The Cock Tavern Paintings - Part I

The Cock Tavern Paintings - Part I

Ben Westley Clarke / Ladette Space

A5, 24 photocopied pages on green paper. Hand stitched binding. Edition of 50.

£3.00

Another zine produced by the prolific Ladette Space - continuing their gallery in the home experiment. This was published to coincide with an exhibition of Ben Westley Clarke's observational paintings made in the Cock Tavern in Somerstown (You can see a few of those paintings here). The pub is a stone's throw from the haunting weight of the artistic and literary history stored in the British Library. You can feel that creative struggle, familiar to most writers and artists, in The Cock Tavern Paintings.

Faithful to his choice of location Clarke focusses his attention on the regulars: the perpetual loners; the elderly who have passed their years in the same seat night after night; the ever friendly, ever vigilant landlady. He captures well the threat of violence, and the slip (sip) into alcohol dependence.

All in all it is an interesting little zine - buy a copy, shove it in your pocket, and read it down your local over a pint. Then share it with someone sat on their own. That's what zines are for of course. 

Buy a copy here: ladettespace.bigcartel.com/product/ben-westley-clarke-the-cock-tavern-paintings-part-i

Review by Nathan Penlington