Unboxing 3: Dangerous Goods Manifest

 

Leicester, December 2020

There's probably a limit to how many of these workplace-derived 'Unboxing' posts I can belabour you with - at least without a bit of creative manipulation of the source imagery.  Nevertheless, I remain deeply attracted to the honest simplicity and truth-to-materials of the honest brown cardboard box, and to the emblematic symbology and potentially allusive texts which adhere to them.  These particular examples were especially 'thrilling' as (unusually), they contained a potentially hazardous chemical, and demonstrate the double-boxing, stern, graphic warnings, and 'Dangerous Goods Manifest' attendant on such a deadly cargo.  For the record, the product in question was a single bottle of Isopropanol - hardly plutonium, but at least: no couriers were harmed in the making of this blog post.

As soon as I have unpacked such consignments, the boxes generally get casually stacked in the corner of the classroom - awaiting recycling.  Even at this scale - with only two elements of modest scale, a distinctly totemic quality begins to emerge.  Indeed, I'm reminded that this is exactly how the format of 2018's 'Sentinel' sculptures originated - almost by accident.

'Sentinel' Sculptures, 'Visions of a Free-Floating Island', Surface Gallery, Nottingham,
September 2018

Perhaps there may be some tentative connection between those pieces, and the spate of mysteriously emerging monoliths, at various international locations, a couple of weeks back.  The reporting of those (beginning with what may have been some kind of oblique art-prank in remotest Utah) appears to have dwindled already.  That makes me think the whole thing was little more than an online meme that failed to really catch hold - particularly as the vaguely unworldly examples at a handful of locations, were joined by reports of a puerile, and far-too-representational, phallic example in Germany.  I suspect we'll soon file the memory of 2020's monoliths away with crop circles, and the like (if we remember them at all).  It does emphasise the enduring fascination of totemic, columnar forms, in the human imagination, nonetheless.

Meanwhile, the primordial urge to stack up cardboard boxes; well, that's something altogether more profound - clearly.

Pop Classics: Robert Indiana & Roy Lichtenstein At Tate Modern

Robert Indiana, Sculptures, Tate Modern, London, July 2019

A slightly concerning slump in my general energy levels, and an attendant apathy regarding social media upkeep (remember when we didn't have to bother with all this striving for attention?), make this my first post of the month.  Only a Doctor might ultimately reveal if my physical lethargy represents anything more sinister than the creeping passage of middle age, and I guess it's ultimately up to me to decide about what I can and can't really be bothered with, digitally.  But, for now, let's persevere, and keep the pot at least simmering with a slight return to my last trip to London, in July.  In particular, this post relates to the pleasurable hour I spent with Tate Modern's current Pop Art display.  

Robert Indiana, Sculptures, Tate Modern, London, July 2019

I definitely enjoy the way the Tate constantly reshuffles and recontextualises its permanent or loaned collections - not least because it makes each repeat visit a potentially stimulating new experience.  Sometimes this leads one to discover something completely new, but this time it was also an opportunity to revisit some perennial favourites in a new configuration.  I remain a sucker for a bit of Pop, and am often surprised to discover how, in the case of the best examples at least, the genre's self-proclaimed superficialities haven't faded, anywhere near as rapidly as one might expect, over the years.  Some of this stuff is certainly very familiar, and has been rendered pretty ubiquitous through repeated mass-media regurgitation, but there is something quite appropriate about that, after all.  In reality,  I still find much of it can still raise a smile, when encountered at first hand.  

Robert Indiana, Sculptures, Tate Modern, London, July 2019

This time round, it was intriguing to witness how the Tate had juxtaposed certain American 'classics' with much less well-known, stylistically sympathetic examples from the other side of the Iron Curtain.  There's clearly plenty to consider regarding the apparent critique of Pop's embrace of Capitalist aesthetics, from opposing sides of the Twentieth Century's ideological divide, and perhaps that's something this post might have been about.  Instead, it's really about how I was more self-indulgently distracted by two of my old Pop favourites - and by certain correspondences between their work, and my own.

I've long been a fan of Robert Indiana - not least for the elegant, emblematic qualities of his work, and the elegance with which he incorporated textual elements into his visual statements.  This is all very familiar from his crisp two-dimensional works, but it's also there in his frequent forays into sculpture.  Best known of those are the welded steel 'Love' monuments which still crop up in various international cities, and have continued to proliferate in a variety of media and formats, over the decades.  But, here at Tate, I was delighted to discover a cluster of his slightly less familiar, herm-like totems, occupying the centre of a large room. 

'Sentinel' Sculptures, 'Visions Of A Free-Floating Island', Surface Gallery, Nottingham,
September 2018

I've always loved these, not least for their formal clarity, but perhaps most of all - for their distinctly human qualities.  It's difficult not to regard them as standing figures, I feel - and also not to notice their formal similarity to certain, far more ancient statues.  I'm also prompted to marvel at how Indiana was able to adapt the glib, monosyllabic invocations of commercial signage or labelling, to further suggest, something intrinsically human (either physically or emotionally).  Like all the best Pop Art, they allow scope for philosophical meditation, whilst retaining a formal accessibility.  Most importantly - they are distinctly witty.

And, of course, it's now impossible not to admit that they were clearly in my mind (either consciously or otherwise) as I was constructing my 'Sentinel' sculptures last year.  The scale, format, and resulting figurative characteristics of those, make the connection pretty obvious - as do my similar attempts to apply apposite textual excerpts to a sculptural format.  Also, they seem to be equally 'of the street' in their use of low grade, found materials.  There's even a submission to the somewhat corny, in at least one or two of the 'Sentinels' - although I certainly don't claim to have got away with that, with anything like the knowing cool of Robert Indiana.

'Sentinel 5', Salvaged Cardboard Boxes, MDF, Adhesive Tape & Paper Collage & Acrylics,
 2018

'Sentinel 2' Salvaged Cardboard Boxes, MDF, Adhesive Tape, Paper Collage & Acrylics,
2018

Anyway, when not revelling in Indiana's statues, or struggling to find clear camera angles in what was a very popular gallery space - I was equally pleased to revisit two works by Roy Lichtenstein, hanging on the wall beyond.  As icons of Pop go, they don't get much more archetypal or over-familiar than Lichtenstein's 'Whaam!'.  In many respects, it could be said to encapsulate everything that's most resonant about American Pop Art.  Relish for the immediacy and mass-appeal of commercially motivated imagery - tick.  Exploration of the visual and formal tropes of mechanically reproduction - tick.  Dialogue between 'high' and 'low' art and the translation of imagery between certain media typical of them - tick.  Juxtaposition of the candy-coated blandishments of consumption-driven affluence, and the darker aspects of actual history - tick.  Exploitation of the potential of key imagery to both insulate the viewer from uncomfortable reality, and simultaneously open-up avenues of internal philosophical debate - tick.  Perhaps never were existential inconveniences (i.e: war and human slaughter), rendered quite so superficially cheery in a piece of gallery art.  And, perhaps most impressively, given its perennial recycling and possible slight fading of pigments - it still feels almost as crisp, fresh and provoking, as it must have in 1963.

Roy Lichtenstein, 'Whaam!', Acrylic & Oil on Canvas, 1963

Three years later, Lichtenstein made his own excursion into the third dimension, in the adjacent wall-mounted relief, 'Wall Explosion II'.  By extracting the already frozen and formalised emblem of the explosion, from 'Whaam!', and then rendering it in welded steel, he further pursued the idea of the instantaneous moment made tangible (or consumable - even).  Again, there's something both eloquent and undeniably 'Pop' (almost literally so) about the translation of a moment of destruction into a reproducible, and thus - marketable, commodity.  And his use of perforated mesh to allude to the ben-day dots of halftone reproduction, or even the stencils he might himself use to emulate them in paint, is just too damn clever for words.  Those are the same halftone dots I've tried to suggest or even collage into more than one of my own works, in recent years - but never in quite such a sophisticatedly oblique manner as Lichtenstein did here - sadly.

Roy Lichtenstein, 'Wall Explosion II', Enamel on Steel, 1965

Completed Sculpture: 'This S(c)eptic Isle': 'Sentinel 5 (Better Products For A Better Future)'

All Images: 'Sentinel 5 (Better Products For A Better Future)', Salvaged Cardboard Boxes & Tube,
MDF, Acrylics, Paper Collage, Adhesive Tape & French Polish, 132 cm X 60 cm X 60 cm, 2018

Here’s the fifth (and as far as I currently know – the last), of my current ‘Sentinel’ sculptures.  This one’s titled, ‘Sentinel 5 (Better Products For A Better Future)’.  Of course, one should never say never.  However, my current feeling is that, if I were to continue down this particular road in coming months – the basic format might need to evolve a bit further, one way or another.  We’ll see.

This has ended up being the second tallest of the current set, and the most irregular in its formal composition.  The asymmetrical footprint was dictated, in part, by the need to add some additional stability to a relatively slender lower section - but quickly came to feel like a pleasing departure from its somewhat simpler colleagues.  The same is essentially true of the tube and narrow box additions running up the faces of that lower box - and I’m pleased to have integrated them more successfully (and less superficially) than was the case with ‘Sentinel 3’.

The main text on this ‘Sentinel’ reads, “I need a home, I need food, I need...”, but perhaps equally allusive, is the original, and more discrete [1.], printed legend, “Better Products For a Better Future”.  There would seem to be some interface between necessity and desire implied by the conjunction of these two found phrases - alongside an obvious contrast in tone.  The latter seems to feed directly into any ambivalent thoughts I may have about consumerism (of goods and/or propaganda), in connection with these ‘Sentinels’.  I’m always fascinated by the potential of such aspirational marketing tags to pretty much satirise themselves – however ambiguously.  Juxtaposing it with the more existential plaintive, "I need..." might also trigger some debate over what our society can (and can’t) actually provide – should you feel so inclined.

[1.]:  A bit too discrete to show up in these photos, in fact.  It is there - trust me.

Completed Sculpture: 'This S(c)eptic Isle': 'Sentinel 4 (Wrong Way Up)'

'Sentinel 4 (Wrong Way Up)', Salvaged Cardboard Boxes, MDF, Acrylics, Paper Collage,
Adhesive Tape & French Polish, 125 cm X 60 cm X 60 cm, 2018

Regular visitors will know the drill by now,  Essentially, I'm methodically putting up posts about my recently completed work, just now - in advance of next month's 'Visions Of A Free-Floating Island' exhibition, with Shaun Morris and Andrew Smith.

This is the fourth of the 'Sentinel' sculptures, 'Sentinel 4 (Wrong Way Up)'.  If I have slight qualms, in retrospect, about the possibly over-literal formal composition of '3' - I have to say, I'm rather happier with this one.  It seems to relate fairly closely to the larger 'Sentinel 1', and to possibly hit an equable sweet spot between suggesting a human figure, and being a purely formal arrangement of boxes.

I'm also pretty pleased with the large applied text fragment, "I'm a human being, God-dammit! My life has value!", and even with the slightly juvenile juxtaposition of the originally printed "Wrong Way Up" legend, and inverted arrows.  There's something delightfully passive-aggressive about labelling the wrong way up, the right way up (as it were), I feel.  I also think the overall distribution of black, red and white graphics seems to achieve a pleasing balance throughout the entire piece.  I'm even quite pleased with the addition of the "Fragile" packing tape, although its variable adhesive properties make that stuff surprisingly tricky to work with, I have to say.

Just one more of these, plus a couple of other loose ends - to follow shortly...

Completed Sculpture: 'This S(c)eptic Isle': 'Sentinel 2 (Premium Bulk Pack)'

'Sentinel 2 (Premium Bulk Pack)', Salvaged Cardboard Boxes, MDF, Acrylics, Paper Collage,
Adhesive Tape & French Polish, 129 cm X 60 cm X 60 cm, 2018

Here’s the second of my recently completed ‘Sentinel’ sculptures.  This one’s subtitled, ‘Premium Bulk Pack’, for reasons that should be fairly evident from the accompanying images.  The use of phrases, extracted from original printed box graphics, for the subtitles of these pieces, is one point I omitted to mention in my discussion of ‘Sentinel 1’ – but what I wrote there applies to ‘2’ in pretty much every other respect.  I’ll spare you any pointless repetition here.

I suppose there’s always a danger of disappearing up the fundament of self-reflexivity, with all this fancy word play.  Doubtless, it would have been more straightforward to further mine the fragments of my extended ‘Below The Line / Beneath Contempt’ text (which also adorn these sculptures), for their subtitles.  But doing it this way adds a pleasing reminder of the found nature of the raw materials.  In fact, the reality is probably even closer to the fact to say that, the printed phrases - whilst nominally functional or promotional in nature, take on a pleasing resonance of their own (in my mind) which just felt too tempting to ignore.

Completed Sculpture: 'This S(c)eptic Isle': 'Sentinel 1 (Your Order From)'

All Images:  'Sentinel 1 (Your Order From)', Salvaged Cardboard Boxes & Tube, MDF,
Adhesive Tape, Paper Collage, Acrylics & French Polish, 145 cm X 65 cm X 60 cm, 2018

As mentioned in my last post, I've been completing sculptures at a fairly rapid rate, over the last three or four weeks.  This is, admittedly, after a much longer period of slog, prepping and painting broken toys, and building a seemingly endless procession of MDF carcasses to reinforce the cardboard cartons I’d collected.

It’s lovely to reach that stage where it’s all about assembling and finishing - and another piece seems to reach completion every few days.  With painting, I’ve always noted how the most enjoyable part of the whole process comes about two thirds or three quarters of the way through - when the thing’s still up for grabs, but most of the problematic bridges have been crossed.  At that stage, you often have a pretty clear sense of whether or not a piece will be successful on its own terms - and it’s possible to take pleasure in bringing it to some form of conclusion.  Although it's been a slightly more methodical process, I currently seem to be enjoying the sculptural equivalent of that situation.  Ironically, the actual completion can often feel a bit anti-climactic in comparison – but just now, that feeling is offset by the focus a deadline brings - and the by fact that, as each piece is finished, there’s another waiting in the queue, immediately behind.

Anyway, alongside the ‘Childish Things’ series of abandoned toy sculptures, I’ve also been working on a parallel series of what I’ve chosen to entitle ‘Sentinels’ - of which this is the first.  Whereas cardboard boxes form an important, if subsidiary element of the ‘Childish Things’, here they are the main event.  The boxes clearly relate to another common feature of the fly-tipped garbage that continues to spill across the pavements of my local neighbourhood, and form one of the oft-mentioned recurring ‘key motifs’ of my ‘This S(c)eptic Isle’ project.  It’s not too great an imaginative stretch to associate them with the on-demand, consumer lifestyles we all now lead.  Even in a fairly low-rent area like ours, most days see a fairly constant parade of white courier vans, unloading the latest online purchases.  The cardboard packaging normally re-emerges, to reside beside front doors, or amongst the bins, not long afterwards.

My alighting upon the monolithic, columnar form of ‘Sentinel 1 (Your Order From)’ was one of those fairly organic, intuitive things that just felt right almost as soon as I started playing with the boxes.  I’d originally thought in terms of more random accumulations, but it seems that the vertical format was pretty close to the surface of my subconscious and felt like an itch I just needed to scratch.  There’s also a direct link with the discarded refrigerators, which certainly rival cardboard cartons for the title of most prolific street trash item on a good week.  Indeed, the idea of sentinels probably occurred in my mind in connection with the fridges, even before I started stacking boxes.  However, I’d already paid heed to them in my pre-existing fridge door wall pieces, and so the boxes won out this time round.

It’s perhaps worth pointing out, at this point – that these particular boxes are somewhat removed from their raw state.  Just as with the toy sculptures, the intention here was to create a sculptural artifact - rather than a pure Readymade.  Not only does each of the boxes contain a rigid inner structure - the surfaces have also been extensively modulated and ‘tidied up’ through the application of acrylic paint, French polish, packing tape and numerous litres of PVA. 

Naturally, as the title suggests, it’s pretty difficult to imagine a simple monolith form, particularly at this kind of scale - without perceiving in it, the human figure.  That’s one of the archetypes of sculpture, from prehistory to the present day, of course, and speaks of our inbuilt tendency towards an anthropomorphic gestalt - regardless of the degree of apparent abstraction at play.  I’ve rarely thought of the figure as my subject, and it certainly wasn’t my first intention when I began the ’TSI’ work, last year.  Nevertheless, there’s no point pretending it isn’t an undeniable association in these ‘Sentinel’ pieces, and I guess there is something pleasing about the idea of figures (or lives) constructed solely from the containers of consumable product.

The other important inescapable feature of this sculpture is its function as a carrier of text.  As with the textual content in the associated ‘Fridge’ series, the phrases stenciled onto ‘Sentinel 1’ are excerpts from my long-form piece, ‘BelowThe Line / Beneath Contempt’.  Although that is an extended text, with the conceit of a five-act structure, any narrative arc(s) it may hint at, is really little more than a happy accident - brought about by the juxtaposition of numerous Brexit-related, ‘Below the Line’ comments.  In fact, it’s really just an exercise in collaging, and thereby recontextualising found material.  This repeated recycling of and calling-back to, of both texts and motifs, seems to have become an increasing feature of my work in recent years.

In the light of that, extracting, and further reframing certain of its components for inclusion in the ‘Fridges’ and ‘Sentinels’, feels perfectly appropriate.  In fact, if these cardboard columns are to be read as figures - then perhaps the application of text onto them feels like an exercise in giving them a voice.  Sadly, as recent British history demonstrates, when a poorly educated populace of alienated consumers is presented with a stark, binary choice - and encouraged to express an uninformed (or misinformed) opinion, ‘the voice of the people’ may not be what one would hope to hear at all.  Democracy, eh?  What a palaver!

In this case, the two chosen phrases, ‘Bizzarre logic’ and ‘You’ve been given plenty- don’t pretend’, come from entirely separate sections of both the compiled ‘BTL/BC’ text, and the original debate that seeded it.  As ever, a cut and paste approach opens up the potential for further interpretation, or indeed – a whole new argument.  And, whilst I do know the correct spelling of 'Bizarre' - the combative on-line contributor, sadly, did not.