donny johnson paints with his hair

my cousin (80 now and interesting in his own right tbh) has organised an exhibition, the dungeon art of donny johnson, to debut at london riverside studio (25-30 oct), featuring the paintings of johnson, a prisoner for more than 40 years and to this day in the californian system, much of it in solitary -- with an arena documentary to follow on 31 oct

this is spamming a little i know and i apologise, but i think the project is extremely worthwhile and interesting, and the london exhibition is here and gone and easy to miss (a larger tour is planned but setting it up during pandemic has been very complicated)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMvAXccpm2o

i went to see this yesterday (it finishes at riverside tomorrow)

alan yantob was there. busy filming a strand for BBC news at ten: my sister watched it and texted me, enraged, to say that the strand elided everyone else's curatorial agency but yentob's own, as if he had done the research and made the documentary -- but of course he always does this

the thing posted pictures and youtubes don't get across is the charming sugar sheen of all the little paintings, they make you want to lick them (don't do this tho)

just rewatching this so i thought i'd post the iplayer link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001169l/arena-painted-with-my-hair