28^th Sep 2018

Bobbing about in the Parks

Bob Parks in the studio, teetering between wisdom and folly, mostly falling over, reading some of his poems, describing paintings and at one point inviting me round to his side of the desk to peruse a catalogue of sculptures in the style of Henry Moore. As we browse through the catalogue, Bob mentions that the sculptor and one of the sculptures has a strong connection with Hallaton, a small village in Leicestershire. This isn’t entirely ‘off the wall’ as Bob attended Leicester Art School in the 1960s which is where he encountered Robin Klassnik (Matt’s Gallery). However, Hallaton happens to be the next village to Tugby where I used to live. Is this synchronicity? Bob virtually interviews himself as I have no idea what he is going to talk about, but I interject occasionally, at one point suggesting that his support for Pol Pot might have been misguided. Bob is undaunted and outlines his latest project: “I’m convening a forum at Vout-O-Reenees to plan the creation of No Name Now as a team project – taken from Adam Daly’s Trilogy Part 3; The Reins of the Transfinite. A group show of my current work, Michel Tombroff and Ken Ford plus Charlemagne Palestine and Phillip Niblock are all components of this project. I expect this to result in a draft format. We are getting together to bring together the disparate components into a coherent whole”. After the show, a friend emails me: “Maybe the delirium of a cold has a lot to answer for, but listening to Parks today was like being caught out in the street during a hurricane, with bits of semi-recognisable street furniture periodically hitting you in the face, and getting continually buffeted by airborne grit and high winds. (This is quite a good thing)”