Sinus Trouble (It's Draining, Men)

All Images: Clifton, Nottingham, July 2016

It's impossible to ignore the advantages of employment in Education, and an academic year punctuated by regular holidays - for any artist who also requires a day job.  Admittedly, it can lead to a slightly stop-start approach to creativity.  However, over recent years, I've learned to lay up as much groundwork and pre-planning during term time; in order to hit the ground running with whichever project I have in hand - as soon as the next block of really usable time appears.

This time round, I'm very much at the start of things - having drawn some form of mental line under the four strands of work that featured in last month's 'A Minor Place' exhibition.  The intervening weeks have involved the inevitable pause for artistic breath, and the physical readjustments attendant on commencing another school year; but also the tentative collection of material and weighing-up of possibilities for new artwork.

It's far too early to predict how things will ultimately pan out, but there are various trains of thought starting to coalesce.  One such involves putting far more emphasis on using writing as the starting point for a given project, and it was my intention to pay this some proper attention during the current Half Term hiatus.  How frustrating is it then - that I've spent the last five days laying on my bed with my head in the bucket of a really heavy cold?  It's far from life threatening of course - just a routine bout of 'Man Flu', really; but certainly enough to rob me of any energy or focus.  It is also the down-side working in schools, I suppose.  Looks like, as is usually the case - I can't have my cake and eat it.  

So, instead, all I've really had the energy or motivation to do so far, is to half-heartedly sort through my photographic archives, and write the last couple of posts from a semi-prone position.  Amongst the half-forgotten photos were these - commemorating a cycle ride I took into Nottingham's Edgelands, earlier in the summer.  They don't really relate to anything much, apart from a general interest in tunnels, subways and underpasses, but they do seem to chime with the images in my last post, both formally and, perhaps - psychologically.

There's clearly a spare geometry about all these images, - something I'd have to fight hard to keep out of so much of my work.  And they also display a similar tawdry banality - of the kind that so easily flips over into mild, dystopian glamour.  Indeed, I flatter myself the final one might be a still from a certain, slightly cliched, variety of Brutalist Science Fiction film.  To be honest, they're really not far removed from the kind of images I've generated before, on numerous occasions.

But, I'd be lying if I said there isn't a kind of persistent psychic resonance to be found in that idea of moving through darkness towards the light, and possibly - towards a dimension of greater promise beyond.  Let's face it, 'the light at the end of the tunnel'  is hardly an original idea - is it now?

So maybe, this and the previous post are really just a minor pictorial essay on having one's forward motion frustrated, and on being forced to struggle through the gloom for a while.  Today is the first when I started to notice the first signs of possible recovery and, as these images suggest - that I'm slowly moving towards the end of the tunnel, (just in time to go back to work - no doubt).

There - how's that for turning a routine episode of viral infection into a full-blown, self pitying, existential crisis?