Bobby Reader, 2007- | street performance
Bobby Reader was a performance persona created in memory of the British magician, researcher and historian Bob Read [1940-2005]. Read’s collecting specialty was magic’s ‘oldest trick’, the cups-and-balls, often performed on the streets under the sign both of entertainment and nefariousness. Read’s collection of images of such performers was unsurpassed. Bobby Reader’s fast-talking mountebank veers between downright charlatanry and cunning art historical punditry, ’a steam roller of opinion, all going in the wrong direction’ [overhead member of the public]