tribe magazine issue 5

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ISSUE 5 TRIBE MAGAZINE 3


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WELCOME TO ISSUE 5 OF TRIBE MAGAZINE

There is a very well known video on youtube of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at a

conference repeating the mantra “developers, developers, developers”. What Ballmer is

saying is that the key to the future of MIcrosoft and the IT industry in terms of innovation are

developers. Without them developing software there is no innovation, and the industry dies.

It’s pretty much the same for the arts sector -‐ but what it needs to develop now and into

the future, is collaboration. I’m amazed however at how little actual real collaboration goes

on in the arts world, due to an inbuilt ‘silo mentality’.

There is a distinct lack of funding in the arts, and London attracts most of it. Outside

London, spending on the arts per head is chronically low. It’s no surprise then that arts

organisations develop a ‘silo mentality’ as we all fight for a very small slice of the arts funding

pie. But the only real way for each of us working in the arts to maxmise our organisational

potential, and more importantly, those that benefit directly from the arts, is to collaborate.

By collaborating outcomes for audiences increases, engagement increases, marketing and

publicity outcomes increase and knowledge transfer increases too. So why aren’t more arts

organisations collaborating fully?

From personal experience, a large part of what is stopping real collaborative practice is a

mixture of fear and ignorance. There is a fear from many organisations that someone may

‘steal’ ideas from them or money from an identified funding pot, and ignorance as it’s easy to

make assumptions about partnership working without ever fully experiencing a fruitful

relationship with a dedicated delivery partner. There is also the added fear that they may not

be the main provider in a partnership and therefore fear of losing some control also plays its

part. Together fear and ignorance make a potent mix and ensure that the barriers to

engagement between organisations reminds high. But instead of seeing every other

organisation as a threat, why not instead see them as an opportunity? It’s a very simple

dynamic to switch around, but one that tribe embraces whole-‐heartedly. I get alot of people

asking me who tribes competitors are -‐ I genuinely have no idea who is. I don’t see

competitors or ‘threats’ in the market, just organisations tribe could potentially partner with

to create great work.

Just think what the arts scene would be like if everyone thought like that?

Mark Doyle, Editor in Chief

t r i b e m a g a z i n e i s s u e 5

Editor In ChiefMark Doyle

EditorAli Donkin

Associate EditorTilly Craig

Editorial DirectorPeter Davey

Marketing DirectorSteve Clement-‐Large

Client ManagerJean Camp

CoverJamie Reid

PhotographyMark Doyle (except where noted)

ContributorsGlyn Davies, Clarice Goncalves, Lianne Marie La Touche, Jamie Reid, Luke Joyce, Hayley Kendal, Bill Lewis, Dean McDowell, Paul Whitehead, Antony Pilbro

CONTACT

To submit work:[email protected] say hello:[email protected]

Full submission details can be found on our website:

www.tribemagazine.org

Artists have given permissionfor their work to be displayedin tribe magazine. No part ofthis publication may bereproduced without thepermission of the copyrightholder(s)

(C) 2012 Trico Creative Media CICcompany no 7982933


CLARICE GONCALVES

C O N T E N T S

JAMIE REID

6

LIANNE MARIE LA TOUCHE

LUKE JOYCE

42

20

30PAUL WHITEHEAD

54

DEAN MCDOWELL

64

GLYN DAVIES

84BILL LEWIS

92

HAYLEY KENDAL

102

ANTHONY PILBRO

72


The Simultaneous And Successive


The Inaudible Sound Of Constant

Presence


Condensation


Embroidering White Labyrinths


Culverins Waves


Clarice Gonçalves

claricegoncalves.blogspot.co.uk


Multifarious Phenomena Specific


architectonic fashion

CREDITS

Lianne Marie La Touche [[email protected]]

[http://on.fb.me/LWVBcX]

Erika Thomas: [www.cre8tivemakeup.com]

[[email protected]]

Cleo Miami: [[email protected]] [cleomiami.weebly.com]

Savita Shukla: [[email protected]]

Mark Doyle: [misophotography.weebly.com]

mailto:[email protected]


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“You have to create a spark. I think that’s what art should do, create a spark.” PETE DAVEY TALKS TO JAMIE REIDtranscription/glyn davies

You recently designed the cover for Folk

The Banks [a compilation album in support

of the Occupy movement]. How did that

come about?

I’d just done quite a big exhibition in

London, in a place called The Bear Pit in

Southwark, and just across the Millennium

Bridge was all the happenings at St Paul’s,

so I got involved with that, and out of that I

was asked if I’d do a sleeve for the album

and a poster. I reworked the image of

Liberty, from the Delacroix painting, which

I’d originally done for Suburban Press in the

mid-‐1970s. Then I’d had the Croydon

skyscrapers behind Liberty, but this time we

changed it to having all the corporate

banks, Canary Wharf and all that. I actually

don’t do much graphic design now, I’m

much more involved with painting.

In the 1980s, you were part of Visual

Stress, a multimedia group based in

Liverpool. Could you explain your

involvement in that?

Yeah, it was a collective of people in

Liverpool who got up to all sorts of

skulduggery! We used to do big events in

Liverpool, and organise festivals and

marches and stuff, and basically used to

take over the town. The sort of stuff we

used to do you’d probably get arrested for

now. There were whole events based

around the theme of slavery and things like

that. It was multimedia, and involved

music, dance, visuals, all sorts of stuff.

So how’s Liverpool today compared to the

eighties and the Visual Stress era?

Well it’s weird, because now to do anything

in Liverpool you have to apply for

permission and go to meetings and sign

loads of health and safety forms. Whereas

what was interesting about the eighties and

the people I worked with in Liverpool, there

was no money involved, so you actually got

off your arse and did things. There was a

lot more spontaneity. >


Do you find that art today seems to have

to be more corporate or commercially

backed?

Well, y’know, I’ve never really done any

exhibitions in any major galleries; I’ve never

really been involved with the art scene. I

mean, the Tate has bought some of my

work in the last few years, but I’ve tended

to do stuff like the Bear Pit thing, and I’ve

got an exhibition that’s on in L.A. at the

moment, ‘Ragged Kingdom’, which is very

much a broad perspective of a lot of my

work, and includes a lot of the recent stuff

as well as a lot of the political stuff and a

lot of the punk stuff; it’s all mixed together.

And I did do that in London earlier in the

year: I created eight teepees, and inside

each teepee was different aspects of my

work, like there was a punk one, there was

a Suburban Press one, there was a Visual

Stress one, there was an Eightfold Year one,

and that’s an exhibition that we want to

continue touring around the world. In

many ways it’s a retrospective, including

stuff that was done in the last few weeks

and stuff that was done in the early

seventies.

You come from a very politically active

family. Could you tell us a bit about your

background?

Yeah, I blame me parents! From my very

early days, my parents and my older

brother were involved with the CND

movement and I was dragged along to

Aldermaston marches. It was very much

part of the way I was brought up. They

were always really supportive, my parents

and my brother. They were socialists, when

there still used to be socialists involved in

the Labour Party. I mean, now the Labour

Party might as well be the Tory Party! From

Thatcher, through Blair, to Cameron, I think

Cameron’s probably the worst of the lot.

Blair basically took over the Thatcher

legacy, it’s just continued from the late

seventies until now, really. But, you know,

people are still having a go, and people are

still protesting. I’ve been involved with

squatting movements and the Occupy

movement and all that from early days, and

I think it’s a worldwide phenomenon now.

But people can’t effectively change things

like they used to. I had a great sense of

disillusionment after that massive anti-‐war

rally. I mean, it was over a million people,

the biggest gathering of people on a

political campaign there’s ever been. It

didn’t change anything. Now people are

now seeing through all the shit and doing

things for themselves.


Do you think your involvement with the

Occupy movement will help?

I think every little bit helps. It’s all good.

It’s all part and parcel; it’s probably art in

the right place.

You were involved in the student protest

movement yourself in the 1960s.

Yeah, that’s when I first met Malcolm

McLaren, we were involved with student

occupations. This was at Croydon Art

School. We took over the college for a

couple of months! At the same time, you

had all that was happening in Paris. It was

quite a worldwide phenomenon. You had

the anti-‐Vietnam student movement, and

these things did have an effect, and it

proves that you can have an effect.

Because I don’t think that without those

protests, we would have had an end to the

Vietnam war. I was also involved with

things like the Poll Tax campaign. All those

demonstrations, and that big kick-‐off, it

brought Thatcher down, didn’t it? So

things can have an effect. But what’s

interesting about the Occupy campaign is

that it hasn’t got an agenda. It’s finding it’s

own way, and it’s worldwide.

Do you think the reason it doesn’t have an

agenda is because young people are

disillusioned with any government?

Absolutely. It’s a matter of finding things

for yourself. But these things come and go.

We’re going through a period of massive

change. The Western capitalist system will

go. America will go, like Rome went.

Things change. I just hope we haven’t

fucked up the planet too much.

Where do you see art in all this? Does it

have an important role?

I think art should be something that’s much

more universal. It’s almost been taken out

of the education system. Things like art

and music, they’re so important. And you

have the whole fucking horror of ‘Brit-‐Art’.

I find it interesting that the people who

created Brit-‐Art, with the approval of

Saatchi and Saatchi, are the people who got

Thatcher into power. I still think it’s back to

that whole punk ethos: the people who are

at the bottom of the pile, if you give them

the spark, they’re the people who are

creating easily the best art. You know, it’s

just silly things. I was watching a film last

night called Knights of the South Bronx. It

was about this businessman who ended up

teaching part-‐time, and these are like the

poorest black kids in the Bronx, and he got

them into chess. And they became the

American national chess champions; within

a year they were playing all these posh

schools, and they fucking won it! And I

think that’s so typical of what can happen

when you give those sort of kids a chance.

You have to create a spark. I think that’s

what art should do, create a spark.


Do you think art should also have a

political message?

Yeah, it should do. It should question

everything and look for new ways of doing

things.

‘Eightfold Year’ is one of your more recent

projects. Could you explain a bit about

that?

It’s a celebration of the Eightfold Year.

We’ve just had the Spring Equinox, you’ve

got the Winter and Summer solstices. If I’m

not painting, I spend a lot of time down me

allotment growing things. And again, I

think if people were to actually plant and

grow stuff for themselves, the world would

be a better place. I was very much brought

up with that – you know, as much you need

political change, you need spiritual change.

My family has been involved with Druidism,

and while I’m not a druid myself, it’s always

been an influence, so I actually believe that

there’s a universal religion that’s very deep,

very old. It could be Native American, it

could be Aboriginal. There’s an awful lot to

learn from those people. We’ve lost our

harmony with the planet, haven’t we?

Would you put that down to capitalism?

Oh, very much so. People have to struggle

to get by, don’t they? Debts, bills,

whatever. If you think of what’s happened

to the education system, all these things

should be birthrights. Everyone should

have access to education. Now you have to

fucking pay to go to university, it’s unreal!

These things are really fundamental, basic

rights. We’ve basically got a whole

generation of youths and kids who’ve been

demonized. They haven’t got a say. They

should have a say. I’m in my mid-‐sixties

now, but if I want to do anything with my

work and my art, it’s to inspire that

generation. It’s interesting that with all the

major exhibitions that we’ve done,

probably 50% of the people there are late

teens or early twenties.

Your work does seem to resonate with

young people, from the Sex Pistols to

things like Suburban Press, which was

before punk.

Yeah, Suburban Press was in the early

seventies. It was part and parcel of a whole

movement of community politics and

people sort of painting and doing things for

themselves. It was involved with the

squatting movement, the women’s

movement, black power, it was all those

things happening. It’s all relative, but it’ll

all happen again. These things come in

cycles. And I think that Western capitalism

is on the verge of total collapse.

A lot of your graphics for Suburban Press

looked very similar to what you designed

for the Sex Pistols.

It was, yeah, it was a whole continuing

thing; it’s the thing that’s continued

throughout. I mean, the stuff I’ve done for

the anti-‐Poll Tax stuff, the Criminal Justice

Bill, you know, it’s a continuing story.

Are you still doing much collage work?

Not so much now, I’m much more into

painting.

Where do you think contemporary art

goes from here, given that we have the

Saatchi gallery, the Tate and so on? How

do we get it out of there?

Well, the Western economy’s collapsed, so

it will all go out the window, won’t it? It’s

such a little clique of people, the critics, the

artists involved, the gallery owners, it’s just

unreal. But there’s more and more art

happening. I’ve done two major

exhibitions in London, a massive show in

Rio De Janeiro, got this big show in L.A.

But, you know, you don’t get art reviews

now. What you do get now, with

computers, is everyone linking on the net.

It’s a whole different world now, and it’s

nothing to do with all that shit.

Do you find art centres and places like that

are killing art?

To a certain extent, yeah they are. They

just want to play it safe. Like being in

Liverpool, with the ‘Capital of Culture’ thing

– art shouldn’t be a competition. And in

Liverpool, they just wanted art that was

totally safe. It was outside people who

organised it all, it was just ridiculous.

They’ve redeveloped Liverpool, and

Liverpool, like every major Western town, is

losing its unique character. You’ve got the

same modern architecture, the same

corporate stores, and every city is

beginning to look like every other city.

Finally, I wanted to bring up your work in

Afro Celt Sound System. What was that

like?

Oh yeah, that was an absolute delight. I

worked with Afro Celt Sound System for

about five years. I was like their visual

director. I used to do the stage shows, as

well as the posters and the graphics, and I

used to do the visuals for them. It’s weird

for me, that, because I’ve got a whole

fanbase there, and a whole fanbase for the

Pistols things, but people don’t like to link

the two. I think that’s one of the things I’ve

found with the art that I do, they want to

pigeonhole you, so I’ll forever be the

person who did ‘God Save The Queen’!


Jamie Reid

www.jamiereid.org


Luke Joyce

donotresuscitate.co.uk


PLYMOUTH

SOUND?ARTIST PAUL WHITEHEAD DEPICTS LIFE IN PLYMOUTH IN STARK DETAIL. HIS PAINTINGS

ARE VIGNETTES OF STREET LIFE THAT CAPTURE THE ESSENCE OF MODERN CITY LIVING.

HE TALKS TO TRIBE ABOUT HIS WORK.

Transcript: Glyn Davies

SOME of your work has been hung at a local

café, you’ve had an exhibition and have

recently sold some work.

Yeah, that’s a confidence booster. It’s all right

having your work up, that gives you valuable

exposure, but if you have it up too long without

selling it, it affects your confidence. Even when

you know the reasons: it’s winter, it might be

placed badly or it’s possibly just there to give

the café owner something to put on his wall!

It’s what we used call an “inner skin” in the

rave days; it changes the character of the

place. And he’s a good businessman, so he

sees the potential of that. It doesn’t matter one

little bit to him whether or not the work sells. It

matters to me, but it doesn’t matter too much

because there are a lot of people going

through that place and seeing it, and it’s

establishing my name, and it’s also doing what

I want to do, which is passing on the ideas that

I’m trying to convey in the paintings.

They’re not difficult ideas, but they are

challenging in some ways, and I’ve been

pleased with the response. People like them

because they’re pictures of Plymouth. Then

when they look at what they actually are, they

can seem a bit ambiguous; it’s not always

putting Plymouth in a great light. But people

look at it and look beyond that, and see what

I’m actually trying to do with it – I’m not trying

to say Plymouth’s rubbish. >


My work is about the analysis of space:

the duality within space and the

importance of space. What I’m

promoting – because you have to have

a unique selling point – is that I have a

contextual basis for my art, in that I

understand what the significance of

s p a c e i s , t h e s i g n i f i c a n c e o f

architecture. I understand what

difficulties can arise from duality of

space: public spaces can also be

private spaces. >

There’s a political element: public and private spaces

have changed since the Thatcher era. Places that

were public have become private. Social housing has

been demolished to make way for shopping malls, and

the actual definition of public and private space

changes at that point. Without going into the spiel,

there’s a place in Manchester, I can’t remember what

it’s called, and it’s a public open space. But it’s

classified as a private space because it’s privately

owned, and legally it’s a different place to be in, the

rules are different, and people aren’t aware of that.

Something could happen to you, you could be

arrested, and the rules for your being arrested would

be different to what they would be in a normal public

space.

I did a little bit of reading on it from a book called

Ground Control. I can’t remember the name of the

author [Anna Minton?], but she did a massive analysis

of how public and private space has changed in this

country. Wealthy people are moving into gated

communities for protection; they want to protect their

wealth as the division between them and those in

poverty increases. Without getting political - because

I’m not a political animal – but I am a working class

person who is trying to better himself, and also trying

to make himself more aware of his place in this society,

and how society needs to change to be more inclusive.

Having read that and looked at the way this country is,

I can see it’s not always going in that direction, and

sometimes I just want to highlight that, without

necessarily standing on a soapbox.


There are difficulties in Plymouth, which is the sort of

thing I’m highlighting: resistance to change in some of

the poorer areas, ignorance, lack of aspiration. As a

play-worker, and as a painter, I am trying to change

that. It’s a small crusade, but it’s important, and it’s

important not to lecture people while you do it, but it’s

important to actually show it. And that’s the

contextual basis of my work, and if I can convey that, it

makes it a marketable object, because people like that,

they like a story. They like to buy an experience, and

that’s what I sell people, without being cynical about it.

I don’t want to be a cynical artist, I want to do what I

love and carry on doing what I love forever. I don’t

want to be all about the money. But at the same time,

you need money to be able to promote yourself and

give you the freedom to do what you want to do.

Your work has a sense of capturing the moment, like

photography. But you do use a certain amount of

photography before you paint. Explain how you go

about that process.

I go around with my camera every day of the week, so

my camera stays on me. If I see something interesting,

it goes in there. What attracts me is composition and

colour. I’m just waiting the opportunity to see

something that has natural composition, and if I have

the camera, I can be in the place to spot it and do

something about it. >


Then I just stick it on the Mac, leave the image

there, look at it and start putting paint on canvas. I

used to do it through projection, but I find that it

does leave the picture looking semi-photographic,

but not quite, because you can never transfer a

photograph onto canvas successfully and make it

look real, so you’re torn between two worlds: it’s

not realistic and it’s not a photograph either. It’s

unsatisfying. I’m developing my own style, so I

want that satisfaction of… not putting my imprint on

it exactly, but we’re all born with a unique eye,

we’re all born with our own unique perspective on

the world.I’ve been lucky enough, all my adult life,

to live on the edges of our society, without wanting

to sound pretentious. I grew up as a punk rocker,

a skateboarder, and immediately you’re that, you

are an outsider. So maybe I’m outsider art. But

you have a unique perspective forced upon you,

and you either run with that or you let it squash

you. And I decided to run with it. I started as a

punk, became very nihilistic, which led to leading a

very rough lifestyle, and from that I became a

traveller, which is an even rougher lifestyle! I was

always looking to be hardcore, that was the thing

back then, and I realised at the end of a very long

and rough journey that to be as hardcore as

possible basically involves living in the gutter! >


You don’t really need to do that to

be an artist. So I star ted

struggling back up and trying to

make something of myself, and

then I stumbled upon the rave

culture, which again is looking at

society from the outside. You

develop a unique perspective; it’s

a different culture, walking into a

room with two thousand people all

moving in unison with white gloves

on. It looked like a bunch of

monkeys going mental!

And like all the other things I’ve

been into, it was ephemeral. It’s

not that I wanted to be those

things, that’s where I ended up. I

didn’t just decide I was going to be

a punk, but punk was inclusive,

and everything I’ve looked for in

the world has been about being

part of a family. You know, being

brought up by a single parent,

there was always something

lacking there. I like the unique

perspective I’ve gained through all

the things I’ve done. It defines me,

it makes me different and people

like to look at things from different

angles. A good filmmaker will pull

yo u i n t o t h e i r wo r l d , i t ’ s

believable. They can transfer their

view of the world to you, and if

they have intelligence, and if they

have empathy for what they’re

looking at, it’s brilliant. Stanley

Kubrick did that and Terry Gilliam

does that. They both have beautiful

visions and they pull you into their

worlds. And that’s all I want, to

be able to pass on a journey that

opens up peoples’ minds.

People like Monet, Turner, Van

Gogh, they all had elements of

that, and I can’t claim to be like

them, but I can claim to aspire to

be like them. What made me want

to be like Van Gogh was reading

Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of

Perception, when he talked about

Van Gogh’s chair, and about

being the chair. I can relate to

that, that’s what I want to do. I’ve

been to the National Gallery and

I’ve seen the chair. It made me

cry. It’s moving. Good art can be

really moving, and that’s what I

want to do, and at the same time

say this is one possibility of how

society can be; it doesn’t all have

to be about materialism.

Would you agree that your work

captures the everyday, and is

more a reflection of reality, rather

than merely trying to capture

images that are beautiful or

“nice”?

Yeah, ugly and beautiful are very

subjective terms. It’s a very

Buddhist thing: I mean, they make

Buddhist monks look at internal

organs and things like that to see

the beauty in them. There’s

beauty everywhere; it’s just being

open to it and receptive to it.

When I’m depressed, everything’s

ugly and I hate everything, but

that’s not a bad thing either as

long as you are aware of it while

it’s going on. You can still paint

when you’re feeling like that, it’s

an interesting exercise in looking

a t t h i ng s f rom a d i f f e ren t

perspective. But it’s whether

yo u ’ ve g o t t h e e n e r g y o r

enthusiasm to paint when you’re

feeling like that! >


But yes, my work is about the everyday, it’s about

the world we live in, it’s a document. I’m a bit

scared of saying my work is a document because

people can just say it’s a picture of what happened

at that particular time, but it’s not. It’s trying to

capture people. Hopefully, if I’m lucky, my work

will still be here in 200 years’ time, and people will

say that’s what it felt like to be in 2012. It should

be like that, it shouldn’t be set in concrete. I don’t

want people to completely misunderstand what I

do, because otherwise what is the point in doing it?

But if they take their own thing away from it, that’s

just like looking at the real thing and taking your

own thing away from it.

You use colour very vividly. Do you consider that

to be an important element of your work?

Absolutely. It’s what attracts me to something

instantly. 90% of what sells a painting –

unfortunately – is colour. If you paint a green

picture, it doesn’t sell because people don’t like

green pictures. It has to have good content as

well, but colour is what immediately attracts me

and it’s what people latch on to. In a cynical

world, that’s what makes it a marketable item, but

it also makes it a beautiful item. It is important to

make beautiful things. That’s subjective, but for me

colour is about joy.


So there is a sense of progression in your work?

You can’t afford to stand still as an artist, can you?

We grow every day. If you’re going to be a good

artist, you do it naturally. You get excited by new

things. Artists all have butterfly minds, hopefully –

we want to be excited every day of our lives by

what we look at. I think my real ‘masterplan’ is to

create accessible art or peoples’ art in the vein of

Anish Kapoor or Antony Gormley. People love

their work. I went to the Royal Academy and saw

Anish Kapoor’s exhibition. What really attracted

me was a room full of huge mirrors, and everyone

who walked into that room just had a big smile on

their face. It’s like the fairground effect, but these

were slick mirrors. They were beautiful objects,

and he knows that. And that’s part of what I want

to do: make peoples’ art that genuinely excites me

and genuinely excites other people. You do have

to keep moving on if you want to do that, you

can’t just settle on whatever you think is

appropriate. It’s not very forward thinking. You

have to be open-minded. <

www.facebook.com/paul.the.painter


Dean McDowell

deanmcdowellartist.com


The Journey

In my work the depiction of everyday life are shown under the working title ‘The Journey’. The work,

being part of an ongoing theme that I have been pursuing over a number of years -‐ relates to the

dilemma arising from the innate theatricality of human endeavour. The inspiration for my work is

gathered through observations, drawings and photographs of fragments from everyday life. I have

also taken inspiration from a poem by W.H. Auden, called The Watchers.

‘Deeper towards the summer the year moves on.

What if the starving visionary have seen

The carnival within our gates,

Your bodies kicked about the streets,

We need your power still: use it, that none,

O, from their tables break uncontrollably away,

Lunging, insensible to injury,

Dangerous in a room or out wildly

Spinning like a top in the field,

Mopping and mowing through the sleepless day’

In this exhibition I want the spectator to read the exhibition as a frieze, the continuous everyday

incidental happenings with no story intended. The spectator moves through the work, as they

would strolling down the street– perhaps deep in thought– and see things as glimpsed from the

corner of the eye, when walking past -‐ half remembered events. The viewpoint constantly changes

through an emotional and visionary experience of the continuous drama,

And you too become aware of this innate theatrically we call life.

Anthony Pilbro

artvitae.com/artist_portfolio.asp?aist_id=466


Into The City


Samson And Delilah


Among The Innocent


Out Of The Shadows


The Day


The Way Of The World


The Night


Top: The Ceefax title page

Below: The iconic weather map


The Joy Of TextPart two of Glyn’s journey into the world of

8-bit technology: a eulogy for the loss of a

much loved friend - CEEFAX

At some indeterminate point in the early 1980s, my parents bought a new

television set. This was something of a seismic event in our house as it

replaced the decrepit, wood-veneered Pye television that had sat in the

corner of our living room for as long as I could remember.

The trusty old Pye had served us well over the years, but it had recently

developed some eccentric habits, like rendering everything on the screen in

a sickly yellow hue, making everyone from Bodie and Doyle to Jan Leeming

look like they were suffering from liver failure. Also the channel-

changing buttons on the front, which were already difficult to operate,

being somewhat firmly sprung, had all but seized up, meaning that the TV

was more or less permanently stuck on ITV. A rather horrendous prospect, I

trust you’ll agree.

What really grabbed my attention however was the TV’s remote control unit.

Slim and colour-coordinated with the TV and video in a pleasing early 80s

shade of slate grey, this mysterious hand-held unit opened up an exciting

new world for me. Not only did it save me from ever having to get up and

change channel manually again, the physical ramifications of which are

still painfully evident for anyone whose chairs I’ve ever broken, but it

also introduced me to the gloriously idiosyncratic world of teletext.


Teletext was developed in the early 1970s as a way of utilising the unused

areas of the UHF television signal that existed above and below the visible

viewing area, the bits you only ever saw when the vertical hold went on the

blink. It was discovered that these areas could be used to relay simple

text and graphical information over the airwaves to suitably equipped

television sets without interfering with picture quality. So in 1974, the

BBC and ITV began their parallel Ceefax and Oracle teletext services, each

offering a few dozen ‘pages’ of news, sport and weather information. It

was initially a slow-burner, as teletext-equipped TVs were considerably

more expensive than those without. But by the early 1980s, as the price of

the technology rapidly came down, households with teletext sets had risen

considerably, and the dozens of available pages had expanded into the

hundreds, while the BBC surreptitiously began to build an even bigger

interest in the service by broadcasting Ceefax pages during some

programming breaks in its daytime schedules instead of the perennial test

card.

For a gadget-loving information junkie like me, teletext ticked quite a lot

of boxes. In those pre-internet days, just the very idea of being able to

call up hundreds of pages of continually updating information whenever I

wanted them was exciting to me. I think for a long time I was the only

member of the family who even knew our new TV had this capability. I’d

only discovered it by accident myself, while I was idly pushing the buttons

on the remote, wondering what strange functions like ‘hold’, ‘mix’,

‘reveal’, ‘top’ or ‘bottom’ might possibly pertain to. I pressed the

button marked ‘text’ and the TV picture disappeared and was replaced with a

computerised menu offering a variety of options in a font and graphic style

that anyone who ever used a BBC Micro would find very familiar.

I keyed in one of the numbers displayed and before long realised I had a

fun new toy, one that would lead to an obsession that lasted until 2009,

when the analogue television signal in my area was switched off, and

teletext – at least teletext in that form - disappeared from my screen

forever, and something which in the intervening years had been a daily

routine for me was suddenly and irrevocably ripped from my life.


Well, perhaps that’s putting it a tad dramatically, but it was certainly an

annoyance at the time, particularly as its replacement, the ‘Red Button’,

was - and is - painfully slow and woefully short of the mark in so many

ways.

The loss of teletext is one of the more unfortunate consequences of

television’s relentless march into the digital age. Only a couple of areas

of the UK still have an analogue television signal, the rest of the country

having been gradually switched over to digital over the past three years.

By October, analogue television in the UK will be a memory, and analogue

teletext will perish with it.

When London was finally switched to digital in April 2012, the London-based

media - a strange, self-absorbed collective who only ever seem to notice

what’s been happening outside the M25 when it impinges on their everyday

lives - began to lament the impending death of analogue teletext, with

particular attention paid to the BBC’s Ceefax, the first and longest-

surviving teletext service. Ceefax has always been the daddy of teletext

services, particularly after ITV’s fairly decent Oracle service was

replaced in 1992 by the imaginatively-named ITV Teletext, which from that

point became less a source of useful information and more a repository for

endless adverts for cheap holidays and financial services.

For me and many millions of others, Ceefax was automatically the first port

of call when we pressed the ‘text’ button, probably because, being a BBC

product, it tried to cover so many different fields of interest. There

were many other teletext services I perused regularly (more on these in a

bit), but Ceefax was always more trustworthy, more dependable and, I

suppose, more BBC, in that it was a bit dull and worthy, but at the same

time reassuring and as sane as a pair of corduroy trousers, apart from the

letters pages, which were as swivel-eyed, rabid and morbidly entertaining

as those you’d find in any tabloid newspaper; an absolute must.


Top: Demonstrating its power to inform dynamically in the age of the internet

Below: Jokes were not any funnier on Ceefax, although some of the news was


I can recall many nights of insomnia during my student days, with Ceefax

being the only remedy, as I idly flicked through every single page, from

the menu on page 100 to the BBC in-house job vacancies and transmitter

information somewhere in the 690s, playing the occasional quiz and picking

up some interesting chocolate sponge recipes along the way. The loneliness

of the late-night teletext surfer.

Ceefax really came into its own in the days before rolling 24-hour news,

when it was the only place you could watch a major breaking news story

unfold, with constant updates appearing on the screen almost as soon as

they arrived in the newsroom. It wasn’t uncommon to find yourself reading

through a story, only to find it had changed completely by the time you got

back to the first sub-page. Election nights were particularly eventful.

It was almost possible to sense the inter-BBC rivalry, seeing if the Ceefax

team could get their updates on screen before the studio broadcast them.

As a sports fan, the continual updates Ceefax offered were pretty much

essential to me, particularly with sporting events that weren’t being

televised live. I spent many a nerve-shredding Saturday afternoon watching

the screen in anguish as Ceefax cycled through the latest scores, hoping

beyond hope that by the time my team’s score came around again, they had

managed to find the net. Watching football by teletext might not sound

particularly exhilarating, but the sense of relief when the magical letters

‘FT’ finally appeared next to your team’s winning score could only be

matched a few minutes later, when you checked the updated league tables and

saw your team riding high in their improved position. As soon as my team’s

division appeared, I’d press ‘hold’ and bask in the glory of being a few

places higher in the league, and then start working out the various

possible permutations of the following week’s matches.

But Ceefax was just one service. With the advent of satellite and cable,

there was the possibility of hundreds. I think I probably tried, on those

same long, insomniac student nights, just about every channel.


The major channels, such as Sky 1, MTV, Discovery, National Geographic and

the like all had fairly in-depth and often quite good teletext services in

the old days of analogue satellite, with each one being tailored to the

channel’s own specific niche, their familiar logos lovingly rendered in

low-res blocks. However, most channels offered little more than programme

guides and schedules, if anything at all.

One I came to really like, somewhat inexplicably, was the teletext service

of the German Sat.1 network. I’m not quite sure why, but some time around

the turn of the 2000s, I started to watch Sat.1 quite a lot. I can

understand barely a word of German, but that didn’t seem to matter. I

tuned in every night to Die Harald Schmidt Show (the German version of

David Letterman – the same set, format and, presumably, the same jokes) and

could just about follow what was going on. But after this, there was

usually a classic British comedy series, dubbed into German, which I found

irresistible. To this day, I still love watching familiar TV shows and

movies in a language I don’t understand. Sometimes, they seem to make more

sense that way. To my delight, I also discovered that Sat.1 had an in-

depth teletext service that, despite being entirely in German, I looked at

regularly to check how things were progressing in the Bundesliga, football

results and tables being pretty much the same in any language.

Teletext may be nearly forty years old now, but I can’t help thinking that

it’s being killed off prematurely and unnecessarily, not least because,

despite the digital switchover, there is no actual technical impediment to

carrying teletext via a digital television signal – there are a number of

European channels on the digital platforms that still use ‘traditional’

teletext, and even the BBC still has its familiar Ceefax title page on

digital platforms, even if it does merely say that Ceefax is no longer

available, so viewers should instead use the Red Button service.


The fact is, analogue teletext services like Ceefax have been deemed to be

old-fashioned and no longer relevant in the internet age. It’s true that

teletext is hideously old-fashioned these days – in fact it has been for

about twenty years. But to the millions who used it regularly, that hardly

seemed to matter. It’s also worth pointing out that Ceefax in particular

very much held its own in the internet age until the enforced move to

digital. The digital Red Button services can potentially do more – they

look a lot better and are more interactive - but they can still be quite

slow and glitchy, and they suffer from a complete lack of charm. Not only

that, but there is also a lot less actual content. For those used to the

bloated nature of teletext, it’s a rather poor show to say the least.

The great thing about teletext was that, despite its flaws, it was

uncomplicated and generally reliable. It didn’t need modern graphics and

gimmickry to pull in the punters; it was purely about information. And in

that respect, it worked brilliantly.

GLYN DAVIES: www.facebook.com/fatglyn2001

http://www.facebook.com/fatglyn2001

http://www.facebook.com/fatglyn2001


Page 96: Holy Spirited

Page 97: Laughter Of Small White Dog

: Nune

Page 100: Shepherd

Page 101: Summer Ghosts

This Page: Cafe Print

Opposite: Rusalka Print

Page 104: Sunday

Page 105: Kissing The Minotaur

Bill Lewis

stuckism.com/lewis/index.html


I create upcycled ‘beings’ constructed from found and discarded objects (from natures offerings to the manmade). Due to the nature of

working with these materials each piece of work I create is one of a kind. I am fascinated how an object originally designed to fulfil an

altogether different purpose can be used or adapted with other materials to form a new ‘being’. I assemble, alter and in cases where I

don’t have what I need, I make or model what I require. Half the fun of making these characters is exploring, collecting and researching

my finds. I am lucky to live on a farm and being able to rummage around in the sheds to find forgotten items. I also pick up anything

that maybe useful from car boot sales, charity shops, beaches, woods and even on the side of the road. I feel I definitely have magpie

tendencies, forever looking down and picking bits up!

Hayley Kendal

hayleykendalsculpture.wordpress.com

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