Completed Painting: 'Map 3'

'Map 3', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2015

Here’s ‘Map 3’, - the third of my current crop of ‘Map’ Paintings to reach completion.  They’re still coming fairly thick and fast, which is pleasing and proves that the groundwork I put in just before Christmas is currently paying off.  I’ve completed four of these at the same size and in the same vein, this month, - with another, of different dimensions, under way.  Unusually for me, I’m actually finishing stuff faster than I’m blogging about them!

As discussed in my recent posts about ‘Map1’ & ‘2’, these have been specifically produced with June’s ‘Mental Mapping’ exhibition at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum, in mind.  Of course, it’s impossible to tell exactly which will make the final cut, (or how much other work may accompany them), but all I can do for now is keep striking why the iron is hot.  I’m far too close to really assess the quality of this work, but I believe in it and am enjoying producing it.  I also now realise that one of the key functions of any exhibition, is for the artist to get a little more perspective on things, once they are talking to each other from someone else’s walls.

The general comments about, and descriptions of, my two previous ‘Maps’ still apply here, although it’s worth mentioning that this one relates to a different geographical site.  As before, it’s another place where fallen advertising posters were harvested, to subsequently form the collaged basis of the piece.  In this case, it’s the junction of Blackbird Road and Parker Drive in Leicester, - just a little north west of the city centre.  If the preceding two pieces related to a junction I usually traverse on foot or by cycle, I most regularly pass this way by car, - either on my way to my day job, on a routine supermarket run, or to the nearby large, orange DIY warehouse.

That last destination highlights another level of self-reflexivity, as most of the board, timber, nails, etc. used to make my painting panels, and all of the PVA adhesive in which my work is drenched, come from that very outlet.  I have it in mind that at least one of the coming pieces might make even more specific reference to that site.  It’s fair to say that, after innumerable repeat visits over the years, I now have a pretty vivid mental sub-map of the car park at B&Q!

North West Leicester, December 2014

In this case however, the colour scheme for the piece derives largely from the premises of a car components company which overlooks the junction from a slightly elevated position toward the end of Parker Drive.  This is typical of the kind of incongruous, deeply mundane landmark that has actually become a significant, (even subjectively resonant), way-marker for me on this regular journey.  The ‘Counter’ text also originates from the side of the same building, where entropy has brought about a seductive fragment of red-on-red ghost text.  ‘Bought For Cash’, was lifted from a second-had car lot a few metres further along Blackbird Road, and was a phrase that just felt far too pointed to ignore.  The two legends seemed to complement each other pretty well, without being directly linked.

North West Leicester, December 2014

On a pretty obvious level, they might allude to the idea that to move through a modern city is to pass through a totally quantified, commodified environment, (hardly an original observation, I realise).  The very posters that provide raw material for this work are, of course, a clear physical manifestation of that.  Increasingly, it seems that idea of commodification extends to pretty much every aspect of our very lives, and I suppose it’s no coincidence that I should most regularly pass that way on my way to buy stuff, or to exchange my valuable time for the cash needed to buy even more stuff.  As ever, I can spoon-feed potential viewers these (not very sophisticated) ideas, but would really rather they found their own interpretations, if the paintings are to really live.

What I do know is that my current preoccupations seem more than ever tied into the idea of achieving some subjective reclaiming of what The Situationists termed ‘The Everyday’ [1.].  If their own agenda was ultimately one of Marxist revolution, my own is perhaps rather more one of bemused observation.  However, I am very attached to their original notion that only through a personally constructed, and deeply subjective relationship with everyday existence, might we find ways to transcend the prescribed drip-feed of Capitalist Spectacle.  Finding new magic in nominally mundane locations is, by now, a well understood strategy for achieving this.



[1.]:  Raoul Vaneigem, 'The Revolution Of Everyday Life' (Original Title: 'Traite De Savoir-Vivre A L'Usage Des Jeunes Generations'), Paris, Gallimard, 1967