'Sick 1' In Detail: 'I'

'Sick 1', 2012, Acrylics & Paper Collage on 4 Panels, 
60 cm X 300 cm (Overall), 60 cm X 60 cm (Each Panel)

'Sick 1 (I), 2012, Acrylics & Paper Collage on Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm

For ages I’ve been inspired by the accretion of ragged fly-posters that wallpaper many urban streets.  They’re referred to in the ‘Safe From Harm 1’ Triptych and I was keen to include them again in ‘Sick 1’.  Development of the overall composition suggested a lighter tonality for the second panel, (‘I’) making it a candidate to be built from layers of white paper.

'Safe From Harm 1', 2011, Acrylics & Paper  Collage on 3 Panels, 
150 cm X 200 cm (Overall), 150 cm X 50 cm (Each Panel)

Searching for potential reference photos I remembered some I’d taken in Cornwall last year.  As often happens, the wall of a St Ives shop had become an informal bulletin board for seekers of entertainment, apparently triggering the usual struggle between shop owner and fly-by-night publicists. Less usual was the use of tape as an adhesive.  The normal pasted collage of torn edges and fragmented typography was replaced by a linear palimpsest of tape residues with minimal textual remnants.  It may indicate an arrangement between fly-posters and ‘postee’ but also created an impression of bleakness to me.

Fly-posting is seen as vandalism or as symptomatic of society’s dysfunction in official channels, but could represent a vibrant, self-generating alternative culture or even an opportunist (albeit criminal) form of private enterprise too.  Both could be regarded as positives by different ends of the political spectrum.  Beyond its obvious advertising role, it leaves a visual record of past events enjoyed as well as being a welcome splash of colour in a drab place.  These glue marks though were less a record of actual messages than merely trace-memories of the communication medium itself, - the last moment before amnesia.  One might ask which is sicker, - a society where private property is defaced in the name of cultural spontaneity or one where such activity is almost forgotten and only prescribed official expressions are tolerated?

The ‘Sick 1 (I)’ panel itself was built up from layers of paper collage, masked and transferred strips of acrylic paint and lengths of actual tape.  The chosen font for the ‘I’ character suggests traditional office type and thus might allude to officialdom and corporate mainstream society.