Good evening ladies and gents. It's a great honour to be asked to speak to you on the topic of painting's use, a subject that has always remained very close to my eyes. The topic reminds one of Sir Kenneth Clark's famous Civilised Painting in England Lecture, delivered at the University of Edinburgh in March 1964. Given the occasion, I thought it would be apt to quote the impeccable logic of Clark's magnum opus:

I didn't get where I am today without knowing good old-fashioned painting when I see it. If I were asked to sum up its key qualities, I'd say that it's a discursive picnic wherein we can discuss establishing a space to discuss how we might investigate future invitations to a both physical and intellectual picnic that functions as a potluck, where each participant can be both guest and host at the same time. People and their fads, eh? Still, no use kicking against the pricks. Neither Mrs. Clark nor myself has ever kicked against a prick. And never use two words where one word will do, that's my motto, that's my axiom, that's the way I look at it.

Of course, it hardly needs to be said that painting has changed a little bit since the late Sir Clark voyaged by donkey to deliver his aesthetic sermons to the good people of Edinburgh. As globalisation's key apologists tell us, time and space have completely collapsed. As a result paint and canvas have transformed into entirely fictional entities. Paint has no more veracity than the loch ness monster. This worries some folks back home, but as Clark said, who are we to kick against the pricks?

We all live in the future, and have to take this into account when painting things. Gone are the days when painters laid out their whole palettes in an arrangement of tones, which, with slight variations and a certain amount of glazing, formed a basis for painting all the different fields of a composition.

Ulglinous, waxy, greasy surfaces have been replaced by alchemical readings of painting based heavily on the writings of French revolutionary martyr John Paul Marat. In the futuristic media-dominated society we live in now, contemporary painters must work with celebrities on behalf of their favourite charities.

I've recently returned from a research trip to the south of France with the internationally acclaimed contemporary Scottish painter Hannah Gordon. Gordon very kindly speed networked me with the artistic community of the spectacularly beautiful Les Baux de Provence; a Nazi-occupied Renaissance village perched on top of a rocky crag. There our research group busily examined the phenomenology of figure ground relationships in the local bouillabaisse as it was spilled over our laps in classic Galton & Simpson sitcom style. Our facilitator was the soup-based painter Francois Artois, an artist known equally in his capacity as the editor of the journal Art in Antarctica. Artois had also arranged for us very lucky pups to be treated to lectures by eminent German art historians Lieutenant Hubert Gruber and General von Flockenstoffen.

Gruber and Flockenstoffen's pataphysical research on Van Clomp's Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies (1583) is unparalleled. Gruber and Flockenstoffen made me think more carefully about painting's ability to be used. We quickly mustered a scheme to sell the painting to the resistance in the hope that this would detract attention from our psuedo radical posturing.

In Avignon, our research group set up right in the centre of the bustling town hall square, full of pavement cafes and tourists. We painted with the most modern materials such as laser beams, frozen food and telepathy. Like Italians flicking their chin, Gruber made obscene gestures at dwarves in a vivid and fragrant lavender field in the heart of Van Gogh's St Remy de Provence. It was a wonderful experience, and greatly improved everyone's facture.

Gordon then flew us from wartime France to current day Hollywood where we put through an intensive course at The Cure Institute of Contemporary Gothic Cultural Work, founded by painter and musician Robert Smith.

Here, we were expertly tutored by neo-expressionist painter Sylvester Stallone, who attributes his artistic success to his constant confrontations with adversity, hard work and dedication, much like his alter ego Rocky Balboa. Rocky can be seen here on the left studying with his mentor, Pablo Picasso. Rocky is no stranger to the changes painting has seen in the past 30 years. His mid period work consisted of radical self-mutilation performances. Later, he returned to his roots, painting big messy expressionist canvases mixing blood and oil paint for dramatic effect, as can be seem in this work entitled Joan's Life.

Important advice was also given by inimitable portraitist Derren Brown, who was in town acquiring some Windsor and Newton turpentine and a felt tip pen to fill in an Arts Council grant application. Brown told us that it was best to paint philosophers, writers, magicians and musicians, something that he has a great deal of experience of. I agree entirely, such powerful subject matter is very important if we are to avoid formalism.

Esteemed Watercolour Challenge judge Timmy Mallet had also just returned from a sabbatical in Australia where he was standby for ex-Rolling Stone Sid Vicious in I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. Timmy loves reaching for Mallett's Pallette and doing a bit of painting. Mallet studied History of Art as part of his History degree at Warwick University and his paintings have been enjoyed at regular exhibitions in Hollywood, London, Manchester and the Home Counties.

If painting is to have a use value, then it is essential that tomorrow's painters achieve the celebrity status of bleeding-edge artists such as Stallone, Brown and Mallet. Combining Brown's bewildering powers of psychological illusion and perceptual manipulation, Rocky's dogged Italian American determination and infinite patience, and Mallet's subtle comedy timing I'm certain that they who continue to dare shall win.

Barnyard Slut