Written City 16: Entropic Gates 2

Soar Lane, West Leicester,  January 2015

Inevitably, the Christmas break flew by with alarming rapidity, and already feels like a distant memory, - after only a few days back in harness.  Having spent much of the two week festive hiatus indoors painting, (when not celebrating/indulging), I drove myself outdoors on the last Sunday to take a turn around a few of my local haunts with the camera.

The freezing temperatures, increasing mist and failing light were something of a disincentive, I’ll admit, but I seized the chance to monitor the changes in a couple of favourite locations, both of which have featured here before.  This post is an update on one of them. 

I now realise that the monitoring of continual change within the urban environment is a key element in my response to the experience of living in a city.  Indeed, it only goes to emphasise the point that to move through any urban environment is to move through time, as much as through space, (physical & mental).  Of course, an embedded ruralist might argue that this statement of the obvious applies even more to any environment where natural/seasonal cycles are most prevalent.  However, I would argue that the sense of transformative change is more concentrated, and monumentalised in cities.  In fact, I suggest it may actually be a somewhat different form of time altogether.

I think there may be considerable difference between both the passage of measurable time as a component of physics, or the regenerative unfolding of biological time, and what might be termed historical time, (which is, I suspect, the form most obviously concentrated in a city).  Whilst they inevitably bleed into one another, one might see any clearly defined concentration of architectural edifices of varying ages, as primarily a series of monuments to itself and the lives lived within it.  Anyway, there are enough (poorly thought out) implications there to fuel an academic thesis, - let alone this supposedly modest post, so let’s just focus on my images of one minor site for now.

Soar Lane, West Leicester, 2011

I’ve walked and cycled past these industrial, steel gates on Leicester’s Soar Lane, thousands of times over the years.  In fact, they only really come into their own when closed, on a Sunday or after hours, as the automotive businesses occupying the compound beyond seem routinely busy [1.].  For many years, the face that the gates presented, in their shut state, was a gorgeous, multi-layered mélange of heavy corrosion, overlapping graffiti and degrading industrial paint.  It was a veritable elegy to the processes of entropy, and I lost count of how many times I thought, “I really should make something inspired by that”.

The chance came in the winter of 2011-12 when they became a source for one of the panels in my four-part piece ‘Sick 1’.  I’m not convinced that is the most sophisticated example in my back catalogue, but it worked well enough visually within the overall piece.  The combined motifs of corrosion and graffiti also provided an appropriate, (if slightly obvious), accompaniment to the themes of entropy, societal malaise and indeed, security, running through ‘Sick 1’, (which was produced in the wake of 2001’s riots).

'Sick 1', Acrylics, Paper Collage & Mixed Media On 4 Panels,  60 cm X 300 cm (Overall), 2012

'Sick 1 C' Acrylics, Paper Collage & Mixed Media On Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2012

Not that long after I completed ‘Sick 1’, the gates were replaced, or at least heavily refurbished, and I photographed them in in their new, pristine state, complete with their fresh, dark grey paintwork.  I understand the desire of the site’s proprietors to project a slightly slicker, more businesslike image to the world, but it did feel like something was lost in terms of the overall visual texture of a distinctly transitional neighbourhood.

Soar Lane, West Leicester, April 2012

Soar Lane, West Leicester, June 2013

Of course, that situation was never likely to last long and in the intervening months the gates have attracted a new generation of taggers.  Their accumulation has been relatively gradual, but it appears they are just beginning to enter that phase where a sufficient tangle of disparate voices can become a kind of overall, calligraphic hubbub.  Visually, here’s a point at which, purely subjectively, it seems to become about more than mere defilement.

Some might object that what we see here are merely the inept scrawls of a few inept taggers, and that this is a world away from impressive, large-scale graffiti pieces and officially sanctioned (or tolerated) Street Art.  That may be true, but these are at least genuine, organic examples of the visual territorial pissing from which all contemporary graffiti originates.  That impulse is timeless, and in this form, at least has the appeal of a raw expression for which the idea of permission or official sanction is irrelevant.  I also like the way that you can actually see the process of practice and refinement taking place in the case of at least one of these writers.

There’s a long way to go for these particular ‘Written Gates’, until they reach the delightfully organic state that originally captured my attention.  The grey surface coating is still largely doing its job, and the serious corrosion that was once such a feature is yet to seriously take hold.  Indeed, it will be interesting to observe whether a little more routine maintenance, or indeed, the creeping urban regeneration now appearing only metres away, may actually hold entropy at bay this time, - for a little while at least.  The whole area actually feels like it may be poised on the brink of some fairly major changes, but more of that very soon.

[1.]:  They also appear focused more on scrapping and salvage than ‘valeting’, from what I can make out.