Simon English: my big self decoy justin beiber brings together a significant new body of painted drawings by the artist that format themselves around the double page spread, with both image and text on the page to invite and resist quiet contemplation. These exquisitely delicate and brutal drawings tussle with one another for space, pulling the viewer into the energetic and colourful vortex of the artist's psyche. Diaries jostle with devotions, desires and disputes a confabulation of friction and fiction in a place where fetish and fact collide. Simon English draws across the blank page with the instincts of one entering cyberspace. His surfing history is left only too clear on the surface of the page, or buried beneath heavy black deletions and overpainting. His are the old gremlins, the monsters within that say one is too much and more is never enough. In 2004, Bill Arning wrote that "for picture addicts like myself, English is the equivalent of a crack dealer". The work within the book is brought together with written contributions from Laurence Scott, who will contribute a text emanating from English's imaginary drawing database, and Sally O Reilly, who will construct a voice for the work somewhere between art, theory, fiction and fantasy. 70 illustrations
