Nuttall stands with Lautreamont, Artaud and with all great jazz musicians, in his wish to fully engage with the actual. Life for Nuttall is blood, nerve, plant and rock, never the mind. This major selection shows Nuttall celebrating the confrontation that exists between individual and world, an engagement which is ecstatic and even worshipful.
'Performance artist, poet, novelist, jazz musician, teacher, theorist, painter and sculptor, Jeff Nuttall is the only all-round genius most of us are likely to meet in our lifetime. And let the sceptic beware: this is no exaggeration. His talents usually control at the limits of human exuberance. His skills are both highly local and deeply embedded in European twentieth-century arts. In a culture exemplified by tepidly isolated skills, greed, pop repetitions and art trivia, Jeff Nuttall's work is bracing and joyful, celebrating another world of values, ones that last.' Eric Mottram (Notes for CALDERDALE LANDSCAPES exhibition at ANGELA FLOWERS GALLERY, London 1987)