As is the norm with happenings, participation is essential. Happenings always include the audience, which makes happenings dynamic and encourages creative participation. In like spirit, the idea for this happening is to get Barrett friends and fans involved in a “Syd Barrett Map of the World” arts project, by sending out pieces of wood cut in the shape of different countries, as in a jigsaw puzzle.
The different countries will then sent out to interested parties with the instructions “Decorate this how you like and send it back”. When the countries return we will then stick them back together as a map. What we’ll end up with is a unique collaborative artifact, “The Syd Barrett Map of the World”, that will be either sold or put on permanent display.
Syd took to these experiments with relish. When Andrew sent him a book he’d made, he sent back FART ENJOY as a ‘reply’ between the end of 1964 and the summer of 1965. Syd was always a fast worker. He created it using seven sheets of cardboard held together by cello tape. It’s a little gem and is as good reflection of the man himself, as Andrew Rawlinson knows: experimental, colorful, wide open and right on the button.
He used the cut-up technique several times (‘Lieutenant Lunch Date’ and ‘Post Office Tower’), sometimes with nursery rhymes as an implied backdrop (‘Sprat Locket Patch’. ‘Hark!’). Origin of Floral Structures’ splices together a textbook and Beatrix Potter’s Tale of Jeremy Fisher. The collages and paintings are exactly like the words: a mixture of austere-bordering-on-abstract and what could be called blazing whimsy. (Just like his music).
It would be really cool to see if other artists would be interested in participating in an experiment of this type in an effort help raise money for the Syd Barrett Trust. Contact if anyone here is interested in participating.
