Avenue artist Matthew Courtney, a founding member of the grassroots Decrease East Aspect arts nonprofit ABC No Rio and host of its celebrated Vast Open Cabaret sequence, died final week in his Brooklyn house on the age of 66. A police investigation discovered that the reason for dying was an unintentional overdose, a member of the collective instructed Hyperallergic.
Born in 1959, Courtney grew up in Portland, Oregon, earlier than finally transferring to New York Metropolis within the early Eighties, the place he helped foster the expansion of ABC No Rio, then an artists’ squat. From the mid-Eighties by early Nineteen Nineties, he hosted the weekly anything-goes open-mic occasion Vast Open Cabaret on the artwork collective’s historic 156 Rivington Avenue tackle.
The sequence was an underground hub for New York outsider artists and dissident voices, and recognized for placing on eccentric, radical, and uncooked performances spanning ten-minute political ramblings, spoken phrase poetry, and experimental music and theater. As author Rebecca Moore wrote for Mirabella Journal in 1990, “Sometimes it’s horrible, sometimes it’s a glimpse of emerging brilliance.” Courtney had only one stipulation for individuals who signed as much as take part: “You are on your honor to be amazing!”
Courtney making a cardboard signal at his Soho sidewalk gallery Steps to Nowhere (picture by and courtesy Fly Orr)
ABC No Rio member and comedian artist Fly Orr instructed Hyperallergic that she was “blown away” by Courtney’s presence the primary time she attended one of many Vast Open Cabaret occasions.
“The audience was his co-host, but he was always the one in the spotlight,” Orr stated, recalling how viewers members would often chime in to supply phrases of encouragement, sing alongside performances, or voice their opposition. Amid all of the loud chaos, “[Courtney] always knew how to rein it all in and get everyone back to a manageable state … with his very commanding, mellifluous baritone.”
Courtney’s theatrics had been captured in readings of his unique poetry, corresponding to “Car Poem Number 1” and “Honey, I’m Home!,” the latter of which noticed him stroll by a yellow doorway and curl up on the ground in imitation of a buttered scone.
“He was beloved and admired by all who met him,” Orr continued. “He shined as much off stage as he did onstage.”
Courtney’s visible artwork repurposed discovered objects together with cardboard and newspapers. (pictures by Matthew Courtney, courtesy Fly Orr)
Courtney was additionally a longtime fixture of Soho’s road group. Starting within the early 2000s, he erected his makeshift, sidewalk-based Steps to Nowhere Gallery exterior storefronts and eating places on Prince Avenue, together with steel steps that led into the wall of a now-defunct J.Crew, the Apple Retailer, and Fanelli Cafe, showcasing brightly coloured Pop Artwork portraits and humorous poetic meanderings. Lots of his artworks had been produced on repurposed discovered supplies like cardboard packing containers and segments pulled from the New York Instances (his favourite was the climate part, based on a 2008 Blogspot put up).
“I used to draw on the front page of the New York Times, but the screaming headlines and dramatic photos used to rattle people and I’d stopped doing that,” Courtney stated in a 2013 video interview filmed on the Steps to Nowhere Gallery. He turned towards different instantly accessible materials: A 2021 picture posted to Instagram depicts a portray made on a paper subway discover, and different photos display that he often used slabs of wooden as canvases.
“Matthew, we carry forward the memory of your presence,” ABC No Rio wrote in a Fb put up. “You made room for the voices others overlooked, and reminded us that art is not just something we make, but something we live by.”
In commemoration of Courtney, the collective is distributing copies of the self-published zine documenting the Vast Open Cabaret sequence this week; these can purchase these publications from its library at 107 Suffolk Avenue in Manhattan’s Decrease East Aspect.
Fly Orr’s depiction of Courtney as host of the long-running Vast Open Cabaret occasion sequence (picture by and courtesy the artist)
Matthew Courtney’s Steps to Nowhere gallery traveled up and down Prince Avenue, stationed exterior storefronts and eating places. (screenshot Maya Pontone/Hyperallergic through @matthew_courtney_art on Instagram)
