Lunchtime Fountains & The Smears of Gerhard Richter

Here are some photos I took on the school trip to Sheffield I mentioned in my last post.  During our lunch break the majority of our party wandered out into the Peace Gardens by the Town Hall, with its contemporary fountains and water features.  Such things are fairly standard in urban public spaces these days but it would be foolish to deny the eternal fascination of cascading water.

The main example is simple in conception, - comprising a series of vertical jets arranged within a shallow, circular, mosaic-patterned depression in the paving.  A cyclical control system causes the waterspouts to vary in scale from below knee high to several metres tall with exciting effects.  Despite the chilly, overcast conditions the fountains were a powerful draw and I began trying to freeze the patterns of tumbling water with my camera shutter.

Our students became increasingly intrigued too and posing in front of the fountains for phone-photos quickly evolved into good old fashioned water play.  Putting hands over the low jets in anticipation of the sudden surge quickly gave way to dares to stand amidst the jets then to run through without getting drenched.  It was all pretty innocent and amusing to watch how willingly a bunch of apparently streetwise, fashion conscious teenagers will temporarily revert back a couple of years if the opportunity arises.

My images are apropos of nothing in particular and don’t relate to anything in my current painting apart from an interest in the compositional possibilities of parallel verticals.  However, whilst manipulating them I began to make visual connections with Gerhard Richter’s paint-smearing techniques and particularly his over painted photographs.  The portions of the background environment visible through foreground curtains of white water reminds me of how Richter will arbitrarily deface photos with a layer of completely alternative visual reality.

Gerhard Richter, 'Grat (Ridge) 2', Oil On Canvas, 1989

Gerhard Richter, 'Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Painting)', Oil On Canvas, 1995

Gerhard Richter, 'Ohne Titel (Untitled) 27.07.94', Oil On Photograph, 1994

Gerhard Richter, 'Ohne Titel (Untitled), 02.04.08', Oil On Photograph

This simple strategy actually stimulates intriguing comparisons between different imaging systems and their relative materiality.  In that respect there may also be some link with the work of Paul Morrison that we were viewing a few minutes earlier. 

Paul Morrison, 'Ice Castle',  Acrylic On Paper, 2007