Fourteen, Fifteen, One Hundred

Work In Progress, New Year's Eve 2014

It’s been a pretty enjoyable Christmas break this year.  I’ve had plenty of R&R, and eaten and drunk enough to remember just how lucky I am to have the option.  I’ve also attended several cheery social gatherings and had many enjoyable conversations in the process.

New Year’s Eve will be a quiet one this year though.  I intend to be painting at midnight, with occasional recourse to a bottle of the good stuff.  In case that sounds a little tragic, it’s actually become something of a ritual with me in recent times.  After so many years of regretting my failure to really function as an artist, the last few have seen me producing artwork consistently and with none of my old doubts about my abilities.  I won’t claim everything done in that time has been of the highest standard, but it’s all stuff I believed in while I was doing it.  Most importantly, at no point did I feel like stopping.  It’s back where it belongs, (at the centre of my life), and I can no longer really imagine not devoting as much of my available time to it as possible.

It feels even more appropriate than ever to be getting back to the easel as soon as possible this year.  I have an exhibition to work towards, (next June, - at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum, with Andrew Smith), and it’s inevitable that will occupy increasing amounts of my attention as the deadline looms.  The house may be a mess, (and my workroom even more so), but there are four paintings intended for that show well under way, and a few remaining days of school holiday to push them along as far as possible.

So, to be hard at work, and ankle-deep in torn paper, acrylic paint and PVA as the old year clicks over into the new, actually feels like an excellent and enjoyable way to be facing the future.

Postscript:

I'll admit, I've worked hard this month to get the blog post count up to 100 for the year, (a mere affectation, - I have a slightly autistic liking for round numbers).  For the reasons outlined above, it’s possible that my bulletins may be a little thinner on the ground during the first half of 2015.  I certainly intend to keep the blog going though, - so thanks to all those who bother to come back on a regular basis, (and to leave encouraging comments).  I hope I can still dredge up a few things of interest in the coming months.

Happy New Year

Just Another Face In The Street

I took a load of pictures of grey boxes in the street, some time ago, but this is the best one I've seen for a while.  They might be the most anonymous, overlooked form of street furniture of all, but I like their totemic qualities and the way they often come to resemble way markers or unofficial message boards.

Mapperley, Nottingham, December 2014

Mostly, this one just makes me chuckle though.

…And The Day After

Washingborough, Lincolnshire, December 2014

We had a little fall of snow on Boxing Day evening this year.  It was a few hours too late to allow for much sentimentalising over white Christmases, and didn’t hang around very long, - at least where I was.  Nonetheless, this being Britain, a few centimetres of the white stuff quickly became inflated in the media imagination into a major weather event.  There were numerous weather and travel warnings, shading into implications of infrastructure breakdown and societal collapse.  Apologies to anyone who may have experienced the odd closed road or cancelled bus service, or who may have lost control on a slippery road, but really I’m baffled by how easily we get ourselves into a national tizzy about so little in this country.  Like most Brits, I retain a race-fascination with the weather, but this affected mild helplessness is something else again.

Washingborough, Lincolnshire, December 2014

Anyway, it was pretty enough for a few hours on 27 December, and I'm always intrigued by how a fall of snow can affect the quality of illumination and general appearance of the most familiar surroundings.  Finding myself at my parental home, just outside Lincoln, I took a couple of shots of melting snow in the placid housing estate where my Mother and Stepfather live.  I won’t pretend this is normally the most stimulating environment, (visually or otherwise), but after its dusting of snow, I was immediately reminded of George Shaw’s lovely painting of a similar situation, ‘Scenes From The Passion: The First Day Of The Year’.

George Shaw, ‘Scenes From The Passion: The First Day Of The Year’, Humbrol Enamel
On Board, 2003.

I’ve outlined my enthusiasm for Shaw’s work before, and always respond to his ability to mine a rich vein of melancholy visual poetry within the mundane surroundings of his childhood home in Coventry’s Tile Hill.  I don’t have the same emotional memory-connection with my Mother’s current home, so this time it was really a case of reality taking on greater resonance through the imitation of Art.

Ermine Estate, Lincoln, (Photographer Unknown)

Coincidentally, I'd earlier taken a little car journey of reminiscence around Lincoln’s Ermine Estate, on the city’s northern fringes.  The Ermine is a post-war housing development with a certain nostalgic resonance for me, being a place I, and my friends would often wander around aimlessly during our Secondary School lunch breaks.  We were searching for some undefined excitement beyond the school gates I suppose, but never really found it.  Strangely though, for all its suburban blandness, the estate always had a sense of slightly alien potential in my mind, - a frisson of stimulating unease.  Perhaps, I should undertake my own visual exploration of that peripheral territory of the imagination some day.

Boxing Day...

Civic Pride: Bus Station Car Park, Lincoln, December 2014

I found myself back in my old hometown of Lincoln again, over the Christmas period.  My Mother still lives just outside the city and I periodically go into town to mooch about when I’m over that way, for old times sake if for no other.  Boxing Day is an obvious time to struggle out of one's chair and walk off a few accumulated calories, - and to take the camera for a stroll.

Bus Station, Lincoln, December 2014

Bus Station Car Park, Lincoln, December 2014

I’ve written before about Lincoln’s more picturesque aspects and how many of its older streets and buildings are tied up with my memories of childhood and my teenage years.  There’s no doubt that the most historical surviving quarter of the city retains an obvious charm, and it’s impossible to ignore both the Cathedral and the Norman Castle, perched high on the escarpment, at its heart.

Bus Station, Lincoln, December 2014

However, it is easy to get sucked into statements of the bleedin’ obvious, both visually and verbally, when contemplating such edifices, and its certainly true that my artistic eye and camera lens are generally drawn to a completely different brand of urban beauty these days. 

Bus Station Car Park, Lincoln, December 2014

Of course, you could argue that most of the images shown here fit equally comfortably into my regular comfort zone of car park-related iconography, entropic architectural detail and primary yellow things, but I struggle to shrug off my fascination with such stuff - so sue me, I guess.

St Mary's Street Car Park, Lincoln, December 2014

Bus Station Car Park, Lincoln, December 2014

St Mary's Car Park, Lincoln, December 2014

Some of these details of curbs, duct covers, road markings, etc. tie in with ideas I’m currently exploring around the theme of reinterpreted micro-landscapes.  It’s too early to tell how that might really play out yet, but for now, I’m justifying such images as valuable research.  Other, related examples are simply just part of my unending fascination with the city as a realm of signs, texts and potential clues, - an environment that might be read literally, conceptually or metaphorically.

Private Car Park, St Mary's Street, Lincoln, December 2014

Other things, like the terrific little fireplace, now looking onto a small car park, where a building once stood, or the beautifully re-rendered patch of wall adjacent to it, were just too visually arresting to let pass without remark.

West Front, Lincoln Cathedral, December 2014

I found myself up by the Cathedral as the gloomy Boxing Day light was failing, and had some notion of trying to do something impressionistic about the illuminated West Front with my phone, (in the ‘light’ of my previous post).  When floodlit, that immense cliff of decorative masonry can acquire an almost hallucinatory aspect that is hard to resist.  Sadly, the lights were yet to come on so instead, I had to content myself with more formal ways of trying to suggest something of the façade’s vertiginous qualities.  It’s been there nearly a thousand years, and even survived a minor earthquake, - so I imagine it’ll still be there for me to try again another day.

Season's Greetings 2014

I'm not a complete Luddite, - I'm writing this after all.  However, I will admit to being more comfortable or intuitive with some forms of digital technology than others, - and have made no secret of my distaste for phones as devices for image-capture.  I find them too small, too light, and consequently, too prone to camera-shake.  I also find anything with a touch screen pretty frustrating, and am regularly tripped-up by the yawning shutter-lag (on my phone at least).

However, I am also aware that much of my regular photography is marked by a somewhat habitual formality, a heavy reliance on careful composition and exposure, (both in-camera, and in post production), and that it may be overly static and DSLR-centric in general.  

I certainly don't intend to put away the big Canon any time soon, but taking more experimental, and certainly more dynamic, still photos, through the windscreen of my moving car with a Digital Video camera, around this time last year, certainly persuaded me there's more than one way to skin a cat.

That's something that I was reminded of whilst viewing my friend, and fellow artist, Shaun Morris' recent phone-grabs of nocturnal lorry parks on his own blog, - full as they are of light bleeds and trails, imperfect exposures, and other visually interesting, random elements.

Inspired by Shaun's shots, and in search of a few festive photos with which to toast the season, I quickly harvested these phone images, on the way home from a last-minute Christmas shopping excursion, earlier this evening.  Apart from a little judicious cropping in a couple of them, everything you see is exactly as my phone grabbed it.  I certainly appreciate the rapidity with which working this way allowed me to get the post up, and also the quality of festivity-through-gritted-teeth-on-a-wet-December-evening that the images contain.  That certainly derives, in part, from my ham-fisted employment of a cheap device, - clearly up against its own technical limitations.  It also seems highly suited to the current state of Britain, in all its increasingly alienated austerity.  

All Images: Stocking Farm Estate, Leicester, December 2014

I realise this is all the kind of stuff most people have taken for granted for years, but I've never claimed to be an early adopter.  It also makes me realise that, even in an era when everyone is a prolific photographer by default, my own motives for taking photos may still differ from those of many around me, (perhaps everyone's vary, in reality).  Anyway, enough with the philosophising. It's time for a few days of unquestioning festivity.

Happy Christmas.

R.I.P. Billie Whitelaw

Billie Whitelaw.  Photo: Jane Brown, Bromide Print, 1969, Collection Of
 National Portrait Gallery, London

I was saddened to hear of the recent death of the respected actress, Billie Whitelaw.  She had a long and varied career, whose cinematic work ranged from working with director, Alfred Hitchcock on the film ‘Frenzy’ [1.], and in the influential 1970s horror movie, ‘The Omen’ [2.], - to the more recent knockabout of the Simon Pegg vehicle, ‘Hot Fuzz’ [3.].

However, she was  most highly regarded for her stage performances, and in particular, - for her work with playwright, Samuel Beckett.  That’s certainly where I first became aware of her work, and where it made the deepest impression on me.  Like anyone with a penchant for a little light Existentialism, I’ve always been drawn to Beckett’s drama, and have vivid memories of the powerful influence it exerted over me at an early age.

Billie Whitelaw Working In Production With Samuel Beckett, 1979.
Photo: John Haynes/Lebrecht

Back in the mid 1970’s, just as I was becoming a receptive teenager with a burgeoning, self-conscious taste for the strange and experimental, it wasn’t too unusual for serious stuff, like productions of Beckett plays, to still turn up on TV, - often on BBC2 on a Sunday evening.  My - how times (and our culture), have changed!  Enjoying the status of Beckett’s ‘muse’, and most favoured dramatic interpreter, Billie Whitelaw often featured in these.  At that age, my appreciation was undoubtedly as much for the overall visual impact of such productions as for the text, and I have particular memories of her performance in ‘Footfalls’ [4.], in which her shadowing figure repeatedly paces a narrow strip of light, on a darkened, empty stage.

Beckett’s work is associated with the darkness of existential despair, but there are, of course, strong elements of absurdity and (admittedly bleak), humour in there too.  Whitelaw proved herself adept at extracting multiple nuances from the often-limited dramatic material, highly stylised text, and bizarre staging he gave her to work with.  This might include performing whilst incarcerated within a large funerary urn, in ‘Play’ [5.], or whilst buried up to the waist, in ‘Happy Days’ [6.], or, most famously, as an isolated, spot-lit mouth emerging from the surrounding blackness in ‘Not I’ [7.].  That last example is one of the most arresting images in all of theatre, (or any other art form, for that matter), whilst Whitelaw's performance is a vocal tour de force.

The numerous photos of Billie Whitelaw over the years demonstrate her striking good looks, and it’s always impressive when such an actress is able to leave behind any reliance on outward appearance or the glamourous image, to become fully engaged with the truth of the ‘Human Condition’ - however unflattering or undignified the demands of the part.  It’s testament to her creative integrity that she should embrace the challenges that Beckett set her, repeatedly and with alacrity.  In the process, she became integral, (even essential), to some of the most important artistic expressions of the 20th century.

[1.]:  Alfred Hitchcock, ‘Frenzy’ (Dir. & Prod.), 1972

[2.]:  Richard Donner (Dir.), ‘The Omen’, Harvey Bernard (Prod.), 1976

[3.]:  Edgar Wright (Dir.), ‘Hot Fuzz’, Studio Canal/Working Title Films/Big Talk Productions, 2007.  Although undeniably, an enjoyable romp, there is a darker side even to this piece, - as with so much of the work Whitelaw became associated with.

[4.]:  Samuel Beckett, ‘Footfalls’, Play, Written: 1975.  This piece was written specifically for Billie Whitelaw.

[5.]:  Samuel Beckett, ‘Play’, Play, Written: 1963-63

[6.]:  Samuel Beckett, ‘Happy Days’, Play, Written: 1961

[7.]:  Samuel Beckett, ‘Not I’, Dramatic Monologue, Written: 1972.  (The isolation of the expressive mouth as an existential device has cropped on several other occasions, most notably in Francis Bacon’s famous paintings of screaming Popes, and the artwork of Swans’ harrowing ‘Filth’ album).

The Geometry Of Danger

Here are two images culled from my archives of relatively recent photographs.  Each was taken as incidental aside to a completely different subject.  Each also combines a variety of functional, metallic geometry with an element of hazard graphics.  However, they differ markedly in several other respects.

Keep Off:  Rugby, Warwickshire, November 2014

The first is somewhat expressionistic, and evokes an almost Punkish element of threat.  I'm always drawn to these bald, 'Danger Of Death' statements, whenever I encounter them.  I like their lack of H&S bullshit, and the no-nonsense, illustrations that are usually included.  Ultimately, all that forbidding spikiness has our own interests at heart.

Keep Out: Central Leicester, April 2014

The second is far more ambiguous, and largely about Minimalism, and abstract formalism generally.  There's a synthetic gaiety about the taped hazard stripes, which reminds me of the more abstract end of Pop Art somehow, (Richard Smith - perhaps?).  Only later, do I notice the slight hint of implied bondage.  In fact, this one implies exclusion for different reasons, and seems more about fortification as a territorial statement, than any attempt to protect the reckless.

Love Against The Wall (Girl/Boy)

North Leicester, November 2014

The city has many hearts.  I find them beating with passion, wherever I go.

Trolley Splash 1

A perfect cliché on a perfect day...

River Soar, North Leicester, December 2014

Concrete 3: Memories Of The Future

Crown House, Central Leicester, November 2014

All that crumbling concrete and haunted Modernism in my last post is just too delicious, so here are a few more images from the same shooting location.  Some of these are a little more oblique or formally self-conscious and, as with so much of what I do, there’s that love of the atmospheres, surfaces and materiality of my urban surroundings.

Multi-Story Car Park, Lee Circle, Central Leicester, November 2014

The images here all derive from my ongoing quest for locations for my concrete-themed video collaboration with Andrew Smith.  How much of this footage will find it’s way into our final effort is impossible to predict, but I’m massively enjoying just getting out there with the video camera and bagging such subjects, wherever I find them.  I’m conscious that, around the turn of the year, we’ll need to harden down, both thematically and editorially, and I’m sure that will be when the real work (and learning) really starts.  The aim is to have something coherent to show at our ‘Mental Mapping’ exhibition at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum, next June.

For now though, it’s still about the sheer pleasure of getting out there and hunting down the raw imagery, despite the drawbacks of plunging temperatures and ever-diminishing light levels.  Increasingly, I’ve found myself wandering out of mic range with the DSLR to collect static shots at the same time, leaving the movie camera to get on with it, when appropriate.

Multi-Story Car Park, Lee Circle, Central Leicester, October 2014

For this shoot, I based myself in Leicester’s Lee Circle multi-story car park, - an edifice whose wider significance I touched on last time.  Fairly early on a Saturday morning, I had the deserted upper decks to myself and was clearly of insufficient interest to Security for them to inquire about my (plainly benign) activities [1.].

Multi-Story Car Park, Lee Circle, Central Leicester, November 2014

The car park structure is of obvious appeal as a subject in its own right, and it was fascinating to be able to catalogue those interior spaces in their abandonment, whilst conscious of the building slowly filling up with vehicles from below like an encroaching tide.  This was conveyed through the ever-increasing volume of sound events drifting up the building’s ramps and central well, and also through the quality of vibrations transmitted through different parts of the physical structure.  A certain multi-sensory heightening is one of the notable features of this steady-gaze approach to filming and I’ve never once become bored, as I’ve allowed the true experiential dimensions of such places to unfold, as my static lens records minimal ‘action’ in real time [2.].  Increasingly, I seem to find ever more captivating layers of stimulus in locations that so many others seem to keen to disregard, despise, or escape from as rapidly as possible.

Crown House From Lee Circle Car Park

The other point about the car park is that it provides an admirable vantage point from which to survey other notable and related landmarks.  Prime amongst these is the abandoned, and increasingly derelict, Crown House, just across the road.  This sublimely ugly monolith is rapidly becoming a bona fide modern ruin, - a state that often presages imminent demolition.  Interestingly, the plot immediately in front of the building was temporarily used as an impromptu car park until recently.  My interest in urban car parks sometimes feels perplexingly nerdish [3.], but I can’t help musing on the differences between the contemporary organic opportunism of today, and the very conscious planning of the 1960s temple to parking opposite.

This One Speaks For Itself, Doesn't It?

Lee Circle, Central Leicester, October 2014

I don’t know what the plans are for Crown House, (although the hoardings around what is now an exclusion zone, don’t bode well).  For now, I must confess, it fascinates me in its decaying state far more than when in use.  The view from the car park allowed me to document the rich textural interest now evident at ground level, where certain sections have already been removed, and the increasing variation in the strict grid of its façade, - created as windows are gradually broken or boarded up.

Crown House, Central Leicester, November 2014

Beyond the Multi-Story, on the other side of Lee Circle, lies a rather beautiful building that once housed Leicester’s main Telephone Exchange.  This is an example of a lighter, earlier tradition of Modernism than the sullen Brutalism of Crown House.  It displays the influence of Scandinavian design and a hint of the ocean liner or seaside aesthetic that once reflected a more pleasure-seeking aspect of Modernism.  This is reinforced by the off-white paint that coats its concrete.  That paint is fairly clean, and the building well maintained, having been redeveloped as an apartment block in recent years.  In that respect, it represents somewhat misplaced, pre-recession attempts to gentrify a neighbourhood that, for now, remains resolutely down-at-heel.

Redeveloped Telephone Exchange, Lee Circle, Central Leicester, November 2014

A couple of other notable, slightly more distant landmarks caught my eye in passing, as I looked out from Lee Circle Car Park.  One is the impassive, slab-sided stump of The Cardinal Exchange Tower, - another telecoms-related building that, I assume, replaced the earlier exchange as the telephone network expanded.  It’s closer to Crown House in its stern aesthetic, and even taller, remaining a powerful presence on the Leicester skyline.

Redeveloped Telephone Exchange, With Newer Cardinal Exchange Tower Beyond,
Central Leicester, November 2014

Of rather more ruin appeal is another, slightly alarming multi-story car park edifice, situated a little to the north east of Lee Circle, between Abbey Street and Garden Street.  If the aesthetics of Lee Circle divide opinion, it’s probably fair to say only an architect’s mother could have loved this one - even in the 1960s.  It’s another example of how central the car was to the thinking of urban planners of the period, this time featuring a hotel (most recently, the Sky Plaza), perched inelegantly on top of a distinctly rickety looking multi-deck parking structure.  It’s been empty since a fire in 2012, but is clearly visited in its increasingly disheveled, current incarnation by Urban Explorers and Graffiti Writers.

Sky Plaza Hotel & Car Park Building, Central Leicester, November 2014

Looking out from Lee Circle, towards the Sky Plaza building, you can almost sense the two monuments to a past era speak to each other of lost optimism across the intervening rooftops of a more disappointed age.  With my fantasy head on, the Sky Plaza building even feels a little like some post-apocalyptic rampart, - rising from a decaying cityscape.  Re-imagined in a suitable dystopian SF novel or film, it might be peopled by refugees, survivalists, anarchists, mutants, or who knows what?

Multi-Story Car Park, Lee Circle, Central Leicester, November 2014

[1.]:  I’ve lost count of how many times this has happened as I’ve been out and about with my cameras, in locations clearly not commonly regarded as standard photographic subject matter.  Most recently, two Police Officers interrupted me; keen to know why I was filming in a desolate Leicester underpass.  In fairness, they were nice as pie and professed to be merely intrigued.  Generally, I find that claiming to be “An Artist, - recording my surroundings”, satisfies both authority figures and curious members of the public, who (I imagine) probably go on their way convinced they’ve just encountered a harmless nutter.

[2.]:  Of course, very few subjects can be said to be completely static.  One theme that has already emerged, as I’ve filmed in various locations, is the wealth of nuances, perceptual shifts, micro-actions and implied events that often reveal themselves in nominally motionless, environmental subjects.  Having got my eye (and ear) in, I often find that the smallest movements, changes in illumination, fugitive cast shadows, or passing sounds, begin to feel like major events. 

[3.]:  Does this make me a Nurb?