Concrete 4: Spiralling

Aston, Birmingham, February 2015

Having focussed mainly on painting for the last couple of months, I’ve been finding myself out and about with the video camera again just recently.  I’ve written before about the concrete-related film I’ve been hoping to complete, in collaboration with fellow artist, Andrew Smith, as an accompaniment our two-handed exhibition, ‘Mental Mapping’, in June.  Pleasingly, the project appears to be progressing well, and my most recent filming excursions have been an attempt to fill in some of the gaps in imagery that the script has thrown up.  This post features some still images from a successful day collecting footage in Birmingham, and it provides an opportunity to discuss the project in a little more detail, (now that I have a clearer idea about how it’s unfolding.

Aston, Birmingham, February 2015

When the opportunity to exhibit together arose, in Rugby Art Gallery & Museum’s Floor One Gallery, it was originally assumed that we would split the show roughly 50:50 between works that we have each produced independently.  Andrew and I certainly share a lot of interests, but it’s also the case that there are distinct differences in many of the themes and concerns running through our work, and I suspect, our habitual approaches and preferred creative procedures.

Aston, Birmingham, February 2015

What particularly interested me about Andrew’s work, when we both participated in a group show in Birmingham, in 2012, is his willingness to work across a variety of static and time-based media, and his tendency to work out of a text or, (often intriguingly oblique), concept in ways that wouldn’t naturally occur to me.  Coming originally, from a more literary background initially, it appears to me that the idea, or indeed text, is generally there in his artwork from the start, with visual or physical elements following in whichever way seems most appropriate.  Whilst textual elements have been integral to most of my own work in the last few years, it’s fair to say that my starting point is generally a visual, sensual or emotional response to some place or environment.  Texts or soft concepts, such as they occur in my own work, have generally been lifted verbatim from a certain location, or released as ideas from my own direct experience ‘out there’ with the camera.  Perhaps it’s the case that, if Andrew is often actively seeking, I’m more usually reliant on finding.

Aston, Birmingham, February 2015

The idea of us collaborating directly on a film as part of ‘Mental Mapping’, started to appeal to me as a way for me to work in a new medium, (Andrew has some previous with film making, - I have relatively little), and to do something beyond my own comfort zone generally.  I liked the idea of relinquishing overall control of a project, and of each of us bringing something the other might not have thought of as we passed it back and forth.  With me based in Leicester, and Andrew in Birmingham, (and both holding down day jobs), it was inevitable that this to-ing and fro-ing would become a feature of the project.  So it has proved.  The film also provided a way to incorporate concrete as a theme within the exhibition, without it becoming the main raison d’etre overall.  The huge cement factory at Rugby was always going to be a major influence over my ‘mental map’ of the town we were exhibiting in, and it felt important to acknowledge it, and its wider influence, - however obliquely.

Aston, Birmingham, February 2015

As things stand, we have a hard drive loaded with a lot of footage, collected around the Midlands by myself.  It features a wide variety of concrete and cement-related landscape features, both large and small.  We also have a script for a spoken narration, written by Andrew and reflecting his own, parabolic, often psychological, (and indeed, essentially Surrealist), interpretation of the idea of ‘Mental Mapping’.  We also have a still incomplete film in which the two things are being edited together and sequenced, in ways that I currently have only a general idea about.  It’s fair to say my sense of anticipation over the final product is becoming increasingly palpable, and I’m enjoying the process of enjoying the journey by letting someone else do the driving for a while.  In the meantime, my main task is to get out there again, in an attempt to find those motifs demanded by the script but absent from the original footage.

Aston, Birmingham, February 2015

Thus it was I found myself beside Birmingham’s thundering A38 Aston Expressway in bright sunshine and bitter winds, recording this wonderful spiral pedestrian ramp, the other day.  It seemed to chime with a reference in the script to "spiral stakes" and was something I’d identified earlier as I drove home from my most recent visit to discuss matters with Andrew.  I’ve been dimly aware of it for several years, and, as my car ground to a halt beside it in heavy tea-time traffic, I realised it’s time had come and I now had a specific reason to return and harvest it as an image.  Google Earth and another tank of petrol did the rest a few days later.

Aston, Birmingham, February 2015

The spiral fire escape also pictured here, is another subject I remembered having photographed in passing, some years ago, and for which I now had a specific use.  I had a dim memory of where it was situated, and in the event, it was pretty easy to find by following my nose up Pershore Street towards the foot of the Bullring.  The staircase makes a pretty strong silhouette in its own right, but, viewing it in bright conditions, I now discover how pleasingly it reflects in the adjacent grid of windows to create a pleasingly complex, fragmented double image.  As it turns out, the architecture of Smallbrook Queensway from which it projects, is also a prime example (as is the spiral ramp), of the kind of mid Twentieth Century concrete Modernism with which Birmingham became synonymous.

Central Birmingham, February 2015

Exactly how Andrew will choose to edit any of my latest footage into our film, or which (if any) of my found motifs resonate with him most, waits to be seen.  Either way, it’s been enjoyable to break up my ongoing painting activities for a few hours, and get amongst the concrete again.  The fact that I can now feel the days lengthening and the temperatures slowly rising, is a reminder of just how quickly time flies.  Better crack on.… 

Aston, Birmingham, February 2015

'Mental Mapping', will be at Floor One Gallery, Rugby Art Gallery & Museum, Little Elbrow Street, Rugby, CV21 3BZ, from 8 June - 18 June 2015.