 |
| '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.
No comments:
Post a Comment