The Hunted (Kellie Howarth as Lolita), 2026

 

Oil on Expensive European Fabric, 45cm x 35cm

Headington Hill Hall, 2026

 

 Oil on expensive European fabric  40 cm x 36.5cm  

Oxford Italianate mansion (actually rented from Oxford City Council) dubbed the ‘best council house in the country’ was lived in by Robert Maxwell from 1959 until 1991 where he eventually moved Pergamon Press publishing hundreds of ‘international scientific journals’. It was here that his nine children were brought up, living in a combination of what was described in the Times, as 'cruelty and luxury'. 

While in situ, Maxwell commissioned a stained-glass window as a feature of the imperial staircase, a depiction of Samson (modelled on himself) by the Israeli sculptor Nehemia Azaz. The lawn doubled as a helipad from which he would jet about for business and pleasure; the grounds too, were furnished with a tennis court and swimming pool. Under Maxwell's reign, all-out parties were hosted here for lan and Kevin and Ghislaine's classmates were reportedly invited over for reading competitions (which Ghislaine consistently won, awarded first prize).

2.23.26 (draft/unfinished)

 

Now the ends are even black 

shared on the thin, V-shaped area

grass memento over the city’s river

three canticles blunted ledges & parapets

the sabotaged listening place 

manic tantras paranoid again

under the chronotope its crossing lights 

in this gelded hellscape

meaningless glom faced,

& the body in pain is itself 

an object of novelty, 

to be inspected with pleasure

to climb for rain

stowed in a dwell of aches 

the co-ordinating points

passed & re-passed

a dozen times since

I’ve become an empty vessel of 

spermless love

International Cultural Enterprises Ltd (draft/unfinished)

 

Our happiness gamifying misery

in the art of not dying 

& the victories we have won

get painfully curled 

tight from the seeded culm 

the bean counter on the rooftop bar

the highballs the end times the exhibition talk 

& The Sadist Whips the Obviously Innocent

cut from me the value but also 

a language of another, 

no bird sound

limitation of the fragile

inescapability of this kind of life

Hansabibliothek REAL CHARACTERS II

 

Readings & performances from REAL CHARACTERS II at Hansabibliothek & Cafe Tiergarden

Documentation by Hilary Jeffery 

Amel Baccouche, Kelly Ballett, Willie Brisco, Christel Conchon, Cole Denyer, Owen Fortunato Brakspear, Hilary Jeffery, Nat Kochan, Eleni Poulou, Tim Wolf. 

A proposal by Owen Fortunato Brakspear / Slub Press  Sunday, October 12th 1pm - 4pm at Hansabibliothek,  Altonaer Str 15, Hansaviertel, 10557 Berlin 4,30pm - 6pm at Café Tiergarten,  Altonaer Str 3, Hansaviertel, 10557 Berlin

 Supported by the PERSPEKTIVE Fund for Contemporary Art & Architecture of the Office for Visual Arts of the Institut français Germany, sponsored by the French Ministry of Culture, the Institut français Paris and the Goethe-Institut. @bureaudesartsvisuels With thanks to Leonie Herweg / Grotto, Elke Falat, Kristin Reinhardt & the Hansabibliothek staff.

For Mark Scott (draft/unfinished)

 For Mark Scott

Put out the lights of the last crimson star 

special prayers hollowed

death is death salutogenesis 

good health on the Red Road 

its premature mortuary scenery  

in the centre The Wealth Games 

with a common signet mouth of cortisol 

here is the tree that never grew 

here is the bird that never flew

here is the bell that never rang

region of hapless skin

burning envoi to working pattern 

inner Maslowian pyramid  

vertical list of failed kingships 

mourning cutpattern

black boxed militant death-drive

Soft water i (draft)

Wally close red stone 

tarriers in brinewet floodplain 

as if the floor was gulched by Orangeism 

thin little nags & wretched pallet crafts 

Lodge Laws collarettes curled circles 

old shoogly harebells 

& the twelfth Haberdasheries 

felled to a black flame 

the peace barrier curbside I sit

highscoring micro lots 

of small batched but barely living 

cold fingered clyde 

chins a song for rent 

dreich, I can’t stand my own 

mind parading, fraternal drunkenness 

or cream yellow exile 

cold storage cutcross ripples 

or worm eaten low-capability

people ruin of air sprangled dogrose

hippidom mizzled the remaining

comfort space towpaths

oracling childstock 

least you're clear of chrome ballast

in the eternal allotments rising

the future different shades 

of tayberries & patty pans 

all else burning rings 

of idioglossia

on embroidered towels