Back On The Golden Mile 3

All Images: Melton/Belgrave Road, North Leicester, December 2018

Here's the third (and concluding) instalment of my recent crop of images harvested on Leicester's Melton/Belgrave Road.  As with Posts 1 & 2, there's nothing here that relates directly to any specific artwork project.  I prefer to think of them rather as simply the most recent manifestations of my ongoing practice of documenting the juxtaposed meanings,  possible clues, and perpetual poetry, of the urban street.  In fact it probably is the kind of stuff that often informs the work sooner or later - if only on a more subconscious level. 

This final trawl concentrates mainly on signage and texts, but also concludes with a few  miscellaneous glimpses that felt just too delicious to ignore.  One of those is a chance moment of instantaneous drama - that just fell in the centre of the viewfinder for once.  The he last two seem to capture inconsequential details, covering spiritual and earthly ends of the behavioural spectrum - whilst sharing certain formal similarities.
   

Back On The Golden Mile 2

All Images: Melton/Belgrave Road, North Leicester, December 2018

There's not too much to say here, beyond the fact that this is the second instalment of the extended photo-essay, commenced in my previous post.  Subject-wise, the images here all fall into the categories of either eating and drinking, hairdressing, or laundry establishments.  As I mentioned previously - pretty much every human need is catered for on Leicester's Melton Road (including at least one undertakers).

It's also the case that most of these shots continue to explore the interrelationship between commercial signage or display, the interior world behind the glass (sometimes animated by the human element), and reflected glimpses of the external world facing the establishment in question.  I really enjoy being able to capture multi-dimensional imagery like this, as a 'found' manifestation, rather than as something artificially manipulated after the event - not least for the intriguing or poetic chance juxtapositions it often affords.  Once mirrors are involved, as in several cases here - things seem to become even more interesting.

Back On The Golden Mile 1

All Images: Melton/Belgrave Road, North Leicester, December 2018

Another year goes by and, once again - I find myself accompanying yet another new cohort of GCSE Photography students on their first photo walk along Leicester's 'Golden Mile'.  In my job's more menial moments, I find myself wondering if twelve years might be more than long enough to spend charging batteries, cleaning paintbrushes and tidying up after teenagers.  However, trips out like this offer more than adequate compensation - being an opportunity to refresh my own eyes, as well as to observe students really starting to get to grips with a wealth of visual stimuli outside their immediate school environs.   

We're lucky in having one of the city's most varied and visually textured thoroughfares right on our doorstep.  Belgrave/Melton Road runs right through the heart of Leicester's culturally diverse Belgrave neighbourhood, and is renowned as both the nexus of its annual Diwali celebrations - and as the source of various oft-quoted statistics about the astounding concentrations of precious metals to be found within its numerous jewellery shops.

The reality is, far more nuanced than just that, and actually provides a fascinating spectrum of urban experience from the tawdry and down-at-heel (or even semi-derelict), to the distinctly glitzy and up-market - often within a few metres of each other.  Above all, it's a vibrant and dynamic neighbourhood High Street, in an era when, we're told - such things are in terminal decline.  One could still access pretty much any of the goods and services one might ever need there, from the downright mundane to the distinctly exotic - and often at competitive prices.

Perhaps it's the sense of everything all being lumped together in a pleasingly matter-of-fact melange of sights, sounds and aromas, that keeps the area so rich as a source of artistic stimuli.  Certainly, whilst I've done this same photo-walk numerous times in recent years - I always seem to find something new to attract my lens.

With more of our students than ever opting to study Photography - we ended up making two trips out this year, on consecutive days.  As a result, I took even more shots than normal - making this is the first of a series of related photo-essays.  This one's retail-related - featuring a range of shop fronts and window displays.  Whilst these have also featured heavily in previous years, there is a slightly new dimension to some of this year's crop.  Experimenting with a new telephoto lens meant I was able to look beyond the street elevations and glancing reflections - to also reveal certain glimpses of the interior human life beyond.  As this was often achieved at some distance, anyone depicted remained unaware and thus, totally at ease.  In fact, what pleases me most, is the way they are incorporated into the geometry of their surroundings - often only emerging after the eye has already taken in a wealth of more distracting visual incident.

More soon...   

Completed Painting: 'Untitled (From The New School) 10'

'Untitled (From The New School) 10', Acrylics On Panel,
30 cm X 30 cm X 10.6 cm, 2018

Here's the recently-completed 'Untitled (From The New School) 10'.  This is another one that's closer to what one might call 'traditional' painting - with plenty of free brushwork, only a modicum of masking and no collage elements.  

It's also pretty close to the tradition of (almost) all-white paintings.  That's a bit of a totem of Modern (or Post-Modern) painting, of course - and something with which my love of Robert Ryman, Gerhard Richter, Robert Rauschenberg, et al, has led me to dabble, periodically.

In this case, the intention was to create a suggestion of thick fog, through which the quasi-architectural motif common to all these 'FTNS' images, might be dimly glimpsed.  As already mentioned, this has come to represent for me - the edifice of Education generally, as much as any specific edifice.  Given that, I'll let the viewer decide whether, here - it continues to offer a beacon of enlightenment amidst growing obscurity, or if, alternatively - it's actually  receding into a cloud of unknowing.    

Completed Painting: 'Untitled (From The New School) 9'

All Images: 'Untitled (From The New School)', Acrylic & Paper Collage on Panel,
30 cm X 30 cm X 10.6 cm, 2018

Here is No. 9 in the 'From The New School' series.  These seem to be arriving thick and fast, right now - and without too much strife.  That's definitely one of the advantages of deliberately versioning the same simple composition, again and again.  Essentially, it just frees one to concentrate on content (and what happens between the lines).  The initial premise  was that they should reflect numerous different philosophical or ideological interpretations of education, or of school life.  Perhaps, then - the previous observation just emphasises how any institutionalised education system inevitably risks promoting a degree of 'thinking inside the box?' (whichever box that might actually be). 

At some point, I suppose I'll start repeating myself with these, but I hope that's some way off yet.  Certainly, I already have ideas for the next few - and do find that my days spent at work, in a large secondary school, stimulate an endless stream of direct experience - and reflections on education generally, as possible inspiration.  However much milage there may, or may not be in this series - it's already shaping up to be my most extensive to date.

This one should be pretty easy to interpret, I suspect - imagining, as it does, a school as an institution constructed largely of rules and regulations.  There are days (most days, to be honest), when it seems as much energy is spent navigating behavioural expectations, rules of conduct, Health & Safety regulations, national legislation, and government directives - as it is upon teaching and learning.

Luckily, that all also generates a range of pleasing, strongly-coloured information graphics, symbols, hazard stripes and hatched exclusion zones - a gift for those of us with a tendency toward formal or geometric abstraction.