'A Minor Place': Better Discuss The Actual Work, Then...

Shaun Morris, 'A Minor Place', Oil on Canvas, 2016

By the time you read this, the ‘A Minor Place’ exhibition, at Studley, Warwickshire’s Artists Workhouse, will have been over for several days and we’ll be into the vaguely anti-climactic phase of storing returned work, reflecting on what was achieved, and contemplating what happens next.  It’s an obvious time to tie up remaining loose ends, something I’ll attempt to do here, with reference to the reflective and projective processes outlined above.  Specifically, I’ll focus on certain aspects of the actual work exhibited, rather than the exhibition as a whole.

I’ve already dealt with most of my own completed work over recent months, (although there is one outstanding post related to that planned).  Likewise, some of Shaun Morris’ work at ‘A Minor Place’ was discussed in my post about February’s ‘The Lie Of The Land’ exhibition at Artrix, Bromsgrove [1.].  So, I’ll attempt to avoid over repetition, and concentrate instead on Shaun’s post ‘TLOTL work; Andrew Smith’s recent output; and on certain relationships with, and implications for, my own work.

Shaun Morris, 'After Hours', Oil on Canvas, 2016

Let’s start with a piece of Shaun’s that could, I suppose, have felt slightly overlooked in the hang - but which actually felt rather comfortable tucked into a corner, on it’s own little piece of wall, at Artists Workhouse.  ‘After Hours’ clearly fits alongside Shaun’s other nocturnal ‘portraits’ of commercial vehicles.  In terms of its painterly, representational approach, and relatively straightforward composition, it also complies with the parameters laid down by some of its immediate predecessors.  But it does depart slightly from the template, as with ‘The Machine’ before it, in depicting something other than a heavy goods vehicle.   

It’s actually one of those quirky little street-cleaning units that stoically trundle the gutters of this land.  If all of Shauns’ vehicle paintings memorialise the taken-for-granted machines haunting our modern world’s liminal zones, none could be more (literally) marginal than this one.  However grudging the eventual take-up of driverless passenger transport may or may not be – this feels like exactly the kind of vehicle that may soon be replaced by a robotic operative.

Shaun Morris, 'The Wait', Oil on Canvas, 2015

My own suspicion is that, as ever more of the machines around us become autonomous, a seemingly inescapable human impulse to anthropromorphise, or at least to ascribe animal characteristics to them, may only grow stronger [2.].  Thus, the constant suggestion of such tendencies in Shaun’s paintings actually feels pretty much on the money.  What could seem a little hokey, actually suggests an inescapable trait to which we’re all prone - whether or not we chose to admit it.  These may still be vehicles of the human-operated variety, - and as such the possible end of a technological line, but they also reflect that same drive (sorry – couldn’t resist.) [3.].

Actually, that sense of a transforming world, and his evocation of a rapidly changing economy’s dark corners – is definitely one of the things that make Shaun’s images resonate in my mind.  Oh, and let’s not overlook the typically skillful deployment of a nocturnal palette illuminated by colour.  A red/green juxtaposition is just thrown out here with calm assurance rather than showy melodrama).  Equally of note, is an economically direct handling of paint that’s largely in keeping with the humble subject.

(L.) Shaun Morris, 'Artic Landscape', Oil on Canvas, 2016

If ‘After Hours’ belongs with the truck paintings from last year, the two largest pieces in our show, ‘Artic Landscape’, and the one that lent the overall show its title, suggest a looking forward to what might come next, and a greater ambition in terms of environmental scale too.  I know Shaun has been wrestling both paintings into submission, along with two other large canvases, for much of this year.  He’s clearly been looking for new pictorial problems to solve, in the process.

Place would seem to be the key with these two - with vehicular references being increasingly absorbed into their surroundings.  ‘Artic Landscape’ (love that punning title, by the way) is a bold, highly physical affair - full of strong contrasts and muscular statements.  Its corral of white tractor units are reduced to a tract of humped forms, delineated by strong shadows and accents of blood red, to resemble nothing so much as a field of ice boulders.  They may be recognisable (just) as vehicles, but mostly constitute a forbidding, semi-abstract environment of glacial monuments one might try to scale.  The glossy secretions of linseed oil on the painting’s surface certainly allude to the original subject matter, but in a way that is tactile and sensual - far more than it is illustrative.

Shaun Morris' Prints On Sale

‘A Minor Place’, on the other hand, is far more about compositional sophistication, and a meditative gaze upon the inherent bathos of a very contemporary location.  The whole idea of ‘Edgelands’ is, I know, one that has fascinated Shaun for some time, and this painting seems to epitomise the kind of alienated, 24-hour infrastructural non-place identified by, amongst others, Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts [4.].

...And On Screen: Shaun Morris, 'Something In The Night', Digital Animation, 2016

Glowing green under industrial lighting, and seemingly lacking any human presence, Shaun’s warehouse and attendant tarmac expanse represent the kind of heavily automated (and thus, employment-light) industrial centre addressed in the film work of Patrick Keiller [5.].  The trailors lined up by the building are the only real vehicular reference in this painting, and recall the containerisation remarked upon by both Keiller and Farley & Simmons-Roberts.

But if his subject matter is entirely contemporary, Shaun’s mode of depiction harks back to certain high-points of twentieth-century representational painting.  His tendency to abstract slightly; to view a geometric subject from a slightly ‘off’ oblique angle; the almost-but-not-quite-symmetrical vertical division; and the pushing of an inconsequential pile of pallets into the foreground - all call to mind the compositional verve of Richard Diebenkorn, (and, thus, Matisse and Bonnard before him).  The painting might not be as forthright as ‘Artic Landscape’, but it’s actually a rather profound, slow-burning image, in my view.

When not engaging with these major painterly statements, Shaun has, like myself, also spent some time producing prints this year.  Some were on sale, but his series of stark, iPad-derived print images could also be viewed on-screen in our show, along with my ‘Wiped Windows’ photographic series, and Andrew’s video, ‘Siesta; Stirchley, Suburb Of Vice’ video.  Shaun’s ‘Something In The Night’ images originate from earlier motifs from his ‘Black Highway’ and ‘Stolen Car’ suites of recent years.  But these stripped-down interpretations are monochrome in the most binary fashion, and almost primitive in their mode of depiction – suggesting a digital take on the classic German Expressionist woodcut.

Whilst all of Shaun’s recent work in ‘A Minor Place’ could be seen as a continuum of existing concerns, Andrew Smith did his usual trick of presenting a body of work I probably couldn’t have predicted from what preceded it.  Indeed, this ability to consistently do something surprising - and often possessing of its own, possibly obscure, internal logic, is one of the reasons I always enjoy engaging with his work.

Andrew Smith, 'Stock Footage', Set of 18 Digital Prints, 2016

This time round, collage would seem to be the prevailing spirit behind most, if not all of the current work.  Last year’s ‘Mental Mapping’ work saw him divining perplexing, or even disturbingly autobiographical currents from obscure photographic imagery – but this time, he seems to be capturing psychological resonances inherent within the juxtaposition of recycled fragments of pre-existing or found images.  This may involve the physical reassembly of actual sections of earlier works, or the use of appropriated imagery from a completely external source.  The occasional use of salvaged posters, or indeed - recourse to collage in general, clearly chimes with my own practice in recent years.  However, whilst my own approach generally focuses on a kind of mulch of suggestive visual texture and splintered clues, Andrew’s may be a bit closer to the Surrealist tradition of automatic image-generation through chance juxtapositions.

Andrew Smith, 'The New Settlement', Acrylic on Canvas, 2016

One obvious example of that would seem to be his suite of eighteen digital prints, ‘Stock Footage’, mentioned in my last post [6.].  At the other extreme would be pieces here such as ‘Strange Cove’, ‘The New Settlement’ or ‘Forgery’, which could be read as purely organic abstractions (and may have been by some).  But those titles suggest entire layers of possible meaning beneath their relatively benign surfaces.  My impression is that these may really be the heavily processed residues of earlier artifacts, freighted with pre-existing meanings – as opposed to purely visual exercises in balancing colours and shapes.  I even suspect that certain deliberately painterly passages may actually be vague depictions of layered or torn print material.  If I’m correct in that interpretation, then there’s a possible connection with my own recent preoccupation with lost voices, or forgotten or misread meanings, and vestigial legacies.

Andrew Smith, 'Forgery' Mixed Media on Paper, 2016

Andrew Smith, 'Strange Cove', Mixed Media on Canvas, 2015

Elsewhere, however, we see that Andrew certainly hasn’t abandoned the use of photographic illusion.  ‘Torn Tower’ is a splendid little image juxtaposing a section of partially demolished modernist architecture with an apparently abstract mark - which may be the result of real, accidental damage [7.].  Several pieces also include photographic representations of staples or pins, or even of pasted layers themselves, which provide a kind of meta or hyper-real commentary on the nature of collage, even as other elements in the same piece may be actually physically applied.  It’s that kind of sophisticated, multi-level stuff that gets me every time.

Andrew Smith, 'Torn Tower', Digital Print,  2016

Andrew Smith, (L.) '"What Makes You Act So Cruelly And Violently Towards The Children"',
(R.) 'Good/Bad Omen', Both: Mixed Media on Canvas, 2016

Andrew Smith, 'The Long Revolution', Digital Print on Canvas, 2016

And should we be missing yet more text elements, or even just the occasional shock to the system that he’s always been able to supply - Andrew also bungs in a little of those too.  It’s typical of him to title an almost decorative concoction, (including significant portions of neon pink), after the incorporated found text, “What Makes You Act So Cruelly And Violently Towards The Children?”  Just when you thought it was safe to start thinking about Matisse…

Andrew Smith, 'The New School', Acrylic & Digital Print on Canvas, 2016

I have another, rather particular feeling of engagement with certain of Andrew’s pieces in ‘A Minor Place’, and one that links to my own work.  Earlier this year, before the opportunity to mount this show arose, I pitched to him the idea of a collaborative project in which we would effectively re-work or reinterpret each other’s work.  In contemporary music parlance - it was a kind of remix project, I suppose.  We discussed possible approaches, and began tentative work on a document - initially as an attempt to agree some parameters, but which showed every sign of becoming an ever expanding, absurdist artifact in its own right.

Andrew Smith, 'Fracker', Acrylic & Digital Print on Canvas, 2015

Ever the compartmentaliser – I had mentally parked the idea in the interim, choosing instead to focus on our three-handed venture with Shaun.  However, Andrew’s practice, (and possibly his thought processes), appear to unfold in a more organic and less inhibited manner than mine.  Close examination of certain pieces in the show, as we hung it, revealed recognisable elements from my ‘Vestige’ series, either as an underlying visual texture - as in ‘The New School’, or bobbing to the surface in recontextualised fragments - as in ‘Fracker’.  Apart from my enjoyment of both those pieces on their own terms, this immediately detonated thought bombs in my own mind, regarding resumption of our original scheme.

Andrew Smith, 'Divining Of The Fumes', Acrylic & Digital Print on Canvas, 2016

Fully expecting a possible short Post-‘AMP’ lay-off, to recharge my creative batteries, I instead find my mind racing over forthcoming possibilities.  I’ve already pried ‘The New School’ from Andrew’s grasp, with a view to continuing the nascent dialogue it represents, and have embarked on a process of reading/research, inspired by the painting’s title as well as its visual content.  Clearly, I’m tempting fate by making public such aspirations, but good intentions and a sense of motivation can only be positives - can’t they?  We’ll see…

Anyhow, I hope I’ve already thanked those who deserve special mention, a couple of posts back, (with apologies to anyone I missed).  So it only remains to thank Shaun and Andrew for being at least two-thirds of the enterprise, in the first place; and for contributing work that was a pleasure to behold, as well as a stimulus to new thoughts.  Before finally leaving Studley, we reflected, over a pint, on how the whole thing felt like a very positive experience.  A large factor in that is, I believe, the fact that it unfolded as a properly equitable three-way split of effort expended and benefits gained.  Cheers, fellas…

[1.]:  For what it’s worth, I’m now the proud owner of Shaun’s little painting, ‘The Wait’.  It’s a piece that struck a chord with me when I first saw it, in Bromsgrove – and did again in Studley.

[2.]:  It’s there in spades, in Disney’s Wall-E character, - a brave little functionary - not so far removed from Shaun’s road sweeper, after all.  And there’s obviously a long, noble SF tradition of robots with personality.  Today, even as the likely, or less likely, implications of robotics and A.I. unfold before our eyes – the viability/desirability of sex with robots is one of the most often (if glibly) conjectured possibilities.  Could there be any greater evidence of humanity’s drive to blur the distinction between the biological and the mechanical?

[3.]:  Reminding me of my late father’s habit of referring to any vehicle he owned as ‘She’, for instance.

[4.]:  Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts, ‘Edgelands: Journeys Into England’s True Wilderness’, London, Jonathan Cape, 2011.

[5.]:  Patrick Keiller (Dir.), ‘Robinson In Space’, UK, Konink Productions/BBC/BFI, 1997.

[6.]:  Although I now find I was slightly wide of the mark in my assumptions about their generation.  It appears Andrew began text-first, with found descriptions of stock film footage, before attempting to visualize them with his overlaid stock stills.  It is thus, a somewhat more layered and translated process than I originally realised.  But, of course!

[7.]:  It seems too delicious that this piece was actually purchased, on the night of our Private View, by a gentleman who once worked on designing Birmingham’s now sadly demolished Central Library.  Spooky!