Belgrave Gate Project 9: Completed Painting - 'Festival Of Lights 1'

'Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 100 cm X 100 cm, 2014

This recently completed painting, ‘Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 1’, is the latest component of my ‘Belgrave Gate Project’.  I had hoped it would be the last significant piece of 2013 but found myself still working on it, (with a wee dram at my elbow), as the fireworks were launched at the turn of the year.  A few hours later it was finished and so is, technically, the first significant piece of 2014.  Either way, it was pleasing to complete a painting that, whilst involving plenty of work, had come together reasonably quickly by my standards.  It is essentially a fairly straight full-scale translation of a well-developed sketchbook study; a procedure that has worked well enough for me in recent times.

'Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 1', Sketchbook Study,
Acrylics & Paper Collage On Paper, 2013

If I’m honest, I find the most enjoyable stage in any painting usually comes around three quarters of the way through.  At that stage, the major components will usually be well established, (I tend to ‘build’ my paintings in a fairly methodical fashion), many significant pictorial problems will have been resolved, and I can usually get a reasonable sense of how successful, (or otherwise), it will be.  There also tends to be a certain provisional freshness that is nearly always diminished as the final nuts and bolts are tightened.  I’ve often thought the best painters are the ones who let their paint do just enough and no more, or are unafraid to leave passages of a painting unresolved, providing an overall conclusion has been reached.  It’s never really been my own M.O. but maybe it takes thousands of hours of doing too much before one can learn to do just enough.

For now though, I can take considerable satisfaction from seeing a painting through to completion after so many earlier years of false starts and projects abandoned through lack of perseverance or belief.  I no longer get too bogged down in ‘the struggle’, as I once did, instead taking the view that, if a particular painting isn’t wholly successful, - perhaps the next one will be better.

‘Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 1’ picks up where the previous ‘BelgraveGate’ paintings left off.  It’s becoming clear that part of the agenda for these pieces is the attempt to integrate representational passages with more abstracted or textual elements.  At root, I think this is a reflection of their origins within a specific physical location, and the fact that the photographic sources on which they rely include recessional space, rather than the surface-emphasis that has usually informed much of my work.  Put simply, they are based on observed 'scenes'.

'Belgrave Gate: Yours 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 100 cm X 100 cm, 2013

On a slightly more abstruse level, I’ve also become increasingly engaged with the potential of a painting to employ contrasting modes of depiction self-reflexively, within the same image.  Authenticity is of relatively little interest right now and these paintings represent, as ever, a search for subjective synthesis.  However, it is my belief that this approach does reflect my actual experience of specific environments such as my chosen tract of inner Leicester.  If my initial apprehension of such a place is a general visual impression, immersion within it, (often focusing on specific details), reveals multiple strands of meaning and association.  I find the act of ‘being’ on site for any length of time, (or on repeated occasions), releases numerous sensations and as a result, a complex web of thoughts and feelings that radiate out in different directions.  It’s the opposite of finding the singular ‘essence’ of a subject but, rather, a desire to account for the complexity, dynamism and transitions prevailing within a modern city.

'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2013

Where this painting does differ from the small ‘Belgrave Gate:Cave Wall’ paintings that preceded it, is in being something of a simplification, formally.  If they ultimately felt visually over-cluttered by too many layers of meaning, this one relies more simply on a single subject image featuring the conjunction of Belgrave Gate, Burleys Flyover and the roundabout junction beneath it.  The entire composition, including the strong central traffic lights in the foreground, is based directly upon this original source which plays a more important role than ever before.  The main textual and semiotic components, while relatively bold, are pushed back into the background, (where they are incorporated by colour and tone into an implied sky), or float insubstantially over a middle ground that feels like it could be receding behind the traffic lights.  The inclusion of words in my images remains as important as ever, despite playing second fiddle to an overall illusion here.  

Burleys Flyover, Belgrave Gate, Leicester, 2013

Divali Lights, Belgrave Road (Looking Towards 
Belgrave Gate), Leicester, 2013

The subject of ‘Festival Of Lights’ is a pretty clear reference to the traffic signals that chop and dice the flow of traffic on both of the Belgrave Gate roundabouts, and, even more famously, along the stretch of Belgrave Road extending in the direction of the painting’s direction arrow in its blue roundel.  That ‘Golden Mile’ might be so-named for the numerous Asian-owned jewelers or the endless parade of lights that seem to be perpetually turning amber, (in the folklore of local drivers).  It's also the site of Leicester’s famous Divali celebrations, (the Hindu Festival of Lights), and during the painting’s preparatory stages my daily commutes were illuminated by the elaborate decorative lights that festoon the route each year.  Belgrave Road itself is beyond the scope of my current project but the intermediate nature of Belgrave Gate makes it feels like a bridge to both that main artery and the South Asian cultural zone surrounding it.

Despite all this, the painting itself appears to be bathed in daylight.  This is actually a legacy of the original image, taken on a brilliant, windy day in early 2013 when the whole world seemed to flicker in a rather different kind of light-fest.  It’s also worth noting the red linear elements in the extreme lower foreground.  Whilst initially deriving from the pattern of white line road markings, their red colour now also implies the brake light trails of vehicles that habitually decelerate towards the junction.  They also supply a much-needed element of artificiality to a colour palette that was in danger of becoming just a little too naturalistic.

It’s too early to really judge the success of this painting but I’m happy enough with it for now overall.  Whilst it employs the kind of half-painting/half-collage techniques with which I’ve become pretty comfortable, the real issues it raises are around the efficacy of the representational modes employed.  I’m not unhappy with the decision to combine a variety of muted impressionism, (in the background architecture), with a looser brand of ‘painterly collage’ to depict passages of foliage.  I’m slightly less content with my handling of a kind of ‘straight’ illustrative style in the traffic lights and advancing flyover, (although, again, not actually with the decision to employ it).  If anything, this is just a reminder of how long it is since I seriously tried to engage with representational painting.  I can’t pretend that this painting wasn’t influenced to some extent by the work of Hurvin Anderson that impressed me so much at Birmingham’s Ikon last year.  A look back at that exhibition's catalogue reveals just how much work remains to be done.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Country Club: Chicken Wire', Oil On Canvas, 2008

Still, - no one ever promised me this stuff was easy…

More Thoughts About Hurvin Anderson

I recently posted about ‘Reporting Back’, Hurvin Anderson’s excellent exhibition at Ikon, Birmingham.  Having made a couple of visits to view it, and had some time to reflect further; here, (in no particular order), are some more observations about Anderson’s paintings:

Hurvin Anderson, 'Untitled (Red Flags)', Oil On Canvas, 2004

• At a time when I have been tentatively exploring ways to augment my own painting practice with other media, it is still wonderful to witness a contemporary artist so wholeheartedly (and successfully), committed to paint.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Imperial', Oil On Linen, 2004

• This is painting for big boys and girls; for people who exist wholly in the modern world but reserve the right to enter into dialogue with a physical artwork; to pay it attention and be worked upon by it in real mental time; not just to be titillated by novelty, glamour or a theoretical mission statement.

Hiurvin Anderson, 'Miss Sylvia', Acrylic On Linen, 2011

• Anderson is unashamed to re-explore the familiar issues of Modern painting.  Not least amongst these are: the old tension between picture plane and illusory depth; the functional scope of brush marks to describe as well as to express and evoke; and the whole, inimical relationship between representation and abstraction.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Untitled (Livingstone Road)', Oil On Canvas, 2000

• The artist really makes/lets his paint work and is a master of getting across a canvas in multiple exciting ways.  To view his painting is to absorb a catalogue of the material’s potential consistencies, manipulations, extents, application speeds and permitted accidents, (without ever becoming bored). 

Hurvin Anderson, 'Miss S Kieta', Oil On Canvas, 2001

• All of this is done at the service of depicting a recognisable subject or situation.  Even when moving towards abstraction Anderson is mostly stripping back, distilling or exploring the ambiguities of a place into which we could still find ourselves projected.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Peter's: Sitters II', Oil On Linen, 2009

• There’s plenty of evidence of photographic and found sources in Anderson’s paintings but everything is processed through his draughtsmanship.  He is happy to reveal an image’s unfolding by allowing some of its linear underpinnings to remain unobscured.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Double Grille', Oil On Canvas, 2008

• This guy knows his way round the colour wheel.  He handles complementary contrasts and three-primary schemes with varying degrees of saturation, but never crudely.  He balances vivid and more neutral passages with aplomb and also recognises the importance of a strong tonal structure.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Some People (Welcome Series)', Oil On Canvas, 2004

• He’s particularly good with red and green, both together and separately. Recent paintings plunge deep into lush, verdant foliage whilst ‘Some People: (Welcome Series)’ juggles numerous reds with white and subdued cool accents to give Matisse’s ‘The Red Studio’ a run for its money.

Henri Matisse, 'The Red Studio', Oil On Canvas, 1911

• ‘Country Club: Chicken Wire’ is a marvelous red and green painting in which the tennis court’s saturated complementary fields are mediated by more neutrally coloured surroundings.  A fascinatingly delineated wire fence extends across the whole canvas, unifying the whole thing audaciously but conferring outsider status on the viewer.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Country Club: Chicken Wire', Oil On Canvas, 2008

• In the ‘Lower Lake’ series subdued greens are juxtaposed with Indian reds and dull pinks to evoke a more sober British Midlands light.  These are still complementary contrasts though and, in Anderson’s painting, ‘red and green should always be seen’.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Lower Lake', Oil On Canvas, 2005

• Like all good painters, Hurvin Anderson knows when to leave things out and his paintings are full of eloquent lacunae.  Varying degrees of rationalisation or omission are used to active expressive effect, for instance in the ‘Peter’s’ series, where abstracted details float free like selective memories, (again, I think of Matisse).

Hurvin Anderson, 'Peter's IV (Pioneer)', Oil On Linen, 2007

• Whether peopled with figures or not, the real subjects of these paintings are place and displacement from context.  Artist, viewer and protagonists alike are dislocated, disorientated or disbarred, like aliens, finding themselves at but never fully of a particular location.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Peter's III', OIl On Linen, 2007

• Sometimes I’ve wondered if I’ll just end up simply painting places.  If that should ever happen, Hurvin Anderson provides a great example of how it might be done.

'Reporting Back' From Brum: Hurvin Anderson & Nina Könnemann At Ikon.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Country Club: Chicken Wire', 2008 & 'Untitled (Livingstone Road)', 2000

Approximately a year ago, around the time I participated in the ‘If A Picture Paints A Thousand Words…’ group exhibition, it felt like Birmingham was becoming a focus for some of my more interesting experiences and activities.  I hadn’t visited the city properly for several years and was interested to be exploring it once more and sampling the various attractions, cultural and otherwise, that it offers.  Attempts to revisit shortly after for photographic expeditions were stymied by a combination of foul weather and increasing difficulties with my dodgy old legs.  However, as 2013 has progressed, (and partly thanks to my physiotherapist), I’ve been able to head west increasingly, taking in exhibitions, numerous sites of photographic or psychogeographic interest and commencing a methodical exploration of Brum’s transport infrastructure in the process, (as detailed in various posts).

Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, October 2013

I found myself there yet again with friends the other weekend and, although Birmingham is only a stone’s throw from our own towns, we decided to make an indulgent weekend of it, treating ourselves to hotel rooms, extravagant breakfasts and the chance to escape the humdrum routine for a couple of days.  Many folk make Brum the butt of dismissive humour but it offers much to the visitor, and is still Britain’s second city in my view.  It’s much easier to negotiate (and afford), than London, is far more welcoming, and has a lot less ‘side’ generally.  It may not be elegant or quaint but isn’t without grandeur and actually provides a wide variety of moods and visual experiences that engage me far more than traditional notions of ‘beauty’ or extravagance anyway.

Despite the bleak weather, we spent a couple of very enjoyable days just hanging out and off duty.  The real highlight for me was a visit to the Ikon Gallery to view Hurvin Anderson’s exhibition of paintings entitled ‘Reporting Back’.  I had a hunch this would be a good one but in the event, it exceeded all expectations; taking its place on a short roster of really impressive shows I’ve seen in recent months.  Having viewed it on the Saturday, I returned the following morning to reflect further on the paintings.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Northern Range', 2010 & 'Lower Lake', 2005

Anderson’s origins lie in Birmingham’s Jamaican community, (he is British by birth), although he has acquired an international reputation as a painter since leaving the Royal College of Art in 1998.  He refutes further the wearisome notion that painting is dead, (still being peddled in some quarters), and also the convention that Black art must be clichéd, pigeonholed or superficially ‘right on’.  His work shows a powerful commitment to, and facility with, the medium of paint, but played out with due reference to the context of photographic and appropriated imagery in which we all now float.  Whilst rooted in the tradition, Anderson’s painting feels completely relevant to now.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Untitled (Red Flags)', & 'Miss Sylvia', Both 2004

Peter Doig, 'Pelican', Oil On Canvas, 2004

I now realise that the art that captivates me most always carries an initial visual/ expressive punch, followed by a slower burn of reflection on the possible themes or theoretical frameworks within it.  I want my mind to be stimulated but never to the exclusion of my senses being seduced.  It’s why I remain wedded to painting, (or some hybrid of it), and why I responded to this exhibition immediately I walked through the door.  The most obvious impression was of the similarities between Anderson’s painting and that of Peter Doig.  Both have a remarkable facility with paint and employ abstract inventiveness within an essentially representational framework, playing freely with the formal elements of picture making.  There is also an original take on the idea of the tropical in both artists’ work.  Anderson is more solemn and rather less theatrical in his approach however, and presents a vision that is very much his own.  My good friend Suzie quite rightly saw correspondences with Hockney and Hopper, whilst I was also reminded of Michael Andrews (a perennial favourite) and the Euston Road tradition in general.  One might even draw some comparisons with Ewan Uglow.    However, Anderson never fetishises the nailing down of an objectivised image in the way that Uglow and the followers of Coldstream did.  ‘A Painter’s Painter’ is a hackneyed label to apply to any artist, and yet…

Hurvin Anderson, 'Miss Sylvia' & 'Imperial', Both 2004

Michael Andrews, 'Good And Bad At Games', Screen Print & Oil On Canvas, 1964-68

The Artist draws fully upon the Afro Caribbean experience, but does so in ways that manage to be particular and personal but also universally human.  Finding subject matter in both his native Birmingham and The West Indies, he repeatedly explores his sense of displacement and disquiet at never quite belonging in a particular place.  This must surely be a powerful theme for any diaspora, and not least for one with a shared memory of the multiple displacements of slavery, colonialism, independence and subsequent migration to these shores.  Yet, as a middle class white man, I gained just as much emotionally and intellectually from these works and they reflect a kind of melancholy loss, alienation or recourse to memory that is easily translatable into any culture.  They may speak eloquently of ‘Black Experience’, (which is not for me to judge), but encapsulate wider Human experience too.  As we viewed the paintings, we decided they reflect the thoughts and feelings of an individual above all, and that there is nothing as limiting or uncreative as a standard account for any culture.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Untitled (Red Flags)', 2004, 'Northern Range',  2010 & 'Lower Lake', 2005

The locations Anderson depicts are repeatedly imbued with disappointment or melancholy and of access denied or promise unfulfilled.  It is achieved most overtly in his use of visual barriers, parallel to the picture plane, through which various scenes are viewed.  These include fences, gates and decorative security screens, (typical of the West Indies), and play both strong pictorial and powerful psychological roles.  Elsewhere, it is evoked more obliquely through images that subvert the illusions of tropical or colonial paradises and Victorian Utopianism, or depict figures rendered anonymous within a newfound context.  The latter category includes blank faced ‘portraits’ of his sister and nephew, wrapped against the cold in their Canadian home, having undergone (we assume) yet further displacement.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Peter's IV (Pioneer)', 'Peter's II', & 'Peter's III", All 2007

One of the upstairs galleries at Ikon was dedicated to several of Anderson’s ‘Peter’s’ series of canvases, with which he essentially made his name.  Sharing the same basic format, but sitting at different points on the figuration/abstraction continuum, they are a powerful exploration of the psychologically significant location of the Afro Caribbean barbershop (of an implied back-room variety it seems here).  With or without a figure in the chair, these paintings are primarily about a specific arena for thoughts, feelings and memories and somewhere that a marginalized community might enjoy a coming together in safe surroundings.  They seem imbued with the stories and conversations that have unfolded within the space, whilst being formally and pictorially inventive as visual images.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Peter's: Sitters II', 2009 & 'Peter's IV (Pioneer)', 2007

At the risk of yet another industrial length post, mention should also be made of German artist, Nina Könnemann’s delightful video piece ‘Bann’ playing in the Ikon’s Tower Room.  It comprises candid glimpses of smartly dressed smokers grabbing a crafty fag in various corners, doorways and dingy alcoves within the City of London.  Whilst some are shown in the open, others reveal their surreptitious presence only through puffs of smoke, disembodied hands, (complete with cigarettes), reflections or just the discarded butts that remain after their passing.

Nina Könnemann, 'Bann', Video, 2012

Könnemann captures the fluctuating subculture that exists all around us at any hour since the widespread indoor smoking ban took effect and the importance of those snatched private, if damaging, moments in relieving the pressure of modern urban life.  It is poetic, ritualistic and not without humour, (for instance one subject’s double take on spotting her camera or the gloomy woman furtively chaining a second tab in the shadows).  It is also an atmospheric elegy to the grey and geometric corporate world of concrete, marble, steel and glass that these City workers inhabit.  Their rhythmic exhalations of smoke just seem to add to the tarnished silvery miasma in which they exist.

Nina Könnemann, 'Bann', Video, 2012

Leaving Ikon via its well stocked bookshop, I picked up a copy of the ‘Reporting Back’ catalogue as well as books on the work of Beat Streuli and Christiane Baumgartner.  The last two are both artists who caught my eye in the ‘Metropolis: Reflections On The Modern City’ exhibition at Birmingham’s Gas Hall earlier in the year.  It just went to emphasise that many of my most inspiring and enjoyable experiences over the last year have occurred in Brummagem.

Apologies; I Fear I Have Committed A 'Selfie'.

Hurvin Anderson’s exhibition, ‘Reporting Back’, and Nina Könnemann’s video, ‘Bann’, continue at Ikon Gallery, Oozells Square, Brindley Place, Birmingham, B1 2HS, until 10 November 2013.  Both are highly recommended.