Completed Photographic Series: 'Wiped Windows'

This post deals with my recently completed photographic series, entitled ‘Wiped Windows’.

'Wiped Window 1', 2016

In another couple of weeks Andrew Smith, Shaun Morris and I will be in the thick of hanging our ‘A Minor Place’ exhibition at Artists Workhouse in Studley, Warwickshire.  There are a variety of organisational tasks to undertake between now and then, and I now realise one of my biggest will be selecting which pieces will appear in the actual show.  But it’s not a bad problem to have, really.  As someone whose neuroses have often centred on having enough work of sufficient quality completed in time to meet any deadline, it’s pleasing to find I probably have more than enough recently completed pieces to fill a third of the available space in Studley.

'Wiped Window 2', 2016

'Wiped Window 3', 2016

'Wiped Window 4', 2016

It seems to justify my aspirations, at the start of 2016, to work steadily and calmly on several parallel strands of related work, without fixating on the arbitrary exhibition deadline.  The hope was that at least some of it would justify public exposure once that actually arrived.  It seems to have paid off generally, and whilst there are always things you might do differently in retrospect - I’m not too despondent about either the quality of or the intentions behind the stack of framed pieces currently boxed-up in my front room.  Exactly what will make the final cut is currently up for grabs (and, to be honest, may be partially decided ‘on the day’, but there’s nothing there I feel too embarrassed about.

'Wiped Window 5', 2016

'Wiped Window 6', 2106

'Wiped Window 7', 2016

This current body of work actually breaks down into four distinct groups, - each envisaged as a discrete series with its own internal logic, but also relating to the others in terms of overall themes and concerns.  The other important point is that each series brings a different approach to media to the table, and it’s this that may go some way to explaining why quantity just hasn’t been a problem with this show.  Working with screen-prints and digitally manipulated and outputted pieces, as well as digital photography, has meant I could often produce images far more rapidly than by sticking to my more customary hybrid collage/paintings, (some of which are also represented).  Anyway, let’s concentrate on the purely photographic pieces here.

'Wiped Window 8', 2016

'Wiped Window 9', 2016

'Wiped Window 10', 2016

As the themes and ideas behind this current phase of work began to coalesce in my mind, late last year, it became evident that a general sense of absence or abandonment was a large part of it.  Much of the work deals with ideas of lost voices; missing or partially erased meanings; or of spaces haunted by indistinct memories or tenuous vestiges.  There’s always a sense of the urban environment in my mind, although the origins of much of my current imagery evolved from improvised mixed media ‘studies’ this time round.  For that reason, it felt important to augment that with at least one strand that derived from specific physical locations.  These ‘Wiped Windows’ photographs represent (literally) that intention, albeit in a fairly oblique manner.

'Wiped Window 11', 2016

'Wiped Window 12', 2016

I’m sure I’m not the first person to become captivated by the paradoxical and visual aspects of windows obliterated by swirls of white paint in vacant or transitional premises.  In fact, even as I was collecting these images, in various locations, I was amused to see that the venerable Techno outfit, Underworld had cottoned onto the same idea for the artwork of their last album, ‘Barbara, Barbara, We Face A Shining Future’.  They may have gone public first, but I’ve actually been looking and collecting these for years, and anyway, I can’t think of two nicer blokes…  Such obscured windows are, of course, a common sight in most cities - and one which never fails to evoke a sense of the interim situation, the impromptu action, the temporary fix, or the vacant turning-inward of a previously energised space.  Even if the premises they veil aren’t permanently abandoned, there’s still a distinct melancholy about the vacancy or altered priorities they symbolise.  This series might equally well have been entitled ‘Vacant Possession’.

'Wiped Window 13', 2016

'Wiped Window 14', 2016

And, of course, the other key point is that this series is just another opportunity for me to explore the idea of ‘Always The Same - Always Different’ that preoccupies me so much these days.  It delights me that so many versions of essentially, white blankness can throw up an inexhaustible range of additional clues, texts, accidents and intriguing details.  The snippets of formal graphics, and the scrawls and doodles of mischievous fingers punctuate those swirling fields - just as collaged poster or photocopy fragments do in my hand-made pieces.

'Wiped Window 15', 2016

'Wiped Window 16', 2016

Whilst considering that, we should probably recognise that, just as every painter moves fluid paint with his or her own muscle memory - so no Contractor’s gestural wipe is quite like another’s.  Those bravura swipes may echo the deliberately off-hand white brushstrokes I’ve used repeatedly in recent pieces, but I could never hope to encompass such a wide vocabulary of mark making as is revealed here.

'Wiped Window 17', 2016

'Wiped Window 18', 2016

One other vital aspect of these images is the sense in which any window acts as a membrane between two disparate worlds.  The overall impression (and utilitarian intention) may be one of blankness or of obscuring, but the glimpses (or even just the sense) of internal space behind the glass, and the fugitive suggestions of a wider, external world (or even the observer’s own ghost), are impossible to ignore.  The deliberate, partial blanking of what is normally an organ of transmission (of light, of vision, and thus – of meaning), and the consequent emphasis this places on reflection, feels key to these pieces.

'Wiped Window 19', 2016

'Wiped Window 20', 2016

Ultimately, I felt that all of the above contributed to images that could stand alone as purely visual statements, in contrast to the far more contrived combinations of photography and text (and cement) that I exhibited last year.  After considering different possibilities, I opted to simply print and frame ten of these twenty images.  My plan is to hang at least a few in our show, but it's hard to predict exactly how many until we get in there to make the make the hang work definitively.  The fallback position is that all twenty might be shown on a screen, - an idea that actually has considerable appeal.  Hmm, future Artist’s Book - anyone?

Design: Chris Cowdrill

'A Minor Place' will run from Saturday 3 - Sunday 11 September , 2016 at: Artists Workhouse, The Royal Victoria Works, Redditch Road, Studley, Warwickshire, B80 7AU.  Opening Hours: Wednesday. - Sunday, 11am - 4pm.

https://artistsworkhouse.com/category/up-and-coming/