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The Odd World of Sexton Ming

Suzy Prince catches up with an eccentric legend of Britain's underground music, art and writing scene

Sexton Ming is rightly acknowledged as a visionary legend of underground writing, music and outsider art. He’s been prolifically creative for over twenty five years as a prominent member of various collectives and scenes. He was a key member of the influential Medway Poets (a group whose number included Billy Childish), and a founder member of the Stuckists art group in 1999: a high profile association of anti-conceptualist artists which has generated its fair share of column inches over the last few years and which was even recently showcased with its own show ‘Punk Victorian’ at Liverpool’s prestigious Walker Art Gallery. Nevertheless, Sexton remains… well, not known by as many people as he really ought to be. In fact, you get the impression that the chief reason for this — outside of the fact that his work will always be too wilfully obtuse and rough hewn for mainstream tastes — is that he has perhaps been rather too closely associated with those various scenes and collectives to gain recognition in his own right. But that may well be about to change. By the time you read this, his first ever solo art show will have opened at London’s Aquarium Gallery. Significantly, Sexton himself seems acutely aware of the need to strike out on his own.
‘It will be interesting to see how I stand up as a solo entity. Just Sexton Ming; writer, artist, musician.’
The various different strands of Sexton Ming’s output; painting, drawing, music, poetry and performance are not the easiest things to describe, but I’ll certainly try. Whether he’s doing music or poetry, a Sexton Ming performance is one that you are unlikely to forget. His latest album ‘Out to Stud’ is described as being influenced by ‘Norwegian death metal, the melodic gentleness of ‘Low’ and the cradle-rocking 3/4 time of the Tiger Lilies,’ which sums it up more concisely than I ever could. His singing voice, meanwhile, is by turns unexpectedly beautiful in a gruff kind of way and intense and confrontational (and I must admit that I do find it difficult to sit through a whole album at once). Sometimes when I listen to his music or his spoken word, I’ll think ‘I am listening to wayward genius here’, in the same bizarre and brilliant vein as say Ivor Cutler, or Captain Beefheart (both of whom are cited by Sexton as big influences). But then he’ll veer off at a tangent, or throw in a fart gag and the feeling is lost. That’s not a criticism: if nothing else, it keeps you on your toes.
One common theme that runs through all of Ming’s work is his blackly humourous observation of human behaviour. He is a master of the witty one or two-liner; his two-line poem ‘Metalhead’ for example:
‘I call upon Satan
but my mum tells me to turn it down’
sums up Death Metal succinctly and made me laugh out loud when I first heard it.
‘It’s taken a while for people to get to where my humour is at,’ he confides, ‘but now people have started to connect with where I’m coming from.’
Significantly, many of his new paintings come complete with speech bubbles:
‘I thought, well if everybody’s always going around talking about art, I’ll make the art talk back for once. I think there’s not enough emphasis on humour. Humour is seen as throwaway whereas to me, humour is stronger than tragedy or pathos or whatever. It’s a great healer and a great weapon. The art world sees it as something that’s not valid. What I’m doing with the show is asking the question of art that Frank Zappa asked about music: Does humour belong in art? I think it does.’
At the age of 43, Sexton is going through a period of reassessment. Several times during our conversation he talked about feeling a real desire to take more control of his life and work. He regards himself as retaining, ‘a lot of childhood innocence, whereas most people have had it kicked out of them by this age. I was the youngest of six kids. By the time my parents had me they couldn’t be bothered to teach me how to get up and get a job. They didn’t teach me a lot about responsibility so I was left to be this kid who was just daydreaming all day long.’
Yet, while this mental freedom has clearly contributed towards his ability to produce the art that he’s created in all its various forms, he now regards it as a mixed blessing.
‘I’ve never had a proper nine-to-five job. Now that I’m married and have a baby, I think that maybe I should have learnt to be a bricklayer or something, and made some decent money. I do feel unemployable sometimes. At the moment I see all of what I’m doing as a job, but I just don’t make enough money from it.’
As far as Ming is concerned, this show may very well be make or break time. It’s a peculiar situation to be in, finally staging a solo art show and at the same time consider-ing relegating it to a hobby in favour of a ‘normal’ job.
Personally, I hope that he sticks with it, although he’s the first to admit, he’s never made things easy for himself:
‘I would describe myself as someone who’s stepped sideways instead of forwards or backwards. A lot of people say if you tell me to do something I’ll either do the opposite or deliberately fuck it up. I have a fear of authority.’
Still, perhaps the clearest sign of his intent to strike out on his own, is his recent decision to distance himself from the Stuckists.
‘I’m so disillusioned with the Stuckists. Bill Lewis, another Stuckist [and former Medway poet], phoned me up and said, “I want to get another group going called the Remodernists.” I said I wouldn’t want to join. I’ve had enough of being in groups. Billy [Childish] has made his name purely on his own merits and I think its about time that I did the same, rather than remaining in a group helping to make others look good.’
On top of all of that he’s recently announced his retirement from live performance, which is a great shame. But as he explains,
‘The money’s shit, and in the last two years I’ve found that after doing a performance I get really really manically depressed for a week or so afterwards. Like a come down from coke or something. It’s not worth it. I’ve had some mental problems over the years anyway, (including a diagnosis of schizophrenia a few years ago) so maybe this has come about as the result of some cumulative build up.’
Reassuringly, the things that he’s cutting out of his life are being replaced by other endeavours. He started his own label — Rim Records — in 1999, born primarily out of desperation to get Ming music out into the world. Quite simply, no other label would go near him, ‘I’d send demos and they’d say “you’re a genius Sexton but it’s a bit too weird for the kids.’” The label is now the home of other ‘outsider’ types such as The Avant Gardeners and Benjamin Prosser.
I wasn’t at all sure of what to expect when I met Sexton; particularly after having heard various anecdotes about his unpredictable behaviour over the years. As it happened, I found him friendly, articulate, amusingly self-deprecating and very easy to talk to. He’s naturally very funny. He still has an air of unpredictability about him, but his life seems to have become much more stable in recent years. Regarding his mental wellbeing, as his decision to stop performing live indicates, he seems to have a greater awareness of what triggers certain problems now and is taking steps to avoid such situations.
He’s also a transvestite. In 2001, he married his wife and fellow artist, Ella Guru, in a cliff-top ceremony: he wore the white dress and she, a man’s suit. And, although he tells me that he doesn’t go out dressed as a woman any more; he can no longer be bothered with the hassle, as he handed me a cup of tea, I did feel envious of his manicured fingernails, which were sculpted into an elegant shape which I have never managed to achieve.
So, any regrets?
‘Yeah. I wish I’d learnt to say thank you and please more, or sucked more cock more often. And I wish I’d had my daughter Lucy when I was just a little bit younger.’ I suspect that if he scaled things down now he would also end up regretting it, although I could be wrong. So go and see the show; give him a reason to carry on with it all. We’d miss him if he was gone.