Here's Dex Wright, taken from a photo with his co-workers The Grim Beepers.
And an interview:
The Sunday Underbelly Oct 2021 DEX WRIGHT unedited full interview by LCRFMLincoln | Mixcloud
I'd forgotten that flat Lincolnshire accent... but not his commitment to going against the flow.
So: we met somewhere (??cant remember) when I held the Artescape Fellowship in 1991. Wherever it was we met, I invited him round. I knew which day he would turn up - two days afterwards was too keen, longer than three was too late - and when indeed he arrived as predicted (with a bunch of wild flowers) he was perturbed by my prediction. No doubt this influenced our relationship.
We were lovers, we were collaborators. I was some many years older than him, he 24, me 42, which seemed irrelevant. To whom might it be relevant? Well, there was the nasty moment when I though I might be pregnant - which is how I found out I was menopausal. We rarely spoke of these things though, painting and sculpture were our lingua franca. His life intruded from time to time; I was vegan, he was not only omnivore but shot birds on the family estate. His was the Little Lord of the village. People actually touched their forelocks when he passed. He lied to me a lot, no doubt thinking it was easier. He would leave me early on a Saturday morning to go to the shoot, saying something quite different: but then we'd bump into one of his friends and 'good days shooting' would be mentioned. I pretended not to notice. How could I expect to change him?
There were the little kindnesses too, he could be very empathic when not distressed. I recall an ear cuff he suddenly bought me (=money was always tight for us both) because he clocked I liked it. There was the meeting with the Queen Mother at the Hayward, totally accidental but impactive; we both painted the event. There was the little picture of us kissing, painted onto Elastoplast and stuck on a box -
We passed the Christmas meal together in a resturant with his family, my introduction to them. His mother had been at the Slade and seemed fairly accepting; the father, a farmer, frankly curious without asking questions. Dex lived in the family home but had his own rooms so my coming and going was never remarked upon. We slept on a horsehair mattress. We ate mushrooms that grew on the lawn with eggs from the hens that pottered about. First time I'd taken an egg from under a hen...
He wore his dead grandfathers clothes, which were fairly smashing and of course beautifully made and in excellent condition. He derived comfort from them. He had been abused as a child by a distant family member and was all-but consumed with hatred for the man, spending a deal of time plotting murder. I tried to help him channel that into the work.
Outside of his place he was a disaster. I took him to London for a party, from which he absented himself. He disappeared - I wasn't worried. Until he turned up in the middle of the night having had to climb over the security fences, furious with me for not going to look for him. He might have killed himself, he said. This was taking in loco parentis too far, I figured, and on getting back to Lincoln we politely distanced ourselves from each other.
But we kept in touch. I got him an exhibition somewhere, small event but a start. He turned up in Amsterdam for Biekes expo where he ran into Ian. And after that every few years we'd touch base... when he lived in Spain with a Spanish girl, which didn't last; when he became a father.
Recently I suggested he visited a councillor as his home life was shambolic. He said he'd had a go and they tried to put him on antipsychotics.
- And latterly I was to do an installation for 10 Digital Place...
dreadfully heavy hearted at his death.
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