities of the other artists at 'Photos of the Rot Sets in’











The bubble gum and bird excrement storyteller, still from the film ‘Compost yourself’

The Cabinet of Evocation

After a hard afternoons work at the Sun and Doves pub the Cabinet of Evocation with Toby Mercurious takes a well earned rest. This formed part of the Marquis of Camberwell event curated by Rachael House and Jo David of Space Station Sixty-Five (See past exhibitions).











The cabinet was wheeled into the pub for people to be inducted into for magical evocation during the sunday afternoon of april the 6th 2008 between 5 and 8pm. Performance



The Cabinet was also on show with the enscribed momentos people brought back after entering it at Sartorial Contemporary Art 
23rd May - 19th June 2008



Intorducing the cabinet.

The inscribed momentos that people brought back were tied by them to the cabinet.
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Room for Manifestation

The Room (shown here in its manifestation in Union Street, Climate for Change Show ) is a reconstruction of an ‘ordinary’ domestic interior using mostly found materials from skips and waste disposal areas.



Fetishistic communion and craft techniques such as woodcarving, house painting and carpet fitting are utilized with the help of Toby Jugs animated within two hand carved T.V sets.









Household furnishings and domestic fittings are re-imagined in a clunky and slightly dysfunctional way but they reflect a mythologized time of making do and making the best of things as opposed to a throw away culture.



The work also questions class related aesthetic judgements about the value and power of ‘domestic monstrosities’.
The work aims to engage all the senses in an interplay of sight, sound and touch aided by two synchronised films.

The comfort of familiarity and the pleasures of discovering new potentials in the domestic environment are explored against a background of the social and economic realities of the dwelling.If phenomena are seen to be part of a field of libidinous energy , the work can be seen as an attempt to make visible various potentials present in the structure and contents of a flat or house. The liberation and unfoldment of possibilities is enacted through familiar containers of domestic fantasy such as Toby Jugs, bashed skirting boards and the floral forests of net curtain.
The aim is also to discover and play with, the mix of physical and social forces which are normally seen as separate, for example; wood, sunlight, electricity, style, cultural and social associations .
Thus ideas about phenomena being interdependent articulations of different forces are explored. The domestic environment, animated with collective projection, could be seen as a counter weight to the commodification and pernicious speculative nature that surrounds the dwelling in our time. Although ‘homely’ images of the domestic are often used in a sentimental way in advertising, the work is an attempt to try to break into an uncensored, more truthful, relationship with these phenomena.


The value of playing with reality and entering into a different set of relationships with objects, which is beyond the utilitarian, is an attempt to rejuvenate the familiar, and create a basis for more objective judgements that take into account felt responses hopefully opening up possibilities for awareness of social interconnectedness by validification of a partly shared ‘inner space’.



"The house is an animal for living in." Lee Coblers