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| Beneath Clifton Boulevard At Junction With Queen's Drive, Nottingham, October 2014 |
After several months of concentrating on static, (and heavily collage-based), imagery, I’ve been out and about with my video camera again in recent days. I did a lot of filming through last winter, both through the windscreen of my car and in the wind and rain as part of my ‘Belgrave Gate Project’. However, progress on all that has been somewhat sporadic and is, for now, on the back burner again, so that footage is yet to see the light of day, (although, it's certainly not forgotten).
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| Belgrave Flyover (Since Demolished), Belgrave Circle, Leicester, 2013 |
This time round though, I’m amassing footage with a, literally, more concrete aim in mind. A few weeks ago, Multi-Media Artist, Andrew Smith and I were lucky enough to secure an exhibition slot at Floor One Gallery at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum. The Gallery allocates the unfilled slots in its exhibition programme on a first come - first served basis and we’d failed twice before, so this was very much a case of third time lucky. The exhibition will take place in June 2015 and has already been titled ‘Mental Mapping’. At the moment, our plan is to exhibit work that represents Andrew and myself individually, but also to collaborate on a joint piece, - which is where my filming comes in.
The plan is to
produce an artists’ film triggered by the theme of concrete and cement. My own fixations with hard, urban
environments, and my existing use of motifs such as Leicester’s Belgrave flyovers, Spaghetti Junction and miscellaneous subway systems, mean I’ve
already spent many hours meditating on the material qualities of concrete. When the chance to exhibit in Rugby presented
itself, it just felt impossible to totally ignore the importance of cement
manufacture to that town’s economy. Indeed,
the physical presence of an immense Cemex cement manufacturing plant looms large over
the whole town and might be seen as the literal source of many of the concrete
edifices I’ve been drawn to in my photographic expeditions around the British
Midlands.
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| Cemex Plant, Rugby, Warwickshire, February 2013 |
Actually, I’d already photographed the cement plant on a murky February day in 2013, without any particular end in view, after attending the Private View of Shaun Morris’ ‘Stolen Car’ exhibition, also at Floor One [1.]. I first met both Shaun and Andrew when they invited me to participate in the ‘If A Picture Paints A Thousand Words…’ Exhibition [2.] in Birmingham in 2012, so this all still feels like several planets periodically lining up.
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| Shaun Morris, 'The Gap', Oil On Canvas, 2012 |
It also makes me reflect that one of the things I’ve really come to appreciate about the whole ‘creative process’ palaver is the idea of an open-ended continuum. Ideas, motifs, themes and all varieties of visual stimulus arrive when then arrive, often in the most accidental or serendipitous manner. The important thing is to keep documenting such experiences however I can, on the assumption that they may become just what I’m looking for, months or years up the line and in unexpected ways. Similarly, if I can just keep resolutely working away, even if feeling a bit underwhelmed by the results sometimes, loose ends will gradually start to tie themselves up, and small breakthroughs be made, in their own time. It’s about capitalising on potentially rewarding situations, rather than trying to force a particular issue.
A large part of
this is the conversations one might have with other artists or people whose
general input can be seen as constructively engaged. This is definitely a reason for working
collaboratively. I have a tendency to
labour away in a fairly insular manner when left to my own devices, and it’s
easy to get lost in a comfort zone or to become over-dependent on old habits of
thought. Thus, the process of working on
‘Time Passages’ at Melbourne Festival
a few weeks ago, and now this collaborative project with Andrew, both feel like
valuable ways of usefully shaking things up to less predictable effect.
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| Painting By Andrew Smith. (Specific Details Unknown). |
My original idea was to start filming with a certain type of apparently static subject and fixed camera position in mind, then invite Andrew to respond with his own textual and conceptual interpretations, ultimately coming together to edit the results into something, (hopefully), coherent. However, my start to filming was somewhat delayed by the need to complete and tie-up the loose ends of the Melbourne project. In that time, Andrew has already started to suggest some interesting themes and textual starting points which are, inevitably starting to colour the way I select potential subjects, or look at those that might appeal for wholly visual reasons otherwise. It’s also more than possible that he’ll want to contribute some visual content of his own, as he’s made more than one film of his own in the past. Indeed, it was Andrew's willingness to work across a variety of media, and to place an idea at the centre of his process whilst always producing a captivating artefact of some sort, that first impressed me about his work.
This kind of
ongoing dialogue, and the potential to be creatively ‘nudged’ in unexpected
ways as events unfold, is exactly what I would hope for from a healthy
collaboration. It’s still very early
days, and I don’t want to be any more specific about the project at this stage,
but I’m really enjoying finally getting out there with the camera, collecting
footage and the baffled stares of passing motorists, and am feeling
increasingly excited about the whole idea as the days go by.
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| Beneath Clifton Boulevard At Junction With Queen's Drive, Nottingham, October 2014 |
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| Beneath Clifton Boulevard At Junction With Queen's Drive, Nottingham, October 2014 |
Which is all a long-winded way of explaining why, as most of the images here show, I found myself under another multi-level road interchange, in one of those little ‘holes in the map’ where the public rarely venture. In this case, it was the junction of Nottingham’s Queens Drive and the section of the city’s A52 Ring Road known as Clifton Boulevard. Although nowhere near as extensive as Birmingham’s Gravelly Hill/Spaghetti Junction, this spot does have certain similarities, and I’ve had my eye on it for some time.
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| Beneath Gravelly Hill Interchange, Birmingham, February 2013 |
Just like at ‘Spag’, it’s possible to sail over in a car, (as I have done a thousand times), and remain relatively oblivious to the complexity of it’s intertwining dual carriageways, on/off ramps and ground-level roundabout. Once one gets right underneath however, one immediately recognises that particular dynamic, and somewhat alien quality that such sites always exude. Progress around the only sectors of the roundabout deemed to be of interest to pedestrians is achieved via an undulating subway system, (which will also require further documentation, when time allows); meaning that access to the very centre of things is somewhat ‘unofficial’ and necessitates a well-timed sprint across the roundabout in heavy traffic. That also lends the territory within an appealing ‘forbidden island’ quality as one wanders amongst the clusters of monumental, slab-sided concrete supports and gazes up at the undersides of the elevated carriageways overhead.
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| Shuttering Patterns, Junction Of Clifton Boulevard & Queen's Drive, Nottingham, October 2014 |
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| Shuttering Patterns, Junction Of Clifton Boulevard & Queen's Drive, Nottingham, October 2014 |
What really
creates the drama here, is the existence of a third
level of single carriageway flying over the main junction in an elegant, sweeping
curve. As at Gravelly Hill, this results
in the spectacle of a really tall support, inserted into the gap between lower
sections of road, and of increasingly complex and dynamically sectioned views
‘beyond’ and ‘between’. The visual
interest of the concrete surfaces themselves is considerably enhanced by the
heavy-grained texture of the wooden shuttering used to construct them, and the contrast
between the raw surfaces and the glossy-anti-graffiti coatings applied up to a
certain height. The latter glistened seductively
in the late afternoon sunlight when I was there. Indeed, the quality of autumnal illumination
transformed the whole experience, with expanding wavelengths of golden light
and lengthening blueish shadows combining to create real visual riches. A current fascination for me is the movement
of shadows cast by passing traffic and, when the sun was brightest, I felt located
at the centre of a swirling vortex of these, both above and all around.
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| Uppermost Carriageway, Junction Of Clifton Boulevard & Queen's Drive, Nottingham, October 2014 |
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| Uppermost Carriageway, Junction Of Clifton Boulevard & Queen's Drive, Nottingham, October 2014 |
Mention should also be made again of the phenomenal sound world that exists in such places. All those hard, multi-facetted concrete surfaces, and the enclosing canopies above, mean that traffic noise bounces around the entire arena in really exciting and complex ways. The dynamism of all this was accentuated at Queen’s Drive by the speed at which the traffic is travelling, resulting in a ceaseless series of rapid sonic events. To be honest, in the hands of an accomplished sound artist, the material collected by my camera’s external microphone would probably become at least as interesting as anything my lens might have captured. Either way, the contrast between all that implied action, and a (nominally), static, monumental environment, is one of the really involving qualities of a site like this.
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| Beneath Clifton Boulevard At Junction With Queen's Drive, Nottingham, October 2014 |
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| Beneath Clifton Boulevard At Junction With Queen's Drive, Nottingham, October 2014 |
This interface between action and stasis was rather poignantly underlined by the presence of a distinctly ill-looking, lone pigeon. Remaining almost motionless at the foot of a pillar, it observed me passively, making no attempt to move when I approached. It was still there when I left and, if those were its last few minutes of life, as I suspect, I can only hope it gained a little entertainment from watching some weirdo with a camera where it least expected to find one.
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| Beneath Clifton Boulevard At Junction With Queen's Drive, Nottingham, October 2014 |
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| Expiring Pigeon, Junction Of Clifton Boulevard & Queen's Drive, Nottingham, October 2014 |
At this stage, I’ve no idea how much, if any, of the footage I shot here will make it into our final film, but, either way, I suspect I’ll be investigating this particular site again before too long.
[2.]: 'If A Picture Paints A Thousand Words Then Why Can't I Paint: An Exhibition Of Work By Five Artists From Across The Midlands', (Indigo Octagon), The Works Gallery, Birmingham, 13 - 23 November 2012
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