Belgrave Gate Project 2: Painting In Progress - 'Yours 1'

'Yours 1', Sketchbook Study, Acrylics &
Paper Collage, 2013

Current Arctic temperatures are a definite discouragement to getting out and about much but, indoors, I’m trying to use the very welcome school holidays to progress with my first significant painting of the year.  The painting will be part of the 'Belgrave Gate Project' referred to in my last post and, whilst it's my intention that this project should see me extend my work further into other media, I'm sure painting will remain central to my practice.  Certainly, after a phase of research and development involving much photographic activity, it feels good to be getting paint under my fingernails again.

'Yours 1', Sketchbook Study, Acrylics &
Paper Collage, 2013

  

As an initial statement, this one follows my customary basic model of the last couple of years, juxtaposing various elements, including text, into an overall composition.  As before, I'm working it up from relatively 'finished' sketchbook studies, although these always evolve through a fairly intuitive collaging method.  What is new is the heightened site-specificity of this piece.  Relating to that, the underlying composition actually derives from a particular photographic image and includes motifs that at least allude to illusionistic space and the piercing of the picture plane.  Anyone used to thinking in pictorial terms, and who is familiar with my recent work may recognize this as something of a departure and it is my hope that the paintings produced as part of this overall project will gradually move into some new painterly territories.  Of course, it's always better to allow these things to occur organically by working, rather than to force the issue, so we will see.  Anyway, more about all this once the painting reaches some kind of conclusion.

Burleys Flyover, Leicester, 2012

Burleys Flyover, Leicester, 2013

The image refers to two of the most striking features of the Belgrave Gate/ Burleys Way/St Matthews Way roundabout junction, just north of Leicester's city centre.  These are Burleys flyover and the truly spectacular 'Yours Supermarket'.  It's a node of the inner ring road that I traverse every working day and my fascination with the locale stems from that familiarity, but also from the realisation that I've collected numerous images from specific sites around this area in recent times.  It seemed time to formally recognize that the entire neighbourhood has become an arena of both visual and psychic resonance for me and to start investigating it subjectively in greater detail.  The overall project is also an opportunity to integrate more formally  some of the ideas that fascinate me about Psychogeography, subjective mapping, urban exploration, time/space relationships in the environment, etc., with themes already extant in my work, (entropic surfaces, found texts, etc.).

Furniture Store, Belgrave Gate, Leicester, 2013

Furniture Store, Belgrave Gate, Leicester, 2013

Regular readers may recognize the supermarket building from a previous post.  It previously housed a furniture store and caught my attention through the détournement potential of its intriguing window signage.  Indeed, on the day I originally photographed it, painters were in the process of applying the startling lime green paint that now covers the whole building, prior to the change of use.  As I've so often noted about my relationship with urban environments, its all about the transformations.

Belgrave Gate Project 1: 'Ever Wonder If Midlands Towns Are As Dull As People Pretend?'

Regular readers of this blog will know I've been dipping in and out of Robert Smithson's collected writings since the turn of the year.  Having read, (and re-read) my way to the end I found an intriguing snippet amongst the closing unpublished work which relates to his 'A Tour of the Monuments ofPassaic, New Jersey' [1], - a piece that inspires me enormously.

Robert Smithson, 'A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic New Jersey'
New York, Artforum Magazine, December 1967

'See The Monuments of Passaic New Jersey', also from 1967, takes the form of a short press release or advertisement, though whether Smithson actually conducted any such guided tours I know not…

"What can you find in Passaic that you can not find in Paris, London or Rome?  Find out for yourself.  Discover (if you dare) the breathtaking Passaic River and the eternal monuments on its enchanted banks.  Ride in Rent-a-Car comfort to the land that time forgot.  Only minutes from N.Y.C.  Robert Smithson will guide you through this fabled series of sites…and don't forget your camera.  Special maps come with each tour.  For more information visit DWAN GALLERY, 29 West 57th Street."  [2.].

Robert Smithson Getting Out & About in 1969

Such artist or writer-led tours with psychogeographic or other subjective intent seem increasingly popular nowadays.  It also relates to a current artistic project that I am currently embarking upon.  In fact, the approach that Smithson took to interacting with a chosen locale in his original piece, along with the writings of several other home-grown writers under the P-Geog. banner, have led me to start my own in-depth, subjective investigation of a somewhat overlooked quarter of Leicester.

Inevitably, I'll be posting about it repeatedly in the future but, by way of a general introduction to it all, here's my own little tribute to Smithson…

Ever Wonder If Midlands Towns Are As Dull As People Pretend?

  

Join Hugh Marwood in a subjective exploration of the fascinating 'Flyovers District' around Leicester's Belgrave Gate.  Wander amongst stylistically varied polychromatic architecture and through the area's maze of quaint side streets, small to medium businesses and private car parks.  Gaze in awe at the dramatic elevated carriageways and road systems that characterize this transitional area whilst marveling at the civil engineering skills of old.  Together we will experience exciting psychic resonances, unexpected conjunctions and startling juxtapositions within this rich and culturally diverse environment.  Artists, Flâneurs, Dérivistes, Anthropologists, Industrial Historians, Philosophers and Semioticians will all uncover a wealth of material to support their studies.  The casually curious will discover an unexpected world of visual and sensory pleasure.  Just minutes from the city centre, with ample opportunities to discover your own time-limited on-street parking space.  Bring your own camera, video or sound-recording equipment, tablet device or notebook.  For more information contact THE ARTIST or follow the Leicester 'A-Z' map and your own intuition.

After participating in the 'If A Picture Paints A Thousand Words…' exhibition last November, I became intrigued by the possibility of augmenting my core painting activity with work in other media.  Photography already plays a major role in my overall process but I'm hoping that writing and possibly video or even sound-based work might start to play a part in the future too.  Such aspirations will require me to become a little more technologically (and possibly grammatically) savvy in order to fulfill them, and it's early days in what I hope will become a significant, multi-platform project unfolding over the coming months.  However, after several weeks of consideration and a few exploratory forays, I have taken numerous photographs and begun work on an initial painting and a couple of written pieces.  Real life events have even made a dramatic contribution but more of that another day.

As things stand, the two biggest impediments to progress are my rapidly decaying knee joints and this interminable winter weather.  However, all I can do is pray for spring to arrive, seek medical intervention and persevere. 

[1.]:  Robert Smithson, ‘A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic New Jersey’, 1967, In Jack Flam (Ed.), ‘Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings’, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996

[2.]: Robert Smithson, ‘See the Monuments of Passaic New Jersey’, 1967, In Jack Flam (Ed.), ‘Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings’, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996

'Elements Of Light': Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory

I was interested to read the following sentiment in a recent 'Wire' magazine article, by Derek Walmsley the other day.  The article was about Daniel Lapotin, (who records as Oneohtrix Point Never), but this relates, more generally, to the way much 'interesting' music is often both presented and discussed, (including in this blog), nowadays...

"When I first heard these records they touched on a thought that had been gestating for some time: that emotion is a scarce quality in underground music, where directness might be mistaken for simplicity or weakness.  Oddly, appeal to the emotions has also become scarce in the discourse around music.  From minimal drone to quiet improvisation to...rock, talking about the the emotional impulse behind them, and speculating on what human needs they might fulfil has become less common as music thinkers and critics buttress their ideas with genre-spotting and factual ephemera." [1.].

I know we live in a context-focussed Post Modern, er - context, but, for a while now, I've found myself wishing music journalists/reviewers would tell me a bit less about how a particular piece relates to external categories; more about how it actually sounds; and what emotional and imaginative stimuli it may furnish.  Here's my first attempt to address the matter in my own monthly music bulletins.  I've focussed on a particular piece that's currently entertaining me and followed it with a simple playlist of other, (related or unrelated), stuff that might give more clues about where my ears are at.  If not wholly emotional in tone, I hope my response is at least slightly more subjective in describing an imaginative sound world.  Of course, some context can still be useful so let's get that out the way first.

Hendrick Weber/Pantha Du Prince

Some Context:

The man behind the rather decadent Pantha Du Prince name is actually German Techno producer Hendrick Weber, who came to my attention via his previous album, 2010's highly acclaimed 'Black Noise'.  It was a lengthy, substantial meal of beautifully produced, ambient-ish Techno that, I found, required repeated listens at raised volumes to fully appreciate its attention to detail and subtle sophistication.  Dedication paid off and I now enjoy it immensely.

Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory

This year's 'Elements of Light' is a more overtly experimental, but also, a more approachable, shorter offering.  Indeed, it is nearer E.P. proportions, although its five pieces do flow together with the sense of an album-long journey.  Title tracks, 'Wave', 'Particle', 'Photon', 'Spectral Split' and 'Quantum' indicate an overriding theme of light physics but the music's most striking feature is Weber's integration of actual bells, played in real time, into his M.O.  Chimes, metallic clangs and Gamelan resonances recurred throughout 'Black Noise', so it's a logical enough development and grows out of a campanological collaboration undertaken at an Oslo festival in 2011.

Vegar Sandholt at The Carillon.  Now, That's a Keyboard!

For this recording, Weber imported an impressive 50-piece, 3-ton carillon, played by Vegar Sandholt, into his own studio.  Its sounds combine with the precision playing of five other Norwegian ringers and percussionists and his own electronic rhythms and ambiances.  The resulting music underlines Weber's primarily melodic take on Techno.  His rhythm patterns are well judged but tend towards functional underpinning rather than structural complexity for its own sake.  It's perfectly logical that he should employ bell sounds to his ends as they are, of course, simultaneously percussive and melodic.

I note that the original Bell Laboratories are where Max Matthews developed the first musical computer programs in the 1950s.

Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory On Stage

Response:

The album opens with 'Wave', a piece that is full of small-scale, tinkling chimes that justify the 'Glacial' and 'Alpine' epithets often applied to Weber's work.  These aren't the forbidding, Arctic signifiers of a producer like, say, Biosphere,  but evoke, rather, the glistening of snow crystals in bright sunlight or the drip-drip of melting icicles.  Indeed, there is little of the Midnight Sun about his music in general, and rather more of an Alpine meadow in the clear light of day.

'Wave' morphs seamlessly into what may be the album's strongest piece, 'Particle'.  For the first time we have a sense of Weber's Techno sensibilities as essentially organic sounds give way to busier, more mechanistic, contrapuntal chimes.  There is a clear sense of vigorously hammered metal and even the dissonant squeals of mechanical scraping.  It's a longer-form piece which evolves through a number of 'movements' and definitely suggests human activity rather than a natural context, be it pealing church bells, the ticking of clocks and other mechanisms, or the 'pots and pans' clatter of metal working or domestic tasks.  The initial introduction of electronic bass tones and programmed beats occurs several minutes in, is beautifully judged and thrillingly ushers in a heightened sense of propulsion.  It's the first intimation that there are passages on 'Elements of Light' where the beauty of bells and driving rhythms lock together into something far greater than a sum of parts.

... And That's A Drum Kit!

This to and fro between the organic and the clangingly metrical is maintained throughout 'Elements Of Light'.  It occurs again in the album's other long-form piece, 'Spectral Split' which evolves from subdued beginnings to eventually become, through insistent, pulsing bass, snappy beats and layered rhythms, the nearest thing the album has to a conventional, dance floor groove, (albeit one in which ecclesiastical bell ringers have discovered club culture).  It's as though the rising sun has first illuminated the uppermost mountain peaks before chasing shadows from the high valleys and ultimately illuminating the roofs and teeming streets of an Alpine Town.  Calm is restored as the album concludes with the subdued 'Quantum'.  It effectively bookends proceedings, echoing the opening track as miniature hand bell chimes subside back into silence, (and darkness), again.

Alberecht Durer, 'View of Trento', Watercolour, (With Other Media?), 1494

Although framed within the contemporary idioms of electronic tones and programmed rhythms, it's no mystery that the use of bell chimes throughout lends the entire piece an incongruous antique Romanticism, perhaps because the enthusiastic futurism once associated with Techno music no longer seems so appealing in a new century of uncertainty.  Such chiming sonorities are unmistakably centuries old and also feel totally European.  However hard I try, I'm unable to make a mental connection with the science of light as Weber apparently intended.  Instead, I prefer to fantasize it's 500 years ago and some intrepid Northern European traveller is breaking his journey in a Swiss town before descending from The Alps into Northern Italy.  I also recall Northern Renaissance landscape painting and, in particular, work by Durer and Altdorfer.

Alberecht Altdorfer, 'Danube Landscape With Schloss
Worth Near Regensburg', Oil On Panel, 1520-25

Pantha Du Prince seems intent on proving that contemporary electronica can tap sensibilities more varied than customary default settings of utopian/distopian S.F. or pure technology fetishism.  It's also refreshing to encounter a contemporary artist unafraid to engage with something as out-moded as Beauty.

Further Listening:

'Black Light', Pantha Du Prince

'Oblivion With Bells', Underworld

'Rifts', Oneohtrix Point Never

'Madrigals, Book 5', Claudio Monteverdi, Performed by Marco Longhini/Delitiae Musicae

'At The Sign Of The Crumhorn, Flemish Songs & Dance Music From The Susato Music Books', Various Composers, Performed by Convivium Musicum Gothenburgense/Sven Berger/Andreas Edlund

'Complete Lute Music, Volumes 1 - 4', John Dowland, Performed by Nigel North

'Junk Science', Deep Dish

'For The First Time In America', (Live Box Set), Costello & Nieve

'Pure Phase', Spiritualized (Electric Mainline)



[1]:  Derek Walmsley, 'The Games People Play', London, The Wire Magazine 348, February 2013

Kurt's Cuts: 'Schwitters In Britain'

Kurt Schwitters, 'En Morn', Paper Collage, 1947

After my revelatory experience in The British Museum's 'Ice Age Art, Arrival of the Modern Mind' exhibition I made my way to Tate Britain to view their 'Schwitters In Britain' show.  I always get slightly nostalgic when visiting the old building on Millbank.  For so many years it was the go-to location for Modern Art in London and I've lost count of the inspiring exhibitions I've seen there over the years.  The old Sugar Shack was instrumental in my Art education long before the brand explosion of 'Tate', 'Tate Modern/Britain/St. Ives/Liverpool', etc. and, while it's great to have them all, I still enjoy returning to the original site.  It feels odd to enter through the side door as one must do nowadays though.

Kurt Schwitters, 'Untitled, (Including Self Portrait Photo)',
Paper Collage, 1937-38

I was relatively unacquainted with Schwitters' work in the original, although he is, of course, well known for his association with the Dadaist Avant-garde and pioneering use of collage, assemblage and multi-media platforms under the umbrella title of 'Merz'.  Effectively, through his employment of found material and commercial imagery, he forms an Art Historical bridge between pre-War Dada and the Pop Art of the post-War recovery years.  Aspects of his work prefigure the performance, installation and immersive environment trends of more recent years too.

Kurt Schwitters, '47.15 Pine Trees', Mixed Media
Collage, 1946-47

Whilst the show touches on all of this, it's main focus are Schwitters' latter years spent in this country.  In some respects, he represents the epitome of the artist in exile. Having been denounced by inclusion in the Nazi's Degenerate Art Exhibition of 1937, he decamped, first to Norway, then, in 1940, to Britain where he was initially interned as an enemy alien.  He never achieved the stability or established career he sought and died in poverty, but still productive, at his final home in Kendall, Cumbria in 1948

Kurt Schwitters, 'Erster Platz - Mz 307 Jettchen',
Paper Collage, 1921

I found the most impressive works on show to be the small-scale paper collages, and of those, the earlier German examples pleased me most.  I'd never appreciated how delicately cut and assembled they were and how intuitively skillful Schwitters was in balancing his palette of found colours.  Having got my eye in, I also noticed there was a soft, golden cast over many of these pieces which, I realised, was the effects of cheap paper fibres browning over the years.  It seems that even the shock juxtapositions of Dadaist disjuncture are visibly unifying and mellowing with age.  Schwitters' method can appear primarily random and serendipitous, and it would be foolish to overlook the layered meanings and textual détournements arising from the accidents of fragmented text and imagery in his collages.  However, many also display a strong organizational force formally, and some even show a perceivable Constructivist influence.

Kurt Schwitters, 'Das Bumerbild', Mixed-Media Collage, 1920

What did interest me was the way that the later collages, produced during Schwitters' ex-patriot years become rather less elegant and appear to acquire more of what we might regard as a 'Pop' sensibility.  Whether it was by choice, or as the result of improved colour printing I'm not sure, but some certainly seem to presage the Technicolor  aesthetic of the post-war World.  Along with this trend goes a willingness to incorporate more overt elements of knowing humour and even political satire into their content.  Perhaps, along with the hardships and inconveniences of exile, Schwitters was able to enjoy the luxuries of free expression, and the chance of a creative future.

Kurt Schwitters, 'Merz Picture 46A', Mixed Media Assemblage, 1921

I won't pretend I'm as attracted to the relief assemblages, many of which have a kind of street scruffiness without gaining much 'edge' from it, in my view.  The small sculptures fully in the round leave me even less impressed.  However, it's important to remember that so much of this work was lashed together under difficult circumstances or on the fly.   Many of the sculptures were constructed actually during Schwitters' enforced travels and he appears to have been compelled to abandon works or have them sent on to his next interim destination on several occasions.

Kurt Schwitters, 'Untitled, (Opening Blossom'),
Painted Wood & Plaster, 1942-45

That he worked as tirelessly as he did is impressive in itself, considering the material obstacles and indifference he endured following his flight from Germany.  Amongst the British works on show are some fairly underwhelming representational paintings and it's evident that Schwitters attempted to supplement his meagre resources through portraiture and even tourist imagery during his Cumbrian years.  One amongst them did capture my imagination however, being a singularly drab architectural view from a high window and across an expanse of grey roof.  Painted on salvaged linoleum, during his internment on the Isle of Man, it's a touching and salutary reminder of his determination to keep working tirelessly, even with limited options.  That dreary image was imposed on him; not necessarily chosen.

Kurt Schwitters, 'Untitled (Roofs of Houses in Douglas, Isle of Man)'
Oil on Linoleum, 1941

Despite my pleasure in seeing the earlier collages, this might be the most memorable aspect of the Tate exhibition.  At a time when the Arts in Britain face an uncertain future, Schwitters' indomitable creative impulse may be an invaluable example and a reminder that degrees of adversity are all relative.

I'd planned to end my London trip with an evening visit to the Hayward Gallery's seductive 'Light Show' but, disappointingly, as I emerged from The Tate I realised my knackered arthritic knees had other ideas and it would have to wait for another day.  By chance, London was putting on its own riverine light show with a combination of dramatic twilit skies and the intimidating but spectacularly illuminated buildings, (including the bizarrely extrovert MI6 ziggurat), on the Lambeth bank of the Thames.  I contented myself with some consolation photos, (with which I'll end this post), before limping gingerly towards Westminster Tube Station.

'Schwitters In Britain' Runs at Tate Britain, Millbank, London, until 12 May 2013.