Press Release
William S Burroughs, Unworkable Machine, 1993, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas,
183 x 122 cm copyright the Estate of William S. Burroughs, courtesy October Gallery, London
William S. Burroughs: Can you all hear me?
Including works by Brion Gysin, Liliane Lijn, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge,
Shezad Dawood & Cerith Wyn Evans
4th December 2014 – 7th February 2015
As the final event celebrating the centenary of William S. Burroughs’s birth, October
Gallery, London, presents an exhibition of his art, including rarely-displayed pieces. The
exhibition opens 4th December, 2014 and continues until 7th February, 2015, and will
highlight artists who have been profoundly influenced by Burroughs’ life, including
Brion Gysin, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Liliane Lijn, Shezad Dawood
and Cerith Wyn Evans.
Throughout all Burroughs work - art, novels, essays, film and sound experiments Burroughs wove a passionate message: deconstruct control systems and think for
yourself. His art is a personal exploration of intelligence. Artists working in all genres
have heard his message, and references to Burroughs’ works are now deeply
embedded in our culture, from painting to film to advertising to literature to journalism
to music.
Burroughs practiced visual art throughout his life. For decades he produced
photographs, collages and film, then in his later years he became a prolific painter.
The last fifteen years of his life, he lived peacefully in Lawrence, Kansas, near his
boyhood home in St. Louis, Missouri. During this period, he produced a large body of
art, and some of his greatest works of literature.
This centenary year has seen William S. Burroughs: A Life, the definitive and lauded
biography by British writer Barry Miles. Burroughs' aesthetic and methodologies have
influenced generations of writers, artists, filmmakers and musicians. Featuring
Burroughs’ paintings, drawings, and sculpture, the exhibition will celebrate the
transcendent magic of his work and its influence upon present art, culture and media.
The show will be the last event of the centenary year.
This exhibition based in Britain, where Burroughs’ fiction was censored and yet
became so significant, will address his legacy and offer a new discourse between his
work and those of the artists exhibiting. When he lived in London in the late 1960’s and
early ‘70s, Burroughs made strong connections with many noteworthy figures of the
British art scene.
October Gallery’s long association with William Burroughs began in 1988 with his
second solo exhibition, his first outside of the United States. The founders of the
October Gallery have worked with Burroughs since 1974. Burroughs pioneered incisive
tools - ‘cut-ups’- to deconstruct mechanisms of institutionalized control systems that
corrupt inborn intelligence.
Although he is often called the father of the Beat movement, Burroughs did not
associate himself with the Beats except that Ginsberg, Kerouac and Corso were
personal friends. 'We’re not doing at all the same thing, either in writing or in outlook.'
In 2012 and 2013, there were major museum shows of his art and work, at ZKM in
Karlsruhe, the Vienna Kunsthalle, and at the Hamburg Deichtorhallen/Sammlung
Falckenberg. This year, the Photographers’ Gallery in London exhibited Taking Shots:
The Photography of William S. Burroughs.
- Notes for Editors –
Exhibition:
Dates:
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William S. Burroughs: Can you all hear me?
4th December 2014 - 7th February 2015
3rd December 2014
October Gallery
24 Old Gloucester Street
London WC1N 3AL
020 7242 7367
020 7405 1851
Tuesday – Saturday 12.30 - 5.30pm
Tuesday – Friday 12.30 - 1.30pm
Free
www.octobergallery.co.uk
press@octobergallery.co.uk
Holborn/Russell Square
19, 25, 38, 55, 168 and 188
Alana Pryce Tojcic - 020 724 7367