Mail Shots 6

All Images: Digbeth, Birmingham 2016

I never seem to get bored of these.

I hope you don't either.

"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.

Playlist 14

My last ten-piece playlist was essentially a generic primer - signifying how the various facets of Dub Techno almost wholly dominated my listening, some weeks back.  As ever, events move on - and this one demonstrates just how eclectic things have once more become.

The Fall:  ‘The Unutterable’

I suspect one might never get to the end of The Fall’s expansive back catalogue, even if foolhardy enough to attempt it.  However, you can have a lot of fun trying.  The late 80’s incarnation (of a band everyone will have been in, for at least half an hour, sooner or later) was one of the most engaging live acts I’ve witnessed.  Their albums are rarely less than intriguing – even at their most ragged or least coherent.  The great ones (of which there are several) can be plain jaw dropping.  I’d contend this offering, from 2000, is close to one of those.

Despite leader Mark E. Smith’s famous, revolving door recruitment policy, each successful Fall line-up eventually sounds like a rackety, all-consuming piece of home-assembled machinery - operated by a contrary, but surprisingly well-read, bar room philosopher.  ‘The Unutterable’ follows that blueprint, combining their trademark, punkabilly guitar thrash with the kind of keyboards that suggest Eleni Poulou (Mrs. M.E.S.) had only a couple of lunchtimes to learn her instrument, (she plays it very well).  Hubby mithers all over it, in fine belligerent style - with no subject seeming too oblique or disconnected.  

There’s always a moment when those rudimentary elements fit together into something immense and hypnotic, and everything makes sense.  Here, that happens during the intimidating ‘Serum’.  Elsewhere, there are well judged changes of pace, a generally acclaimed masterpiece (‘Dr. Buck’s Letter’), and even a left turn into spastic ‘Jazz’ (‘Pumpkin Soup And Mashed Potatoes’).  Mostly though, it’s just a great, steaming pile of everything The Fall does best.

DNA: ‘Blonde Redhead’

Of course, everything’s relative - meaning that early 80s ‘No Wave’ band, DNA, can make The Fall sound vaguely conventional.  Famous is also a relative term, but they were, ‘famously’, one of the mainstays of a movement that sought to deconstruct Pop/Rock yet further back than Punk did, and even - to dispense with formal structure by marrying it to free improvisation.  What you actually have in DNA, is a trio (two trios, actually), comprising untutored musicians, (or others who chose to play that way), whose mania lasted around four years - never extending beyond their NYC hot house, at the time.

Miraculously, this almost professional video exists on YouTube.  It shows them in their second-gen. pomp, (with a bassist who could play a bit), running through one of their ‘hits’.  As is often the case with such Free noise-making, repeated immersion eventually reveals an alternative, internal logic - however perverse.  If nothing else, you’ve got to love Arto Linsey’s detuned guitar work, surely?

Pantha Du Prince: ‘The Triad’

I’ve enthused about Hendrik Weber’s music as PDP before, and this new album largely carries on from his previous two – ‘Black Noise’ and ‘Elements Of Light’ (with The Bell Laboratory).  This time, he works in close collaboration with Scott Mou and The Bell Laboratory’s Bendik Kjelsberg (plus guests), to fill that (often) sweet spot between ambient soundscape and dance floor.  They do so with now-familiar chimes, melodic tones, and unobtrusive beats, alongside increasing amounts of vocals, with an essentially pastoral overall aesthetic.  It’s a sound not alien to followers of, for instance, Four Tet - although painted on a somewhat larger canvas.

Of course, there’s a danger of such stuff becoming overly tasteful, but it does provide some lovingly assembled sonic healing, once DNA and The Fall have packed in their racket.  My only real criticism would be with some of those vocals.  The aim is seemingly to inject techno tropes with greater emotion; but that can feel more like ‘emotion’ as a non-specific stylistic dressing, than anything particularly felt.  Certain moments here sound worryingly like Depeche Mode, or a certain brand of anodyne Indie Dream Pop - but are outweighed by the album’s more intense passages.

Paul Simon: ‘Stranger To Stranger’

The question is probably - does the world really need yet another solo album by one of the aged luminaries of Classic/Soft Rock?  Certainly, there will be many who wish the quasi-MOR stylings of Paul Simon’s Mid-70s output had been consigned to history during the ‘Punk Wars’ - or at least by DNA and their ilk.  But I’ve never bought into that Stalinist outlook and kind of want it all.  If the old folks can still marshal talent and inspiration, and even more importantly - experiment with new ways to express themselves, why shouldn’t we sill give them consideration?  It’s got to beat endless luke-warm rehashes of the back catalogue - surely.

As it turns out, a degree of relative innovation is exactly what Simon pulls off here.  His songwriting still sounds pretty fresh; and he switches between the emotive, the socially engaged, and the just plain quirky, with a fleetness of mind many composers a third of his age might only dream of, (sometimes all within the same song).  However, it’s the arrangements that really distinguish this album.  No Paul Simon record is going to lack pristine vocals or melodic beauty, but here they often float over a bare bones rhythm bed, or within fields of unusual instrumentation, (liberally augmented with samples).  ‘The Werewolf’ cosies up to Tom Waits’ junkyard aesthetic, whilst Simon’s use of Harry Partch’s outsider instruments suggests he’s as conversant with Avant-Garde traditions, as with contemporary studio practice.

Simon & Garfunkel: ‘The Only Living Boy In New York’

In reality, listening to any quantity of Paul Simon’s work with Art Garfunkel, from the other end of his career, will either break your heart or rot your teeth.  It’s easy enough to dismiss them as the more saccharine wing of the 60s Folk movement, but that would be to ignore the consistently strong core of Simon’s songwriting, and the care and attention that went into the creation of much of their material.  It also occurs to me that each S&G album comprises a group of pieces, each with it’s own individual identity and specific emotional cargo – in contrast with something like ‘The Triad’, for instance.

Anyway, this is, for me, the best thing of theirs I’ve heard, and brings together all the elements of their music I enjoy.  Simon ruminates on the inner tensions that would soon tear the duo apart, (and seemingly trigger decades of acrimony).  But he does so with a degree of implied love and respect for his colleague - making the lyric more philosophical than antagonistic.  The melody is just about perfect, and captures a world of melancholy whilst soaring elegiacally in the choruses.  As recorded, the song wears some of the lush orchestration and studio atmospherics as ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, but avoids that track’s grandiose, manipulative overkill.  The organ runs occasionally rising in the mix are a triumph of understatement that kill me every time.

Gryphon: ‘Red Queen To Gryphon Three’

Gryphon (Those Were The Days)

Ah - that inevitable, potentially awkward, early Prog moment.  Actually, I feel no shame in enjoying this kind of thing - relishing its good-natured ambition and potential to become a portal to a partially re-invented youth.  Gryphon and their unembarrassed faux Medevalism have also featured here before, but this is their Proggiest masterpiece.  Four extended pieces, comprising Folk melodies, vintage synths, early instruments and numerous tempo/mood changes, build to a wholly instrumental, overall concept piece, on the theme of a chess game.  Really - what’s not to like there?  Only in the 70s…

John Dowland: ‘Complete Lute Music’ (Performed By Nigel North)

If Gryphon were playing at Early Music, This is very much the genuine article, (in so far as any recording of a contemporary performer can be).  I picked up this multi-disc box set a while back, at an embarrassingly low price considering the sheer quantity of treasure it contains.  It’s an absolute sanity saver when I require a little tranquility, clarity, or calm dignity in my head, and always takes me to a place far from the sensory overload of the modern world.  I also love the way that, although just another wooden box with stretched strings - a lute always sounds intrinsically more ancient than a guitar.

Of course, the Renaissance world from which it all derives was one of routine death, war, pestilence and religious persecution – in which only a tiny, privileged elite could access such stuff at all.  So, I suppose we should be grateful to our modern age for providing the economic and technological frameworks that allow us to experience it, after all.

Half Man Half Biscuit: ‘I Went To A Wedding’

I took my eye off the HMHB ball many years ago, assuming them to be a once-amusing, novelty-Indie act whose moment must have surely passed in the late 1980s.  This little gem, from 2003, proves I was wrong.  Yet I only stumbled on it because of its oblique Dowland reference (bless Wikipedia).  I marvel that it also mentions another giant of Renaissance music, Thomas Tallis, amidst some wry social observation - before ending with a cheery football chant.  It’s all done with a Merseysider’s erudite wit, and actually ends up as a rather poignant little bit of contemporary Folk.  I have next to no pride in being English (especially, now), but things like this (along with Dowland, Tallis and The Fall), do represent some of this benighted nation’s saving graces.

William Basinski: ‘The Disintegration Loops II’

Still From: William Basinski, 'The Disintegration Loops', Video, 2001

Basinski’s complete ‘Disintegration Loops’ is a bit beyond my monthly financial reach, but I’m enjoying slowly acquiring them in manageable chunks.  In the process of revisiting earlier short loops, Basinski discovered that the tapes were physically deteriorating before his ears, and thus serendipitously created a masterpiece of long-form ambiences, cycling into decay.  It should, I suppose, feel tediously repetitive, and mostly about the concept.  In reality it’s a sensual and highly involving experience, and bridges the gap between intellect and emotion beautifully.  That he finished work on the morning of 11 September 2001 just seems too ‘good’ to be true.  It allowed him to pair the music with a video account of the unfolding events and reverse-engineer it all into a profound monument to the disintegration of entire civilisations or value systems.

Deadbeat: ‘Drawn And Quartered’

Had I heard it at the time, this would have definitely been in my Dub Techno-themed playlist.  Indeed, it now feels rather like Scott Monteith's masterpiece to date.  With delightful perversity, it contains five wholly instrumental 'Quarters', each of which sit at slightly different points on the Dub/Techno spectrum, and gradually unfold to build a whole much greater than their sum.  Monteith's genius is to retain sufficient, recognisably Jamaican tropes, within a largely abstract context, as in 'First Quarter', where isolated guitar clangs rise up like thrilling signifiers.  'Fifth Quarter' does something similar with fragments of brass, whilst 'Second Quarter' uses recognisable bongo hits to punctuate its metronomic rhythms.  Ultimately though, isolating individual tracks makes less sense than just treating it as a really satisfying start-to-finish deal.

Cross Currents: The Work Of Michelle Keegan & Elizabeth Walker

Michelle Keegan, 'Still Navigating 10', Zinc Etching, (Date Unknown).

I spent some more productive hours over at Leicester Print Workshop, the other day -  bringing my current run of screen prints to some kind of conclusion.  I’ll write more about them soon, but this post is about another important aspect of using such a communal facility.  Apart from the obvious benefits of working in a well equipped print studio, it was always my hope that becoming a member might allow me to gain inspiration or shared insights from other artists working or exhibiting there, and to break free of my often, slightly insular art activities, from time to time.  This appears to be paying off already.

Michelle Keegan, 'Still Navigating' Series Of Etchings At Leicester Print Workshop, June 2016

One instance is my discovery of the work of Michelle Keegan, - a Nottingham-based artist previously unfamiliar to me, through the simple expedient of her work being on display in the Workshop’s public project area.  My eye was immediately drawn to her nominally abstract, square format etchings, not least because of their nuanced sophistication and appealing formal qualities.

Michelle Keegan, 'Still Navigating 8', Zinc Etching, (Date Unknown)

Michelle Keegan, 'Still Navigating 6', Zinc Etching, (Date Unknown)

Michelle's prints are comprised of, amongst other things, complex networks of irregular marks, overlapping grids of varying regularity, and accumulating layers or screens of fluctuating density. Overall, they display a pleasing tension between the geometric and the organic, and manage to be simultaneously simple (formally), and full of complex detail.  They alongside their spare formality, they also demonstrate an all-over mode of composition, and a commitment to the notion of variation within a standard format.  These are all things with which I’m engaged, to a greater or lesser extent, in my own current work.

Michelle Keegan, 'Still Navigating 12', Zinc Etching, (Date Unknown)

It appears that Michelle’s inspiration comes from her memories and impressions of Romney Marsh (in Kent), although the work itself is a largely synthetic, almost entirely abstract distillation of any kind of landscape experience - and is all the better for it, in my view.  Whilst I've had no opportunity to meet Michelle, or to discuss her work at first hand, her block of images on show at LPW have certainly opened my eyes to some of the abstract potential of print media, and confirmed some of my own current ideas about the presentation of a body of work, too.  Anyway, you can judge the work for yourself, by visiting her website, here.

Elizabeth Walker, From: 'Tower Blocks' Series, Cyanotype & Screen Print, (Title & Date Unknown)

On a more face-to-face level, I’ve also enjoyed the company of a couple of other Saturday regulars on more than one occasion now.  One of these, Elizabeth Walker, turns out to be an artist with whom I share a slightly spooky abundance of common visual interests.  Elizabeth is another of that extensive band of artist/educators, and an experienced printmaker – who is based in Northamptonshire.  She also has a website, where you can view her work, here.

Elizabeth Walker, From: 'New Town', Screen Print, (Date Unknown)

Elizabeth Walker, From: 'Tramps Trolleys' Series, (Details Unknown)

Having looked over each other’s shoulders a couple of times, it quickly became obvious we share an enthusiasm for many of the same varieties of urban imagery, - including elements of signage, Modernist architecture, and the surfaces, details and geometries of the built environment.  It amused me to discover we’d both latched onto the noble shopping trolley as a motif at some point, and that Elizabeth clearly demonstrates a similar relish for the inconsequential, or easily overlooked, as my own.  Also, as part of a general enjoyment of the patterns of half-tone reproduction, etc. - it appears that we’ve both independently hit on the notion of stenciling patterns of dots and discs over given portions of an image.  The relationship translation between photographic, mechanically reproduced, and hand-made imagery; and the whole area of 'process' can hardly be ignored either.

Elizabeth Walker, 'Harlow Clock', Screen Print, (Date Unknown)

  

These little things can mean so much and, rather than feeling miffed that someone else may have got there ahead of (or better than) me, - I'm just happy to have some of my own hunches and visual sensibilities validated in such a way.  Mostly, it just makes me want to crack on with loads more print-related work.

Elizabeth Walker, From: 'Coastal Signage' Series, Screen Print, (Date Unknown)

I’ve certainly been impressed by the freedom with which Elizabeth layers and repeats different motifs, - often building up impressively large composite images in the process, and the way she seems happy to exploit the processes of screen printing, and to riff on a combination of motifs without getting overly hung-up by the limitations of ‘correct’ procedure, in any stilted or technically constipated manner.  Speaking as someone just starting out on a journey as a printmaker, this definitely feels like the kind of attitude one might usefully aspire to.

Elizabeth Walker, Photographs Of Disused Little Chef Diner, (Details Unknown)

Sometimes the coincidences just keep coming, and as well as discussing our appreciation of the work of such artists as Christiane Baumgartner, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, etc. we also discovered a shared love for a particular, obscure landmark of ‘lost’ Modernism by the side of the A1, in South Yorkshire.  The dramatic curved geometry of this feature, (being actually the curved canopy of a Little Chef diner), is something I clearly remember from family car journeys many years ago.  I’ve talked before about how the passing of such architectural tropes seems to symbolise the dismantling of the very world I was born into, and I had a bit of a pang when Elizabeth kindly emailed me some of her impressive photos of this one. 

Most of the above images remain copyright Michelle Keegan and Elizabeth Walker.  (Let me know if you want them removed, Michelle and Liz).

Postscript:

Following Three Images: West Leicester, June 2016

The day after my most recent exchange with Elizabeth, I came across this abandoned shopping trolley (complete with Beuysian contents), just metres from my front door.  It never ceases to amaze me how things join up sometimes.  They're not the best photos I'll ever take, but you can have these on me in return, Liz.

Completed Studies & Screen Prints In Progress

'Untitled', Screen Print On Paper, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2016

For some time now, I’ve been trying to expand my own art practice in a number of directions beyond simply painting.  As I mentioned a few weeks back, printmaking is one such, and I’ve been able top make a bit more progress with that over recent months.

'Untitled', Screen Print On Paper, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2016

'Untitled', Screen Print On Paper, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2016

'Untitled', Screen Print On Paper, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2016

My previous post on the subject dealt with a two-day screen printing course I undertook at Leicester Print Workshop, but since then I’ve jumped through the necessary hoops, (both financial and practical), and am now a paid-up member.  This will give me the freedom to use their facilities as and when I need to.  My hope is that, by putting in the hours at various points over the coming months - I’ll finally develop the instincts, muscle memory and store of experience necessary to feel really comfortable as a printer.  For now, I’m concentrating on screen printing, not least because it seems ideally suited to the crossover between painting, collage photography and mechanical reproduction, already existing in my work.  I certainly wouldn’t rule out other forms of print in the future though, so watch this space.

'Untitled', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Adhesive Tape & Spray Enamel
On Paper, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2016.  (Original Source Image)

Anyway, I’ve already spent quite a few hours moving forward with some imagery derived from one of the paper-based studies I produced towards the end of last year.  As ever, there’s nothing very purist about my approach.  In fact, just as I seem to be something of a hybrid painter in terms of media, - I'm as likely to rip up a print and collage it back into something else; or to screen a fragmented image onto the surface of an already painted panel; as I am to produce a pristine edition of pure prints.

'Untitled', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Screen Print, Ink, Spray Enamel, Pencil & Ballpoint Pen
& Various Solvents On Paper, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2016

'Untitled', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Screen Print, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish, Pencil
Ballpoint Pen & Various Solvents On Paper, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2016

In fact, that process is already under way, with several sacrificial versions from my first serious print run having become part of the mulch of a second group of four collaged/painted studies.  These were in turn scanned and digitally manipulated to create stencils for another, increasingly multi-layered run.  This process is distinctly fractal in nature, with each study or digital reworking offering numerous new alternatives, and even within a single print, just altering the number of contributing colour layers, or the order in which they are laid down, creates yet more potential variants.  I’m still only dipping my toe in the water with all this really, but already feel slightly boggled by how expansive it might potentially become.

'Untitled', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Screen Print, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish, Pencil,
Ballpoint Pen & Various Solvents On Paper, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2016

'Untitled', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Screen Print, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish,  Pencil,
Ballpoint Pen & Various Solvents On Paper, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2016

'Untitled', Digital Manipulation, 2016

'Untitled', Digital Manipulation, 2016

'Untitled', Digital Manipulation, 2016

'Untitled', Digital Manipulation, 2016

With that in mind, it’s probably worth mentioning that the images of actual screen prints shown here represent stages in an ongoing process - far more than final definitive versions.    My process seems to be to periodically pull out certain prints - allowing them to rest as milestones in a larger process, but for many to go back into the pot for further development.  I have a certain four-colour version in mind as another possible ‘result’ but am already wondering how much further one might just keep layering and increasing the overall density before an image needs to be drastically broken down and recycled all over again.  One strategy I've found to avoid an image from just becoming clogged in excess visual texture, (at any stage), is to periodically apply a stronger graphic motif in an almost arbitrary manner.  Examples of this include elements of text lifted straight out of my pre-existing photos, and blocks of colour derived from grids found within the original studies.   The whole process is far from the traditional printer’s model of the numbered edition, but complies with my mantra of ‘The Same But Different’, and a commitment to the process of mutated evolution.

West Leicester, May 2012

Of course, the real key to much of this lies with the translation of any given image into the digital realm.  It’s hardly an original revelation to point out how many new avenues of replication, versioning, or reproduction, open up as soon as digital manipulation is involved.  Whilst this is also true of more traditional, hand-made printing media, I do suspect the majority of screen prints, for instance, have already been through Photoshop at some point in their image development, nowadays.  The bigger picture is that, for a while, I’ve been talking not only about moving my own practice into a wider range of media, but beyond that - to also take account of the whole issue of translation.  This is envisaged, not only between individual media, but between the realms of the hand-made one-off, traditional/analogue reproduction, and digital imagery too [1.].

'Untitled', Screen Print On Paper, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2016

'Untitled', Screen Print On Paper, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2016

Some pointers to this can still be found in previous posts, about the work of Dan Perfect, for instance, or about Tate Modern’s ‘Painting AfterTechnology’ Exhibit, (to which I’ve referred on several occasions).  Talking about this with a younger colleague at work, the other day, I was led to wonder whether there’s a generational aspect to take into account here.  I’m definitely of an age where I can look back and see my life being divided into two, distinct phases: namely, pre mass-use-of-digital-technology, and post same.  It feels a bit like being a nineteenth century senior remembering a time before the steam engine totally reshaped the world.

'Untitled', Screen Print On Paper, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2016

I can’t help wondering if that’s why the technologically orientated art that interests me most is still that which consciously explores some of the intrinsic qualities of its specific medium, of speaks of the interface between the analogue and the digital.  The majority of those artists who engaged me so much at Tate Modern are, I suspect around my age, or older.  I wonder if a younger generation, through whose lives the digital dimension is more seamlessly woven, might find this idea of it as still something novel and worthy of comment, quaintly outmoded?

'Untitled', Screen Print On Paper, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2016

'Untitled', Screen Print On Paper, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2016

For all that, I do believe it remains the job of the artist to interrogate their chosen media, and anyway - we’re all where (and when) we are, and can only proceed on the basis of our own experience.  The point at which you stop at least asking some questions about the changing technologies of image production, and how your own methods do or don’t relate to it is probably the point at which you’ve really rendered yourself properly obsolete.

[1.]:  It seems important to reassert that, for me, this is definitely a two-way process.