'This S(c)eptic Isle': Notional Pride 12 (trans_late)

 

All Images: West Leicester, March 2022

The Riverman claimed right away that the Economic Misdeeds Bill is part of the package. The principle is that he manages the assets of the British oligarch with a new register, which obliges foreign companies to verify the name of the beneficiary from the skin. At this hour, as the Vlasniks can have a vikonanny period of 6 months, they will work. What time to be! The oligarchs will fix their names otherwise the stench will precede them - as if they were zatrimani under the sanctions of the new order. Activists also fear that the oligarchs will be guilty within the 18-month window, in order to profit from tributary ports, territory of the United Kingdom, and the region of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. The public may not register large Roku Vlasnikov in business, before the end of 2023.

The measure of tax justice is overtaken by the fact that the legislative acts which can be adopted do not solve the problem in offshore jurisdictions. "There's almost no definition of what isn't," said groupie Wiki Director, Beach Lomax: "These are the styles (of the oligarchs) to brighten up unviable tombstones. I bet most of them are in overseas territories and Royal dominions." It will all be a formalisation of Britain's permanent exclusion from the bully.

Chondrite Watermill MP and Labour MP Magog Rethread, in order to save the treasury near the tributary port, want access to company data in the city. Dame Magog tells Aden Ninette PhD: "They give way to penny sins, like a secret three-way path. Without sumnivu jurisdiction, oligarchs can earn victorious tax havens as 20 dodos, 20 dodos." Labour deputies of the regular government are guilty of new vikonuvaty rights, but tremayutsa ryadovyh zakoniv, which help the oligarchs to steal their pennies, are guilty by reducing the be-yaki range. "Anything to avoid consultants, hulks, real hulks and legit wavers," said Dame Magog: "Children are welcome for everyone. You are guilty of committing criminal offences, Tilki - on the way to Youmu."

Anti-corruption activist, Dribbler Low (a kind of creation for UK magnetic law and, if you will - order) praised more laws. Viv instilled in the oligarchs the fact that it is impossible to just relocate assets - like in the UK, (so in the UK, so in the UK, so in the UK, so in the UK, so in the UK, so in the UK, so in the UK, so in the UK), saying: "In order to remove the oligarchs' access to wealth, Britain must pass the law to be the mother of the Firmi Que Accounting Form" - which act helped the oligarchs create information exchange systems.

MPs and campaigners believe the Economic Misdeeds Bill, which will be heard in the house of Lords on Mondays and Tuesdays, will avenge other glaring shortcomings. Alyson Lush, who is Spotlight's Director of Corruption, points to laziness (there is no true lord). The stench is also respected by those victorious kleptocrats with the path to power, recognised for the 'Submit-Sub-Little-Sub-Little-Subject-Subject', to hide the manifestation. One of them may have 25% of mechanised control. People opine that the oligarchs are being bold, selling some of the shares through their foreign company.

"There are significant gaps in the bay that are really fighting," Lush said: "It will be very important to reconsider the organisations behind the cordon." The floor has many ways of gaining, depending on the apical structures, but colleagues do not support the contribution of the current participations in the bill campaign. Minister of the Interior, Patti Peril (boy-rock, rock all day) can be be passed another period of the economic crisis, about to come to that parliament in Lipni Chi Lipni, because the minister can take all the decisions at the moment.

Pretty, Vacant 6

 

All Images:  Central Leicester, December 2020

1:  What is the true relationship between consumption, control, and preservation?

2:  Can you have your pudding, until you've received your just des(s)erts?

  

3:  Does the unusual and fortuitous conjoining of multiple favoured motifs promote unification,           or multiply complexity?

4:  How might meaning and serendipity intersect?

5:  Are some monoliths hiding in plain sight/site?

6:  Do Ghost Sentinels exist?

Completed Mixed Media Piece: 'Fridge 7'

All Images: 'Fridge 7', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Screen-Print, Adhesive Tape,
Spray Enamel, French Polish & Plastic Letters on Salvaged Refrigerator Door,
 55 cm X 136 cm, 2018  

This post brings me up to date with documenting all my recently completed work.  It deals with ‘Fridge 7’ – the one that nearly got away, as my attention shifted to the ‘Sentinel’ and ‘Childish Things’ series of sculptures, over the Summer.  It had sat untouched for quite a while.  Luckily, it was far enough advanced for its completion to be a relative formality, once I did return to it.

‘7’ is actually the largest of the ‘Fridges’ to date, although it essentially follows the same general format as the others, in combining relatively abstract imagery, built from paper and tape collage, photo-derived screen-printed motifs, and fridge magnet letters [1.] – and applying them to a salvaged refrigerator door.

Anyone following the evolution of my ‘This Sc(e)ptic Isle’ project, over recent months, will remember that the abandoned fridges populating my neighbourhood (and possibly yours too?), are a recurrent motif in the work – as well as providing a plentiful supply of ready-made painting substrates.  I didn’t even need a screwdriver to collect this door, as it had been considerately detached and left propped against a wall – just as though someone knew I’d be coming along.  The refrigeration theme is also echoed in the lower portion of printed imagery – it representing a radiator grille from the reverse of a completely different appliance.  I’ve been very attracted by the abstract geometry of those grilles, as I’ve documented the fridges on my regular photographic patrols – and can’t help wondering if there's even be a potential side-project in there.

Above the grille, is another section of photo-derived print, representing yet another of the project’s key motifs (and indeed, another frequently-observed category of street trash) - the abandoned trundle toy.  Several prime examples of those have been dragged home and repurposed in the form of the ‘Childish Things’ sculptures – but they’re actually just a small selection of the ones I’ve photographed to date.

Although it’s hard to divine at this stage, the abstracted ‘background’ of this piece even incorporates a third category of ‘TSI’ motif, in the form of a dismembered Union Flag.  It’s largely subsumed into the rest of the overlying imagery by now, but can perhaps still be guessed at from some of the vestigial geometry (the still-prominent triangle on the right hand side, in particular).

And that, along with a fairly blunt clue in the overriding text, are a reminder that all this work has carried a simmering undercurrent of politics throughout - as well as being a report on the way we live, revealed in the discarded refuse I move amongst each day.  It feels like a long time now since I collected and re-ordered all the found on-line comments that comprise my ‘Below The Line / Beneath Contempt’ text - but they seem to have lost little of their currency, as I’ve plundered it for choice phrases to apply to the ‘Fridges’ and ‘Sentinels’, ever since.  The original sources were as much an indicator of the futile divisiveness on both sides of what has come to be universally termed ‘The Brexit Debate’ - as any useful guide to the validity of one viewpoint over the other.  I pretty much know where I stand on the matter – as, I’m sure, might you.  But what is terrifyingly obvious, is that - after all these months, Britain is no closer to achieving anything remotely resembling resolution (or even just a degree of political maturity) on the matter.  If anything, the levels of delusion appear only magnified, as each side becomes ever more entrenched.  In effect, this country seems intent on acting-out one of the most embarassing, extended, quasi-suicide bids in recent history.

If it’s cries for attention we’re really talking about, the self-serving buffoon, who deployed the ‘have cake – eat cake’ metaphor that feeds ‘Fridge 7’, is certainly one of our leading ‘experts’ [2.].  He could even become our own Idiot-in-Chief, should such overweening personal ambition ultimately hold sway.  That thought chills me to the marrow, but it seems we really shouldn’t underestimate the gullibility of the British people these days.  And of course, the dissembling nature of such a character – playing the blimpish comedy role to mask far more sinister intentions, is pretty typical of the caliber of leadership we now endure.  Now we’re so far through the looking glass, he might actually be the figurehead most suited to the tin-pot, failed state, that Britain appears to be intent on becoming.

However this may all one day shake out – it was never really my intention to become simplistically polemical in my work – even as some kind of response felt called for.  Dogmatic ranting, and even personal abuse (see above) may provide a temporary (and even enjoyable) release - as ‘the ‘BTL / BC’ trolls demonstrated, but they’re unlikely to achieve much in the long run.  And so, I find myself attempting to repurpose them, somewhat despairingly - in search of more oblique or allusive responses to the baffling absurdity of both domestic and global affairs.  Ultimately, it feels like bleak humour may be the only properly resilient way to maintain a degree of sanity, just now.

Forthcoming Exhibition:

That’s it for finished work, then.  By the time you see this, Shaun Morris, Andrew Smith and I will be installing our latest joint exhibition, ‘Visions Of A Free-Floating Island’ at Nottingham’s Surface Gallery.  The work goes up on Wednesday, 12 September, ready for our Opening Event on the evening of Friday, 14 September.  Obviously, you’re more than welcome to join us, should you find yourself in the vicinity.  The exhibition will be up for two weeks - until Saturday, 29 September, and we’ll be giving an Artist Talk on the afternoon of Saturday 22 September (once again, the more - the merrier).  Space allowing, I plan to include as many as possible, of the ‘Flagging’, ‘Fridge’, Childish Things’ and ‘Sentinel’ pieces, shown here over the last few months.

[1.]:  Appropriately enough, the larger "CAKE" letters are actually made of some sponge-like material (aimed at the very young).

[2.]:  One might also be tempted - I suppose, to draw a connection with the current favourite T.V. anaesthetic of the disengaged classes, 'The Great British Bake-Off'.  "Let them eat cake", indeed.

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?".

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?

Completed Mixed-Media Piece: 'Fridge 4'

'Fridge 4'  Acrylics, Paper Collage, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish, Screen-Print
& Magnetic Letters On Salvaged Refrigerator Door, 47 cm X 50 cm, 2018

Having recently completed the tenth and final piece in my 'Flagging' series - it was time to get back to  my mixed-media fridge door pieces.  Here's the recently completed 'Fridge 4'  Pleasingly, this one came together fairly quickly over recent days - after I'd done the initial ground work over the Christmas period.

Like each of the existing 'Fridge' pieces, this is a combination of mixed media, collage, screen printing and fridge magnet letters - all compiled on a salvaged refrigerator door.  The text is another excerpt from my 'Below The Line / Beneath Contempt' text - itself a linking thread throughout my overall 'This S(c)epic Isle' project.  With abandoned fridges being a key motif within the project - it's fortuitous that their doors also make great painting supports.

I'm becoming quite a connoisseur of them, and this is an unusually dinky example - found in a West Leicester back street.  It features a pleasingly sculpted handle arrangement and an unusual integral lock - which makes me wonder exactly what this little fridge once contained.

There's not much else to report really - other than that Number Five is following close behind.

Completed Mixed-Media Piece: 'Fridge 3'

'Fridge 3', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Screen-Print, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish,
Misc. Solvents & Magnetic Letters On Fridge Door, 81 cm X 49 cm, 2017

I seem to be on an increasing roll, as 2017 draws to its disillusioned conclusion.  That’s only as it should be really.  It’s been a year of dismay on a global scale, during which it often felt like the species has finally lost the plot altogether - plus one in which my own individual progress also felt distinctly sluggish at times.  If you chuck in the various episodes of illness and bereavement afflicting those close to me, then 2017 can just go and ‘do one’, as far as I’m concerned.

So, if more seems to be reaching a conclusion creatively, as the turn of the calendar year approaches – that must surely provide a glimmer of hope for better things in 2018.  Of course, I know that reality doesn’t really order itself thus, and that life, if not completely random - plays out in far less orderly cycles.  Nevertheless, having always been somewhat seasonally affected, the darkest, shortest days often feel like a natural time to evaluate and regroup to me.  The post-Christmas hangover is often a period in which I take a deep breath, and the New Year – one in which, like many others, I try to put my best foot forward once more.

Either way, it’s pleasing to draw a line under the third in my ‘Fridge’ pieces (shown here), and doubly so - to keep tripping over the numerous freshly prepared fridge doors currently littering my living space, and awaiting yet more imagery.  I always love that feeling of having done all the preparatory donkeywork, and of there being nothing left but to just get on with it.  With the meat of the educational break still ahead of me, the timing feels particularly apposite just now.  There’s just no reason not to hit 2018 running.

In terms of specifics, ‘Fridge 3’ follows the same basic blueprint laid down in ‘1’ & ‘2’.  It brings together onto its salvaged substrate, my by-now customary mélange of paint and collaged multi-media coupled with screen-printed elements - and focuses primarily on the motif of discarded laughing gas capsules, alluded to in ‘2’.  The text – picked out in magnetic letters once more, is another excerpt from my ‘Below the Line / Beneath Contempt’ text [1.].  If this one seems a little more cynical or brusque – well perhaps that just reflects the (in)toxic(ated) nature of much of the online debate which seeded that piece [2.].

[1.]:  Actually in 'Act 5' - to be posted shortly.

[2.]:  A cursory dip into that text ought to assure my employer that the phrase is unrelated in context to my day job, and has no bearing on my attitude towards our own young ‘customers’.