Art Exhibition: "DEAD PEOPLE ON HOLIDAY" by Stephen Jackson
Artist’s Statement: A new book from which the show takes its cue, represents the first fusion of visionary art and visionary poetry since William Blake in the 19th Century. “Visually stunning,” this work has been called: and its writing has been compared in richness to that of the English metaphysical poet John Donne. A leading British poet of today has acclaimed it as “tight and life-affirming”. Who would have thought that it began life as the secret chronicle of one man’s ten-year journey through a private hell? And yet, and yet, what has been learnt and shared here has the power to move and perhaps empower us all.
This exhibition co-incides with the release of an already published book in ebook form, making it available to a whole new audience at the lowest possible price. On screen, too, richly saturated images take on a jewel-like quality that conventional printing struggles to match. “The living”, it has been said, “are dead people on holiday”. Stephen Jackson’s Dead People on Holiday is a ten-year testimony to one man’s living extinction, concluding in acceptance and the chance of a return to hope, love, and a new life. The poetry here pulls apart the inner sadness of encroaching age and irredeemable failure, with a candour which for most of us has to be kept stifled, silent, perhaps barely even thought. Yet this is a book which surmounts despair. If these are the ashes of a failed life, they are the ashes from which a phoenix can rise; and someday, it will.
‘Dead People on Holiday’ Softcover: ISBN 978-1-4500-3968-0
Dead People on Holiday’ Ebook (new): ISBN 978-1-4691-6760-2