Oskar: Scenes From a Creative Life

27th of November. It has already been a shit morning. On the way to the office, the inclement breeze had tampered irreparably with my bi-weekly blow dry and I’d lost a shoelace to a quick-fingered slum child. My chronic suspicion that Jesus despises me was only compounded when, arriving into work, my editor informed me that my first task of the day was to interview the notoriously elusive artist, Oskar Oprey. A mission I feared would be harder than the copy boy yesterday when he caught a whiff of my new pheromone-laden mating scent that I had ordered from an internet site.
Curiously, the editor handed me a phone number scribbled on a crumpled receipt from Wimpey Burger. Hands shaking, I dialled…

Voice: “Hello?”
Me: “Hello, is that Mr Oprey?”
Voice: “It is an aspect of him, a fragment”
Me: Good enough for me. So, Oskar Oprey, I'd like to start by thanking you for allowing us the rare opportunity to speak with you. Why is it that you are so reluctant to parley with the worlds' press?”
Voice: “I had a bad experience with the press the last time I was in it, for a short film I made. I was a delightful cunt to the photographer and the photo that got printed was bad. Served me right.”
Me: “I see. Shall we skip this painful episode in your career and fast forward to your recent exhibition?”
Voice: “Yep, so we're skipping forward 5 years, which went in quick.”
Me: “Your pieces in Raw Meat seemed to go down well with the art viewing public despite their abject nature. One guest at the opening even requested that you bestow upon him one of the octopus cadavers”
Voice: “Yeah, and he didn't want to eat it. He wanted to use it for his own work.”
Me: “I hope you made it clear that art is only fit for consumption -FEED THE WORLD as Bob Geldof says.”
Voice: “My work is more or less free to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who can't. That person couldn't.”
Me: “For those unfortunates who missed their chance to see your work in the flesh, could you talk us through the idea behind the Dead Ed Woods?”
Voice: “Those unfortunates can view the photographs, which in some respects work better than the real thing. The idea is what you see, a wee pair of dead octopuses that like to dress in drag. I like the idea of them coming in a pair, very Noah's Ark. It’s just a series of end points from things I've been looking at. Mainly octopi and sexploitation film posters. But I've been juggling loads of things together, trying to come up with a visceral image, and that's what I spat out.”
Me: “And what is the meaning of the title, Dead Ed Woods?”
Voice: “Well of course Ed Wood was that notoriously bad filmmaker, who also liked to dress in woman's clothes. The title actually came after I'd made the piece, but I was thinking about him at the beginning when I was looking at sexploitation posters. I started watching the biopic of him by Tim Burton (which I incidentally turned off halfway), and there were octopi in the opening title. I thought that's it! Dead Ed Woods! I want to make a whole series with Octopi, not strictly to do with Ed Wood. He's more like my little alter-ego, has all the qualities a good artist needs.
The octopi that is, not Ed. Ed just had a good attitude. Kept working while failing.”

I knew the feeling. I was starting to experience some interference on the line and feared the consequences if I didn’t manage to get the whole scoop.

Me: “Wait! Don't go, Mr Oprey! My editor will keep me behind after hours and beat me with a medieval leather and wood dildo belonging to his late wife if I fail to get the scoop on your octopus obsession!”
Voice: “Well what do u wanna know? It’s a secret recipe.”
Me: “Um, well, what do you like about them? Why octopuses? Why not hanged mice, or snakes? Actually, not snakes.........”
Voice: “The mouse has been done to death anyway. And snakes, too phallic. Octopuses are highly intelligent beings. They are also very jealous, spiteful and envious - and can also have transvestite qualities.”

More crackling on the line. It was no use. He was gone. Was it even him? He did sound muffled, as though speaking through a tissue… I hope to God I can get a decent story out of this…

This piece is an in-joke about boredom and artschool administration. At the end of each term we fill out a self-evaluation form before our assesment. I created my own version which I sent out by post to thirty art school tutors, all of whom either teach me or at least lecture me in art history. It is an almost exact replica of the form the students have to fill out, except the words "student" and "evalution form" were replaced with "individual" and "self-evaluation mirror". Another major difference is that the text has been inverted so that it can only be read by placing up to a mirror. I liked the idea of the receiver putting in all that effort (say a minute's worth) in their busy schedule trying to work out what the thing says, only to be confronted with their very own admin. They came in six putrid pastel colours - like the real thing - and I displayed the master copies like the kind of bolring colour chart abstract painting that I love to hate.