Mike Cockrill: Awakening

On the face of it what Mike Cockrill is doing here is upright and straightforward, Boy Scoutish even, which is not a bad metaphor, considering that he was himself a keen Boy Scout during those years when he was unknowingly accumulating the material that would be the core of much of his mature work. You could say that this project is simply about borrowing. But it s not that simple. Artists do generally feel free to rifle the image banks of art and popular culture for usable stuff, but if their takings have been fairly obscure and/or they have very much made an image their own, they seldom feel it necessary to bring the originals to our attention. Yet here is Cockrill pointing out as painstakingly as the teacher in one of his cherished school primers these are my sources and this is what I have done with them. Essay by Anthony Haden-Guest.