Colour / Not Colour 5

A little colour goes a long way in a drab world.  This building houses a Community Centre in Leicester, and yet parts of it are fascinating in their almost alien blankness.  I particularly like the way that strip of windows filters the sky into five varieties of chromatic unearthliness. 

Peepul Centre, North Leicester, June 2014

Information & Decay 1

East Leicester, June 2014

Increasingly, our lives are played out on a meta level.  We withdraw from the material dimension as packets of information pass between the very molecules of a decaying world.

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Blog Post

Connections, connections, (you know how this goes by now…).

I’m currently reading Tom Wolfe’s ‘The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby’ [1.], and enjoying it immensely.  It’s significant for a few reasons, not least because it offers an excuse to put up some more photos of this beautiful orange hot rod.  It particularly caught my eye, amongst exotic vehicles of all shapes and sizes, when I went to watch some drag racing, a few weeks back.  The car won the Best At Show award in the ‘Show & Shine’ section at Santa Pod Raceway’s ‘Dragstalgia 2014’ event, but I’m ashamed to say I don’t know the owner’s name. Anyway, it's a marvelous example of the breed (’34 Ford Coupe), and the kind of thing that elevates car bodywork to the level of fetishism.  It’s not technically metal-flake, but that paint job absolutely shimmers.   In most respects, the car could be an illustration of Wolfe’s title.  It looks like  Pop Art made real.

1934 Ford Coupe

Which leads me to reflect on how, maybe at the age of 12 or 13, I picked up a copy of the book in a shop one day, no doubt attracted by the cover image, (another orange Ford, if I remember rightly) [2.], and that delightful, Rococo title.  As already mentioned, I was fascinated by hot rods and custom cars back then and, actually, these occasional automotive diversions from the real intent of this blog might just be about indulging in a little enjoyable, mid-life juvenilia.  I had no real insight into the book’s true nature and, lacking the funds to purchase it anyway, I just put it down and moved on.  I’ve thought about it every now and then, over the years whenever Tom Wolfe’s name came up, and his cultural significance became more apparent. Up until now though, I just never got round to doing anything about it.

Tom Wolfe In Full Country Gent/Literary Dandy Mode

Published in 1965, ‘TKKTFSB’ was the author’s first book and represents a collection of his journalistic essays on the social mores, status displays and sub-cultural currents running through America at the time.  It covers a range of topics and is by no means a book all about cars.  Nevertheless, in addition to the title essay, which contextualises the ‘Kustom Kar’ scene of the era as essentially a youth cult, he also includes one on stock car racing, (now usually known as NASCAR), and another on the bizarre spectacle of the Demolition Derby [3.].  It’s important to remember that cars are massively important as American cultural signifiers, at least as much as they are a simple means of transport.

Demolition Derby:  The Point At Which American Car Culture Effectively Eats Itself.

Wolfe was a doyen of what became known as The New Journalism, an approach in which the conventions of fiction were mixed, often experimentally, with objective, factual reportage.  His style is more refined than the simulant-fuelled psychosis of Hunter S Thompson, but he does employ an insouciant hipsterism that still conveys an air of delight in his often-outlandish subject matter.  He’s also capable of genuine human insights.  The title essay details the complexities of the hot car scene, and the history and sociological elements that shaped it.  It then goes on to profile, often in their own words, two of the leading lights of the sub-culture, George Barris and Ed Roth.  Beyond merely describing their exploits, he attempts psychological insights into their motivations and is quite moving on the relationship between them and the oddball lieutenants who attach themselves to their respective workshops.

George Barris, Dodge Deoria Pickup.  Channelling The Pop Futurism Of The Era.

Ed Roth, 'Outlaw'.  A Typical Fusion Of The Retro And The Streamlined

If the Californian car scene was ultimately based on the idea of making cars go very fast in straight lines, Stock Car Racing was all about going round and round in circles at similarly suicidal speeds.  Its genesis was largely located in the southern states and grew from the attempts of bootleggers of moonshine whiskey to outrun the Police in surreptitiously over-tuned cars.  Wolfe covers this in interesting detail in ‘The Last American Hero’.  It’s worth noting that he’s very good on those differing regional aethetics and sensibilities.  He posits the Kustomizer’s urge towards the streamlined and curvilinear as an essentially west coast, Dionysian impulse, and at odds with the Apollonian sensibility of Detroit’s more rectilinear mainstream styling of the period [4.].  This ability to apply those aesthetic considerations normally allocated with 'High Art', to commercial products or popular expressions lies at the heart of Pop Art. 'TKKTFSB' might be seen as one of its seminal texts. 

Junior Johnson In His Heyday

The real subject of his Stock Car piece is Junior Johnson, a renegade star of the sport, and a man with Bootlegging in his DNA.  Wolfe’s close quarters observations of Johnson brings a wealth of picturesque detail, but also, serious insights into the clan loyalties, physical courage and anti-authoritarianism of Appalachian mountain communities.  He also manages to draw a picture of fully fleshed-out personality, rather than a mere 'Good Ol' Boy' stereotype.  Johnson also has a clearly defined code of personal ethics and a nuanced hinterland to back it up.

Photos:  Erik Bartlam

The final piece in this little jigsaw is an explanation of why I finally got round to purchasing a copy of ‘The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby’.  It was mentioned to me in an email by one of my regular readers, Erik Bartlam.  Erik’s another part-time Artist and blogger, based in Mississippi, whose own blog you can read here.  He’s left various positive comments on here, over the months and had kindly sent me a few of his own photographs to look at.  There are definite correspondences in the kind of subjects that draw our respective lenses and we found ourselves exchanging views on William Eggleston, - a photographer, (and another southerner), who clearly influences us both.  Erik gave me a few interesting insights into the Southern mindset and, in passing, mentioned Wolfe’s book, (in the light of my drag racing post).  There seemed nothing left to do but order myself a copy.

Photos: Erik Bartlam

It’s hardly an original observation, but I really like the way that having an online presence, and blogging in particular, allow one to make this kind of creative connection over thousands of miles.  I suppose I should have got over my pleasant surprise at what the rest of the world takes for granted by now, but I’ve always been a pretty late adopter.  Anyway, as ever, it just proves again that it’s all about making the connections.

Photos: Erik Bartlam

In conclusion, I’ve included Erik’s photos here.  I know he doesn’t take his photographs too seriously as images in their own right (although I think these stand up well enough) so I hope he doesn’t mind.  (Let me know if you’d rather I removed them again, Erik).

[1.]:  Tom Wolfe, ‘The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby’, New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965

[2.]:  ‘Interestingly’, the actual car described in the text is a ‘kustomized’ Chevrolet, but you can’t always make everything join up.

[3.]:  Demolition Derbies are, it transpires one of those strange, decadent examples of an existing form turning in on itself.  In this case, it marks an attempt to distill the more extreme aspects of Stock Car Racing into a bastard form that’s purely about the crashes.  There’s a cheerful nihilism about that, which we can all appreciate - surely?

[4.]:  I suspect one could extrapolate this idea further to imagine a contrast between the Catholic/Latinate and the Protestant/European strands of American consciousness.  Certainly, the influence of Latin America on the southern Pacific States shouldn’t be overlooked.

P-Funk 1: London Perambulations

THE P-WORD:

Like many other folk these days, I drop the word 'psychogeography' with careless abandon.  Indeed this blog is littered with it, as are many others, along with numerous books, articles, films, lectures, seminars, websites, tweets, - and who knows what else?  It's a term (perhaps like 'Hauntology') which describes a recognisable sensibility within certain cultural expressions, but which has inevitably become devalued through its over-application to a increasingly diverse range of artefacts and activities.

Of course, it's not unusual for such invented, theoretical labels to become adapted to different uses and often disputed over, in the process losing any currency they may have once had through dwindling specificity or changes in intellectual fashion.  I don't want to embark on an extended discussion of the word's multiple applications and provenances here, but would once again refer anyone interested in the Psychogeographic tradition to Merlin Coverley's useful little overview, 'Psychogeography' [1.].  In his introduction, Coverley himself states, 

'Psychogeography'. A term that has become strangely familiar - strange because, despite the frequency of its usage, no one seems quite able to pin down exactly what it means or where it comes from.  The names are all familiar too:  Guy Debord and the Situationists, Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd, Stewart Home and Will Self.  Are they all involved?  And, if so, in what?  Are we talking about a predominantly literary movement or a political strategy, a series of new age ideas or a set of avant-garde practices?  The answer, of course, is that psychogeography is full of all these things, resisting definition through a shifting series of interwoven themes and constantly being reshaped by its practitioners." [2.]

Self-Styled Comic Book Magus, Alan Moore

In the light of this, I was interested to see that Iain Sinclair, a writer who many may see as sitting at the head of the table of literary psychogeography,  now appears to reject the term altogether. This was made plain to me whilst reading the Quietus article, (already referred to in one of my subway-themed posts), in which comic book writer, Alan Moore, discussed his own psychogeographical interests in relation to Sinclair.

"Perhaps understandably, Sinclair has more recently attempted to distance himself from the term psychogeography. In the film, 'The London Perambulator', Sinclair urges that psychogeography had relevance when the Situationist used it as an aggressive way of dealing with the city, and then again when Stewart Home later resurrected it and brought comedic value to it, but eventually became a 'nasty brand name' used to describe almost anything to do with cities or walking. He has instead signed up to Nick Papadimitriou's notion of 'Deep Topography' which brings the tradition back to that of the British naturalist, the wanderer of edges who is not so preoccupied with the concept of his practice." [3.]

Iain Sinclair

To be honest, I'm happy to leave the semantic debate hanging.  Suffice it to say, for my money, 'Deep Topography' is a perfectly pleasing term - if no more or less useful than the term Sinclair is keen to replace.  Instead, the Quietus article led to me consider two other questions.  Firstly, who exactly is Nick Papadimitriou?  Secondly, why did it take me so long to get round to watching 'The London Perambulator'?



PERAMBULATOR:

Nick Papadimitriou.  Still From John Rogers (Dir.), 'The London Perambulator',  2009

'The London Perambulator' is a documentary film, made in 2009 and directed by John Rogers.  It takes as its subject the activities of outsider/Deep Topographer, Nick Papadimitriou, a man who, (even more than any of the other names dropped here), could be labelled a genuine and rather marvellous eccentric.  Certainly, his whole life now seems to be subsumed into an endless cycle of wanderings and detailed explorations of those parts of Middlesex that most people would automatically overlook.  His chosen patch is archetypal Edgeland territory, with all that that implies.  The film includes significant contributions from Iain Sinclair, Will Self, (for both of whom he has worked as a researcher in the past), and, slightly surprisingly, comedian, Russell Brand.  

Comedian (And Self-Styled Revolutionary/Sex Machine/Media Messiah), Russell Brand

Papadimitriou himself clearly had a troubled early life, serving time for burning down his own school as a teenager, and, bizarrely, becoming the subject of a poem by serial killer Dennis Neilsen whilst incarcerated in Wormwood Scrubs.  He has also has a past history of drug abuse, - something he shares with both Self and Brand [4.].  Indeed, I can't help wondering if, for some, all this restless walking and obsessive documentation of seemingly insignificant landscape details might not be a search for deeper engagement with one's existence in a puzzling, fascinating world without narcotics.  Could, all this ceaseless motion and repeated striking out, be a search for a variety of transcendence whilst keeping one step ahead of their vices?  In one of the film's notable scene's, Papadimitiou and Self discuss the diminishing returns of heavy drug use, something that is antithetical to the kind of focus they now seek.  Elsewhere, Sinclair discusses walking as the core psychogeographic activity for its ability to raise consciousness.

Nick Papadimitriou: Reading Between The Lines.  Still From: John Rogers (Dir.),
 'The London Perambulator',  2009

Perhaps Sinclair and Self's disillusionment with the label often attached to them, stems in part from comparing the depth of their own activities and relationship to the landscape with that of  Papadimitriou's.  If they ultimately re-examine their own experiences through the detached filter of literature, there is a sense in which Nick is Deep Topography [5.].  It's one thing to sense physical underground streams and discuss how the engineering of such natural flows into the fabric of the city lends it a multi-layered aspect, (as the film opens), or to exhibit an obsessive interest with the Mogden Water Purification Plant [6.].  However, it is something altogether different to claim, "my ambition is to hold my region in my mind", as he does later, and to imagine his own identity becoming totally subsumed into the very fabric of Middlesex. For all his apparent superficialities, it may be that Russell Brand's slightly daffy air of wonder at encountering someone so singularly at one with his chosen subject, comes closest to pinning down Nick's essence.  Maybe this isn't really a surprise after all.  Brand is known for his quasi-spritual dabblings, and there's definitely something of the ecstatic mystic about some of Papadimitiou's utterances.  He would appear to come from Blakeian tradition more than a Debordian one.

If there is a tragedy at the heart of Nick Papadimitriou's life, it is revealed towards the end of the film where he questions whether it's all been a dispiriting waste of time to have been hanging about in the Edgelands when he could have been working or raising a family.  Ultimately, though, is this not the deal that all artists, (or full-time thinkers), must make to a greater or lesser degree? The other point worth making is that, for all his latent train-spottery  he has seemingly compiled an archive of material on his chosen patch, far deeper and wide-ranging than any other individual or institution could hope to.  If Papadimitriou's real legacy is to demonstrate a more intense and rewarding relationship with our surroundings than most  will ever experience, - well, someone has to do it.  To that end, I'd encourage anyone who's ever wondered what all this wittering about psychogeography (or indeed Deep Topography) is all about, to watch 'The London Perambulator', or its shorter companion piece, 'Inside Deep Library' [7.].

  


[1.], [2.]:  Merlin Coverley, 'Psychogeography', London, Pocket Essentials, 2006 

[3.]:  John Rogers (Dir.), 'The London Perambulator', London, Vanity Projects, 2009.

[4.]:  I have no knowledge of Sinclair's previous experience in this respect.  He's associated with plenty of counter-cultural figures over the years though, including notorious 'importer' Howard Marks, so I doubt he's a complete naif.

[5.]:  I think I'm talking about degrees of intensity and emotional commitment here.  Papadimitriou is, after all a published author too:
Nick Papadimitriou, 'Scarp, In Search Of London's Outer Limits', London, Sceptre, 2012.

[6.]:  Papademitriou's linkage of The Sewage Works' processing of externalised waste, with the impulse towards psychotherapy, is exactly the kind of thinking many of us lapsing into at any opportunity, (although not quite so passionately expressed, perhaps).  And, this focussing on what Self splendidly calls forgotten "Oxbow Lakes Of Urbanity", is little different from hanging around in Leicester's subway system, after all.

[7.]:  John Rogers (Dir.), 'Inside Deep Library', London, 2007

Kerri Pratt, 'Point Place Time' At Tarpey Gallery, Castle Donington

Kerri Pratt, 'Room With A View', Acrylic On Canvas, 2014

It’s been a busy summer for me this year, with large portions of time taken up with my preparations for a project I’ve agreed to undertake for the Melbourne Arts Festival next month.  I don’t want to talk too much about that now, but will write some kind of report, as and when it reaches a culmination.  However, it does explain why I’ve been spread a little bit thin of late, and why I’m a little late writing this post.

Kerri Pratt, 'Detached',  Acrylic On Canvas, 2014

I found myself in the small, North Leicestershire Town of Castle Donington not long ago, accompanying my close friend Suzie to the Private View of Kerri Pratt’s exhibition ‘Point Place Time’ at the Tarpey Gallery.  Kerri is a Derbyshire-based painter, represented by the gallery, and a recent recipient of the prestigious Jonathan Vickers Fine Art award.  That prize represents a substantial financial sum, and will help Kerri to fund her practice effectively full-time over the coming year.  This will see her relocate to Derby, from her current workspace [1.], whilst undertaking some additional community-based art work and mentoring Fine Art students at the University of Derby.

Kerri Pratt, 'Anonymity', Acrylic On Board, 2013

Viewing the work on display, it was easy to see what may have caught the judges’ eyes.  The paintings operate within the general mode of cityscape, but with an emphasis on the ambiguity of locations that feel vaguely familiar but difficult to place.  This is clearly indicated by at least one view of Venice, focusing on its obscure, shadowed backwaters, rather than its spectacular but over-familiar aspects.  Were it not for a subtle flavour of architectural historicism, the mood of such pieces might just as easily recall Birmingham or some post-Industrial Northern locale.  In addition, there’s as much emphasis on optical viewpoint as on subject selection.  There’s a relish for dramatic perspectives and several subjects acquire increased dynamism through dramatic diagonals and sharply converging orthogonals.

Kerri Pratt, 'Still Waters Run Deep', Acrylic On Board, 2012-13

I’m guessing that at least some of her images derive from her own East Midlands back yard.  ‘Room With A View’ particularly impressed me, with its nod towards the beginnings of Cubist abstraction and delight in the atmospheric potential of anonymous vernacular architecture.  I also love Kerri’s willingness to just fill a portion of middle ground wall with an almost arbitrary passage of flat, custard yellow paint, in almost as direct a manner as the actual masonry might have been coated.  Devices like this, and the flattened perspectives and interlocking wedges of contrasting tone feel like a British Heartlands take on Richard Diebenkorn’s mid period views of anonymous built environments.

Richard Diebenkorn, 'Chabot Valley', Oil On Canvas, 1955

Throughout the show, Kerri demonstrates her confident paint handling.  She utilises a wide vocabulary of eloquent marks and happy accidents, and is adept at counterpointing passages of fluid and dry brushwork.  There are numerous examples of how to modulate nominally blank, surfaces with visual textures.  Returning to ‘Room With A View’, there’s an exciting ambiguity about the curtain of dragged brushwork that blocks our view into the far distance.  It manages to suggest either trees, or some harder, scaffolded edifice, whilst being equally just about paint too.  

Kerri Pratt, 'Urban Vista', Acrylic On Board, 2012-13

Kerri’s no stranger to the atmospheric potential colour either.  For all her delight in shadowy tonality, paintings like ‘Seeing Red’, show a bold confidence with glowing reds, whilst elsewhere, I was delighted by a passage of daring electric ultramarine employed to describe the reflected light from an obscure Venetian canal surface.

Kerri Pratt, 'Seeing Red', Acrylic On Board, 2012

‘Point Place Time’ is a small but genuinely satisfying exhibition and I found plenty to absorb me as I viewed and re-viewed each painting.  My own take on the urban environment tend to be more synthetically abstract and freighted with textual components, but I do sometimes wonder if, one day, I might end up simply trying to depict it.  Paintings like this show just how rewarding that might actually be.  Kerri herself also proved highly approachable and more than happy to talk about her practice in engagingly down to earth terms.  If this is what she’s achieved since graduating as a mature student in 2011, (and whilst holding down a day-job and raising a family), it will be fascinating to see the results of her coming year of full-time immersion.

Tarpey Gallery, Castle Donington

Should anyone find themself in the Castle Donington area, I’d definitely recommend a visit to The Tarpey Gallery, (as a detour en route to the nearby East Midlands Airport, perhaps).  Housed in an attractively converted barn, behind the town’s oldest house, it showcases an impressive roster of represented artists and transcends both the scope and quality of work one might typically expect from a small, commercial gallery in such a location.  Proprietor, Luke Tarpey is clearly committed to the artists he represents and the premises extension now taking shape, and plans for a sculpture garden beyond, speak of his ambitions to create a significant outlet for contemporary art in the region.

Mandy Payne, 'Void', Aerosol Paint On Concrete,  Date Unknown

In addition to Kerri Pratt’s work, I was also interested to see a couple of pieces by Mandy Payne, whose images of the (im)famous, Modernist edifice of Sheffield’s Park Hill Flats particularly chime with my own current interests.  She has herself been recently shortlisted for the John Moore’s Painting Prize and I am particularly intrigued by her recent experiments with painting on concrete.

David Manley, 'DDA5 - Swine Flu', Acrylic On Aluminium, 2013

I was also pleased to find one of the circular ‘Epidemic’ paintings by David Manley that impressed me in Nottingham, earlier this year.  David is another artist who exhibits and sells through the Gallery and I’ve been regularly following his blog for some time.  An enjoyable evening was therefore capped when I discovered David himself was in the room and was able to introduce myself and chew a little fat with him in person [2.].  Again, it seems that online activity has led to a little enjoyable real time contact.

Kerri Pratt, ‘Point Place Time’ Continues until 20 September at Tarpey Gallery, 77 High Street, Castle Donington, Leicestershire, De74 2PQ.

[1.]:  At Long Eaton’s Harrington Mills Studios. 

[2.]:  Coincidently, David teaches in my own hometown of Lincoln and is a fellow Cornwall enthusiast.  We chatted for several minutes about his plans to revisit Moushole, the Cornish village I reported from myself, earlier this year.