“SLEAZY” PETER CHRISTOPHER SON/COIL/TG/PSYCHIC TV SIGNED COLLAGE
Notes on this auction from Genesis.
People always ask where we get these items AFTER the auction is over. The Jajouka Hand Made drum was a gift from Bachir Attar when he and his brother lived with Lady Jaye and myself Genesis for almost a year in our The Gates Institute house in Brooklyn. It has found its way home to Morocco with exactly the right trusting and kind person. This new item for sale is also very, very special. It was a“Happy Birthday” “One More Or Less?” collaged photograph. The image is black and white and grey print from an old Picture Post or Life magazine. There is a chair partly in view, a pair of legs from the knee down in polished riding boots that may well be German war issue? In the foreground is a beautiful German Shepherd dog with its eyes closed, in peaceful repose. The bottom right corner of the image, which is mounted on an off white backing paper, has“Sleazy’s” right thumb print across it in red paint. Don’t get excited out there, blood would have gone brown and not be as thick. Bottom left is a blue rubber stamp “22 FEB 1981” with a black hand added line under the “E” as this is from the era when we wrote “E” instead of “I”. In the centre bottom is handwritten “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” with a rubber stamp of his name “Peter Christopherson” beneath. The rubber stamps of signatures was an in joke begun by myself in Hull as an ironic reference to the Dole Office Manager’s name always being rubber stamped. Later we learned Divine would stamp “Yours Sincerely Divine” when asked for autographs by fans, which added to our fun with this concept for a while. Beneath Sleazy’s stamped “signature” is handwritten “one more or less ?” There is a second date rubber stamped in blue “23 FEB 1981” which also has a careful black double line under the “E”. The birthday card/collage is especially unusual as Sleazy rarely created pieces of “art” in this way. We were privately intensely close friends during this period. The image is framed in black coated wood. The outside measurements of the FRAME are 9 inches wide by 6 and an half inches high. The actual photographic picture is just under 6 inches by just under 4 inches. The back is still sealed as originally, nothing has been removed ever. There is wire to hang the picture as illustrated. There is also a message written by myself from a slightly later date around the period 1982-83 when Sleazy actively joined the band Alex Fergusson co-founded with me in 1981, Psychic TV. The message in brown ink reads “ BLESSINGS TO YOU SLEAZY L-OV-E Genesis P-Orridge”. There is a Psychick Cross and a scrawled 23 next to the signature.
The two illustrations are scans made by my assistant for me who found it in an envelope amongst boxes of books where it had lain forgotten. We feel something so beautiful and that illustrates how loving and loyal a friend Sleazy always was to me and any others he truly cared for in his quiet but special and timeless way is now best shared by all of us who share the same core values of loyalty, chivalry, trust, and courageous sacrifice to protect each other without fear of the potential, even ultimate cost.
Genesis BREYER P-ORRIDGE , New York June 2011.
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