The furniture store photos I
showed here recently reminded me of some earlier related images that have lain
in my archives for several years.
I collected these images in 2008, in west Leicester.The large, shabby building, exemplifying the lowest form of cheap Modernism, had seen better days and has been subsequently demolished and replaced by an Aldi supermarket.Thus, my photos are further evidence of the constant tides of change that wash through cities and particularly in this part of Leicester in recent years.
I’m unsure of the building’s original purpose but, when depicted, it stood empty after having housed an outlet for bankrupt stock and constituency headquarters for the local Labour party, (you couldn’t make this stuff up really). It seems that all the opportunities one needs for sociological, philosophical and semiotic reflection or for satirical détournement exist right there in the street.
The initial appeal of the subject was equally visual - lying in the Modernist flatness and modular grid of the façade, and atmospheric, - through its overall air of dilapidation and neglect.Cursory examination reveals several, inter-related grids, each visually punctuated by architectural appurtenances, evidence of damage and age, material textures and the remains of old colour schemes.I always seem to respond to such visual geometry and planar flatness typical of a particular 20th Century aesthetic.
Also important, however, is the text incorporated into the geometry of the façade in large block characters.Inevitably, they quickly begin to operate as carriers of possible meaning or interpretation beyond their formal function.This process of immediate visual recognition, opening out into extensive subsequent lines of thought or layers of meaning is intrinsic to my current practice and relates to my recent post on the adoption of Psychogeographical attitudes to one’s surroundings.The use of text elements within my work is my deliberate method for moving between the worlds of vision and considered thought.
Possible clues to the reading of these images might include:
Ideas about moral, political, philosophical or literal bankruptcy on a personal or societal level.
Recent history and financial travails, nationally and globally.
The nature of warehouses and associations of accumulation, commodity and commerce.
Fluctuating economic fortunes and the degradation or changing uses of buildings.
The obsolescence of design styles and their associated philosophical, theoretical or political frameworks.
The multiple interpretations of individual phrases or the extraction of shorter, possibly resonant words from within longer ones, (e.g. ‘WAR’, ‘HOUSE’, ‘REHOUSE’, etc.).
Today I finally got round to
documenting this favourite piece of urban text that I regularly see on my drive
to work.
The building concerned is an
ugly, gaudy edifice housing a discount furniture store and replete with brash
blocky text across its topmost windows. Most of the panes spell ‘BEDS BEDS BEDS’, but my eye is
always drawn to the legend ‘LIVIN G SLEEPING’ positioned at one end.
The two words face me
directly as I wait for the traffic lights to change and seem ripe with
potential interpretations. One might
read them as a comment on our collective state of hypnotised consumerism, lack of intellectual curiosity or,
more prosaically, on my usual state of alertness at that time of the
morning. Cities are full of texts
like this and I love the way a mundane or utilitarian phrase can become
redolent with ambiguous poetry or be mentally detourned into completely new or
contrary meanings. This one could easily translate into a typical Situationist slogan.
I anticipated difficulties
in finding a suitable camera angle as the building sits on a busy roundabout,
adjacent to large flyover and amidst a visual clutter of lampposts, road signs
and traffic and nearly scrapped my plan when I saw the building being
painted. Then I realised the men
on their lift and incomplete area of new colour added an extra dimension to the
images. In addition to their
textual content, they now relate to my interest in urban transformation and, of
course, the very act of painting.
The choice of lime green
against that red steel work should wake me up too.
Here's the soundtrack to my last month or so. I think everyone will know at least a couple of these...
‘Anarchy in the UK’, The Sex Pistols
Johnny Contemplates A Long Tradition Of Dissent
I’ve been reading Greil
Marcus’s ‘Lipstick Traces, A Secret History of the Twentieth Century’ thatplaces
the Pistols in a long tradition of alienated dissent including the Brethren of
the Free Spirit, Dada and the Parisian ‘68ers’. It’s hard to credit now just what a kick in the teeth
Malcolm McClaren’s post-Situationist art experiment seemed in 1976. Nevertheless, John Lydon/Johnny
Rotten’s introductory “Rrrright – noowww” and
deranged claims to be “An Antichrist” sound like he really might turn over society this time round.
‘Sandinista’, The Clash
Triple Album Madness At A Great Price
From the Sex Pistols it’s a
short step to The Clash. Despite
their initial Punk stance, Joe Strummer’s song writing literacy and Mick Jones’
musicianship meant they’d quickly outgrow the genre’s limitations. Releasing an experimental triple album
covering such wide stylistic terrain was a mad proposition at the time but
there’s great stuff on here and the Clash did pull off White Reggae where
others failed.
‘Hard Rain’, Bob Dylan
Bob Contemplates Headgear Choices
Recently we experienced a
truly Biblical thunderstorm here - complete with massive hailstones that dented my
car. Old Bob recorded his rawest live album outdoors in heavy weather, in 1976. Enveloped in a glorious, shambolic racket and looking like a
disgraced messiah, Dylan seems battered by psychic as well as metrological
elements or like a man who has behaved badly and is reaping the whirlwind. His bottleneck guitar runs on ‘Shelter
From The Storm’ are inept but
totally justified.
After all these years and
repeated hearings, it’s easy to take Dylan for granted but his delivery of a
line like, “I came in from the wilderness, A creature void of form”, proves no one else ever went quite so far lyrically.
‘Das Ist Ein
Groovybeat, Ja’, Jake
Slazenger
My infatuation with Mike
Paradinas’ back catalogue continues.
Jake Slazenger seems to be his pseudonym for stuff that’s a bit less
‘intelligent’ and more straightforwardly funky. This one gets criticised for being kitsch and over
repetitive but I don’t see the problem and hesitate to over-analyse, as it’s
mostly just loads of fun. It’s got
some immense beats, terrific cheesy synths and a big fat bottom. It’s also got a fantastic title and a
nice blue Volkswagen on the front.
‘Shangaan Electro - New Wave Music From South Africa’, Various
I have a neighbour who plays African Pop from his upstairs window. It makes a pleasant change from the usual bass thump of passing cars and sent me to this compilation from last year. The Shangaan Electro sound combines weirdly speeded up beats with soulful chanted vocals and practically no bottom end. It’s unmistakably African, absolutely of the Twenty-First Century and very refreshing.
‘The Indestructible Beat of Soweto Volume 1’, Various
The Shangaan Electro album reminded me of an earlier era-defining compilation of South African music. In the mid 1980s Paul Simon patronised some of these musicians as a backing band but this sounded like the real thing. It showcases the cream of Zulu/Township Jive and includes some blistering tracks. I left a vinyl copy in a Bristol pub once and suffered genuine loss.
‘The Sabres Of
Paradise Are Sabresonic’, The
Sabres Of Paradise
Stick This One In Your Ear
I lamented the
unavailability of this for years and nearly bought a tatty CD version from
Oxfam a while back until I saw the state of its playing surface. I’m glad I held back as it’s available
now as an official download.
Andrew Weatherall and his colleagues used their rhythmic sense and
production know-how to produce a masterpiece of atmospheric techno that’s
genuinely sensual and goes way beyond mere enjoyment of structures.
‘Replica’, Oneohtrix Point Never
Daniel Lapotin Contemplates Mortality
Daniel Lapotin’s most recent
LP appears to mark a significant departure from his previous O.P.N.
releases. There are plenty of the
smeared washes of quasi ambient sound that characterised ‘Returnal’ but also a new reliance on rhythmic patterns and
almost-identifiable found sounds apparently constructed from chopped samples of 1980s adverts. His
skill lies in using just enough of each snippet to imply past content without
lapsing into the pure abstraction of earlier ‘Clicks & Cuts’ forms. It appeals to the same part of my brain
as Actress.
‘Goats Head Soup’, The Rolling Stones
I haven’t played the Stones
for ages but some media activity around their 50th anniversary
coincided with this being on offer locally. I’ve always enjoyed their stuff from the late 60s and early
70s when they combined the self-parodic decadence of Rock and Roll with real
musicianship. This includes three
of my favourite of their songs in ‘A Hundred Years Ago”, ‘Silver Train’ and ‘Hide Your Love’. If ‘Star, Star’
shows them at their most puerile and sexist, it’s still more life affirming
than the cold sexual commodification pushed at teenagers today.
‘Birdsong From The
Stroud Valleys’, Various
A Lovely Little Nuthatch Contemplates...A Nut, ( Probably)
Does birdsong qualify as
music? Can music be made by other
species? Do animal calls become
music when processed by the human brain?
Is it even necessary to distinguish between music and sound
anymore? This provided some
respite from all the snarling punks, chanting Africans, old rockers and
repetitive beats.
Despite my best intentions,
it seems I’ve found myself becoming a little more politically conscious again
after years of trying to disregard the whole sorry charade. Recent years have seen such momentous
economic upheavals and political dysfunction that it seems impossible to
retain that particular intellectual luxury.
In this context, and whilst,
still hoping to maintain a position of ideological non-alignment, I’ve just
read with interest Mark Fisher’s little book, ‘Capitalist Realism, Is There No Alternative?’ [1.].
The failure of the
discredited old Left world-view resulted in the illusion, over recent decades,
of the ‘end of history’ [2.] and the ‘triumph’ of liberal market economics. Yet, daily news reports and the
experience of people on the ground bring accumulating evidence of the defects
and delusions of that prevailing orthodoxy. By now, the inherent indifference of Global Capital to the
wellbeing of the general populace should be no surprise. Yet our leaders continue in their
desperate attempts to prop up the creaking edifices of nationally based
economies, Liberal Democracy and the myth of no imaginable alternative to the
status quo.
Over just eighty readable
pages, Fisher diagnoses our current situation of ‘Reflexive Impotence’ [3.] incisively. His genius is
to tackle this stuff with genuine intellectual rigour without lapsing into the
academic self-regard and impenetrable jargon typical of such discussions and he
skilfully links his ideas to cultural references that range from Franz Kafka to
‘Supernanny’. The scope of his analysis in such a
short book is somewhat miraculous and includes ideas about education, mental
health and the environment that relate his theories to the
real experience of potential readers.
Photo: Umair Shuaib
Fisher writes from an
undeniable left wing position, but his refusal to resort to the old orthodoxies
of monolithic state control is admirable.
His analysis of how Capitalism nullifies our lives risks inspiring
despair, but the conclusion that there might, after all, be an alternative
should at least inspire attempts to look for it. His own practical suggestions may feel a little thin, but if
the book only serves to release readers from their apathy, impotence or hypnotic
stasis it will have served a valuable purpose.
Anyone interested in Mark Fisher’s ideas should check out his k-punk blog. Despite it’s current dormancy, his archives are full of
thought provoking stuff. He is also a teacher and freelance journalist who has written for New Statesman, Frieze, The Wire, Sight & Sound and FACT.
[1.] & [3.]: ‘Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism – Is There No Alternative?’, Ropley, Hants, UK,
0 Books, 2009, Chapter 4: ‘Reflexive Impotence, Immobilization and Liberal Communism’.
[2.]: Francis Fukyama, ‘The End Of History
And The Last Man’, New York, Free
Press, 1992
As I trawl my photographic
archives I find more and more images of closed doors, gates, shutters and so
on.Here are some more
examples.These were taken over
the last three years in Leicester, Nottingham and Grimsby.There’s somewhat less textual content in some of these
but still bags of formal and textural interest.
Clearly, it’s a subject
category to which I’ve been drawn for a while without thinking about very
consciously.Maybe, I’ve tended to
focus on what’s on the surface within their frames, - regarding them as found
images, whilst disregarding the implications of their function as barriers or
blocked portals.I don’t want to
go into it all too deeply right now, but there’s a lot that might be explored
around themes of privacy, security, exclusion, indifference, lack of engagement
and denial of access or opportunity, amongst much else.
It’s a typical example of
the coming together of a visual motif with a set of associations that can also
relate to a wider external context.This process often causes me to regard something that’s been in the
background for ages with renewed fascination.
My painting activity must undergo a
brief hiatus over the next few days while I have the windows in my house
replaced then reassemble my little studio room.It’s frustrating as I normally want to hit the ground
running with the next painting at the start of the academic summer break, but
the disruption should be over soon.
Since completing ‘Closed 2’
I’ve played around with some smaller scale experiments in preparation for the
next piece. I want to continue
with the ‘Closed’ theme and push it forward without slipping into a facile
comfort zone. I’ve also been
reviewing my numerous photographs of closed doors, gates, shutters and other
barriers. Some of the recent ones
are here. All were taken in West Leicester over the last year
These barred entrances
constitute a repeating feature of the urban fabric and regularly play the role
of un/official notice boards and carriers of all kinds of text.They also come loaded with associations
of security, privacy and exclusion and the obvious question of what lies on the
other side.
On a purely visual level,
I’m constantly drawn to the artificial colours of painted closures and the
range of their substrates and industrial coatings. Inevitably, this also includes a fascination with how their
surfaces weather and degenerate and are punctuated by items of door furniture. Pictorially, such subjects appeal to my
taste for formal, geometric compositions with their frames, planks, panels and visible construction.
That last point reminds me
of the exhibition of Gary Hume’s door paintings I saw at Modern Art Oxford in
2008. Initially, these paintings seem to lack
any obvious narrative content and have a slicker glossier aesthetic than mine, but they display a similar enjoyment of synthetic colour and compositional
geometry. Actually, once one knows they're based on real hospital doors numerous possible interpretations begin to cohere.
Gary Hume, 'Girl Boy, Boy Girl', Gloss on MDF, 1990-91
Gary Hume, 'Four Doors 1', Oil on Canvas, 1989-90
Gary Hume, 'Shine', Gloss On Aluminium, 2001
Gary Hume, Door Paintings At Modern Art Oxford, 2008
Gathered together, Hume's doors display a multiplicity of formal variations on a simple recurring format. That returns me to
consideration of my own ‘Closed’ images and their potential to become a more
extended series over the coming months.
This post marks the
culmination of an extremely long-term project and is in memory of my Dad, John
Marwood who died ten years ago aged 73.
Although he spent his
working life in a bank, his real love was mechanics and vehicles of all
sorts. He spent many weekends
dismantling and rebuilding a series of Morris Minors and owned numerous other
sixth-hand vehicles including a lovely old Rover and an eccentric homemade Ford
camper van named 'Flo'. For many
years he was a member of the Lincolnshire Vintage Vehicle Society and plenty of
my childhood weekends were spent riding in elderly buses to vehicle rallies
where men in beards would discuss coachwork and compression ratios.
Sometime in the mid 1970s he
bought the 1960 Velocette Viper motorbike pictured here. It was tatty but largely complete and
the intention was that he and I would restore it together. The bike was pulled apart and carefully
boxed but the momentum was lost as other activities took precedence. The years went by, I grew up and left
home and my parents moved house twice, taking the boxes of ‘Velo’ bits with
them each time.
Chris Goldson (R), & Phil Adams (L). 'Thanks Guys'
When he died in 2002 my Mum
and I found ourselves staring at the dismembered bike.We knew it was too interesting to scrap
so donated it to ‘The Vintage’ in the hope that someone would restore it in his
memory.More years passed and
eventually, sufficient funds were raised and the project handed over to expert
local bike restorers Chris Goldson and Phil Adams.They’ve just completed the job and, as these photos show,
have made a beautiful job of it.The old L.V.V.S depot has expanded to become the Lincolnshire Road
Transport Museum and 610 BRM will find a permanent home in the impressive
collection there.
Velocette was a classic
Birmingham marque from the golden age of British Biking and there are plenty of
enthusiasts for their machines.
The sporty 350cc single cylinder Vipers aren’t particularly rare but
this one’s a little special due to its two-tone livery and, at the time controversial,
engine fairings. Classic ‘Velos’
always looked stylish in all black with their attractive engine castings and
fishtail silencers. This one
demonstrates how the company were trying to bring their established models more
up to date cosmetically as they moved into the 1960s and I think it looks the
business. Chris says it
displays the typical Velocette reluctance to start first time but then runs nicely.
It’s great to see the bike
fully restored so genuine thanks go to the Lincolnshire Vintage Vehicle Society for
making it possible and to Chris and Phil for all their hard work and expertise. I know my Dad would have
been chuffed to see it like this.
