Nicodemus

IT STARTED AT THE YELLOW HOUSE

About a million years ago there was the Yellow House on Macleay Street in Sydney, started by surrealist artist Martin Sharp. Full of pop-art, the canvas was the house itself, walls, floors and ceilings were covered in paintings, scuplture, and masks.

You’d often run into brilliant make-up artist Richard Sharah who hung out with painter Bruce Gould. Bruce was a fabulously eccentric guy who was doing shows with Sylvia and the Synthetics, underground drag performers who threw fish and other goodies onto the audience. Pre Rocky Horror 'little Nell' Campbell would do an occasional show. Talented occult painter Rosoleen Norton, the witch of Kings Cross might wander in.

This was a time when mime artist Lindsay Kemp lived in Sydney, he transformed the Glebe Theatre into his own magical performance space. Polish Laboratory Theatre’s Jerzy Growtowski brought over his play Apocalypsis Cum Figuris and started a school in Armidale. Actor/playright Steven Berkoff was a regular visitor, acting in and directing his plays. All of these amazing people held extensive workshops, which I loved, especially Berkoff’s.

With a little support from the arts council I founded the Sydney theatre ensemble Abba Dabba, performing original group penned plays in an abandoned church we renovated into an arts workshop and performing space. We’d usually start a performance at midnight, sometimes cops would show up…..and stay, applauding along with everyone else.

Having met so many talented Brits I couldn’t wait to get to London, I’d been corresponding with the E15 acting school. Hated England when I got there and split for Berlin. It was love at first sight.

I was experimenting with electronic music, painting and film so I combined these diverse elements into solo multi-media  installations. Other artists invited me to collaborate on their projects….. and life was beautiful.

Then the wall came down.

Hullo New York.

I thought the best way to gate-crash NYC was to get my ugly mug on television so I created Krash Boom TV, featuring performance artists, electronic bands and the club kid scene…..and of course shamelessly promoting my music and videos.

I met my muse Anitra who became the KBTV co-host and we started performing as The Elephant Of Celebes, changing it later to Men Smash Atoms which is more apropriate for the kind of noise we make.

I loved the historic Tunnel club and decided it was the perfect setting for my  feature length version of Hamlet, 'Rotten in Denmark - a psuedo Elizabethan film noir’. To get around renting the space (they wanted two grand a day) we showed up in our fab Elizabethan clobber when the club opened at night, pretending we were doing a KBTV shoot. Talk about guerilla filmmaking…..it was a lot of fun.

Neoclassical Nudes and Dandies is my solo ambient project. See a link to this and other delicious propaganda at www.nicodemusweb.com

~n