Completed Paintings: 'Map 6' & 'Map 7'

As promised/threatened, here’s a more detailed look at my two most recent ‘Map’ paintings.  Apologies my tardiness in getting to this, - I feel like I’m playing catch-up here.

'Maps 6, 7 & 5', 'Mental Mapping' Exhibition, Rugby Art Gallery & Museum

Having completed the modestly proportioned ‘Maps 1 – 5’, I knew I wanted to extend the basic premise of the series into a larger format, in part - as a way of accommodating greater compositional complexity without everything becoming too fiddly.  I’ve worked with this 1 metre-square format a lot in recent years, and it always feels like a comfortable template with some relation to the human body.  In painting terms, it’s hardly large, but as a size point, It’s probably the place where ‘Medium’ gets properly interesting.  Anyway, ‘Map 6’ and ‘Map 7’ are the result, this time round.

The convolutions of how these two came together is somewhat anti-intuitive, and very much the consequence of consciously working towards an exhibition as a totality, over a more organic approach.  ‘Map 7’ was actually started before ‘5’ or ‘6’, and sat half-completed for several weeks while both they and my ‘Cement Cycle’ photographic project evolved.  ‘6’ then happened in about three weeks flat, (start to finish), whilst ‘7’ was eventually finished off in around five days, just prior to ‘Mental Mapping: New Work By Andrew Smith & Hugh Marwood’ being hung.  Once upon a time, pushing against a deadline like that would have caused me to cave, or lose faith in what I was doing, but I always felt it was a potentially strong piece, and never really doubted I could see it through.  Look how I’ve grown!

'Maps 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 & 7', 'Mental Mapping' Exhibition, Rugby Art Gallery & Museum

Much of what has already been written about the technical approach and general intent of previous ‘Maps’ carries over here.  Both pieces share a source location in Leicester, with ‘1’ and ‘2’, and, as before, the poster fragments that constitute much of their substance, were picked up beneath, or found hanging from, the large advertising hoardings located on that junction.  For these two though, Google Maps, rather than A-Z street maps provided the relevant cartographical content.  At the risk of excessive nerdery, I'm interested in the differing conventions and levels of detail between disparate maps of the same locations.  In this case, it can be detected in the radiused terminals of certain streets, and the use of blue or grey shading to designate water or different types of thoroughfare.

‘Map 6’

'Map 6', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 100 cm X 100 cm, 2015

‘Map 6’ started out with a largely grey palette in its early stages, and featured a large fragment of advertising for East Midlands Trains, which has long since vanished beneath subsequent layers.  Sometimes, the parts of a painting you grow most attached to early on must be destroyed before it can really move on, as was the case there.  What really struck me about the source location this time was the visual impact of the numerous vivid yellow and blue traffic direction signs peppered across it.  Even under grey Midland skies these sing out, and in bright sunlight - they positively fizz with synthetic primary colour.  References to them duly found their way into the painting, and it became something else altogether.

West Leicester, May 2015

Textually, there are actually three key phrases at work in ‘6’, although the repeated occurrences of the word ‘Wait’ are effectively lost under subsequent statements.  I enjoy the presence of earlier lost messages within these paintings that, ultimately, only I know about.  For what it’s worth, ‘Wait’ relates to the illuminated instructions of the junction’s numerous pedestrian crossings.  What finally took precedence were the two advertising slogans, ‘Good Stuff Happens’ and ‘Regret Nothing’, - relating to oven chips and fizzy drinks, respectively.  I’m amused by the trite, vaguely self-help tone of such commercial guff, and the way it attempts to equates implied ‘quality of life’ with the instant gratification of low-grade foodstuffs.  That being said, on a philosophical level - who can say that, if one waits and avoids the pitfalls of excessive regret, - good stuff can’t actually happen at any stage of life?  If I'm honest, it does feel like I'm involved in something of a creative late flowering myself.

Advertising Messages, West Leicester, May 2015

It also occurs to me that a few years ago, not long after the installation of a British, Tory-led coalition government, I produced another painting with an unfeasibly tangled composition and a primary palette of red, yellow and blue.  We have another new, unfettered Tory administration now, - installed even as ‘Map 6’ was being painted, and free to do its worst.  Could it be that ‘Good Stuff Happens’ is sardonically ironic after all?  Is it any real coincidence that the direction arrows point down as well as left, or that they are subsumed in roundels of deep blue?  Am I trying to stretch a point much too far? (Probably).

'Asylum 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 100 cm X 100 cm, 2011

I don’t know if ‘Map 6’ is wholly successful, or necessarily the strongest of the ‘Map’ series, but I’m happy enough to stand by it.  It’s probably trying to do far too much at once, but I do like the way it almost painted itself, and now seems locked in perpetual internal debate.

‘Map 7’

'Map 7', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 100 cm X 100 cm, 2015

‘Map 7’ is a little more straightforward in both composition and phraseology, and was always envisaged as a rather rainbow-coloured affair.  Its somewhat bald, ‘End Of Life’ statement was lifted straight out of the signage for an End Of Life Centre, attached to railings on the same junction as above.  That’s a strangely euphemistic title for a car-wrecking yard, by the way, - being the same enterprise which shelters behind the graffiti-adorned gates I’ve revisited several times on here.

West Leicester,  January 2015

The palette of each of the ‘Maps’ has generally been derived from the various corporate ldentities, or other functional colour schemes found at their source sites.  This is no exception, and the starbursts and sugary, hot pink/peppermint green/lemon yellow/royal blue combo used to advertise what is otherwise a pretty grungy and grease-stained set-up, delights me no end.  In fact, the vaguely Po-Mo, Memphis-style palette brings to my mind an earlier period (in the early 1980s), when Britain also lurched dangerously to the political Right and market forces ran riot.  I write this in a week when the project to fully privatise the Post Office, and to further starve the NHS and dismantle the Welfare mechanisms that support countless disadvantaged citizens, were announced [1.].  We are sold a vision of Britain in which the Government’s ideologically driven misdeeds are cloaked with the bland notion of ‘Aspiration’.  Sadly, aspiration isn’t an option for many, for some of whom the continuing fixation with austerity, in maintenance of an economic system that favours only the wealthy, may literally imply the ‘End Of Life’.

On a more parochial level, the Redevelopment of Leicester’s St Augustine’s district, extending to the west, continues in earnest.  I’ve written aboutthis recently too, but had no idea just what a monster of a building was being planned to house De Montfort University’s ever-expanding student intake, when I photographed it a few weeks back [2.].  The old burnt-out Friar’s Mill  has a roof once more and, though it had largely passed me by, it seems that extensive plans to redevelop the whole area have been under public consultation for some time.  That includes several locations from our ‘Orfeo’ film, and the site of the cement depot from my ‘Cement Cycle’ project, (both also part of ‘Mental Mapping’).  The city shrugs its shoulders and, one of my favourite entropic playgrounds may be reaching the end of its life as a hotspot of picturesque dilapidation.

Student Accommodation Block Under Construction, St Augustines, West Leicester, June 2015

I can spoon-feed you all this stuff, till the cows come home, but it only really skims the surface of my thoughts and feelings both in the source locations, and whilst working on each piece.  I’d also hope that the found texts running through each of the ‘Maps’ are sufficiently ambiguous or open-ended to allow the viewer to apply their own potential interpretations.  It may be that, even without my cod philosophising, the juxtaposition of a terminal ‘E.o.L’ message and ‘7’s cheery, polychromatic presentation is a sufficiently entertaining conundrum, even as it stands.

That brings us up to date with the ‘Map’ series.  When I embarked on them, eight months ago, I hoped there might be up to eight to draw on for the exhibition.  In the event, seven were completed in that time, along with ‘Orfeo’, and ‘Cement Cycle’, - which actually feels like pretty good going by my standards.  They all made the cut, and fitted the space available in Rugby rather well.  Each has its relative strengths and weaknesses, (and I certainly have my favorites), but I’m reasonably satisfied with them as a body, and I don’t feel like there are any complete duds.

Will there be any more ‘Maps’? – I’m really not sure.  ‘Mental Mapping’ obviously felt like a major milestone, but part of me would still like to do the eighth ‘Map’, even after the event, (and there is an idea in the tank).  However, there are a variety of things to take stock of in the coming months, both artistically and otherwise, and it’s possible my next significant burst of creative activity may involve something other than painting for a while.  Either way, I should have more time for blogging over the second half of 2015.  

[1.]:  Even more cynical, is Chancellor George Osborne’s move to tie all future governments into the harsh imperatives of their chosen world view.  (There they go with their flippin’ ‘Capitalist Realism’ again).

[2.]:  Each afternoon, when I return home from work, this edifice appears to have acquired another story.  It seems set to dominate our entire neighbourhood, much as does the student tower, a little to the east, which I wrote about a while back.

Mental Mapping: "And There's No Time To Think"*

'Mental Mapping'. (Foreground): My 'Cement Cycle'. (Background): Work By Andrew Smith

Well, our exhibition 'Mental Mapping: New Work By Andrew Smith & Hugh Marwood' came and went, and already feels like it's receding in the rearview mirror at an alarming rate.  I haven't been even remotely able to keep up with events in real time here, so we're very much in the realms of retrospective speculation from here on in.  Actually, the tragic nature of fleeting time was evident even in the midst of the show.  Knowing it would be my only chance to spend time alone with it, I deliberately went into Rugby Art Gallery & Museum a few hours before our Private View, to spend a while thinking about what we’d achieved before our guests arrived.

(L.): 'Orfeo'.  (R.): My 'Map 1-4' 

When we secured the exhibition slot, last year, I assumed I would exhibit a selection of existing work, along with anything new that  I might complete in the interim.  However, in the event, both Andrew Smith and I ended up producing two bodies of completely new work specifically for the show.  In fact, my participation in last September’s ‘Melbourne Arts Festival’ meant that all my ‘Mental Mapping’ work was actually completed in about eight months.  Only now am I coming to terms with just how hard I’ve actually been working during that period.

Personally speaking, it became clear this would be the case once we’d arrived at the exhibition title and I started to think seriously about the themes it suggested.  It felt like a real opportunity to pin down the relationship between various urban texts, and the layers of meaning they might release, with reference to specific familiar locations.  The first two elements have existed in my work for some time, but the third felt somewhat underdeveloped.  I’d attempted something consciously site-related in my stuttering ‘Belgrave Gate Project’, but that felt like a bit of a false start.  As it turns out, the current ‘Map’ paintings provided an effective escape route from those conundrums, being essentially a return to a more formally focused, abstract mode of picture-making - but with added cartographical value and found texts from my chosen sites.

My 'Map 6, 7 & 5'

Furthermore, the itch to work in other media, besides painting, could be scratched - I now realised, equally well within the exhibition’s overall thematic premise(s).  My photographic ‘Cement Cycle’ project, and the ‘Orfeo’ video collaboration with Andrew are the fulfillment of that.  ‘Cement Cycle’ is the first time I’ve envisaged my own photography as something exhibitable in its own right, and feels like a distinct widening of my repertoire.  In reality, it may be that ‘Orfeo’ is the real pivotal piece in ‘Mental Mapping’, for a couple of other important reasons.

Andrew Smith & Hugh Marwood, 'Orfeo', Digital Video, 2015

The first is that it marks my most successful attempt, to date, to collaborate with another artist on equal terms, and with a consequent leap of faith.  It involved a definite move away from my default comfort zones in several respects, and not a little experiential learning on the hoof.  I’ve been through the whys and wherefores of the film in a previous post, but I am genuinely gratified by how well it has been received, generally.  Despite its obscure, elliptical qualities, people seem happy to stay with it, and to enjoy being benignly confused.  I hope this means there’s a richness to both the imagery and the language, that transcends any need for definitive meaning.  One viewer claimed to be genuinely moved by the twilit image of spilt paint, (always a delight to discover it’s not just me), whilst another felt that the vocal tone of Andrew’s narration struck exactly the right note.  I remain painfully aware of some of the film’s technical shortcomings, (mostly in-camera), but all of this makes me rather proud of our little film, and genuinely happy that we made the attempt.  I certainly hope to do more work in this area in the future.

Anyone Want To Buy A Plinth?

The other obvious point about ‘Orfeo’, is that it forms a clear bridge between the two, distinct bodies of work on show.  It’s the point at which my attunement to the resonances of place; - my sense of ‘being there’ as thoughts and feelings unfold at a certain site, meet Andrew’s expression of the subconscious through the weaving of obscure, often absurdist narratives.  It’s within those that he projects his own, often deeply personal, internal accounts onto the objects and situations around him.

‘Orfeo’ was, I suppose, a case of me inviting Andrew to weave an account around my chosen surroundings, and to do something a little deeper or more elliptical with them than I might have otherwise achieved.  In passing, I’m struck by the fact that he acknowledges the influence of Kevin Lynch’s ‘The Image Of The City’ [1.] on his concept of the film, just as it was on ‘Cement Cycle’.  In my case, this is fairly explicit; - the organisational logic of the five pairs of ‘Elements’ derives directly from Lynch’s ideas, and the captions incorporated into each image are my re-written interpretations of certain sections of his text.  In ‘Orfeo’, it’s far more nuanced I feel, - more veiled in poetry perhaps, but the influence is still evident to me in a number of ways [2.].

My 'Cement Cycle', (10 Pieces), Inkjet Prints On Concrete, 2015

This contrast between internally derived (Andrew), and externally derived (Me) stimuli, is probably the crux of the exhibition.  Only now, do I really appreciate just how superficially extrovert my own paintings may look in relation to his, - in terms of colour and sheer wordiness, if nothing else [3.].  It seems that Andrew’s strategy for dealing with his own psychodramas is to turn to internal investigation, whilst mine may be to become visually extrovert, and to run off at the mouth.

Andrew Smith, (L.): 'Flag',  (R.): 'The Way Things Happen', Computer Drawing , Inkjet Print
On Paper, (Centre): 'The Art Of Camouflage', Acrylic On Canvas, All 2015

In the light of this, Andrew’s largest painting, ‘The Art Of Camouflage’ feels like a key work.  At first glance, it’s less photographically oriented than his other canvases, with more than a suggestion of classic Surrealism, and even a hint of Cubist space.  However, the implications of a profile head populated by submarines, are pretty clear, and a tendency towards (partial) concealment, and an urge to dive beneath the surface are key themes within all the work surrounding it.

Work By Andrew Smith

Andrew's more photographic paintings are generally suggestive of still-life arrangements or domestic interiors, but I’m unable to avoid also reading them as spaces one might inhabit.  The odd viewpoints, ambiguities of scale and deliberate unfocusing of imagery owe a clear debt to Gerhard Richter, as does the care with which they are painted.  However, they remind me, even more, of the paranoid way that David Lynch’s film camera will regularly close in on some, suddenly threatening domestic detail at moments of extreme psychic disturbance.

Andrew Smith, (L.): 'Family Portrait', (Centre), 'Little Navigator', (R.): 'Mummy',
Acrylic On Canvas, 2015

What becomes apparent from spending time with the paintings, and in conversation with Andrew, is that certain implied narratives run through both the paintings and the accompanying digital prints, as a body.  This is most overt in the recurrence of two implied characters,  ‘Little Navigator’ and ‘The Wound Dresser’.  They lend their names to a pair of paintings, but also conduct a written exchange in the print, ‘Conversation’.  Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that the final line of dialogue reads, “But words are not for explanation”.  My own initial interpretation was to see the Navigator as male, and the Dresser as female, and I hold to that view.  However, having gained extra insight from Andrew, I now realise there is something more darkly Freudian about ‘The Wound Dresser’ as a painting, than I might have originally imagined.  What might seem benignly symbolic of female domesticity, actually imply something more emasculating, it seems.

Andrew Smith, 'Conversation', Computer Drawing, Inkjet Print On Paper, 2015

Andrew Smith, 'The Wound Dresser', Acrylic On Canvas, 2015

It’s not really for me to delve too deeply into such psychosexual undercurrents here - not least because there is, I’m sure, more than a little autobiographical content in Andrew’s work.  It’s perhaps sufficient to add that there is more than a suggestion of something lost, wrecked or discarded in the multiple images of wooden debris, abandoned furniture, scattered drawers, and castaway references which recur throughout the prints.  It would be for Andrew to fill in more specific detail, but perhaps words really are not for explanation. 

Andrew Smith, 'We Must've Taken A Wrong Turning', Computer Drawing,
Inkjet Print On Paper, 2015

Andrew Smith, 'Blue Lagoon', Inkjet Print On Paper, 2015

What is evident in Andrew’s prints is a willingness to incorporate photographic imagery with a variety of other modes of depiction, and to operate through several layers of potential meaning in each piece.  The photographic aspect allies them superficially to my ‘Cement Cycle’ in the exhibition, I suppose, as well as to ‘Orfeo’.  However, I think the more meaningful connection would be the attempts that both of us habitually make, to have numerous parallel ‘realities’, (or more likely, - fictions), running through our work.

Andrew Smith, Prints 

By bringing together these separate streams within an expressively neutral, digital realm, Andrew creates an arena in which each statement, representational convention, or implied medium, is introduced on equal terms with everything else.  His is a form of virtual collage, in contrast to my own, distinctly material form.  That interplay between media, and the leveling-out effects of digital translation are things I’m keen to take more account of myself in the near future.  The examples of Dan Perfect, Sigmar Polke, Christopher Wool, Charlene Von Hayl and Albert Oehlen have all stimulated me to think about all this in recent weeks.

Andrew Smith, 'The Way Things Happen', Computer Drawing, Inkjet Print On Paper, 2015

Andrew Smith, 'On Arrival', Computer Drawing, Inkjet Print On Paper, 2015

Whilst ‘Mental Mapping’ may be pretty small beer in the grand scheme of things, it feels like a significant advance for me, both artistically, and in terms of belief in my own abilities to make something happen from soup to nuts.  It also proves that creative collaboration can be an equable and rewarding process that need not involve endless frustrating compromise, as once I might have foolishly believed.

It’s been a wholly positive experience for me overall, and represents my acceptance that, if you’re at all serious about producing art, then going public with it periodically is all part of the deal.  If the individual, original art object is to retain its validity in an increasingly mediated world, (no question, in my mind), then sheer presence in the room remains its greatest strength, after all.  Tucked away with the work in my back bedroom, for months at a time, I live on top of it to such a degree that, in the end, I can hardly see it anymore.  Putting the work in a neutral space, open to the response of others, is the only real way to tell how much progress has been made, and if it really can cut it out there in the world.

An exhibition can sometimes feel like the end of a particular creative phase, but actually, I see the whole process as far more cyclical than that.  As I sat with our show for a while, I was thinking about the clues it provided to what might come next, as much as about what had just concluded.

*   Bob Dylan, 'No Time To Think'.  From the album, 'Street Legal', CBS/Special Rider Music, 1978

[1.]:  Kevin Lynch, ‘The Image Of The City’, Massachusetts USA, The M.I.T Press, 1960

[2.]:  Lynch himself wasn’t adverse to a little playful obfuscation it seems, as can be seen here

[3.]:  For people who know me well, the wordiness might not be such a surprise.