Completed Painting: 'Shut 2'

'Shut 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 120 cm X 90 cm, 2012

I’ve just finished my latest painting, titled ‘Shut 2’.  It’s been a few weeks in production and a couple of significant events occurred since I posted about its preparatory development stages.  One of these was the ‘If a Picture Paints a Thousand Words…” exhibition in Birmingham in which I participated, as also discussed in recent posts.  I'm sure that the thought processes it triggered, and the potential of Birmingham to provide source material for future artworks, will percolate through next year’s work.

Study For 'Shut 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage
On Paper, 60 cm X 45 cm, 2012

Study For 'Shut 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage
On Paper, 60 cm X 40 cm, 2012

However, the origins of ‘Shut 2’ precede that show and it’s actually more revealing to relate it to another important influence, namely October’s visit to Walsall, (itself, a stone’s throw from Brum), to see Fiona Rae’s exhibition, - ‘Maybe You Can Live On The Moon In The Next Century’.  I had been thinking about Rae’s work as the idea for my painting emerged so the timing of the inspiring Walsall show was particularly fortuitous.  It’s no accident that, whilst continuing themes I’ve been exploring in paintings during 2012, this one draws consciously on certain aspects of Rae’s own visual vocabulary.

Fiona Rae, 'Moonlight Bunny Ranch',
Oil & Acrylic On Canvas, 2003

The painting’s origins lie in the photographic images of industrial steel shutters I’ve referred to repeatedly this year.  In this case, the individual subject was the same as the preceding ‘Shut 1' but observed from a closer viewpoint.  Though still based upon parallel vertical bands, the newly asymmetrical composition gave increased prominence to the various elements of door furniture and other visual incidents distributed over the corrugated surface(s).  This triggered thoughts about Rae’s habitual scattering of disparate motifs, (apparently) randomly across a composition.  If ‘Shut 1’ was elegantly austere in its formal regularity, '2' soon became more extravert and less rigorously balanced.

Industrial Shutter, Leicester, 2012

'Shut 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Two
Joined Panels, 150 cm X 100 cm Overall, 2012

'Together 1', 2012

This increased overtness is also expressed through the introduction of a certain Pop sensibility into the individual motifs.  Initially, they evolved from the elements of graffiti and stickers in the original subject and came to refer to the appropriation of contrasting, (often kitsch), font characters and cartoon motifs in Rae’s painting.  It revives a certain quality of my own work from early 2011 too, (best seen in ‘Together 1’).  However, whilst Rae appears to pay homage to the online world, my own work remains largely tethered to the materiality of the urban environment.

In its construction, ‘Shut 2’ followed my usual procedure of layering paper collage and acrylic paints.  It shares a similar background palette of off-whites and pastel blues, and certain visual textures with ‘Shut 1’.  I realise that, in addition to obscured blue paint in the source subject, these blues also derive from the backing paper of the tattered advertising posters I regularly salvage and collage into my work.  My use of repeat dot patterns originated from observations of perforated security shutters, but here, may also recall to the printer’s dots in such material.

I think there may be more mileage in my ‘Closed’/’Shut’ theme but suspect that the series will probably rest here for a while.  ‘Shut 2’ clearly reflects the ideas around urban entropy, economic frailty, mixed messages and exclusion that haunt its three companions but with an added dimension.  I once described last year’s early works to someone as "Like Pop Art left out in the rain”, and this painting may be the closest I’ve got to that feeling so far.  Above all, it’s my most recent attempt to capture the sense of flimsy market stylings pasted onto the crumbling edifice of a society in decline.

R.I.P. Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck

I was saddened to hear of the death of the pioneering Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck this week.  At just a day short of 92 he was unusually long-lived for a Jazz musician and had consequently witnessed most of the important developments in the genre and worked with many of it’s major players.  Brubeck himself became a prime exponent of progressive Jazz and particularly the 'Cool' style that emerged in the late 50s.

I won’t pretend to be familiar with his entire oeuvre but have often returned to his classic 1959 album - ‘Time Out’ over the years.  It’s the perfect embodiment of his stated intention to explore alternative approaches to rhythm and harmony within an approachable framework.  ‘Time Out’ has an undeniably easy-going West Coast cool that can’t obscure the fact that Brubeck and his quartet were applying a consciously experimental approach to style, structure and time signature over its seven tracks.  It’s also a showcase for the sinuous saxophone work of Paul Desmond who’s ‘Take Five’ became a massively successful and immediately recognisable single.

Ultimately, I guess Brubeck's main creative achievement was to demonstrate that music could be seductively listenable and still present a satisfying artistic challenge.  His musical scope was considerable and he was well versed in High Modernist theory and had even studied with Arnold Schoenberg.  Nonetheless, to this day it seems that, whenever I’ve played ‘Time Out’, someone in the room will claim they "don’t normally like Jazz but really like this".

The 'classic'  Dave Brubeck Quartet.  (L-R):  Joe Morello, Paul Desmond, 
Brubeck, Eugene Wallis

The other facet of Brubeck that his Californian hip credentials and commercial success might obscure was his integrity in matters of civil rights.  Having recruited the black bassist Eugene Wright into the quartet he was to cancel several gigs and at least one Television appearance in opposition to the segregationist attitudes of club owners and producers.

It seems that Brubeck’s long life was an ‘Unsquare Dance’ indeed.

Playlist 7

There has been a prevailing Folk strand running though my monthly playlists to date.  This time, after an initial sample-fest, things became increasingly Jazz-centric, and a bit funky too.

‘The Five EPs’, Disco Inferno

Disco Inferno was an ironically named Indie outfit that made a few ripples in the early to mid 90s.  They might have been remembered as mere New Order wannabes had they not hit on the unusual idea of using ‘real’ instruments to trigger an expanding library of samples.  It was a technically unwieldy approach but one that allowed them to construct fascinatingly nuanced soundscapes and employ their found sound sources as raw material rather than mere decoration.

Arranged chronologically on this compilation, these tracks range between relatively conventional, if sonically unusual, song forms to real avant-garde aural sculptures.  The best cuts stand comparison with the multi-layered texturalism of contemporaries The Cocteau Twins or My Bloody Valentine, and the later tracks show increasing complexity and some humour.  It takes a certain genius to combine a drum loop from Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust For Life’ with fragments of the ‘Playschool’ theme, (‘It’s A Kid’s World’).

‘Foley Room’, Amon Tobin

Of course, what Disco Inferno once attempted with a stack of mal-functioning equipment is now achieved over coffee with a laptop computer.  Amon Tobin has enjoyed a reputation as a highly skilled aural bricolagiste and beat technician for some years now but 2007’s ‘Foley Room.’ album saw him abandon his trusty record crates in favour of tailor-made original field recordings.  The album still showcases his customary obsessive detail and disquieting atmospherics but acquires an extra dimension through the new cinematic approach to sound design.  It proves genuinely arresting to listen to tracks constructed from a pitch-shifted motorbike engine or terrifyingly close-up tiger growls.

‘Until The Quiet Comes’, Flying Lotus

This may prove to be my favourite new record of 2012.  Steven Ellison has established himself as an impressive practitioner of the style of electronica sometimes called Wonky.  He’s a master of the stumbling, unquantised rhythms and dazzling assemblages of diverse sounds typical of the genre, - achieving massive degrees of disjuncture but always retaining nagging vestiges of a groove or melody. This is his lushest material to date, incorporating swathes of atmospheric keyboards and sweet, processed vocals into an implied dreamscape.  Even a contribution from whinging Radiohead vocalist Thom Yorke can’t spoil the excellent ‘Electric Candyman’.

Whilst coming from a nominally Hip-Hop background, Ellison covers numerous stylistic bases and possesses a distinct jazz sensibility and laid-back West Coast funkiness.  He’s much aided in the latter by long-time collaborator and virtuoso bassist Thundercat.  For all the formal abstraction, nothing overstays it’s welcome and there are moments of sheer transcendent beauty here.   Rather than proving a problem, his grasshopper approach to track construction can make each repeat listen seem like a new experience.  To my ears, ‘UTQC’ is the most seductive Flying Lotus release so far.

‘The Golden Age Of Apocalypse’, Thundercat

Thundercat Channels The Warmth Of The Sun

Having marvelled at Stephen Brunner’s bass guitar work for Flying Lotus, it was only natural I’d turn to his own 2011 album, - itself produced by Steven Ellison.  This is imbued with West Coast ambience and, with eyes closed, it seems to evoke an artificial L.A sunset, - polychromatic with smog and airbrushed for reproduction.  Actually, it reminds me of Ed Ruscha’s paintings of the Hollywood sign.

The album is full of jazz and funk flavours and Brunner seems to be channelling Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and, particularly, George Duke, whose ‘For Love I Come’ is covered beautifully.  Like much of the best synthetic music these days Brunner plays freely with a palette of retro tropes whilst producing something that sounds very contemporary.  As the title suggests, these are sun-drenched grooves for a changing climate.

‘Headhunters’, Herbie Hancock

Hancock was a major name in 60s jazz, making numerous albums under his own name, and as a member of Miles Davis’ seminal fusion bands too.  With a new band, also named Headhunters, he embraced a new funk-orientated approach with this album in 1973.  If it was partly a search for greater commerciality, it also contained great music and proved to be a milestone in jazz-fusion.  The main influence is Sly Stone and this shares his ability to find compelling laid-back grooves within relatively spare arrangements.

Hancock and his band played in Leicester’s De Montfort Hall Gardens one wet midweek evening some years ago.  Dancing for warmth in a pathetically small crowd I wondered, “where is everyone – it’s Herbie Hancock?”  They’d have been forgiven for getting out of there as soon as possible but, instead, turned in a memorably dynamic and fully committed performance.

‘Birdland’, Weather Report

Not The Album Version But Too Good To Leave Out.  Weather Report 
Play The Stadthalle Offenbach, 1978

Weather Report is another of those Jazz-fusion acts whose music, (from the 70s at least), I really enjoy.  Purists always scoff at this kind of thing, forgetting that mutation and evolution are actually necessary for the sustained health of any art form.  That Miles Davis and his circle sought to push Jazz into new areas of expression by no means betrays what went before and merely signifies that the idiom was adapting to survive.  Weather Report was a major component of his legacy.  Of all the period's fusion acts, they probably retained the greatest element of Jazz within their music overall.

‘Birdland’ came from 1977’s ‘Heavy Weather’ album and marked a conscious move away from their previous reliance on improvisation towards a more accessible, composed approach. The single was certainly their most successful release commercially but I love it nonetheless.  It has an infectious, uplifting hook and is pretty much the sound of optimism.  It always works well in the car at the start of any journey undertaken for pleasure.

‘Handsworth Revolution’, Steel Pulse

A Bird In The Handsworth... Oh, Never Mind.

In Birmingham not long ago, I caught Vanley Burke’s exhibition of documentary photos of the city’s black community, taken over several decades.  Many of Birmingham’s immigrants came from Jamaica and it made me realise I haven’t played much Reggae lately.  Steel Pulse hailed from the Handsworth area of Brum and was amongst the most credible of the British Reggae acts.  This was the band’s debut album and it’s a great example of the roots style that bares comparison with anything from the island.

‘Marcus Garvey/Garvey’s Ghost’, Burning Spear

Winston Rodney, Aka. Burning Spear

Another slice of conscious Roots Reggae but this time, very much from Jamaica.  Whilst originally a three piece, Burning Spear was essentially Winston Rodney – a musician whose Rastafarianism and adherence to Marcus Garvey’s teachings were profound.  This release gathers the original album with the subsequent ‘Ghost’ dubs.  It does appear that Spear’s deep and heavy sound was somewhat lightened for mass consumption but I love the steady, serious tone and sincere, heartfelt vocals.

‘Solution’, Solution

One Sunday evening, Stuart Maconie played a track from this on his ‘Freak Zone’ pigeonhole, (sorry – radio programme), and really whetted my appetite.  Solution’s debut is a wonderful piece of early 70s Dutch Jazz Prog. that ticks loads of boxes through its numerous changes of mood and tempo, proper, heavy-duty organ, flutes, and impressive passages of European Jazz-Rock.  It also includes some spooky, atmospheric bits and a passage that sounds like a circus orchestra on speed.

Connections between Solution and Focus - the godfathers of Dutch Prog., led me back to…

‘Focus III’, Focus

Focus Embrace Their Dutch Heritage

Focus covered most of the Prog. bases in their first few albums.  Dynamic guitar and organ Rock; Classical influences; Jazz; Renaissance Lute Music; mock operatic vocals; Latin lyrics; yodelling; whistling, - they all appear at some stage, (sometimes within the same song).  They had real instrumental ability but avoided terminal pomposity by tempering grandeur with humour.  Even their tendency to assemble over-ambitious, extended pieces from separate fragments, rather than through-composing them, seems less of a problem in our cut & paste age.

‘Focus III’ aims all round the target and scores several bullseyes in the process.  Highlights for me are the slow-burning title track segueing into ‘Answers? Questions! Questions? Answers!’ and ‘Sylvia’, (that rarest of beasts, - the perfect short Prog. Rock single).

If A Picture Paints A Weekend Away...

Rather than rushing back to Leicester after the Friday night private view of the ‘If a Picture Paints…’ exhibition, I made a weekend of it in Birmingham.  It allowed me to revisit the gallery on the Saturday and reflect further on the work and the exhibition experience as a whole.  It also provided an opportunity to celebrate my close friend Susie's birthday in a different city, and to explore some of the photo opportunities I suspected were lurking in the Digbeth area near the gallery.  The luxury of a big bed and leisurely hotel breakfasts were an attraction too.

Work By: (L-R), Shaun Morris, Andrew Smith, Chris Cowdrill & Andrew Smith

Two Of My Paintings With Work By: (L-R), Andrew Smith, Shaun Morris
& Andrew Smith

Still Life Paintings By Shaun Morris

Work By: (L-R), Andrew Smith, Shaun Morris & Andrew Smith

Friday was all about the buzz of the exhibition as an event, but Saturday demonstrated it can still be difficult to coax people into a gallery under normal conditions, however diligently you publicise it.  If only a trickle of people found their way in that day, I still think it was right to opt for a weekend opening and can’t fault the collective effort to raise awareness of the show.  The Works gallery is a good space and suited the exhibition well but, being on the third floor of an old industrial building, must struggle for passing trade.  I guess the lure of Brum’s extensive retail honey pot nearby was always going to provide severe competition too.

Ceramic Piece By Craig Underhill, (Foreground), With Work By: (L-R),
Myself, Andrew Smith & Chris Cowdrill

Ceramic Work By Craig Underhill

Nonetheless, it was good to spend more time with the work, to chat to Shaun and Andrew again and get to know Chris a little better.  I appreciated seeing how the work appeared with some daylight illumination too.  Andrew’s paintings, which had seemed quite muted the previous evening, started to sing next to the large gallery window as surprising amounts of colour seeped out from their accumulations of visual incident.   I was drawn to make comparisons with my own paintings’ more overt, on-the-surface garishness.

Paintings By Andrew Smith

My Paintings 'Home 1' (L) And 'Broken 1' (R)

My Painting 'Shut 1'

I like what Indigo Octagon are trying to do as a collective and am convinced that artists gathering together to provide their own support mechanisms and shared energy is a canny strategy in these days of increasing financial and cultural poverty.  I chatted with Chris about the potential for different projects under the same banner to involve varying combinations or degrees of involvement from core members whilst drawing in outside collaborators as appropriate.  It works well enough for musicians, (Massive Attack being an obvious established model), so why not artists?  I was encouraged to meet a group for whom the main priority appears to be the work, with everything else seemingly just about maximizing the chances of it reaching an engaged audience.  In a hollow, P.R. driven culture, where every dream is retailed back to us, the value of encountering reasonably like-minded people is incalculable.

Paintings By Shaun Morris

Earlier, I had wended my way slowly to Pershore Street via the seriously dilapidated industrial back streets of Digbeth.  The streets I traversed are dominated by massive brooding railway arches which, as Andrew pointed out, lend them a slightly Gothic, or even De Chirico-esque, quality.   During my short walk I encountered numerous good examples of urban text, decaying surfaces and general entropy.  I’m sure I only scratched the surface(s) and intend to return for more photo-perambulations very soon.

Surfaces And Texts, Digbeth, Birmingham

The day concluded with a meal and drinks with my friends and a chance to marvel at the apparent 'last days of the Roman Empire' unfolding on Broad Street.  A real find for me was ‘The Yardbird’, tucked in next to the municipal library.  Somewhere between a bar and a club, this intimate venue revealed itself to have a very happening vibe with lounge décor, an open minded crowd and excellent Jazz/Funk/Soul/Hip-hop sounds.  Full marks go to the proprietors for pitching the P.A volume perfectly too.  It’s good to know my arthritic knees still permit occasional dancing even if my Sunday morning head doesn’t like me drinking!

Private View: If A Picture Paints A Good Night Out...

My last post mentioned how various events in Birmingham have been occupying my time just lately.  Prime amongst these was the private view for the exhibition, ‘If a Picture Paints a Thousand Words, Why Can’t I Paint’, organised by the Indigo Octagon collective and in which I participated as a guest artist.  Although the show had been open for a few days, the Friday evening event was an obvious opportunity to draw as many people as possible through the door and was, in that and several other respects, a real success.

Being at a geographical remove, I’d had a relatively little hands-on involvement with the show’s practical preparations and was unsure exactly what to expect prior to entering the gallery for the first time.  Additionally, I was rather breathless from the rapid race over through Friday evening M6 traffic, (thank you, Road Gods!), and a hurried hotel check-in.

In the event, I was delighted to see how well the exhibition looked and just how much care, thought and sheer hard work, Shaun Morris and the other guys had put into the hang.  Although generally familiar with the soft themes underlying the show, and some of the work on display, I hadn’t anticipated just how well different pieces would relate to each other across the room.  It was fascinating to observe the subtle correspondences between the differing preoccupations of the five artists emerge as one moved around the gallery.  I think one of the main achievements has been to allow these connections to be discovered and reflected upon naturally without too much spoon- feeding or conceptual contrivance.

It’s always scary to expose one’s work to a public arena and in the context of other artists’ output.  I was relieved to find I haven’t been fooling myself, and that, out in the World; my paintings can justify their creation.  Of course, there’s always a list of things one might do differently and certain aspects of the other participants’ work may suggest possible new ways forward for my own.  This is particularly true of Andrew Smith’s engagement with some concerns that I share but across a variety of platforms.  Despite my commitment to painting, he takes greater account of the flux of urban existence, and the relationship between environment, text and thought processes, than I have managed so far.  His video work, painted photographs and textual paintings supplied much food for thought.   Craig Underhill’s ceramics engage with the nuances of distressed hard surfaces to which I’m often drawn, whilst Shaun’s painted motorway nocturnes and Chris Cowdrill’s painstaking, collaged illustrations tackled those mutable zones at, and just beyond, the margins of any conurbation.

The Men They Could Hang: (L to R), Craig Underhill, Some Bloke From
Leicester, Shaun Morris, Chris Cowdrill, Andrew Smith

Work By Shaun Morris, (Left & Centre) And Andrew Smith, (Right)

Ceramics By Craig Underhill

Many exhibiting artists will probably admit that private views sometimes alternate between the slightly intimidating and the dispiritingly vacuous, but this time round it seemed the large gathering comprised people who’d come for the right reasons.  There was plenty of genuine interest in the work and lots of positivity and general good humour. I met many new faces and enjoyed numerous conversations. It was evident that the I.O. team had worked really hard at getting the word out and it paid off, with the room remaining full nearly all evening.  The exhibition brochure was a stylish art statement in its own right and the souvenir badges provided a nice touch of affordable ‘merch’.

Shaun & Andrew Perform 'Music For Service Stations'

Box Of Knives

The exhibition’s mixed media aspect was further enhanced by the inclusion of live music that turned a private view into a real multi-dimensional event.  Although Shaun and Andrew will maintain their performance of ‘Music For Service Stations’ wasn’t wholly successful, I was impressed they’d composed a piece specifically for the event at all.  They were followed by a committed performance from local band Box of Knives that went down very well with the room.

It Was a Mixed Crowd

Although our numbers were a little reduced through illness, I was pleased to be able to take a small contingent with me to add to the crowd.  As well as thanking the I.O. guys for making it all happen, and everyone who attended, particular thanks are due to Lorel, Susie, Pauline, Dave and Sid for helping to make it a great weekend altogether.  More of that in my next bulletin…

'Thanks For Coming'

It’s worth mentioning that the show continues until November 23 so here’s hoping that, before then, some more folks make it along to the Works Gallery, Jubilee Centre, 130 Pershore Street, Birmingham B5 6ND.  Oh, and if you want to know who Harvey Smoke is, - ask Andrew.