Parked up outside the House of Illustration is Jonny Hannah's 'Darktown Turbo Taxi', an alternative world, brought to life through an illustrated sixteen year old car.
"Darktown offers me a refuge from modern life and council tax payments. A relief from x, y and z factors. Any visit to this distinguished distopia offers a relaxing coffee at the Mermaid Cafe, a great bowl of mussels at the Hotel de la Plage, and a chance to draw and paint in my modest hideaway in Rue Zig-Zag in a leisurely manner, with fewer deadlines than normal.
Looking back, Darktown began in my formative years growing up in Dunfermline. I reckon The Skids were on their way there, when going Into the Valley. Couple that with buying dark, dark denims, with bright yellow stitching at Donaldson’s on Dunfermlines High Street, and an annual treat from the Kay Bruce toy shop on east port, and before I realized… Darktown was born. But it would take decades to rise to the surface. To help that process happen, I played Fats Waller, Hank Williams and CW Stoneking, obsessively. I watched Wages of Fear, anything by Jacques Tati, Les Diaboliques, The Red Shoes and Whisky Galore over and over again. I poured over Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell and Ferlinghetti’s Coney Island of the Mind. And there it was… I had my ferry ticket to Darktown in my hand and have been setting sail ever since." Jonny Hannah
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