Pic via @Bob_Fischer
 
Uncanny Island, the very first solo art exhibition by musician and author Luke Haines is on at the Eston Arts Centre through the end of the month. Should you find yourself in North Yorkshire, you should drop by and check it out.

The exhibit features Haines’ psychedelic visions of British wrestlers from the 1970s and early 80s (echoing his 2011 concept album 9 ½ Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of the 1970s & Early ‘80s) and a Christmas tree festooned with ornaments bearing the likeness of everyone who was ever in the Fall. (The band had 66 members during Mark E. Smith’s five decade run, in case you were wondering.)

Luke Haines’ latest album is Setting The Dogs on The Post Punk Postman.

I asked the artist a few questions via email.

Is this your first solo art exhibit?

Luke Haines: Yep. First solo exhibition. I’m pleased it’s in the north—away from curators and the dull art people.

Tell me about the Fall Xmas tree?

I’d painted a MES bauble for a friend’s Xmas present. The obvious next stage was to paint every member of the Fall, but I had no reason to embark on such a futile endeavour. Then the artist Neil McNally asked me if I wanted to have an exhibition. It was then that I realized it was time for the Fall Xmas tree.

I know that you’ve described your work as outsider art in the past, but with the Lou Reeds, the Hawkwind paintings, the Maoist Monkees—and of course the psychedelic wrestlers which refer to your own album—it seems more like you’re doing something more akin to “rock snob art”? How do you see it?

My stuff is more like sitcom art. I tend to do the same thing: put popular or unpopular culture figures in absurd situations. Like putting Hawkwind in a balloon carrying esoteric knowledge (The North Sea Scrolls) back to their squat in Ladbroke Grove. If Hawkwind actually did this the world would be improved immeasurably. In the show there are a couple of paintings depicting wrestlers having diabolical fever dreams about It’s A Royal Knockout. I’d like to do a whole art show about It’s A Royal Knockout. Maybe a straightforward reenactment.

How often are you asked to comment on the art of Ronnie Wood, Ringo Starr or Paul Stanley?

I think that worrying about pop stars inflicting their art on an ungrateful world will be the least of our problem post covid. There will a tsunami of ‘lockdown art washing up. It will all be terrible.
 

Mark E Smith Xmas tree bauble
 

The Fall Xmas Tree in situ.
 

Fall Xmas Tree (detail)
 

Liver Sausage (Mark “Rollerball” Rocco)
 

Brian Glover
 

Dickie Davies
 

 
Eston Arts Centre, 176 -178 High Street, Eston, Middlesbrough, TS6 9JA.