SOUTH Hams rocker Jimmy Cauty – who famously torched £1 million in cash and recorded it on film – is heading home with his ‘dystopian diorama’ in a 40ft shipping container to mark a 215-year-old riot.
Cauty, who was known as ‘Rockman Rock’, was famously one half of the KLF – which became the biggest single selling music act in the world back in 1991.
He created his cryptic dystopian model village as one of the highlights of the Banksy creation Dismaland, which occupied a derelict funfair on Weston-super-Mare’s seafront last year.
The musician and artist’s exhibit was so popular it spent three months on show in London.
It is now on its way to Totnes where it will be on show on The Longmarsh from late Monday afternoon.
Cauty’s project, called The Aftermath Dislocation Principle, is a 1:87 scale model village, described as ‘reeling in the aftermath of a mysterious event’.
Rupert and Claire Callender, of Totnes’ Green Funeral Company, are part of an art collective called Ways with Weirds which is bringing Cauty’s creation to Totnes, where it will remain for five days.
Rupert said: ‘This exhibit was so popular it was shown again in London for three months, where it was expanded.
‘The installation was subsequently divided into three shipping containers, so it could tour, with one part now in the British Academy’s summer exhibition, and the others on a national pilgrimage of sites of historical social discontent.
‘Totnes will be curse-blessed with the biggest section: ADP1, a 40ft shipping container version, which will be parked in Longmarsh car park by a modified articulated lorry, sometime in the late afternoon Monday.’
Cauty was born in Totnes and as a 17-year-old artist he painted a popular Lord of the Rings poster, and later one based on the Hobbit for the huge British retailer Athena.
He joined Bill Drummond to form the KLF and, among many other things, the duo scored their first British number one single as the Timelords, with the novelty pop record Doctorin’ the Tardis.
In August 1995, Cauty hit the world headlines when he filmed himself burning £1m in cash in a disused boathouse in Scotland and then toured the film around the UK.
At one time Cauty had a home in Broadhempston when he bought an armoured car, reputed to have been used in 1960s military experiments in low frequency sound, took it to the top of a local hill in the middle of the night and played music across the countryside – which farmers later claimed had driven livestock miles away into a frenzy.
Mr Callender added: ‘Ways with Weirds are unorganising a celebratory welcome, something between an old- time church revival and the Native American ghost dance, a banned, defiant ritual designed to reunite the living and the dead to defeat the undefeatable white invader; a suitably chaotic welcome for a man who once burnt a million pounds of his pop earnings, then deleted his musical back catalogue worth millions more, and retired from the music industry at the height of his fame and success.’
He added: ‘Jimmy Cauty was once a resident of Totnes, and still has many family here, including his brother Simon, also an artist, so he will most likely receive a fiercely warm welcome from his old town folk, and maybe a few pity quids.
‘The tour has criss- crossed the country to a fascinated and engaged public, old punks and primary school children, policemen and miners, old women and teenagers, visiting sites where civil unrest once raged, including Stonehenge, Toxteth, Brixton, Orgreave and St Paul’s in Bristol.
‘It is coming to Totnes because of the Bread Riots of 1801, which spread from Dartmouth to Totnes, just one of 400 national riots related to the scarcity and price of staple grain products which were literally starving the rural poor to death.
‘It also promises to shine a light on some of the lesser known civil disturbances that have rumbled up and down the hill of Totnes.’