Ice Cream for Crow Exhibition at Make

Artwork being created for Ice Cream for Crow

When Don Van Vliet exhibited at the Bluecoat he made all of the works in black and white. As part of the Captain Beefheart Weekend John Hyatt has curated an exhibition of completey black and white works. The Ice Cream for Crow exhibition at Make has involved an innovative and intense making project by young artists from Liverpool, Dublin, Leeds, Manchester and Salford, in response to Beefheart’s 1972 works. The project has taken the spirit of spontaneity that was Don Van Vliet’s signature approach to creating, allegedly having created the paintings for his Bluecoat exhibition in one intense burst of activity. 

John Hyatt is Professor of Contemporary Art at Liverpool John Moores University and the exhibition continues and extends the relationship between regional University art schools – LJMU, Liverpool Hope, Manchester Metropolitan and Salford, developed under the title of ‘The Northern Flowerpowerhouse’, for Hyatt’s ROCK ART exhibition at HOME, Manchester in February/March 2017, the exhibition will also include Leeds Beckett University and the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. At the opening event for the exhibition on Sunday 12^th November, there will be live music from The Murmurists, Inland Taipan and John Hyatt’s Plastic Reality.

Artwork being created for Ice Cream for Crow

John Hyatt is also known for working across the boundaries of art forms and has written Beefheart-inspired song lyrics. 'Spacetime for Fruity' is published here so everyone can sing along at the opening of the exhibition!

Spacetime for Fruity

It's a spacetime for fruity
Facetime for juicy
Don't be uptight, be Loosey
Oranges and lemon
Hell's having a flame war with Heaven.
Jump up Little devils and Foul mouthed angels
Falling from the sky flinging haloes like bagels
hoop magnetic loops of radiation
And make the plants grow weird and malproportioned
in the garden, dearest diamond Lucy.

It's a spacetime distortion
A new curve to the balance of proportions
Will make it all twisted and goosey
A banana on a spindle
A great rock and roll swindle,
Pop Bubbles up on a Monday and then its back into the soup on Tuesday
and it all goes down
And it all goes down
I said, "By all the powers in my vest, it all gets taken down way down to the ground". Give those subterranean sounds.

It's a space brain for Mercy

Eventually evening - just plain even, get me?
I'm gonna turn on the sun.
I'm gonna Turn up the juice.
Liminal and limpid lizards lounge on linoleum loosely
leaving orangutans and lemon drops fruit pops hanging from the heavy branches, ripe and ready to fall into Eden's paw

Paw to maw said ma to pa
Tra la tra la
Let's do our propogation
It surely is our duty
It surely is
Juicy
Oh Mercy

The angelic disc needs reformatting, defragging and erasing

Put down your plaything and take up the harp, we're running out, we're running out and about running on empty and rubbing about shouting "spacetime for fruity".

Take out your harp, the devil is in this Cocktail.
The devil is in the D note.
The apple is in my throat.
I'm gonna blow it out, juicy.
Blow it into spacetime for fruity.

Play it rootsy tooty!
Spacetime for fruity!
Spacetime for fruity!