MALCOLM MC NEILL has worked as an image-maker and writer in many contexts including the music industry, newspapers, magazines and books, and in film and television as an Emmy award-winning designer and Director. He was introduced at the 1991 Broadcast Design Awards as “…the man probably responsible for the most imitated [television] design style of the 1980s.” His images have been exhibited in galleries in London, New York and Los Angeles.
OTHER work includes a video account of the artist's collaboration with writer William Burroughs, text/image works in progress and an audio-visual project exploring the image making process with respect to Time. |
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MC NEILL wrote and published two books in 2012 recounting the history of his long creative interaction with writer WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS on the Word/Image Novel AH POOK IS HERE - a project that was ‘lost’ to the record for 30 years. Reviewers were unanimous in acknowledging the significance of the collaboration, both with respect to the Burroughs canon and the history of the Graphic Novel, but due to the practical and legal limitations of the books, the wider implications of the idea remained unclear.
A FICTION NOT OF OUR MAKING now presents the complete history of AH POOK IS HERE and explains WHY a significant body of work by a 20th Century Literary icon was ‘lost’, HOW it was restored to the record and WHY it continues to be obstructed and obscured. It clarifies the unprecedented circumstances that led to the collaboration’s ‘rediscovery’ and shows how they confirmed the original pretext for the writer and artist working together. Using hundreds of images and texts from the project, the video demonstrates how AH POOK IS HERE remains distinct from any other creative endeavor.
MC NEILL wrote and published two books in 2012 recounting the history of his long creative interaction with writer WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS on the Word/Image Novel AH POOK IS HERE - a project that was ‘lost’ to the record for 30 years. Reviewers were unanimous in acknowledging the significance of the collaboration, both with respect to the Burroughs canon and the history of the Graphic Novel, but due to the practical and legal limitations of the books, the wider implications of the idea remained unclear.
A FICTION NOT OF OUR MAKING now presents the complete history of AH POOK IS HERE and explains WHY a significant body of work by a 20th Century Literary icon was ‘lost’, HOW it was restored to the record and WHY it continues to be obstructed and obscured. It clarifies the unprecedented circumstances that led to the collaboration’s ‘rediscovery’ and shows how they confirmed the original pretext for the writer and artist working together. Using hundreds of images and texts from the project, the video demonstrates how AH POOK IS HERE remains distinct from any other creative endeavor.
Ongoing complementary texts are posted on Facebook.
- CRAFT is the means by which ideas are articulated. In keeping with another definition of the term, it is also a VEHICLE enabling the artist to move through SPACE and TIME. MAPS is an ongoing Word/Image project that considers that idea, using art, sculpture, film, video and text created by the author.
0º was a ‘graphic novel’ scrapped in 2003 when Ah Pook is Here was revived. Two brothers ride a motorcycle and sidecar along the equator, one on a mission to save the world, the other doubting there is one. One smokes cigarettes, the other collects the cards given away in the packs. The card images were salvaged to become Science..
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1% was an illustrated book about Bigfoot suggested by The Sierra Club. The DNA difference between apes and humans is 1% and in that narrow margin, is where Bigfoot - and all other “missing links” exist. It is an incomprehensibly vast area encompassing the difference between knowing and not knowing, comedy and horror. The book was abandoned in 2003 when Ah Pook is Here was revived, but many of the ideas were incorporated into the original essays that have been compiled as REFLUX.
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