BOB COBBING
BILL JUBOBE
curated by William Cobbing and Rosie Cooper
CHELSEA space
16 John Islip Street - London
18/11/2014 - 19/12/2014
Concrete poet, arts organiser, publisher and printmaker Bob Cobbing (1920-2002) is best known for his performed works in which language is anarchically stretched and dismantled through the deployment of shouts, groans and hisses, interspersed between recognisable tracts of spoken word. He also made innumerable publications and prints, visual scores that blur the distinction between decipherable text and abstract imagery, making use of typography, image and found texts, and using the typewriter, printing press, screen print, photocopier and computer to replicate, destroy and remake.
Bill Jubobe highlights the interrelation between Cobbing’s live performance and his experiments on paper, considering the two as inseparable. The exhibition presents rarely seen footage of his live performances from the 1970s until his death, alone and with Birdyak (Lol Coxhill, Jennifer Pike and Hugh Metcalfe). Publications of his anthologies, released under his prolific Writers Forum imprint, are available for visitors to leaf through, and graphic posters announcing his innumerable performances cover the walls.
The exhibition’s title is an excerpt from a line written by Cobbing's friend and collaborator François Dufrene, "Bob jubile et, bien sur, à la langue, Bill jubobe": a tongue-twister that stresses the material presence of written and performed language in Cobbing’s work, casting Cobbing himself as the anagrammatic protagonist. Cobbing liked the quote so much that in 1976 he used it as the title for one of his books.
Intensely collaborative, Cobbing worked with many outstanding figures of the international sound and poetry scenes of the 1960s and 1970s, including Dom Sylvester Houédard, Henri Chopin, Allen Ginsberg, Jeff Nuttall, Paula Claire, and his wife Jennifer Pike. In the mid 1960s he was the manager of Better Books on Charing Cross Road, London, helping to make it an important centre for performance and publishing. During his time there, the bookshop hosted events as part of the Destruction in Art Symposium (1966) as well as being the headquarters for the emergent London Filmmakers Co-op, co-founded by Cobbing.
Image: Bob Cobbing reading 'Are Your Children Safe in the Sea' c. 1966-1972
BILL JUBOBE
curated by William Cobbing and Rosie Cooper
CHELSEA space
16 John Islip Street - London
18/11/2014 - 19/12/2014
Concrete poet, arts organiser, publisher and printmaker Bob Cobbing (1920-2002) is best known for his performed works in which language is anarchically stretched and dismantled through the deployment of shouts, groans and hisses, interspersed between recognisable tracts of spoken word. He also made innumerable publications and prints, visual scores that blur the distinction between decipherable text and abstract imagery, making use of typography, image and found texts, and using the typewriter, printing press, screen print, photocopier and computer to replicate, destroy and remake.
Bill Jubobe highlights the interrelation between Cobbing’s live performance and his experiments on paper, considering the two as inseparable. The exhibition presents rarely seen footage of his live performances from the 1970s until his death, alone and with Birdyak (Lol Coxhill, Jennifer Pike and Hugh Metcalfe). Publications of his anthologies, released under his prolific Writers Forum imprint, are available for visitors to leaf through, and graphic posters announcing his innumerable performances cover the walls.
The exhibition’s title is an excerpt from a line written by Cobbing's friend and collaborator François Dufrene, "Bob jubile et, bien sur, à la langue, Bill jubobe": a tongue-twister that stresses the material presence of written and performed language in Cobbing’s work, casting Cobbing himself as the anagrammatic protagonist. Cobbing liked the quote so much that in 1976 he used it as the title for one of his books.
Intensely collaborative, Cobbing worked with many outstanding figures of the international sound and poetry scenes of the 1960s and 1970s, including Dom Sylvester Houédard, Henri Chopin, Allen Ginsberg, Jeff Nuttall, Paula Claire, and his wife Jennifer Pike. In the mid 1960s he was the manager of Better Books on Charing Cross Road, London, helping to make it an important centre for performance and publishing. During his time there, the bookshop hosted events as part of the Destruction in Art Symposium (1966) as well as being the headquarters for the emergent London Filmmakers Co-op, co-founded by Cobbing.
Image: Bob Cobbing reading 'Are Your Children Safe in the Sea' c. 1966-1972
