Culture of the Uncomfortable by Jeff Perks!

LAST night, the poet Mike Rosen opened an exhibition entitled 'Political furniture, NOT a comfy sofa' on behalf of the artist Jeff Perks at the Stockport Art Gallery on Wellington Road.  Jeff has said:  'The work will be called anti-political' and 'It is, and it's against all those men who too quickly rush to solve the problems of our nuclear world by military action.'

Mike Rosen told us that he and Jeff first met at the National Film & Television School, and that they both worked for the BBC.  They had later collaborated on a film about the Shrewsbury pickets; afterwards I asked Mr. Rosen if he knew Mick Abbott, one of the pickets who died this year, as he had told us that he himself had been on the MI5 files.  Jeff Perks had been in the Communist Party at one time.  We naturally discussed the recent cases of the blacklisted electricians, the Consulting Association, and the Blacklist Support Group.

Mr Perks, who lives in Derbyshire has agreed to do an interview with the printed version of Northern Voices, used the quote that 'It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its Government.'  This could well be an anarchist quote, but Jeff describes himself as a 'socialist artist'. 

The Exhibition takes place from Saturday the 20th, September to Thursday the 30th, October at the Stockport Art Gallery,  Wellington Road, Stockport, Cheshire SK3 8AB.



Jeff (in above picture) has participated in numerous exhibitions of art work. These include:

• Art for Society - Whitechapel Art Gallery
• Whitechapel Open Exhibition
• Race Against Time - Trades Union Congress House
• 55 Wapping Artists
• Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool
• Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol
• Wapping Artists Open Studies
• The Whitechapel Summer Show
• Wapping Artists
• Prophecy and Vision - Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol
• The Religious Spirit in Contemporary Art - Westminster Cathedral
• The Last Wapping Show
• The Great Sheffield Art Show
• Derbyshire Open Art Exhibition (2-times winner of the Derbyshire Print Trophy)
• Left in Vision. London Unversity.
• 'Originals' Prints. Mall Gallery
• Winner of the Friends of Buxton Museum Sculpture Award.