Over a diverse and productive career Cauty has distinguished himself as a musician, record producer, artist and cultural provocateur.
As a teenager he drew the Lord of the Rings poster that sold millions of copies through high street poster shop Athena; in the 1980s/90s was a founding member with Bill Drummond of pioneering pop disruptors The JAMs and The KLF who had a string of number one hits and critically acclaimed albums before retiring from the music industry in 1993, deleting their back catalogue and morphing into art disruptors The K Foundation… who infamously burned a million quid. The ashes of the burned money were then used to make a household brick.
Solo activity included experiments with sonic weaponry (Advanced Acoustic Armaments), to anti-Iraq war and other subversive postage stamps (Stamps of Mass Destruction, The Cautese Nationál Postal Disservice), and model making (A Riot In A Jam Jar, the Aftermath Dislocation Principle aka ADP, ESTATE).
After featuring at Banksy's Dismaland, in 2016 the ADP model was re-fitted into a 40-foot shipping that toured the UK and then the world as The ADP Riot Tour. We attempted to tour his model of a dystopian high-rise ESTATE but that was severely hindered by the real dystopia of the global pandemic. Both models in their containers are now retired to the Shetlands.
In 2017 he once again joined forces with Bill Drummond and announced the building of The Peoples Pyramid, a monument to the dead made of bricks containing ashes of the dead.
We started working with Jimmy in 2004 after he loaned one of his Stamps of Mass Destruction to our exhibition of art against war organised in support of the Stop the War Coalition - Pax Brittanica, A Hellish Peace, the aquarium 2004. He had recently been sued by the Royal Mail for breach of copyright so we helped sidestep such issues with a barrage of new stamp designs as The CNPD – kicking off with the exhibition BLACKOFF - A Post-Terrorist Xmas Gift Shop, the aquarium 2004.
Jimmy now makes sound & vision films and records under the name TowerBlock1, collaborates with Jem Finer as The Standing Stones, and operates as director to K2 Plant Hire Ltd for building The Peoples Pyramid.
He also releases editions of appropriated police riot shields, sold here:
smileyriotshields.com
