The Leftovers of John Will

ILLOGICAL 
SCATOLOGICAL
PATHETIC 
INEXPLICABLE 
RUDE 
MISPELLED  

Margaret Trudeau once claimed that her 70's lifestyle came to an abrupt halt when she awoke late one morning on a couch at Studio 54. The house lights were on for cleanup and she saw with new eyes what the famous club really looked like without the cover of night. This story returned to me the moment I entered John Will's nearly empty studio in early January of this year. Like a picked over turkey carcass that had been left out in the rain, forlornly, beside an overflowing garbage can, the dregs of John Will's painting career greeted me. Within a six-month period starting last fall, John Will has had or will have between twelve and fifteen exhibitions. This show is not an attempt to expose the sordid underbelly of the work of a "grate artist" (the spelling is Will's own and it is what he frequently calls himself in his much flogged but as yet unpublished third autobiography "The Harrumph of the Will" which, incidentally, is often referred to in the literary circles he has attempted but failed to charm as "his biog-crappy"). Some will say "What happened to the remarkable cultural insights?" Others will ask "Where is the hillbilly panache?" They will have to go elsewhere for that. This is all that was left in his studio. 

Chris Cran 
Curitiba, 2081 

Organized by Chris Cran for the Illingworth Kerr Gallery.