Introduction to Dream Ventriloquism

David G. A. Stephenson

David G. A. Stephenson’s first art-song was “I Want To Hang Out With Ed Ruscha” (written & performed with Richard Bell), released as a CD single through the Anthony d’Offay & Rocket galleries (London) in 2000. 2003 found Stephenson back at Cambridge University studying for a year in the Department of History of Art (completing a degree that he had begun in 1977). Overseen by Professor Alyce Mahon, he produced a dissertation on the art of Los Angeles-based Ed Ruscha. In his research Stephenson was delighted to discover that Ruscha had designed the cover for Artforum’s Special Surrealism issue of September 1966 (also a great year for popular music; Ed Ruscha created a book of album covers in 1971.)

Stephenson had used a selection of Ruscha’s words & phrases from his paintings (Ruscha sometimes chose lyrics from Captain Beefheart and Rolling Stones) to create something of a surrealistic narrative for ‘I Want To Hang Out With Ed Ruscha’; this probably chimed with Alyce Mahon, as she liked the song very much. In 2010, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, very successfully reissued the CD single to accompany the Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years Of Painting exhibition (which had initially travelled to Haywood Gallery, London and Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany).

Stephenson had also been very interested to find out that Ruscha had been show in the 1960s by London gallerist Robert Fraser. Fraser’s inaugural exhibition in 1962 was with the Surrealist-inspired Jean Dubuffet; Stephenson wrote a song celebrating Dubuffet & then created (with producer/musician Josh Stapleton) a double-vinyl album Robert Fraser’s Groovy Arts Club Band featuring songs about many of Fraser’s artists. This was released—it is now available on Spotify etc—in 2019, alongside an exhibition of the same title, co-curated by Stephenson and Mila Askarova at her Gazelli Art House, Mayfair, London.

One of the tracks on Robert Fraser’s Groovy Arts Club Band is the Michael J. Gosling/David G. A. Stephenson composition ‘Clive Barker With His Midas Touch’, which is a paean to artist/fabricator Clive Barker, whose work always has a surrealistic quality (‘Dagger and jewels and a chocolate éclair’). After composing this song and ‘Pop Confessions Of Eduardo Paolozzi’ (with its chorus line: ‘Give me the head of surreal invention’), Stephenson and Gosling set out to create a series of albums inspired by visual artists. Alyce Mahon was pleased to hear these new songs and at the beginning of 2024, the centenary of Andre Bretton’s Manifesto of Surrealism, she encouraged Stephenson to study the Manifesto and create a song in celebration. Excited by many of Breton’s startling sentences and ideas, Stephenson and Gosling took up this challenge and have produced ‘Dream Ventriloquism’—Stephenson’s title seems both a metaphorical and literal encapsulation of Surrealism’s power to loosen inhibitions and to let the imagination run wild.

Cover image for “Dream Ventriloquism” — Figure 1. Melanie Winning, Dream Ventriloquism, 2024.

Image Description

Oil painting in green and blue hues of a woman’s head, with eyes shut. A hand holding an orange fish obscures her left eye. At the top-centre of the image, “Dream Ventriloquism” appears in white capital letters, and in the bottom right corner “Art-O-Matic” appears, also in white capital letters.

Audio Description and Lyrics

In front of rhythmic guitar chords accompanied by a slow, pronounced drum beat, ART-O-MATIC sings the following lyrics in crisp, gravelly voices, alone and as a duo.

Children set off each day, without a care in the world

Disinterested play of thought, the omnipotence of dreams

Long live social revolution, dream, reality future resolution

This is surrealism

Dream ventriloquism

The madness that locks one up; the key to this corridor

The marvellous is always beautiful, only the marvellous is beautiful

The poet is working and we never sleep, beloved imagination we will keep

This is surrealism

Dream ventriloquism

We are still running, heading towards our salvation

With a shudder, we cross dangerous territory

We assert our non-conformism, pure psychic automatism

This is surrealism

Dream ventriloquism

There is a man cut in two by the window, immediate absurdity

In the depths of the dark night, the fundamental questions of life

If we don’t conform to accepted practices, we free the body and mind

This is surrealism

Dream ventriloquism

ART-O-MATIC are Michael J. Gosling (based in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, UK) and David G. A. Stephenson (based in Colchester, Essex, UK), who have been collaborating on writing and recording songs for over 40 years. Gosling plays all the instruments, mixes & produces the tracks, while Stephenson provides lyrics, vocals (and occasional harmonica). Operating now under the moniker ART-O-MATIC reflects the theme of their new material: songs celebrating art, artists, architects, designers, writers and thinkers. Their first ‘release’ as ART-O-MATIC is a trilogy (entitled Gesamtkunstwerk) of albums: Kunsthaus (architecture, design, philosophy); Wall Rockets (painting); Space Invaders (sculpture, 3-D installation)—available on Spotify & all digital platforms plus YouTube. Their song ‘Dream Ventriloquism’ will be available as a digital ‘single’ release in due course, but for now it is only exclusively available through the International Journal of Surrealism.

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