Monstermind: The Magical Life and Art of Tony 'Doc' Shiels

Artist Tony Shiels arrived in St Ives, Cornwall in 1958, hungry for art-world success. For a few years his career went well, but as the sixties developed, he grew impatient with the limitations of abstract art. Instead emboldened by the irreverent, libidinal spirit of Dada and Surrealism, his life became stranger and more magical. Then following a series of bizarre monster-raising stunts, in the mid-1970s he and his family became briefly known across Britain as 'The weirdest family in the land'. Shiels used skills learnt as an artist to manipulate the public in a brazen and audacious display of theatrical, imaginative daring. In the process he left an indefinable but not insignificant magical and artistic legacy.