This is a guest post by Nick Abrahams, co-director of the new documentary film, The Bruce Lacey Experience:

Bruce Lacey is the invisible man of British art. “Many people who know me in one of my activities think there are in fact several different people called Bruce Lacey” he wrote in 1975. Lacey’s constantly inquiring mind has meant that he has evolved too quickly to maintain a level of success, constantly moving from one form of expression to another, and leaving a trail of confusion in his wake. If you are British, and of a certain age, you probably remember him from his appearances on kids TV shows like Blue Peter. He made cameos in the Beatles’ movie Help and swinging London feature films including Smashing Time and The Knack…and How to Get It. Bruce and The Alberts, the band he regularly shared an anarchic stage with, performed at Peter Cook’s Establishment Club, helping kickstart the nascent satire boom in Britain. It was there that Bruce encountered comedian Lenny Bruce, who consequently offered to manage them. Unfortunately by the time Bruce and the band had crossed to the USA by boat (performing on board, no doubt to the bemusement of their fellow passengers), their American mentor was under arrest, and he was unable to follow through on his offer. Safely back in the UK, Bruce went on to record a live album with George Martin at Abbey Road (By Jingo, It’s British Rubbish), but its cover of a torn and defaced Union Jack was rejected by EMI and the record was never released. This was in 1963…. The Alberts were the first performers on BBC2 when it was launched in 1964, and were offered a showcase TV series which failed to materialize when the producers discovered Bruce’s aversion to rehearsals.

Bruce made props for many different television shows, including gadgets for Michael Bentine’s Potty Time. Within his own work these gadgets evolved into full scale robots and automatons. He claims he hated working with actors so much that he felt compelled to invent robots to take their place, the most famous of which was ROSA BOSOM, who in 1985 won Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World pagent- a subversive counter culture institution in England, beating style icon Leigh Bowery and future potter Grayson Perry to the prize. Fairport Convention wrote a song, “Mr Lacey,” about him, and he has brought his robots on stage with them.

Although Bruce’s work has influenced artists as disperate as David Bowie and Genesis P. Orridge, success on a wider commercial scale has eluded him. Some of this seems to be down to the way in which Bruce has had an amazing ability to grasp failure from the jaws of victory. He is very vocal about embracing mistakes, accidents and deliberately sabotaging his own work. It is not enough to do a magic trick, it must be a magic trick that goes wrong. I sat through an amazing magic lantern show that Bruce gave in his local village of Wymondham last Christmas. Slides were upside down, often in the wrong order…total chaos! Bruce was obviously loving it, and the audience tittered nervously, not quite sure if it was funny or not, or how intentional any of this was. It seems to be what keeps him interested, these moments of total spontaneity. Is it performance art? Music hall gone awry? Or is he just, as he sometimes claims, simply “playing silly buggers”?

Over the last three years Jeremy Deller and myself have spent hours in the company of Bruce, who, at the age of 85 is very much still an active artist. Very little of the above information made it into our film. Hopefully you get a taste of what Bruce is like today, as he let us document some of his private rituals and public performance art pieces. I hope that what comes across in our film The Bruce Lacey Experience is a man who is unable to stop creating, someone constantly following his dreams, worlds away from the careerism of the Tracey Emins and Damien Hirsts of this world. The film is an attempt to get inside Bruce Lacey’s head - a document of England’s greatest surviving bohemian in his own words. There are no talking heads, no academics ‘explaining’ Lacey’s work, no celebrity endorsements, just a man at work, and a partial tour through the back catalog of his life so far. One other stray voice, from an interview with his son Keith, enters into the film, but otherwise it’s just a strong dose of extremely concentrated Bruce Lacey.

It seems perhaps that the world has come around to Bruce again at last, with a major retrospective exhibition at London’s Camden’s Art Centre opening on July 7th, and for those unable to get to London, the British Film Insitute are releasing a double DVD of some of film works on July 23rd, mainly by Bruce but also including films that Bruce appeared in (including rareities by Harrison Marks, better known for his nudie cutie reels, and films by Beatle collaborator Dick Lester and cult animator Bob Godfrey), as well as The Bruce Lacey Experience. We are hoping to screen the film in the USA later in the year.

Below, the trailer for Jeremy Deller and Nick Abrahams’ The Bruce Lacey Experience:
 

 
The trailer for BFI’s The Lacey Rituals DVD release: