{"id":4625,"date":"2021-06-25T22:23:25","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T22:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4625"},"modified":"2021-06-25T22:24:49","modified_gmt":"2021-06-25T22:24:49","slug":"they-thought-we-were-terrorists-meet-joe-rush-the-master-of-mutoid-art-and-king-of-glastonbury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/4625","title":{"rendered":"\u2018They thought we were terrorists\u2019: meet Joe Rush, the master of mutoid art and king of Glastonbury"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\u2018Maybe
\u2018Maybe our leaders will catch up\u2019 \u2026 Joe Rush with Mount Recyclemore, a sculpture made from discarded electronics installed at the G7 summit. Photograph: Ben Birchall\/PA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The punky master of outsider art was once a pariah, thrown out of Britain for his anarchist ways. Now, he\u2019s a national treasure. Joe Rush relives 40 years of sticking it to the \u2018straight world\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cT<\/strong>hey thought we were terrorists,\u201d says Joe Rush, remembering the day not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall when he and a fellow anarchist took over a patch of no man\u2019s land at the heart of the German capital. They filled it with military hardware: tanks and artillery and the like \u2013 along with a MiG-21 fighter jet that they pointed directly at the nearby Reichstag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe authorities were furious,\u201d he says. And no wonder. The police feared that, just as the cold war was ending, another military face-off had begun. \u201cThey thought we were going to fire missiles into the Reichstag,\u201d says Rush. \u201cSo we pointed the MiG into the ground to make it clear we weren\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the authorities didn\u2019t realise is that Rush and his travelling band of outsider artists had come to Berlin not to make war but to create a peace garden. His Mutoid Waste Company (MWC) crafted a huge gateway out of Soviet assault vehicles and called it Tankhenge. This then provided the entrance to the garden, which was an outdoor exhibition of found objects, some worked up into sculptures by the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe stole most of it,\u201d says Rush, who gives the impression that there was military hardware just lying around Berlin at the time. \u201cIt was like we found the biggest salvage yard in the world.\u201d The authorities lost interest in evicting MWC and turned instead to feuding over who was responsible for letting a bunch of British weirdos get their hands on a scarcely decommissioned cache of Soviet military might.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\u2018It
\u2018It was like the biggest salvage yard in the world\u2019 \u2026 Rush in Berlin in 1989. Photograph: Courtesy of Guy Mayhew<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rush, now 60, has dedicated his life to recycling, at whatever level. I Am a Mutoid, a new film by Letmiya Sztalryd airing on BBC Four on Sunday, profiles this genial outsider artist who most recently hit the headlines with Mount Recyclemore<\/a>, a sculpture depicting the G7 leaders in recycled metal and electronic components, positioned to face them as they met in Cornwall this month. That work was created by Rush and collaborator Alex Wreckage (possibly not his real surname) to indict the mountains of defunct computers and outmoded mobile phones slowly choking the planet. Does he think Johnson, Biden and the others will take heed? \u201cProbably not,\u201d he says, \u201cbut this is a ground-up movement. Ordinary people around the world seemed touched and inspired by it. Maybe our leaders will eventually catch up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rush\u2019s career as a salvage artist began one midsummer\u2019s morning in the early 1980s when he was in the bath. He decided to shave off his hair. Once shorn, he went out on to Portobello Road in London, but he felt self-conscious so he came back in and glued a rabbit pelt to his bald head, then went out again. Later, he gussied the rabbit fur into a kind of Mohican and became something of a local character, looking like a figure from 2000AD<\/a>, the British weekly comic he\u2019d loved as a kid that featured a dystopian Mega-City. \u201cYou learn a lot from looking funny. Some people get scared, some angry. Sometimes you have to fight. And sometimes you find people who don\u2019t feel threatened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He became obsessed with wheels, keeping motorbike spare parts and drip trays for oil in his bedroom. His hands were rarely clean. In London in 1984, he and a bunch of ex-punks formed the MWC. They put on parades down Portobello Road looking like cyberpunk comic book heroes or extras from the Mad Max franchise. They drove mutated motorbikes and flat-bed trucks from which flames rose into the sky, to soundtracks of snarling guitar and dub reggae. These events were a cross between theatre, circus, installation art and \u2013 as often as not \u2013 really bad traffic jams. \u201cI had no desire to be taken over by society,\u201d says Rush, \u201cor be part of the straight world. I didn\u2019t want to have roots. I wanted to keep on the move.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The MWC at Glastonbury 1987. Photograph: Diane<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He was inspired by his late father, the artist and single parent Peter Rush who, in the late 1960s and 70s, decided the family should hit the road. Peter bought a caravan, painted it jauntily and set off from Romney Marsh in Kent. They got as far as Salisbury, where Peter was knocked over by a car and injured so badly that life on the road came to an end. The MWC was, in part, a reprise of that alternative lifestyle: a collective of artists, musicians and disaffected Britons who creatively reinvented themselves as a tribe of human mutants living on the road, in squats, and \u2013 in Rush\u2019s case at one point \u2013 a decommissioned Korean war helicopter sitting in a junkyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you don\u2019t mutate, you\u2019re dead. That\u2019s why I’m drawn to being on the road. My life has been about reclaiming the nomadic spirit<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

They were treated as pariahs by the early 1980s club scene in London, refused admission for looking too weird or potentially troublesome. So they created their own culture, a party scene in squats and abandoned warehouses that predated and inspired late 1980s rave culture. \u201cThe Thatcher years were really hard on us,\u201d says Rush. \u201cWe became part of the traveller community who experienced persecution.\u201d The culmination of that persecution, Rush tells me, was the Battle of the Beanfield<\/a> in 1985. The Mutoid Waste Company joined about 140 vehicles known as the Peace Convoy, which headed to Stonehenge for a free festival. But English Heritage took out a last-minute injunction banning the festival and police arrested 537 people from the convoy after a bloody battle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was it for us,\u201d says Rush. \u201cWe were effectively driven out of the country.\u201d He and his friends went into exile on the continent for a decade, only occasionally popping back. \u201cIn Europe, there wasn\u2019t anything like a party scene or illegal warehouse parties. So we started putting on shows. We were mostly welcomed, unlike at home.\u201d Why didn\u2019t you just settle down? \u201cThat wouldn\u2019t have been the mutoid way,\u201d he laughs. But what is the mutoid way? \u201cWe\u2019re mutating all the time. If you don\u2019t mutate, you\u2019re dead. That\u2019s why we\u2019re drawn to travellers and being on the road.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rush thinks humanity took a wrong turn when we became farmers and set aside the nomadic, hunter-gatherer existence that had characterised our species until then. \u201cMy life has been about reclaiming that nomadic spirit. All the festivals we\u2019ve taken part in over the years are really just an echo of what happened when nomadic tribes came into the valleys in summer and partied.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Rush
Rush in Italy in 1990. Photograph: Anne Marie Goodman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But he is not the refusenik outsider he used to be. \u201cThe key moment came when one of my sons got sick from Agent Orange or DDT or whatever it was left in Berlin\u2019s no man\u2019s land. He needed more serious treatment than dangleberries and herbal tea.\u201d In 1995, after 10 years wandering Europe, he and the MWC returned to Britain, where his son got proper hospital treatment and Rush made his peace with straight society for the sake of his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before Mount Recyclemore, he was probably best known for his long association with Glastonbury<\/a>. In 1987, the mutoids were allocated a field at the festival site. There, the recyclers built Carhenge and surrounded it with what Rush calls \u201can apocalyptic Disneyland on acid\u201d. There were sculptures, installations and dinosaurs assembled from scrap metal. Drums were omnipresent and festivalgoers at various levels of consciousness joined the mutoids in beating oil barrels, car wrecks and metal statues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ants
Ants made from motorbike fuel tanks are part of a Mutoid installation in south London. Photograph: Dave Rushen\/SOPA Images\/REX\/Shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In later years, Rush\u2019s pyrotechnical spectacles, animatronic robots, sculptures, stage shows and mutant parade of strange vehicles driven by even stranger humans have become key to Glastonbury\u2019s ethos. Rush was behind such annual spectacles as Unfairground<\/a>, Trash City, Joe Strummer\u2019s Memorial Tree (made from exhaust pipes) and a giant mechanical phoenix that hung over the Pyramid Stage as the Rolling Stones headlined in 2013. Most recently, he built Glastonbury on Sea, a replica of a seaside pier which seemed to imagine the kind of architecture Somerset will need if sea levels rise thanks to the climate crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2012, he was invited to art direct and perform the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games in London. The pariah had become a national treasure. \u201cWe\u2019d been hounded out of Britain and now we were representing Britain. The whole thing blew our minds.\u201d During the ceremony, Prince Edward arrived in a mashup of a 1930s gangster car and an Afghan armoured vehicle, and then the MWC drove into the stadium in salvaged, pimped-up rides and put on a show that was as visually compelling as Danny Boyle\u2019s opening ceremony for the Olympics earlier that summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\u2018We
\u2018We pointed the MiG into the ground to make it clear we weren\u2019t going to fire missiles into the Reichstag\u2019 \u2026 Berlin, 1989. Photograph: Courtesy of Guy Mayhew<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Lockdown has given Rush the chance to concentrate on creating other things. Fossil-like works mostly, made from spanners and bike chains, as well as a sculpture consisting of all his dogs from over the years, their heads and bodies crafted from repurposed drills, carburettors and other detritus. It\u2019s a touching memorial: pets reborn as trans-canine mutants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of his work was recently on show at Fulham town hall in London, part of a show called Art<\/a> in the Age of Now. Does this mean Rush is finally joining the art world, and moving from the street and field to the gallery? \u201cI\u2019ve never wanted to be part of the art world,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause that would involve cosying up to people I don\u2019t really understand or like.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While he is a contemporary of such YBAs as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, unlike them Rush never went to art school or had his oeuvre collected by Charles Saatchi. That said, he has worked with Banksy and Hirst. The latter gave him tips on how to make bronze versions of sculptures originally created from recycled aluminium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When lockdown ends, he is hoping to return to his European travels \u2013 and put on exhibitions in museums. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be in galleries,\u201d he says. \u201cI want to be in museums like the V&A, Tate Modern and the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay in Paris.\u201d What\u2019s the distinction? \u201cPrivate galleries own you and your art. I don\u2019t want that. My principle has long been that if a child thinks a work of art is bollocks, it\u2019s probably no good. Kids can see through nonsense. And I try to remain a child in that sense. Some people think you need to grow up. You don\u2019t. You just need to learn how to keep playing. I\u2019m lucky enough to be still doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stuart Jeffries. Guardian. 24 Jun 2021
https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/tv-and-radio\/2021\/jun\/24\/joe-rush-i-am-a-mutoid-mutoid-waste-company-glastonbury-g7-mount-recyclemore<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The punky master of outsider art was once a pariah, thrown out of Britain for his anarchist ways. Now, he\u2019s a national treasure. Joe Rush relives 40 years of sticking it to the \u2018straight world\u2019 \u201cThey thought we were terrorists,\u201d … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[539,228,163,668,667,670,222],"class_list":["post-4625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1","tag-art","tag-festivals-2","tag-glastonbury","tag-mutoid","tag-rush","tag-terrorists","tag-travellers-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4625"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4627,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4625\/revisions\/4627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}