Navigation 1: Cycle Ride From Digbeth to Gravelly Hill, Birmingham

Great Barr Street Bridge, Grand Union Canal, Digbeth, Birmingham, January 2013

Not long ago, I extolled the virtues of cycling for the urban explorer and paid particular attention to the opportunities it offers to escape the obvious major routes and to experience alternative urban perspectives from the flipside of a city.  An obvious way to access such territory is to drop down onto the towpaths of canal and waterways networks still threading their way through many conurbations, only a few metres away from, (but generally disregarded by), the users of congested roads.  As someone always conscious of his knees, I also appreciate the relatively level terrain they provide.

Grand Union Canal Bridge, Digbeth, Birmingham, January 2013

My friend Dave Weight and I made just such an expedition recently by shoving our bikes and cameras in the back of the car and driving over to Birmingham to begin what I hope may become an ongoing two-wheeled exploration of that city’s waterways.  We’ve both done plenty of this sort of thing in Leicester over the years but Birmingham is famous for the magnitude of its canal network, (insert standard clichéd comparison with Venice, etc.), and offers a wealth of potential new experiences and an escape from the over-familiar.  My photos from the day generally relate to a series of (by now), familiar themes within my artwork and more general thinking about urban environments.  To avoid an even more massive post, I’ll deal with a couple of these specifically in separate bulletins.  This one covers our ride more generally.

Digbeth, Birmingham, August 2013 

We’d already strolled a short stretch of the Grand Union towpath during a photographic walk around the Digbeth area, some months previously, when we also visited the strange world beneath the massive ‘Spaghetti Junction’/Gravelly Hill Road Interchange on Birmingham’s northern perimeter.  Despite the obvious prevalence of elevated carriageways, canals are also a feature of that complex maelstrom of competing routes.  This trip joined those two favourite sites via the Digbeth Branch and Fazeley & Birmingham cuts.  It’s not a massive distance to cycle but took us through a variety of urban landscapes and provided a wealth of sensory stimuli and photographic subject matter.

Digbeth, Birmingham, August 2013

Inevitably, I collected various examples of signage, graffiti and other textual fragments.  Such details are of perpetual fascination to me, both as formal elements and clues to possible meaning, and I remain committed to their incorporation within my artwork.  The same is true of the physical textures of entropy, dilapidation, botched repair and sheer materiality so prevalent within any city, and several examples of all this were obtained in Digbeth before and after our progress along the towpath.  The area remains a rich visual hunting ground being caught in transition between the dereliction of dead industry and the ad-hoc opportunism of more adaptable recent enterprises.  Sprinkled amongst these are various style-conscious flowerings of the current ‘Creative Industries’, (ugh!), but, thankfully, the gentrification of Digbeth still has some way to go.

Digbeth, Birmingham, August 2012

Our waterside ride passed through several zones of the city, each with its own distinct atmosphere and physical characteristics.  I was struck by the contrast between the clinical corporate presentation of certain stretches and the less ordered, but visually far richer, industrial tenor of others.  It seems that the aesthetic rewards of the information and service sectors remain largely virtual and trapped within telecommunications infrastructure.  Further evidence of the processes of transformation was to be found close to Birmingham’s University/Millenium Point quarter where another vast area, punctuated by huge yellow cranes, has been cleared for regeneration.  We detoured here to examine the spectacular dereliction of an ornate Victorian factory but even more poignant to me was the abandoned triangular house overlooking the canal at the junction of Belmont Row and Pitt Street.  Isolated on one corner of the construction zone and prey to the attentions of taggers and vandals, it remains a poignant, strangely dignified relic from a lost tract of the old city that is being hastily reimagined.  It also recalls an era when people lived and worked in the same locales.

Abandoned Canal Side House, Birmingham, August 2013

Diversion & Dereliction: Birmingham, August 2013

Regeneration: Birmingham, August 2013

Derelict Factory:  Birmingham, August 2013.  Photo:  David Weight

We made another brief detour further along our route to photograph three vast Victorian gas storage gantries that have been painted claret and blue, in tribute, (I assume), to Aston Villa FC.  It’s interesting how community pride in a football club has transmogrified into the imposition of corporate sports branding onto the local environment on such a scale.  The surrealism of such gestures strikes me as pretty ludicrous but also strangely enjoyable.

Aston, Birmingham, August 2013

On our journey, the sense of changing mood and palpable atmosphere was particularly powerful at the two points where the canal passed through tunnels and, reviewing my photos, I wish I’d made some attempt to document this.  A particular sense of urban dread pertains to the unlit section beneath the main railway lines running towards Moor Street and New Street stations.  We passed through rapidly, having spotted a couple of figures lurking in the shadows late, and emerged relieved that it was merely the occasion of a cheeky toke.

Junction Of Digbeth Branch And Birmingham & Fazeley Canals, Birmingham, August 2013

In such locations I’m prompted to consider the importance of illumination, acoustics and even smell in contributing to a particular mood or subjective response.  It fuels a, so far largely unfulfilled, desire to extend my practice into other media, (the movement from darkness towards a distant light being an obvious subject better documented by video than static imagery for instance), and emphasises the immersive, multi-sensual experiences afforded the pedestrian or cyclist.  The advisability of carrying valuable electronic equipment into such locations may remain open to question but I guess you can’t plunge into the urban underbelly without also accepting some of its potential dangers.

No Pressure: Birmingham, August 2013

For me, the most obvious theme of our journey was that of different transport and communication routes, of varying status and visibility, intersecting the built environment.  Passing beneath roads, railway lines, footbridges, gas pipelines, and even each other, waterways provide a delicious opportunity to experience the city in reverse and to witness the ‘warts and all’ realities of life and work unfolding behind facades habitually presented to the street. They also represent a descent through time to an archaic industrial transport network now rededicated to less utilitarian use. Whilst not strictly ‘unofficial’ as such, they are obvious magnets for deviants, artists, dreamers and those wanting to snatch a moment or slow the clock.  Relieved of trade and commerce, they now provide conduits for our thoughts and dreams to flow through the modern world unimpeded.

Beneath Gravelly Hill Interchange, Birmingham, 2013

The reality of all this is fully realized at Gravelly Hill, where all routes come together and we paused for refreshment beneath the M6 motorway.  Once again, we delighted in the effects of reflected light on the vast concrete canopy above and the complex sonic environment fluctuating on the underside of brutal modernity.  Many of the photos I took there record the rapid passage of vehicles and the relationship between concrete structures and reflections in standing water.  All around us puddles were regularly punctuated by concentric ripples as drips leached through the overhead concrete after earlier heavy rain.  I also experimented with some scratch video of the undulating canal-surface reflection of a brightly lit Sky TV advertisement.  This was partly in tribute to the work of Christiane Baumgartner that impressed me at the ‘Metropolis: Reflections On The Modern City’ Exhibition in June and a reminder that it really is time I invested in a dedicated video camera.

Beneath Gravelly Hill Interchange, Birmingham, August 2013.
Photo:  David Weight

Beneath Gravelly Hill Interchange, Birmingham, August 2013

It was a great day, full of stimulating thoughts and impressions, and something I hope we can repeat soon.  Certainly, Brum has no shortage of canals for us to explore.