 |
| Charred Boards, Narrow Marsh, Nottingham, April 2014 |
A few posts back,
I mentioned how spending any significant amount of time in an art exhibition
can sometimes influence my perception of the world after leaving the
gallery. In the case of my recent visit
to ‘Somewhat Abstract’ at NottinghamContemporary, (already discussed at some length), a similar process took place
but this time, in reverse. On my way to
the gallery, and with time and Spring weather on my side, I spent a while
exploring the surrounding area with my camera with the intention of
concentrating on the walls, surfaces, and material fabric of the city in as
abstract way as possible.
 |
| Charred Boards, Narrow Marsh, Nottingham, April 2014 |
There was a
specific research agenda behind this, (and it’s hardly new territory for me,
after all), but also, the general sense that, if ‘Abstract’ was to be a theme
for the day, I might as well get into that mindset from the get-go. In the event, I spent over an hour happily
strolling around the dilapidated grandeur of the Lace Market area to the North
of The Contemporary, and the more workaday territory immediately to the South -between
the foot of the sandstone cliff that the gallery surmounts, and the Railway
Station beyond.
 |
| Both: Narrow Marsh, Nottingham, April 2014 |
 |
| Rear Service Entrance, Nottingham Contemporary, April 2014 |
Although
adjacent, these zones differ greatly in both atmosphere and physical attributes
and there’s quite a contrast between the worlds of above and below. The Lace Market, once being the seat of one
of the craft trades on which Nottingham’s prosperity was most famously built, is
a maze of interconnecting streets lined with imposing and often ornate
Victorian buildings. In recent years it
has adapted itself to the needs of young creative types or those in search of
stylish inner-city living, and the identity of the area now takes its identity
equally from its historic setting (and dilapidation that still prevails in
places), and the incidents of slick design and gentrification now punctuating
it.
 |
| Both: Narrow Marsh, Nottingham, April 2014 |
The tract below
is even more obviously in a state of transition. The elevated tramline running towards its
terminus next to the railway station, which is itself currently in the throws
of major redevelopment, bisects it. Indeed,
this whole area is a nexus of transport routes, with a major road in and out of
the city centre and a canal cut both running through it. Regular readers will recognise this as
exactly the kind of location I’m routinely drawn to.
 |
| Both: Narrow Marsh, Nottingham, April 2014 |
Immediately to
the west of the new tramway lies the bulky, faded Modernism of the Broadmarsh
Shopping Centre, Bus Station and Car Park complex, with various entrances
resembling the mouths of a somewhat forbidding bunker. To the east sits an enclave of mid-twentieth
century housing that always intrigues me in its inconguity. Laid out, I assume, as a public housing estate,
and punctuated by a network of secluded pedestrian cut-throughs, it feels like
a surprisingly calm oasis of tightly packed gardens and something of a time
capsule in a rapidly changing scene.
 |
| Both: Lace Market, Nottingham, April 2014 |
In the shadow of
the tramline lie the last vestiges of the old Narrow Marsh slum area and the
ruins of a disused railway line that once ran through it. This includes a couple of streets of
abandoned, dilapidated commercial buildings, (some showing evidence of arson),
which provided some of the richest pickings for my camera. These seem to teeter on the very edge of
events now, as lapping up against them is a recently cleared area, clearly awaiting
development and denoting the regenerative processes overtaking this whole district. I never tire of such locales where one can
sense the last gasps of a previous situation, just prior to it being sloughed
off like dead cells from a city’s larger organism.
 |
| All: Lace Market, Nottingham, April 2014 |
 |
| Narrow Marsh, Nottingham, April 2014 |
As was my
intention, they tread a line between formal abstraction and the recognisable world, whilst remaining fairly 'straight in terms of exposure and focusing'. They also contain less than usual of the textual content that habitually
fascinates me. I suppose one could argue that relatively little of my geographical description above is specifically discernible from them. However, I never tire of
the multiple ways that history, and changing events or usages, can leave
evidence of itself on the surfaces of a city’s physical fabric. The passage of thousands of lives and the
activities carried out within them, are all to there to be read, along with the
wider processes of entropy, material decay and socio-economic fluctuations, if
one looks hard enough.
 |
| Prunella Clough, 'Samples', Oil On Canvas, 1997 |
It was a delight
to enter the ‘Somewhat Abstract’ show
a few minutes later and find many of these thoughts magnified and distilled by
the work on show. They were there most
obviously in the paintings of Prunella Clough and cast reliefs of Karin Ruggaber, with
their strong suggestions of weathered masonry and urban environments. More obliquely, they were also there in Mark Lewis’s
filmed meditation on the lost Utopianism of an outmoded vision of architecture
and city planning, or indeed, in Wolfgang Tillmans’ investigation of just how
photography might transform itself into a medium capable of conveying the
abstract.
 |
| Narrow Marsh, Nottingham, April 2014 |
On reflection, I wonder if photography
might, paradoxically, be one of the more interesting ways to explore the oft-stated
idea of abstraction/representation as two sides of the same coin. It can, of course never be abstract in the strictest sense, but like the exhibition itself, may offer plenty of scope to explore the points at which the recognisable begins a transformation into something other. It also occurs to me that, despite my recent ham-fisted attempts to expand my 'range' by incorporating representational motifs within certain paintings, it's really in some variety of formal abstraction that I feel most at home.
 |
| Lace Market, Nottingham, April 2014 |
Somewhat Abstract: Selections From The Arts Council Collection', continues until 29 June at Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham, NG1 2GB.
