South Hams rocker Jimmy Cauty – who famously torched £1 million in cash and recorded it on film – is heading home with his ‘dystopian diorama’ in a shipping container.
Cauty, who was known as ‘Rockman Rock’, was famously one half of the KLF – which became the biggest single selling music act in the world back in 1991.
In 2016 he brought his cryptic dystopian model village called The Aftermath Dislocation Principle – one of the highlights of the Banksy creation Dismaland – to Totnes where it was displayed at Longmarsh car park for five days.
Now his latest interactive art exhibition ‘Estate’ has taken up a month long residency at his former school, King Edward VI Community College.
Cauty’s stark and subversive piece features four abandoned concrete tower blocks inside a 40-foot long shipping container.
Cauty was eager for the school to host his exhibition, says KEVICC assistant headteacher, Ben Cotton, who added: “Now that it’s here, we think it’s a brilliant opportunity for our students and the local community to see and explore a different type of art exhibition locally.
“As a former KEVICC student with a formidably creative mindset and independent spirit, Jimmy is an inspiring figure for our students and wider college community.”
Two years in the making, each of the 1,360 rooms on Cauty’s Estate has been made from scratch and then painstakingly vandalised by the artist.
All four tower blocks are 17 floors high and contain meticulously crafted derelict interiors - some with lights, toilets and tiny TVs playing looped public information broadcasts.
One tower block is dedicated to residential and light industrial Live Work Die units, another is a children’s prison, the third a high-rise residential care home, and the last appears to have functioned as a pagan religious centre. They are all empty and no one knows what happened to the inhabitants.
The completion of Estate marks the third and final instalment in a decade-long series of miniature building projects by Caulty, alongside A Riot in a Jam Jar (2011 – 2013) and The Aftermath Dislocation Principle (2014 – 2016).
Cauty was born in Totnes and as a 17-year-old artist he painted a popular Lord of the Rings poster, and later one based on the Hobbit for the huge British retailer Athena.
He joined Bill Drummond to form the Justfied Ancients of MuMu which mutated into KLF, who released two albums and a string of top five singles including acid house anthems ‘What Time Is Love’ and ‘3 a.m. Eternal’ to become the biggest selling singles act in the world in 1991.
In August 1995, Cauty hit the world headlines when he filmed himself burning £1m in cash in a disused boathouse in Scotland and then toured the film around the UK.
He later became co-founder of The Orb and married artist, musician and former Thompson Twin Alannah Currie.
At one time Cauty had a home in Broadhempston when he bought an armoured car, reputed to have been used in 1960s military experiments in low frequency sound, took it to the top of a local hill in the middle of the night and played music across the countryside – which farmers later claimed had driven livestock miles away into a frenzy.
Estate will be exhibited in front of KEVICC’s main school building from Thursday April 7 to Friday April 8 from 6pm to 8pm, from Saturday April 9 to Monday April 25 from 12noon to 6pm, and again on Monday April 25 to Friday April 29 from 6pm to 8pm.
The exhibition is free and suitable for adults and children over the age of 5.
Anyone who is able to volunteer to help man the installation is asked to fill out a form by following the link on the news section of KEVICC’s website at www.kingedwardvi.devon.sch.uk.