This post deals
with my recently completed photographic series, entitled ‘Wiped Windows’.
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| 'Wiped Window 1', 2016 |
In another couple
of weeks Andrew Smith, Shaun Morris and I will be in the thick of hanging our ‘A Minor Place’ exhibition at Artists Workhouse in Studley, Warwickshire.
There are a variety of organisational tasks to undertake between now and
then, and I now realise one of my biggest will be selecting which pieces will appear
in the actual show. But it’s not a bad
problem to have, really. As someone whose
neuroses have often centred on having enough work of sufficient quality completed
in time to meet any deadline, it’s pleasing to find I probably have more than
enough recently completed pieces to fill a third of the available space in
Studley.
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| 'Wiped Window 2', 2016 |
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| 'Wiped Window 3', 2016 |
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| 'Wiped Window 4', 2016 |
It seems to
justify my aspirations, at the start of 2016, to work steadily and calmly on
several parallel strands of related work, without fixating on the arbitrary
exhibition deadline. The hope was that
at least some of it would justify public exposure once that actually
arrived. It seems to have paid off
generally, and whilst there are always things you might do differently in
retrospect - I’m not too despondent about either the quality of or the
intentions behind the stack of framed pieces currently boxed-up in my front
room. Exactly what will make the final
cut is currently up for grabs (and, to be honest, may be partially decided ‘on
the day’, but there’s nothing there I feel too embarrassed about.
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| 'Wiped Window 5', 2016 |
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| 'Wiped Window 6', 2106 |
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| 'Wiped Window 7', 2016 |
This current body
of work actually breaks down into four distinct groups, - each envisaged as a
discrete series with its own internal logic, but also relating to the others in
terms of overall themes and concerns.
The other important point is that each series brings a different
approach to media to the table, and it’s this that may go some way to
explaining why quantity just hasn’t been a problem with this show. Working with screen-prints and digitally
manipulated and outputted pieces, as well as digital photography, has meant I
could often produce images far more rapidly than by sticking to my more
customary hybrid collage/paintings, (some of which are also represented). Anyway, let’s concentrate on the purely
photographic pieces here.
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| 'Wiped Window 8', 2016 |
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| 'Wiped Window 9', 2016 |
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| 'Wiped Window 10', 2016 |
As the themes and
ideas behind this current phase of work began to coalesce in my mind, late last
year, it became evident that a general sense of absence or abandonment was a
large part of it. Much of the work deals
with ideas of lost voices; missing or partially erased meanings; or of spaces
haunted by indistinct memories or tenuous vestiges. There’s always a sense of the urban
environment in my mind, although the origins of much of my current imagery
evolved from improvised mixed media ‘studies’ this time round. For that reason, it felt important to augment
that with at least one strand that derived from specific physical
locations. These ‘Wiped Windows’ photographs represent (literally) that intention,
albeit in a fairly oblique manner.
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| 'Wiped Window 11', 2016 |
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| 'Wiped Window 12', 2016 |
I’m sure I’m not
the first person to become captivated by the paradoxical and visual aspects of
windows obliterated by swirls of white paint in vacant or transitional
premises. In fact, even as I was
collecting these images, in various locations, I was amused to see that the
venerable Techno outfit, Underworld had cottoned onto the same idea for the
artwork of their last album, ‘Barbara,
Barbara, We Face A Shining Future’.
They may have gone public first, but I’ve actually been looking and
collecting these for years, and anyway, I can’t think of two nicer blokes… Such obscured windows are, of course, a
common sight in most cities - and one which never fails to evoke a sense of the
interim situation, the impromptu action, the temporary fix, or the vacant
turning-inward of a previously energised space.
Even if the premises they veil aren’t permanently abandoned, there’s
still a distinct melancholy about the vacancy or altered priorities they
symbolise. This series might equally
well have been entitled ‘Vacant
Possession’.
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| 'Wiped Window 13', 2016 |
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| 'Wiped Window 14', 2016 |
And, of course,
the other key point is that this series is just another opportunity for me to
explore the idea of ‘Always The Same - Always Different’ that preoccupies me so
much these days. It delights me that so
many versions of essentially, white blankness can throw up an inexhaustible
range of additional clues, texts, accidents and intriguing details. The snippets of formal graphics, and the
scrawls and doodles of mischievous fingers punctuate those swirling fields -
just as collaged poster or photocopy fragments do in my hand-made pieces.
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| 'Wiped Window 15', 2016 |
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| 'Wiped Window 16', 2016 |
Whilst considering
that, we should probably recognise that, just as every painter moves fluid
paint with his or her own muscle memory - so no Contractor’s gestural wipe is
quite like another’s. Those bravura
swipes may echo the deliberately off-hand white brushstrokes I’ve used
repeatedly in recent pieces, but I could never hope to encompass such a wide
vocabulary of mark making as is revealed here.
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| 'Wiped Window 17', 2016 |
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| 'Wiped Window 18', 2016 |
One other vital
aspect of these images is the sense in which any window acts as a membrane
between two disparate worlds. The overall
impression (and utilitarian intention) may be one of blankness or of obscuring,
but the glimpses (or even just the sense) of internal space behind the glass,
and the fugitive suggestions of a wider, external world (or even the observer’s
own ghost), are impossible to ignore.
The deliberate, partial blanking of what is normally an organ of
transmission (of light, of vision, and thus – of meaning), and the consequent
emphasis this places on reflection, feels key to these pieces.
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| 'Wiped Window 19', 2016 |
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| 'Wiped Window 20', 2016 |
Ultimately, I felt that all of the above contributed
to images that could stand alone as purely visual statements, in contrast to
the far more contrived combinations of photography and text (and cement) that I
exhibited last year. After considering
different possibilities, I opted to simply print and frame ten of these twenty
images. My plan is to hang at least a few in our show, but it's hard to predict exactly how many until we get in there to make the make the hang work definitively. The fallback position is that all twenty might be shown on a screen, - an idea that actually has considerable appeal. Hmm, future Artist’s Book - anyone?
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| Design: Chris Cowdrill |
'A Minor Place' will run from Saturday 3 - Sunday 11 September , 2016 at: Artists Workhouse, The Royal Victoria Works, Redditch Road, Studley, Warwickshire, B80 7AU. Opening Hours: Wednesday. - Sunday, 11am - 4pm.
https://artistsworkhouse.com/category/up-and-coming/
