Just Sink Into A Nice Comfy Chair

Both Images: West Leicester, February 2019

Sometimes, you're working away, but in a slightly haphazard manner, and without much serious impetus or intent; so you take the camera out for a walk, in glorious (almost worryingly unseasonable) sunlight, and without any particular agenda - and the world just gives you a gift...

The Bin Commandments 1

West Leicester, February 2019

I've been cataloguing refuse bins for a while now.  In many respects, they seem to play a similar role to abandoned fridges, as sentinels of my local landscape.  However, the focus is more on the textual content, than the carrier (or indeed, the actual contents).

In a neighbourhood of tightly-packed, often multi-occupancy, terraced housing, the territoriality and etiquette of wheelie bin use is a matter of some importance - and potential trigger of social tension, on occasion.  And, quite obviously, as a motif - the bins also stimulate a meditation on our disposable, consumer economy, and current attitudes to the provision of public services.  As ever, though, the unofficial will always subvert the official; and observed reality will always short circuit any trite theory I might have formulated about the work I'm doing.  I honestly wouldn't have it any other way.  

I wonder if these will become another little blog series?  We'll see...

Invisible City 1

Soho, London, March 2017

"Kublai:  'Perhaps this dialogue of ours is taking place between two beggars nicknamed Kublai Khan and Marco Polo; as they sift through rubbish heap, piling up rusted flotsam, snaps of cloth, wastepaper, while drunk on the few sips of bad wine, they see all the treasure of the East shine around them'.

"Polo:  'Perhaps all that is left of the world is a wasteland covered with rubbish heaps, and the hanging garden of the Great Khan's palace.  It is our eyelids that separate them, but we cannot know which is inside and which outside.'" [1.]

[1.]:  Italo Calvino, 'Invisible Cities', London, Secker & Warburg, 1974

"What Do You Think Of It, So Far?" 2

All Images: Digbeth, Birmingham, June 2016

It seems like rubbish bins, (or possibly just rubbish in general), have established themselves as a distinct theme.  This splendid rank of red Biffa bins was found under the railway viaduct which dominates Birmingham's Digbeth area.  In fact, I think they serve the adjacent Custard Factory creative complex.  

The photos were taken a couple of days before Britain's recent EU referendum, and already feel like a missive from a very different country.  I don't really want to launch into an extensive polemic here - other than to express the baffled disillusionment which, I assume, I share with 48% of the population.  Britain suddenly feels like a considerably more depressing and less enlightened place to live.  The only recourse seems to be to hang on to the sense that national boundaries are irrelevant as far as Art is concerned, and that an outward looking attitude will always provide more rewards than neurotic insularity.

Sadly, it seems that 52% have yet to make that mental breakthrough, and consequently chose to put the whole country in the trash.  I can only hope the rest of us won't be judged by their standards.  It's probably a bit glib, but I can't help noticing that the particular model name of these hoppers is the 'Continental 1100'.  The legend 'General Waste' just seems a bit too apposite too.