'This S(c)eptic Isle': Notional Pride 4

 

All Images: West Leicester, August 2021

"In the era of the Zoom interview, it seems government ministers believe nothing signals their patriotic credentials like a union flag placed strategically in the background.  

"But away from spare rooms in ministers' homes, new spending figures also highlight the increasing embrace of the flag by the government under Boris Johnson's premiership - whether motivated by Brexit, Scottish nationalism or the so-called culture wars.

"Spending on union flags has increased in virtually every government department since Johnson entered Downing Street, with more than £163,000 spent this year and last.  It accounts for 85% of union flag purchases over the past four years." [1.]

[1.]: Ben Quinn, 'UK government spends more than £163,000 on union flags in two years', The Guardian, 6 August 2021.

Perforated 3

West Leicester, March 2016

As a couple of previous posts demonstrate, I've had a certain visual attraction to 'Those Little Perforations' for some time.

West Leicester, March 2016

It's also the case that all-over repeat patterns have loomed pretty large in my visual sensibility, and indeed - my artwork, just recently.  Patterns of dots, alluding to either pierced surfaces, or printer's half-tone dots, have cropped up in numerous pieces for a while.  Grids and meshes seem to be coming increasingly to the fore too.  

West Leicester, March 2016

Anyway, these examples were all collected during a couple of routine journeys around Leicester and, beyond their purely visual interest, also tap into my abiding interests in both urban security measures, and graffiti, of course.

West Leicester, March 2016

West Leicester, March 2016

The raw metallic ones also make me think again about certain paintings by Jacqueline Humphries, - an artist whose work I've looked at a lot over recent months.  Not only has she also worked with grids and dot patterns on numerous occasions, but has also used metallic silver grounds beneath loose painterly marks, in some of her most notable paintings.

Jacqueline Humphries, 'O', Oil On Linen, 2015

Jacqueline Humphries, 'Alpha', Oil on Linen, 2014

Jacqueline Humphries, 'Alpha 4', Oil on Linen, 2014

This clearly introduces a whole new, fugitive element of visual sensation into any subject, making reflected light, and even the subtlest shift in viewpoint, an intrinsic part of the experience.  This was certainly what drew my eye to some of these subjects - perhaps as much as the familiar patterns they contain.  It's particularly true of certain of the graffiti-related pieces, involving the irregular, contorted surfaces of seriously battered security screens.  A couple of those illustrate how, in certain such situations, light and shadow reflecting from the nominal ground can modulate or even overwhelm what sits upon it.

Remaining Images: Central Leicester, April 2016

It's an interesting inversion, and one which, I suppose, could be categorised as a 'perceptual modifier'.  As such, perhaps they also relate to the reflections on window panes, and the shifting relationships between internal and external 'realities'  that can result.  Even the duller, plain metal examples here illustrate how subtle reflections can modulate and energise a seemingly inert industrial surface.

I suppose I'm mostly just musing out loud here really, or possibly making public - stuff which could just as easily reside within a private sketchbook.  Anyway, what does seem evident, is that certain perceptually fugitive phenomena seem to be of increasing interest to me, at the moment.  

River Of Words / 'A Brief History Of Graffiti' on BBC4

All Graffiti Images:  River Soar, South Leicester And Beyond, August 2015

The images in this post were all collected during a recent cycle ride along the towpath of the River Soar, from my inner Leicester home, to the southern periphery of the city, and beyond.  Apologies for the sometimes questionable quality, - my phone was the only image capture device to hand on that particular occasion.

I won't pretend there's anything remotely original about their subject matter.  This fascination with the calligraphic scrawling and stenciled philosophies of urban graffiti writers is something that runs like a thread through much of my artwork in recent works, and I’m hardly the only one tapping into such things as a visual or a semiotic resource.  These days, certain prominent street-artists have the status of international celebrities, and there are shelves of coffee table books devoted to their work.  Some would argue that recycling the various forms of contemporary street art, as a generically urban signifier, became a somewhat lazy trope many years ago.

And yet…  Whenever I venture out of my front door, on foot or on wheels, there it all still is, a restless, polychromatic tangle of stylized characters, hieroglyphs, icons and symbols, endlessly combining, self-cancelling and regenerating.  The city never ceases rewriting the unofficial account of itself in draft after draft.  It may be overly familiar, but that just proves it is still completely current as a means of communication/expression.  Being distinctly alternative, less densely populated routes through any city, river and canal towpaths are usually rich in graffiti.  However predictably, I was soon punctuating my pleasant Summer afternoon ride at regular intervals to document the current crop in South Leicester.

Actually, what might appear an inability to abandon a comfort zone of artistic subject matter on my part is slightly less straightforward than it might seem.  For some weeks, I’ve been considering possible directions for the next phase(s) of my artwork, mentally rehearsing various alternatives in a general sense, whilst idling in neutral, as it were.  At such moments, I often found it useful to deliberately return to a familiar starting point, whilst considering as yet untried ways of exploring it.  It may not be about the original subject so much as how one transmutes it.  In the case of some of these images, it may be the abstract qualities in general, and a certain, occasional sense of cancellation, that interests me primarily.  I also sense an increasing engagement with some of the spaces between marks as well as with the actual statements.

One current notion is that I’d quite like at least one aspect of my future output to be more self-consciously painterly.  The basis of much of my recent work, culminating in the ‘Map’series of pieces exhibited at June’s ‘Mental Mapping’ exhibition, took layered advertising posters as their starting point, both as content, and as an actual medium.  It’s no accident then, that the finished pieces took the form of paper collage as much as of painting per se.  I have no problem with that at all, but do wonder if it’s now time to return to something a little more fluid, rather than being quite so extensively ‘pieced together’.

In that context, the gestural, calligraphic quality of much graffiti, the unmistakable clues to its use of fluid media, and the flowing ‘one-hit’ nature of its execution, all feel quite significant just now.  These are qualities that don't attach themselves naturally to my default picture-making demeanour, and thus things that part of me periodically yearns to try to push up against.  I do believe that, ultimately, any creative practitioner can only really become the best artist they were going to be all along, but also that the limits of that are best defined by periodically pushing up against the things that come less easily.

Some of the above might seem to contradict my oft-stated ambitions to also work in non-painterly media, (the collaborative film, ‘Orfeo’, and my ‘Cement Cycle’ photographs being recent attempts to scratch that itch).  However, I’ve never aspired to abandoning painting, (quite the opposite), - merely to widening my range.  In fact, one of the circles I’d really like to square is that of the relationship between traditionally painterly and non-painterly, (possibly mechanical) media, even within the same work.  That's a clear concern much contemporary painting, and it seems to me that, paradoxically, an open acknowledgement of the material qualities inherent to paint could actually be of more rather than less use, in that context.

I wouldn't want you to think any of this is set in stone, (or concrete), - I'm just trying to illuminate certain trains of thought that characterise my own on-going creative process, even when work isn't actually in full flow.  Remember how I once used to fret about my (often over-extended) periods of hiatus?  It feels like definite progress that I now recognise these periods of creative 'rest' are just valuable refreshment breaks, and not a sign that it's all ground to a halt yet again.

A typical strategy at such times is to increasingly expose oneself to the work of other artists, in search of new (or even old) connections.  That’s an on-going process for most creative people, of course.  However, whilst it can be about confirming the validity (or otherwise), of work already in hand, between phases of work, it can be more about stimulating new processes or concerns not previously explored.  In this mode, I sometimes find it useful to investigate deliberately, certain artists whose work I’ve previously overlooked, or even those to whom I might have an initial antipathy.  Serendipity, synchronicity and plain old coincidence can all be enormous value, not least as a function of the fractal digital re/search we all indulge in routinely nowadays.

I’ll expand on that in the near future, but for now, I want to return to the initial theme of this post with mention of a recent BBC4 TV broadcast, ‘A Brief History Of Graffiti’ [1.].  I don’t own a TV these days, but do watch some stuff on demand.  Often, that’s just miscellaneous comedy, consumed for relaxation, but occasionally there's something more mentally nourishing, - like this.  In fact, it’s exactly the kind of thing I would probably miss out on once the current Government forces the BBC to charge viewers for its IPlayer on-demand service.  In passing, I’m perpetually baffled by how willingly the British will sacrifice the few shared things they have left of any genuine quality, to the imperatives of the market place, - usually devaluing them beyond repair, (but don’t get me started). [2.].

Richard Clay.  Still From: 'A Brief History Of Graffiti', BBC4 TV, (First Broadcast: 25 August, 2015)

Anyway, the programme was an engaging and informative survey of the tradition of alternative, wall-based expression, presented by Richard Clay, - an academic with a nevertheless engaging enthusiasm for the subject.  He had my attention from the get-go, in particular with his discussion of Prehistoric cave painting, and its typical, reverse-stenciled hand motif, (something I’ve reflected on here more than once).

That very human urge to assert “I woz ‘ere”, - to mark one’s individual identity within the group, and locate oneself in time, space and, most importantly, memory, was clearly there from our very origins.  It is clearly a key function of graffiti, and thus, a theme Clay returned to throughout his discussion.  It came to the fore again as he inevitably turned to the burgeoning of ‘Wild Style’ writing in 1970s Philadelphia and New York.  That was the birth of what might be regarded as the modern era of Graffiti, and still holds sway over the essential aesthetic of unofficial urban environments globally.  Certainly, the importance of the individual tag remains a key component, as a variety of personal trademark.

Also notable, was the connection of the prehistoric spray technology of diluted, ground earth pigment, scallop shell reservoir and blown reed, - with today’s ultra-convenient weapon of choice, the aerosol can.  Throwing paint was the most immediate application method from the very start, it would seem.

The flip-side of that coin is the function of graffiti in cementing the tribe, be it as blind allegiance to whichever clan one most identifies with, or in sharing common political or philosophical cause.  Translated Ancient Pompeian exhortations to violence against neighbouring cities, centred upon the gladiatorial area but clearly infecting wider society, prefigure current allegiances to football team or post code ‘hood’ in an even more overtly bloodthirsty manner.

To illustrate the importance of graffiti as political propaganda, Clay drew on the example of the Paris Commune of 1871.  Enjoyably, he revived the motif of the sprayed hand to illustrate how the invention of lithographic printing around the same time allowed activists to move beyond the individual, handwritten slogan, subverting an originally commercial medium to their own ends.  I might wish he could have extended this passage to make connections with the later traditions of Lettrism and Situationism, but I guess there’s only so much you can squeeze into an hour.  As the programme demonstrated, this is another theme that prevails, and the imperative to reassert an alternative voice (of whatever viewpoint) amidst the overwhelming Capitalist babble, may be even more vital than ever.  I’m sure anyone who follows this blog will be unsurprised that this stuff engaged captured my imagination.

Understandably, the survey ended with an examination of how Graffiti, and Street Art in general, came into the art mainstream, and how, nowadays, it’s as likely to be encountered in a gallery, as on the street.  I guess my own attempts to assimilate some of its tropes into my own process is a very tiny part of that.  Anyone disillusioned by the apparent ‘official’ co-option or acceptance through dilution this implies, may take heart from the activities of superstars of contemporary graffiti and Urban Exploration, Lek and Sowat.  It transpires that, whilst coordinating a temporary collective graffiti project at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo in 2012, they also found time to secretly decorate an inaccessible space in the bowels of the institution, unbeknownst to either its management or the visiting public.

I think we can all take pleasure from that, even if, as Richard Clay admitted, we still struggle to shrug off a certain ambivalence about someone inscribing our own walls.  I wonder if I'll be so quick with the paintbrush next time someone augments my property (as occasionally happens)?

I really enjoyed ‘A Brief History Of Graffiti’, both for its mild academic intent and palpable delight in the subversive impulse at the heart of graffiti.  If nothing else, by cropping up around the same time as my own lens turned again towards the omnipresent writing on walls, it encouraged me to believe that my own abiding attraction to the subject may not be quite as hackneyed as I sometimes fear.

You can catch up with the programme here, until 25 September 2015.

[1.]:  ‘A Brief History Of Graffiti’, BBC4, First Broadcast: 21.00, Wednesday, 26 August 2015.

[2.]:  Personally, I’d be taxing all the commercial broadcasters, advertising companies, etc. to fund all that’s best about the BBC, - keeping it public, free from advertising, egalitarian and, above all, A SERVICE!  I also realise this is the exact opposite of this Government’s current agenda, or indeed, the wider spirit of our age.  Perhaps I’m just pining for the broadcasting landscape of my childhood.  Say what you like though, once this stuff’s gone, - it’s gone; and I don’t see any commercial broadcasters trying to enrich my cultural experience in the same way.  If that makes me elitist, - so be it, (although I’ve never understood what’s so elitist about wanting to “Inform, educate and entertain” everyone equally, or enabling “Nation to speak peace unto nation”).

Love Against The Wall (Girl/Boy)

North Leicester, November 2014

The city has many hearts.  I find them beating with passion, wherever I go.

Concrete 3: Memories Of The Future

Crown House, Central Leicester, November 2014

All that crumbling concrete and haunted Modernism in my last post is just too delicious, so here are a few more images from the same shooting location.  Some of these are a little more oblique or formally self-conscious and, as with so much of what I do, there’s that love of the atmospheres, surfaces and materiality of my urban surroundings.

Multi-Story Car Park, Lee Circle, Central Leicester, November 2014

The images here all derive from my ongoing quest for locations for my concrete-themed video collaboration with Andrew Smith.  How much of this footage will find it’s way into our final effort is impossible to predict, but I’m massively enjoying just getting out there with the video camera and bagging such subjects, wherever I find them.  I’m conscious that, around the turn of the year, we’ll need to harden down, both thematically and editorially, and I’m sure that will be when the real work (and learning) really starts.  The aim is to have something coherent to show at our ‘Mental Mapping’ exhibition at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum, next June.

For now though, it’s still about the sheer pleasure of getting out there and hunting down the raw imagery, despite the drawbacks of plunging temperatures and ever-diminishing light levels.  Increasingly, I’ve found myself wandering out of mic range with the DSLR to collect static shots at the same time, leaving the movie camera to get on with it, when appropriate.

Multi-Story Car Park, Lee Circle, Central Leicester, October 2014

For this shoot, I based myself in Leicester’s Lee Circle multi-story car park, - an edifice whose wider significance I touched on last time.  Fairly early on a Saturday morning, I had the deserted upper decks to myself and was clearly of insufficient interest to Security for them to inquire about my (plainly benign) activities [1.].

Multi-Story Car Park, Lee Circle, Central Leicester, November 2014

The car park structure is of obvious appeal as a subject in its own right, and it was fascinating to be able to catalogue those interior spaces in their abandonment, whilst conscious of the building slowly filling up with vehicles from below like an encroaching tide.  This was conveyed through the ever-increasing volume of sound events drifting up the building’s ramps and central well, and also through the quality of vibrations transmitted through different parts of the physical structure.  A certain multi-sensory heightening is one of the notable features of this steady-gaze approach to filming and I’ve never once become bored, as I’ve allowed the true experiential dimensions of such places to unfold, as my static lens records minimal ‘action’ in real time [2.].  Increasingly, I seem to find ever more captivating layers of stimulus in locations that so many others seem to keen to disregard, despise, or escape from as rapidly as possible.

Crown House From Lee Circle Car Park

The other point about the car park is that it provides an admirable vantage point from which to survey other notable and related landmarks.  Prime amongst these is the abandoned, and increasingly derelict, Crown House, just across the road.  This sublimely ugly monolith is rapidly becoming a bona fide modern ruin, - a state that often presages imminent demolition.  Interestingly, the plot immediately in front of the building was temporarily used as an impromptu car park until recently.  My interest in urban car parks sometimes feels perplexingly nerdish [3.], but I can’t help musing on the differences between the contemporary organic opportunism of today, and the very conscious planning of the 1960s temple to parking opposite.

This One Speaks For Itself, Doesn't It?

Lee Circle, Central Leicester, October 2014

I don’t know what the plans are for Crown House, (although the hoardings around what is now an exclusion zone, don’t bode well).  For now, I must confess, it fascinates me in its decaying state far more than when in use.  The view from the car park allowed me to document the rich textural interest now evident at ground level, where certain sections have already been removed, and the increasing variation in the strict grid of its façade, - created as windows are gradually broken or boarded up.

Crown House, Central Leicester, November 2014

Beyond the Multi-Story, on the other side of Lee Circle, lies a rather beautiful building that once housed Leicester’s main Telephone Exchange.  This is an example of a lighter, earlier tradition of Modernism than the sullen Brutalism of Crown House.  It displays the influence of Scandinavian design and a hint of the ocean liner or seaside aesthetic that once reflected a more pleasure-seeking aspect of Modernism.  This is reinforced by the off-white paint that coats its concrete.  That paint is fairly clean, and the building well maintained, having been redeveloped as an apartment block in recent years.  In that respect, it represents somewhat misplaced, pre-recession attempts to gentrify a neighbourhood that, for now, remains resolutely down-at-heel.

Redeveloped Telephone Exchange, Lee Circle, Central Leicester, November 2014

A couple of other notable, slightly more distant landmarks caught my eye in passing, as I looked out from Lee Circle Car Park.  One is the impassive, slab-sided stump of The Cardinal Exchange Tower, - another telecoms-related building that, I assume, replaced the earlier exchange as the telephone network expanded.  It’s closer to Crown House in its stern aesthetic, and even taller, remaining a powerful presence on the Leicester skyline.

Redeveloped Telephone Exchange, With Newer Cardinal Exchange Tower Beyond,
Central Leicester, November 2014

Of rather more ruin appeal is another, slightly alarming multi-story car park edifice, situated a little to the north east of Lee Circle, between Abbey Street and Garden Street.  If the aesthetics of Lee Circle divide opinion, it’s probably fair to say only an architect’s mother could have loved this one - even in the 1960s.  It’s another example of how central the car was to the thinking of urban planners of the period, this time featuring a hotel (most recently, the Sky Plaza), perched inelegantly on top of a distinctly rickety looking multi-deck parking structure.  It’s been empty since a fire in 2012, but is clearly visited in its increasingly disheveled, current incarnation by Urban Explorers and Graffiti Writers.

Sky Plaza Hotel & Car Park Building, Central Leicester, November 2014

Looking out from Lee Circle, towards the Sky Plaza building, you can almost sense the two monuments to a past era speak to each other of lost optimism across the intervening rooftops of a more disappointed age.  With my fantasy head on, the Sky Plaza building even feels a little like some post-apocalyptic rampart, - rising from a decaying cityscape.  Re-imagined in a suitable dystopian SF novel or film, it might be peopled by refugees, survivalists, anarchists, mutants, or who knows what?

Multi-Story Car Park, Lee Circle, Central Leicester, November 2014

[1.]:  I’ve lost count of how many times this has happened as I’ve been out and about with my cameras, in locations clearly not commonly regarded as standard photographic subject matter.  Most recently, two Police Officers interrupted me; keen to know why I was filming in a desolate Leicester underpass.  In fairness, they were nice as pie and professed to be merely intrigued.  Generally, I find that claiming to be “An Artist, - recording my surroundings”, satisfies both authority figures and curious members of the public, who (I imagine) probably go on their way convinced they’ve just encountered a harmless nutter.

[2.]:  Of course, very few subjects can be said to be completely static.  One theme that has already emerged, as I’ve filmed in various locations, is the wealth of nuances, perceptual shifts, micro-actions and implied events that often reveal themselves in nominally motionless, environmental subjects.  Having got my eye (and ear) in, I often find that the smallest movements, changes in illumination, fugitive cast shadows, or passing sounds, begin to feel like major events. 

[3.]:  Does this make me a Nurb?