Pretty, Vacant 5

All Images: West Leicester, June 2020

It seems that the subject matter of most appeal to me, whilst out and about with my camera, currently falls into one of two conflicting modes.  As usual, everything emerges from my immediate surroundings, but I've noticed that it's generally characterised by either a distinct emptying of, or conversely - an ever-denser occupation of, physical space.

The latter is an obvious feature of my on-going 'Constructed City' work, and I've already highlighted how the frenetic urge to build, currently overtaking several key locations around Leicester feels like a conscious filling-in of both the city plan, and the visual panorama.  The building projects that have captivated me so much over recent months, are all large-scale, multi-storied undertakings, and rapidly grow to represent significant and un-ignorable interventions on the visual (and thus, psychic) environment.  Viewed from a distance, (in my case - as approached on two wheels, like as not), they generally betray a distinctly monolithic blocking-in of any vista they occupy.  However, closer inspection generally reveals a situation of overwhelming visual intricacy, complex geometry, and almost limitless abstract appeal.  With these subjects, more is definitely more, and (as I've already discovered) the challenges of translating that in final pieces are not to be underestimated.

But however much those concerns currently dominate my imagination, there is also an countervailing pull back towards the themes of vacancy and absence which characterised my work just a few years ago.  That's what these 'Pretty, Vacant' posts are about.  For all that the local landscape is impacted by multiple, often startling, emerging edifices, it's also host to numerous examples of vacant commercial premises and abandoned real estate.  There is a palpable emptying-out to be detected in numerous locations peppered across the city.

Just a few years (or even months) ago, such motifs  seemed to speak of the economic convulsions of our age, or to anticipate the potentially catastrophic effects of insular politics.  Typically, these would include a decade of post-crash Austerity, and the inevitable B-word.  But, of course, to that list we must now add the implications of our latest pandemic  catastrophe (the C-word - I suppose).  Regardless of how severely we may or may not have been individually affected by recent events, there's a distinct mood of loss stalking the world right now.  Whether through actual loss of life, or through the disappearance of livelihoods, the restriction of economic activity, or the shutting-off of civic and social life - there's a hollowing of what many still fondly think of as 'normality' abroad, right now.  For some, this may represent a perversely welcome opportunity to re-set - perhaps on a global scale.  For others, it may resemble the latest wave of a much greater, gradually unfolding Apocalypse.  For the majority, it might just be another in an endless catalogue of (hopefully) temporary inconveniences - to be endured, and adapted to.

Whatever one's position on all that (for what it's worth, my own shifts between all three - on an almost daily basis) the empty sites I keep stumbling over still feel like a very apposite symbol of our age.  As with several of the examples I've featured in this little series, I have no evidence that this showroom's current state is specifically virus-related.  As a former Triumph motorcycle dealership, it may speak more of fluctuations in that market, to which I'm not privy - not least because another bike merchant also disappeared from the local landscape quite recently.  However my chosen images have never been about capturing specific subjects for documentary reasons alone.  The specifics of the local landscape are an inevitable part of my photographic habit - that's true, but I'd like to think they are quite quickly absorbed into a more subjective process of capturing secondary themes and multiple potential readings.  In that sense, the images here seem to reach out, beyond the simple facts of their situation - perhaps to evoke the recent denuding of our collective day-to-day experience.

As I write, Leicester's particular difficulties continue.  However, there may be a weak sense of renewed hope, elsewhere in Britain - to accompany a reported levelling-off of the daily virus statistics (although why anyone would put much faith in the official statistics - I'm really not sure).  Hopefully, this is not too misguided a hiatus, in what may still prove to be a far longer-lasting situation.  Perhaps all the empty floorspace and blank windows will soon feel less appropriate as topically symbolic motifs.  I certainly can't predict any of that.  Whatever the case, I suspect I would always be visually drawn to such subject matter - regardless of which specific readings might be subsequently attached.  That might be purely for formal/visual reasons - I suppose, or perhaps I'm just a perennial sucker for the bleak and the melancholy.  In this instance, it occurs to me that one might just as easily meditate on the paradoxical thrill of the 'everyday', or the strange resonance of contemporary non-spaces (motorway services and airports being other closely-related examples, perhaps).  The essential resonance of the location would remain undiminished - I believe.  Meanings fluctuate, just as do commercial lettings, commercial use and public health.  And window reflections and beautifully cast shadows do too, of course.  

Such morphing and layering of possible readings is the real thrill of a Psychogeographic relationship with one's own environment, and will always be most heightened in the hive of a city - or so it seems to me.  Only time will tell which may feel most appropriate in this one, over the coming months.

Pretty, Vacant 4

All Images: Central Leicester, May 2020

Here are a few more images on the theme of vacant commercial property.  Once again, they were captured in the centre of Leicester (and separated by only a few metres), on another of my recent two-wheeled meanders through the city's relatively deserted, locked-down streets.

Being the erstwhile premises of a hairdresser and a bar, respectively - both are highly representative of the kind of enterprises forced to close during the pandemic.  Slightly ironically however, I know for a fact that both were empty some time before the current crisis.  What intrigues me in both of these cases, is the A4 missives giving notice of future intentions.  Clearly, the application for a bar license is more than a little irrelevant - for the time being, at least, whilst the move to an alternative salon nearby seems equally futile, even if the coiffeurs have "took over another business".  

So, while not actually documentary in nature, these images are still pretty symbolic of our current plight - I guess.  In particular, they seem to speak of an optimism that (with hindsight) feels more than a little misguided.  "When things get back to normal"  and, "When the pubs re-open" are phrases I hear pretty regularly these days, and it is true that the British  lock-down appears to have relaxed a little (officially), and frayed a little more (unofficially), in recent days.  However, it seems inevitable that the backwash from all this mayhem will cause more than a little turbulence, for years to come, both socially and  financially.  Something tells me 'normal' might no longer be quite what people expect.

  

I do need a haircut, though (and a social drink wouldn't hurt, either).

Pretty, Vacant 3

Central Leicester, May 2020

This vacant little beauty should have made it into my previous post, really - being both food-related and framed in red.  Still, better late than never - and it's definitely too attractive to ignore.  I wasn't even sure if these premises really were vacated.  Numerous take-away food outlets have continued to function throughout the Coronavirus lock-down, and that glowing fluorescent tube suggests some form of occupation.  However, closer inspection  of that barely-legible hand-written notice confirms this is yet another site for rent.

Once again - I don't know if all this is actually virus-related, of course.  However, perhaps subjective visual resonance and implied symbolism are more important than the actual facts, in matters of the art. 

Pretty, Vacant 2

All Images: Central Leicester, May 2020

Here are a few more images of vacant or inactive commercial premises, captured on another of my routine lock-down bike rides around Leicester.  Although these were encountered at two separate food-related locations - it's striking how they're unified by their red-painted framing elements, and delicious paper-based blanking strategies.

I'm not sure if it's exactly healthy that I'm starting to almost enjoy the slightly post-apocalyptic mood suffusing the city centre, in recent weeks.  In my defence, subjects like these windows were well represented in my photo archive, long before we'd ever heard of Covid-19.  It's not even certain that the inactive state of these premises is directly virus-related.  Years of economic uncertainty and Austerity have been stimulating such phenomena for years, after all.

Nevertheless, they do seem to capture the current atmosphere, I feel.  As I cycle around the eerie, almost deserted city streets, I can't help wondering if such economic inactivity, and the vacated spaces and blind windows that result, will become ever more prevalent  features of the urban landscape 'once this is all over'.         

Signs And Whispers

All Images: Central Leicester, April 2020

Here are a few more images, taken on the same excursion as those in my last post.  They feel closely related, visually - but these are of slightly less direct relevance to our current pestilence-ridden situation, perhaps.  They certainly do seem to belong to that whole 'Lost Voices, Forgotten Meanings' vibe of four years ago though, in pretty obvious ways.  Breakdowns in communication, and the erosion of narratives were as much a theme of that work, as all the focus on vacancy and physical absence, evoked in the previous window images.

In recent years, I've tended to think of my work as progressing (if indeed, it does) via a series of relatively self-contained projects.  The fact that several of these appeared to culminate in exhibition ventures, can suggest each has reached some form of conclusion, and that a line is consequently drawn beneath it. It's a useful enough way of imposing some degree of organisation on my practice, I suppose - and hopefully avoids a situation in which I might try to cram to many themes and strategies into my work, all at once.  But, in reality - the events and moments of visual recognition the world offers, and the thoughts and feelings they release, come along in a far more organic, randomised manner.  The various currents of thought represented in these seemingly discrete packets of work aren't shut off, just because some work gets arbitrarily hung on a wall at a certain date, or because my  responses to them feel a bit worked out, for a time.

It's all a continuum really.  The currents intertwine and different ones rise to the surface at certain times.  Serendipity and coincidence are major factors in any creative process, and time can double-back on itself, to refresh familiar tropes, at any point.  It's important to recognise all that, and not to become a slave to organisational compartmentalising.  When all's said and done - if the world offers you something as glorious as this palimpsest of eroded text and nuanced paint, it would be criminal not to accept it with gratitude, even if it doesn't quite square with some imagined schedule.