Completed Untitled Studies ['Deleuzian Cartography'] 2

 

Untitled Study ['Deleuzian Cartography'], Paper Collage & Mixed Media on Paper,
300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

Here is a somewhat delayed round-up of the paper-based studies from my 'Deleuzian Cartography' work. Everything here was produced during the latter months of 2024, alongside the slightly more substantial/resolved panels which emerged from these explorations. The first and last images here represent studies at the larger 300 mm x 300 mm size, and could, I imagine be presented as exhibit-able work, should the opportunity arise. In the event, the intensity of work and degree of resolution they represent falls only slightly short of the small 'finished' panels which have resulted from all this to date.  

This & Following Five Images: Untitled Sketchbook Studies ['Deleuzian Cartography'],
Paper Collage & Mixed Media on Paper, 180 mm x 180 mm, 2024

The remaining images show sketchbook-based studies, which were thus somewhat more spontaneous and rapid in their execution. This fairly organic methodology is a key feature of this phase of work, with motifs, themes cartographic locators and solipsistic references all bobbing to the surface of an ongoing process of exploration. The hope is that anything that emerges might draw on previous discoveries or feed into as yet unmade images with equal facility. 

The key motivation behind all of the work is, I guess, the search for a form of intuitive, deconstructed/reconfigured cartography, in which the established geometries of the street plan are perpetually short-circuited through space and time by more fluid currents of potential meaning or narrative. As can be seen, this has expanded to encompass references to electrical/electronic circuitry, diagrammatic labyrinths and specific literary/philosophical  references, alongside the streets, buildings and allusions to digital/analogue mapping with which I began. Simultaneity and a sense of zooming-in/out feel like they're pretty key too, and I can't help noticing that the inclusion of specific textual elements has once more become a thing.

As regards media and technique, there's nothing especially new to report. Everything has evolved via my long customary mixed-media/collage-based methodology. It allows me to hang onto a degree of chance and spontaneity and is a well-proven way to act as an editor/manipulator of found material (and spaces). I can only hope there's been some refinement of technique or increase in sophistication/nuance over the years I've been working like this.

The whole 'Deleuzian Cartography' idea still feels very live, although I've currently taken a short pause for thought, largely to consider possible ways to retain the key features and spirit of this kind of imagery at a larger scale. I feel like there are relatively practical issues of enlargement  implied here, but also an imperative to explore the idea of extensiveness and the transgression of set boundaries too. In relation to that, it's impossible to ignore the fact that Jorge Luis Borges once wrote an account of a physical map produced at 1:1 scale, which grew to encompass every topographic detail of the entire empire it eventually covered [1.]. Time for some more practical experimentation, I think...

Untitled Study ['Deleuzian Cartography'], Paper Collage & Mixed Media on Paper,
300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

[1.]: Jorge Luis Borges, 'On Exactitude in Science', From: ‘The Aleph’, London/NYC, Penguin, 1998

R.I.P. David Lynch

David Lynch. Image: Adam Bordow/BW

It's hard to know what to say when someone of David Lynch's cultural stature passes away. Anything even half intelligent one might say about the facts of his career as a director, painter, musician (and transcendental meditation advocate, amongst other things) has already been covered by the time one can even begun to process the information. Others have almost as quickly filled countless megabytes and column-inches with reflections on the possible 'meanings' within the work, and wider significance within the cultural landscape. In the time it took me to get here, I've even read one semi-poetic discussion of the life-long (and life-shortening - as it transpired) smoking habit which almost seemed to define him as much as the work for some.

On reflection, perhaps the whole smoke thing is as good a signifier as any for an artist whose work was so saturated in the ineffable, and so resistant to being pinned down. It also speaks to his approach to life as an endlessly unfolding creative process. Lynch himself spoke of the 'Art Life', describing with relish how each creative gesture would blur seamlessly with his endless chains of coffee and cigarettes - each becoming the next in real time. Ultimately though, that's in danger of becoming yet more romanticised 'myth of the artist' stuff really. It feels like the only meaningful response at this stage is a more personal one, accompanied by some of the man's own unmediated words.

Image: Studio Canal/Les Films Alain Sarde/Asymmetrical Productions/

Babbo Inc/The Picture Factory/Bridgeman

When all else is said and done, Lynch's films and TV work (and let's face it - this is what will be remembered longest) have moved and stimulated me more than pretty much anything else achieved in those media. In my view, no one else has managed to blur the boundaries between moving images and dreams quite like Lynch. The logic at work within them is dream logic. This is why, just like the dreams we experience immediately prior to waking, they seem more vivid, more affecting, more divorced from convention, and more engaging of thought and feeling as sides of the same coin than any other cultural artefact I've encountered. It's why they resist traditional analysis so pleasingly. It's why even Lynch himself didn't always know what might happen - even as a mood or association emerged in real time on set. It's why, for those of us who relish questions and possible interpretations, far more than answers and definitive statements, Lynch is the go-to, par excellence. And I really don't care if he is the kind of film director 'someone like me' would like. I just do.

'Eraserhead', 'Twin Peaks', 'Lost Highway', 'Mulholland Drive' - these are works I can return to repeatedly, and never quite get to the end of. Certain scenes and images will remain indelibly stamped on my memory in perpetuity (I've mentioned more than a few on here before). The concluding credits may be rolling, but my response is slightly different each time, and I'm already anticipating the next time I can fail to '(ex/mans)plain it all away. Each work seems to mean so much, but I really don't want to know exactly what. In the process of not knowing, I may have been horrified, haunted, baffled, or felt like I'm falling in love. I may have gasped, laughed out loud or chuckled inwardly, confronted my own deepest fears, or just gazed longingly at the sheer formal elegance of Lynch's craft. I may have loved and despised humanity in equal measure. I may have gasped at the sheer audacity of it all (on a spectrum from the gleefully cheesy to the truly profound), and even, most surprisingly - meditated without irony on the existence/nature of good and evil). I'm not sure what else I could ask from an art experience, and I thank him for it.

Anyway, enough of me. Lynch really should get the final/not final words...

"If you get an idea that’s thrilling to you, put your attention on it and these other fish will swim into it. It’s like a bait. They’ll hook on to it and you’ll get more ideas. And you just pull them in."

"I don’t know why people expect art to make sense when they accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense."

"Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there’s humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd. But I don’t just find humor in unhappiness – I find it extremely heroic the way people forge on despite the despair they often feel."

"In a way failure is a beautiful thing, because when the dust settles there’s nowhere to go but up, and it’s a freedom. You can’t lose more, but you can gain."

"A film or a painting – each thing is its own sort of language and it’s not right to try to say the same thing in words. The words are not there. The language of film, cinema, is the language it was put into, and the English language – it’s not going to translate. It’s going to lose."

"Certain things are just so beautiful to me, and I don’t know why. Certain things make so much sense, and it’s hard to explain."

All quotes: David Lynch.

Individual sources can be found in: Adrian Horton, 'A life in quotes: David Lynch', London, The Guardian, 17.01.25

'The Annihilation of Time and Space': HNY 2024/25

All Images: Lincoln East Bypass, December 2024

In what is becoming something of a seasonal tradition, I found myself up on the Lincoln East Bypass, with bike and camera, on Boxing Day. Certainly, this indicates that, like so many of my creative endeavours, my 'The Annihilation of Time and Space' project has been 'ongoing' for much longer than originally envisaged. However, it also means that the scope of the project has expanded to encompass this slice of edgeland in a range of different conditions and moods.

Last year, the landscape was bathed in crystalline winter sunlight, but this time the conditions couldn't have been more different. The entire region was sunk in dank fog and, even in the early afternoon, light was fading fast. The defining characteristics shifted from deliciously blank to poetically bleak.

Given the state of world events, and the trepidation any of us might feel regarding the coming year, perhaps these conditions were glumly appropriate. As the somewhat reduced procession of vehicles beat on into the gloom, it was impossible to avoid the inevitable impressions of a lost civilisation careering headlong into an obscure and forbidding future.

Whatever the truth of that, we can only hope there are still some brighter days to come, whatever the general trend, and to seek the reasons to be creatively cheerful wherever they may be found. The conditions may have made my cycling a little arduous, but they also prompted me to see a familiar environment in fascinating new ways - and to capture some images with a darker romance not previously attached to this particular project. There's usually some uplift to be found if we remain open to the possibility, and - as Albert Camus pointed out, we should still find the time and energy to dance, even on the edge of the abyss.

Happy New Year.

Season's Greetings 2024

All Images: Centenary Square, Birmingham, November 2024

The City offered-up an unironic cascade of festive light and colour this year - or so I thought. Unfortunately, grim reality imposed itself between these shots being taken and their current moment of publication. One of these fairground rides, erected for the festive season, in Birmingham's Centenary Square, partially collapsed a few days ago - causing numerous injuries. Thankfully, there were no fatalities, and reports suggest none of the injuries were actually life-changing.

Immediately prior to these shots being taken, my friend Andrew Smith and I had been gazing at the scene over coffee and idly speculating whether we'd ever have summoned the courage to seek such thrills. Our joint conclusion was, not - preferring to participate in the spectacle as mere spectators. How little we really know...

Anyway, in the interests of pursuing innocent pleasures/lines of flight wherever they seem available, I'll offer condolences and wish a speedy recovery to anyone adversely affected in the process, and Season's Greetings to everyone else.

Merry Christmas

Completed Painting: 'Deleuzian Cartography 3'

'Deleuzian Cartography 3', Paper Collage & Mixed Media on Panel,
300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

This is the third of this year's small ‘Deleuzian Cartography’ panels. It came into being in parallel with ‘DC2’ and I suppose they share a certain aesthetic - in colour range, if nothing else. The fragmented street maps and circuit diagrams are still there, although much of that content is even further subsumed into an ‘all-over’ composition this time.

For much of the piece’s development, I figured that might be the whole story, and that this one was going to represent a variety of urban hum approaching near blankness, rather than the more strident energy flows of the streets. Somehow though, this just wasn’t quite enough and a recognisable portion of Leicester’s inner gyratory system rose to the surface very late in the day. The final gesture of reaching for a pot of varnish and looping it off the handle of a brush occurred in wholly intuitive manner (late at night, and probably half asleep). It is often the case that such release creates the most fortuitous results, and in this time the drips appear to continue the ring road’s circuit organically through sheer chance. I couldn’t have made that happen if I’d tried.

Without delving to dee eply into any of the complex, abstruse philosophical concepts which may (or may not) inform this body of work, the tension between formally established territory and more intuitive flows of urban life continue to feel like a key theme. Indeed, this may just represent another interpretation of the official/unofficial interface that’s been there in my work for many years (signage vs graffiti, crisp edges vs random mark-making, social democracy vs uninformed reactionary politics, etc.).

Another point worth noting is the suggestion of some pixellated, glitch-type artefact at bottom left of this image. There was actually more of this in ‘DC1’, and it does feel like another category of motif that may continue to recur in this body of work. For now, let’s simply regard it as a hint towards the digital lens through which we often chart the terrain. I’ll leave it at that for now, but the potential of Google Maps/Earth, OpenStreetMap, etc. to further mediate our understanding of geography is definitely folded into these pieces, and something to discuss at greater length another time

Completed Painting: 'Deleuzian Cartography 2'

'Deleuzian Cartography 2', Paper Collage & Mixed Media on Panel, 300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

Here is the second of my small ‘Deleuzian Cartography’ panels, a small clutch of which have recently emerged in the wake of my summer sketchbook experiments. As ever, the quantity/rate of production may feel a little less than desired, but the reality is that progress been consistent, and I think I’m reasonably content with the general direction they have taken so far. I think I should give up worrying about stuff like that once and for all, and just accept that I’ve always been a fairly slow, methodical worker, with many of the usual mundane limits on available time and energy in addition. Furthermore, each one of these often takes longer to resolve than could ever be predicted and - let’s face it, just churning-out a series of predictable ‘product’ shouldn’t really be the aim either.

In fact, the real ‘issue’ to be faced now is probably more to do with scale (i.e. the space side of the space/time interface). Any imagery deriving from maps must, by its very nature, imply a degree of open-endedness or extension. Ultimately, there is only one map after all (and it is spherical and without definitive boundaries). The end of one chart is just the beginning of the next. Even my own modest and localised voyages of discovery around the city reveal a seemingly limitless range of possibilities (what happens if I take this route instead of that? what happens around that slightly less familiar corner? How far can I really follow this river beyond the city’s nominal edge? etc.).

This would all suggest that one simple ambition should be to move away from what has become (often for simple practical reasons – or is it timidity?) my default ‘small’ panel size. I’m not necessarily talking Mark Bradford scale here, but the annexing of a little more territory is indicated, nonetheless. If limits on working/storage/living space all imply some conflict with that ambition, a sensible solution might be to consider the extension of imager over several conjoining sections. Thinking about it – that would be in keeping with the cartographical nature of this work too (see above).

Anyway, that’s all in a possible future. As far as this little panel goes, there is clearly some attempt to further dissolve the street plan into an abstracted soup of possible routes and directions generally. There’s also clear reference to the idea of the city being a vast circuit of energies and informational flows - as much as it is an arena for physical journeys. Overlaying (and threaded through) all this, more fluid traceries and Deleuzian rhizomes attempt to arc across, or take mental/emotional flight from, the territorial geometries of the map. That’s my excuse for a bit of Pollock-style drippage, and I’m sticking to it!

Completed Painting: 'Deleuzian Cartography 1'

 

'Deleuzian Cartography 1', Paper Collage & Mixed Media, 300 mm x 300 mm, x 1 2024

This is the first small panel to emerge from all my messing about with maps over recent months. As mentioned in my previous post, this imagery emerges from a period of sketchbook experimentation, in which recurring motifs and working methods were allowed to evolve in a fairly organic manner without too many constraints. For all that may feel like a new phase of activity, I now realise that this kind of thing superficially resembles some of the street plan-derived work I made a few years ago.

'Map 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage on Panel, 600 mm x 600 mm, 2015

I guess that's how it goes sometimes - we set off in what we feel is a new direction, only to discover we've actually looped back round on ourselves without really knowing it. I'm going to tell/fool myself that this is hopefully less of a resort to some stifling comfort zone, and more of a re-statement of the central concerns within my work. As stated many time before - it's pretty much always about an interaction with my immediate (largely urban) surroundings, and the various ways in which it becomes codified and freighted with numerous tangled narratives. In this case, a conscious use of appropriated texts encountered at specific locations has given way (I think) to certain implied philosophical underpinnings - such as might be encountered in the work of Gilles Deleuze or Michel De Certeau, amongst others. 

There's far too much nuance there (and let's be honest - baffling complexity) to detail now. So, for the time being, I'll hang on to the hope that, rather than merely circling back to some earlier starting point, any movement achieved here is more representative of a spiral. Just as each time we pass through a certain location on the map - we may experience it in a slightly different way, so perhaps any return to possibly familiar creative territory may might contain the experiences, knowledge and insights gleaned since the last time we were there. Perhaps we can hope for a little more finesse too?

Yes - it may be another map-like yellow painting, but I've certainly torn up a load of paper, and read a lot more confusing books since the last one, so here's hoping...