Completed Mixed Media Piece: 'Fridge 6'

'Fridge 6', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Screen-Print, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish & Magnetic
Plastic Letters on Salvaged Refrigerator Door, 65 cm X 50 cm, 2018

Here’s the sixth of my fridge door-based multi-media pieces.  At first glance, ‘Fridge 6’ looks reasonably of-a-piece with the preceding five - and in many ways it is.  It certainly follows the familiar recipe of acrylics, paper collage, and screen-printed elements - compiled onto a salvaged refrigerator door, and bearing a textual component picked out in magnetic plastic letters [1.].  As ever, the latter is an excerpt from my written piece, 'Below The Line / Beneath Contempt' [2.].

However, there is a slight adaptation of procedure here, in that the printed elements are integrated far more into the collaged ground – rather than being applied over the top, as previously.  This was a deliberate, attempt to avoid everything just following too predictable an A to B to C formula.

Whenever I do another print run, I tend to roughly proof onto disposable newsprint paper – creating, in the process, a stack of lower-grade versions of the final images.  These are what were collaged into this piece - in the full knowledge that they will inevitable yellow and darken with age.  It’s obviously a slightly risky approach, but an element of progressive degradation and built-in obsolescence actually feels pretty appropriate, given the general tenor of this particular body of work.  It has occurred to me, more than once, that ‘embracing the decay’ might actually be one of my own mental survival techniques, in both my art - and in life generally.  I’ll definitely be keeping half an eye on any creeping changes in this one, over the coming months.

Anyway, the role of the main figure is taken here by a symbolic representation of a cardboard box - which itself marks the introduction to the 'Fridge' series, of another of the key motifs appertaining to my 'This S(c)eptic Isle' project, as a whole.  By coincidence (or perhaps not at all), I've also entered the more sculptural, cardboard box-based phase of the 'TSI' project.  More of that in future posts.

[1.]:  Comic Aside:  As the magnets alone aren't strong enough to rely on - I've been affixing the plastic letters to these pieces with Superglue. Whilst doing this one with bare feet, late one night, I failed to notice the puddle of adhesive which had dropped onto the floor.  Cue - a moment of growing panic as it appeared I may have glued myself down - followed by several more minutes of very tentative peeling.

[2.]:  Despite the simplicity and directness of this particular phrase, I relish the different interpretations it might actually imply, through varying the inflection.  "Who cares what YOU think?"; "WHO CARES what you think?"; "Who cares WHAT you think?"; "WHO cares what you think?".

Birmingham Canal Ride: Broad Street To Dudley Port (Retrospective)

Birmingham Canal, Central Birmingham, August 2017

Introduction:

Writing my preceding post, about David Byrne's cycle-based approach to exploring cities, reminded me that I'd been sitting on this post for far too long.  It was actually written last August, in the immediate aftermath of one of my own occasional Birmingham canal rides - but delayed under the pretence I was going to edit and include some of the video I shot on the day.  That never happened, and is unlikely to do so right now - so let's just dust off the post anyway.  It does feel like it's in the spirit of Byrne's 'Bicycle Diaries' [1.], if nothing else.  Better late than never, I guess...

  

August 2017:

It’s been quite a while, but I recently got back on the bike to cycle another stretch of Birmingham’s extensive canal system.  This time, my companion was my friend and work colleague (Boss, actually), Tim.  Our route was one I’d been intending to take for some time - taking us from Broad Street, in the city centre, along the Birmingham Canal - through Smethwick to Dudley Port.

Birmingham Canal, Old Line (Soho Loop), August 2017

The Black Country, to the west and north west of Birmingham is famously a cradle of the Industrial Revolution.  Indeed, as the name implies, coal mining, metalworking, engineering and manufacturing of various kinds once combined to create the region’s reputation as a reeking, poisoned hive of industry.  As Tim pointed out, it’s even credited with inspiring Tolkein’s vision of Mordor – that nexus of sulphurous evil from ‘The Lord Of The Rings’.  The nature of commerce and industry in Britain has, of course, shifted focus from those core activities since the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and these days, the remaining factories and occasional once-grand Victorian edifices rise largely from a lower-level landscape of lorry parks, transport hubs and trading estates.

Birmingham Canal, Smethwick, August 2017

In fact, I was mildly surprised to discover just how verdant was much of our route.  The reality is obviously that, what would have once constituted a major commercial artery between central Brum and the towns of the Black Country, long since gave way to the preeminence of rail and road transport.  It has become instead, both a green corridor and a thread of industrial architecture punctuated by overgrown colliery workings, disused quays and the occasional canal museum.  As our own presence proved, and as I’ve noted before - the real appeal of canals nowadays is as places in which to dawdle and reflect, or even as conduits for our dreams.

Birmingham Canal, Smethwick, August 2017

Whilst some industrial facilities do still rear up on either bank, two of the most memorable examples from our ride remain the partially demolished and burned-out buildings along the Soho Loop (at the Birmingham end), and the large, partially cleared site, were the canal separates into two parallel branches, at Smethwick.  Elsewhere, we noted how much new housing and recently landscaped parkland is now lies along our route.  The reality, I think, is that one needs to come back up to street level to fully experience the current industrial/commercial flavour of the region – something I certainly intend to do in future visits.

Birmingham Canal (South Branch), Smethwick, August 2017

The depth to which we were actually sunk beneath the contemporary surface of the world was emphasized by the sheer height of the cut’s embankments, particularly along the Smethwick section, and especially by the parallel tunnels and soaring bridges through which we passed just there.  This is, of course, largely a consequence of topography (and testament to the fortitude of the Navvies, who dug it all out originally).  Nevertheless, I’m always also struck by that sense of passing vertically through time, as well as laterally in space wherever such manmade landscapes stack up multiple layers of infrastructure (and by implication, technological advance).

Birmingham Canal, Central Birmingham, August 2017

The most dramatic and resonant example of this, and one of the major draws of the excursion for me, is the elevated section of the M5 between West Bromwich and Oldbury.  Just as at Spaghetti Junction (to the north of the city), this provides both vertiginous concrete drama - with huge columns and supporting piers actually sunk into the canal bed itself; and a multi-layered environment of road, rail and water (including a splendid aqueduct, to carry one canal branch over another).  Long time readers of this blog will know I’m a complete sucker for this kind of thing.

Beneath M5 Motorway, Oldbury, August 2017

They will also recall that this is the same location from which many of my fellow artist Shaun Morris’ paintings emerged in recent years.  This is indeed, the ‘Edgeland’ landscape of Shaun’s childhood, and the one to which he turned for his memorable ‘Stolen Car', ‘Black Highway’, and ‘The Lie Of The Land’' cycles of painted nocturnes.  Having waxed lyrical about that work on so many occasions, it was a delight to find myself finally sampling, at first hand, the resonance of the place from which they sprang.  I also amused myself by trying to spot one or two specific locations from the paintings as we passed.  There can’t be too many piles of wooden palettes quite that big - can there, Shaun?  I think I spotted the big green transport depot from ‘A Minor Place’ too.

Shaun Morris, 'A Minor Place', Oil On Canvas, 2016

However, nothing stays the same for long.  Since Shaun depicted them, many of the motorway’s monumental supports have sprouted an undecipherably complex tangle of scaffolding in a major process of renovation of the weathering concrete.  This cocoon of metallic struts and precarious zig-zag ladders has completely transformed the sensory experience of the place.  It converts an environment of cavernous monumentality and quasi-geology (albeit man-made), into something closer to a shimmering, silvery forest.

Remedial Maintenance Work, M5 Motorway, Oldbury, August 2017

As we pedalled back into Brum, Tim and I considered the relative merits of natural and man-made environments (not that all British environments aren't essentially man-made), and our subjective responses to them. Certainly, I'm more than happy to recline in a meadow, or stroll along a beach - when rest and relaxation are in order.  But I'm forced to conclude once again (as if there were any doubt), that it's in a hard-edged world of stained concrete, coiled barbed wire, or scribbled graffiti, that my creative sensibilities find greater nourishment.

Birmingham Canal, Old Line (Soho Loop), August 2017

[1.]:  David Byrne, 'Bicycle Diaries', London, Faber & Faber, 2010 (Paperback)

David Byrne: 'Bicycle Diaries'

I’m a longstanding Talking Heads enthusiast, being old enough to remember the impact of their first records in unashamedly bringing ‘Art’ into the post-Punk/New Wave equation, back in the late 1970s [1.].  It’s far from original to point out that their real genius lay in marrying leader David Byrne’s unconventionally analytical (possibly autistic) songwriting and twitchy mannerisms, with an unerring rhythmic nous, and willingness to prioritise the Funk, over tired Rock cliché.

Talking Heads. (L-R): David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Martina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison
(Photo: Rock Hall Library & Archive)

I’ve returned to the T.H. back catalogue consistently, since their somewhat rancorous dissolution in 1991, and their best recordings really never wear out.  For all that, I never really followed David Byrne’s prolific solo career with anything like the same dedication, despite his continuing exploration of numerous avenues of expression, through a variety of parallel media, over the intervening years.

David Byrne.  Still From: 'Stop Making Sense', (Dir.) Jonathan Demme, 1984,
Talking Heads/Arnold Stifle Co.

David Byrne, 2015

However, I couldn’t help noting the P.R push surrounding the release of his latest album, ‘American Utopia’, [2.] with its typically ironic (I assume) title, and associated, and very timely, drive to find much-needed 'Reasons To Be Cheerful' in our current global situation.  The media hype didn’t fulfill its assumed ambition of driving me to purchase the album.  However, it has generated some income for Mr. Byrne, in reminding me that he had written a couple of books in recent years (with both of which I’d been meaning to catch up) - and persuading me they might be exactly the kind of thing I could fancy reading right now.

David Byrne, New York City, 2011 (Photo: Buzz Photo)

David Byrne Aboard Folding Bicycle

I’ve yet to open ‘How Music Works’ [3.], but my impressions of the earlier ‘Bicycle Diaries’ [4.] are very favourable so far, it being an account of David Byrne’s enthusiasm for one of my own loves – namely, exploring cities by bike.  He’s quite rightly identified the pedal cycle as the perfect vehicle for conducting an expedition of urban discovery [5.].  It’s particularly pleasing to discover that he routinely travels the world with a folding bike, using it to devote much of his down-time from various creative endeavours, to exploring the cities he visits.  Byrne isn’t totally disengaged from a variety of constructive cycling activism, but this is a book about how the bike might be deployed as a creative tool - rather than a Bible for the gear-heads, fitness obsessives, lycra bores or two-wheeled warriors.  Most of his accounts focus on the things he finds out in the world, rather than on each turn of the crank it took to get there.

North Leicester, March 2018

Northwest Leicester, March 2018

It’s also encouraging to find he’s lost little of the fascinated objectivity, which made his early work so refreshing – and which always gave the suggestion of a visitor conducting a detailed research project into humanity and its self-built environments.  Of course, true objectivity is far from attainable for any artist (and this is what David Byrne remains, after all).  Nevertheless, I like the (now, often unfashionable) relativism of his approach, and the general attitude it seems to encapsulate, that ‘Everything Is Interesting’ [6.].  I particularly enjoy the fact that any emotional responses he may have, or any political, philosophical or otherwise theoretical conclusions he may draw, stem from simply going out to see what is actually there.  It is, closely akin to my own favoured approach, and represents a guiding principle that I aspire to maintaining in my process.

Northwest Leicester, March 2018

It would be foolish and unfair to attempt to review a book I’m still reading.  Instead, here are a couple of quotes that have impressed me, as I’ve jumped back and forth through the text, (it originated as a blog – which seems to encourage such a reading approach).  The first is from David Byrne’s own introduction, and the second concludes his Epilogue:

“This point of view [from a bicycle] - faster than a walk, slower than a train, often slightly higher than a person - became my panoramic window on much of the world over the last thirty years – and it still is.  It’s a big window and it looks out on a mainly urban landscape.  (I’m not a racer or a sports cyclist).  Through this window I catch glimpses of the mind of my fellow man, as expressed in the cities he lives in.  Cities, it occurred to me, are a manifestation of our deepest beliefs and our often unconscious thoughts, not so much as individuals, but as the social animals we are.  A cognitive scientist need only look at what we have made – the hives we have created – to know what we think and what we believe to be important, as well as how we structure those thoughts and beliefs.  It’s all there, in plain view, right out in the open; you don’t need CAT scans and cultural anthropologists to show you what’s going on inside the human mind; its inner workings are manifested in three dimensions, all around us.  Our values and hopes are sometimes awfully embarrassingly easy to read.  They’re right there – in the storefronts, museums, temples, shops, and office buildings and in how these structures interrelate, or sometimes don’t.  They say, in their unique visual language, “This is what we think matters, this is how we live and how we play”.  Riding a bike through all this is like navigating the collective neural pathways of some vast global mind.  It really is a trip inside the collective psyche of a compacted group of people.  A Fantastic Voyage, but without the cheesy special effects.  One can sense the collective brain – happy, cruel, deceitful, and generous – at work and at play.  Endless variations on familiar themes repeat and recur: triumphant or melancholic, hopeful or resigned, the permutations keep unfolding and multiplying.” [7.].

“I’m in my midfifties, so I can testify that biking as a way of getting around is not something only for the young and energetic.  You don’t really need the spandex, and unless you want it to be, biking is not all that strenuous.  It’s the liberating feeling – the physical and psychological sensation – that is more persuasive than any practical argument.  Seeing things from a point of view that is close enough to pedestrians, vendors and storefronts combined with getting around in a way that doesn’t feel completely divorced from the life that occurs on the streets is pure pleasure.

“Observing and engaging in a city’s life – even for a reticent and often shy person like me – is one of life’s great joys.  Being a social creature – it is part of what it means to be human.” [8.].

[1.]:  It’s fair to say that not only is 1979’s ‘Fear Of Music’ my favourite album by Talking Heads, but remains amongst my favourite albums by anyone.

[2.]:  David Byrne, ‘American Utopia’, Nonesuch/Todo Mundo, 2018

[3.]:  David Byrne, ‘Bicycle Diaries’, London, Faber & Faber, 2010 (Paperback)

[4.]:  David Byrne, ‘How Music Works’, London, Canongate Books, 2013

[5.]:  It extends one’s pedestrian range (particularly if your dodgy old legs don’t permit extended forays on foot).  It still embeds you firmly within your surroundings – being a physical extension, rather than an insulating capsule.  When deployed non-competitively, it affords a constructive connection between rhythmic physical activity and creative mental ‘flow’ - without becoming tediously all about the exercise (improved physical wellbeing as a side-effect of an engaged life sounds like a perfect win-win to me).  It negates the need for parking provision (especially if of the folding variety) – allowing one to simply jump from the saddle, lean it against a wall, and collect the next tranche of photos/impressions/evidence.  And (admittedly, after a little initial outlay) the running costs are pretty negligible.  Along with my camera, I can honestly say that my own bike has become so much of a trusted tool as to feel effectively like an inanimate friend, with which I share numerous invaluable small experiences.

[6.]:  ‘Everything Is Interesting’ is actually the title of a 2003 exibit at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery, by Canadian Conceptualist, Kelly Mark.  They’ll still sell you a badge bearing the same legend, and it seems to me - an admirable dictum by which one might live a life, creative or otherwise.

[7, 8]:  David Byrne, ‘Bicycle Diaries’, London, Faber & Faber, 2010 (Paperback)

Completed Mixed - Media Piece: 'Fridge 5'

'Fridge 5', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Screen-Print, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish & Magnetic Letters
On Salvaged Refrigerator Door, 64 cm X 49 cm, 2018 

Here's the fifth of my 'Fridge' pieces, which seem to be coming fairly thick and fast just now  (by my standards, at least).  '5' essentially follows the same basic template laid down in the previous four (which can be sampled here, here, here, and here), so I'll detain you just long enough to highlight a couple of points specific to this latest version. 

I talk a lot about the 'key motifs' within my overall 'This S(c)epic Isle' project (under which banner - all this stuff belongs).  These recurring subjects all relate to specific features of my local urban surroundings, but also act as possible clues or signifiers, either to current socio-political preoccupations, or just to the way we live now.  In each case to date, they derive from my own photography - and this feels important.  The fact is, many of these subject categories might seem pretty cliched, were it not for the fact that I observe them all around me each day.  Like all the best cliches, they actually contain a significant kernel of truth, as my regular photographic forays prove.  The white vans are parked up all around me, even as I write, and I only need to glance out of the window to view yet another of the evicted fridges which are so ubiquitous as to constitute another variety of street furniture.  'Fridge 5' introduces another species of the motifs - the wandering supermarket trolley. 

I've noticed that these recurrent totems increasingly interconnect in their associations, as I go on with all this. The fridges themselves may relate to ideas of fluctuating short-term tenancy, the ubiquity of cheap consumer durables (and their built-in obsolescence), or perhaps to the relationship of food intake in raw ingredients in many contemporary homes.  And, just as the couriers' vans might indicate the means of delivery of at least some of these fridges, when purchased - the shopping trolleys may relate to the items that once stocked them.  Their disconnected migration to the local street corners and alleyways may indicate some frequently-witnessed variety of consumer larceny, but is also, I suspect, indicative of a population often unable to afford a vehicle with which to cart all that heavy stuff away.  The movement of the fridges outdoors, once their usefulness is terminated, could indicate a similar problem - along with an inability (or reluctance) to stump-up the costs of 'appropriate disposal'.  

My final observation here, relates to the textual element.  As before, the legend picked out in fridge-magnets, is extracted from my 'Below The Line / Beneath Contempt' text.  As such, its sentiments originate in the scurrilous 'below the line' online debate over the dreaded 'B'-word, which seeded that piece, some months back.  Reading it again however, I can't help wondering if it might also contain an element of self-reflexivity with regard to this whole project of mine.  Gotta laff - ain't yer?