By Tim
I was asked about the Cods heads in the background again the other day.
Just in case you hadn’t noticed, the Cods heads are the face behind our festival. The question went something like, Why! or Whats the meaning of it? For a moment I imagined what Warhol might say when palming off a similar enquiry about soup cans. The truth of the matter is, I have no idea what they mean or where they came from, it was January, in the grim grip of lockdown. The day before I’d been flirting with the idea of a hunger strike, but in the end, I plumped for discretion in place of valour. Besides, I was severely lacking a sufficient fan base, for the project. Anyway, the day after I was Trawling the internet, searching for inspiration (legitimately pilfering). We needed an art visual, for this looney idea we’d hatched. We, being Chris and myself. Two middle-aged men, minus a pot to piss in, coming up with the idea of having an arts festival in the middle of a place where the city sends all of its traffic twice a day, and you can drown if you’re not careful. Meanwhile, the mouse was doing a steady three miles an hour, over flattish terrain, nipping into frequent lay byes to scoff buttered toast washed down with Lidl coffee. I remember I’d been gazing at a bunch of hypnotic prints by Bridget Reilly, suddenly the butter-basted mouse leapt from my grasp, the screen blinked and there they were, basement eyed, palletised, and gaping. Somewhere inside of me, a jaw dropped and I knew immediately I’d found the face of our festival.
Just like Andy and the soup can, they spoke to me, man.