Written City 4: BANKRUPT WAREHOUSE

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.).