Completed Paintings: 'space_time_05 [Undertaking]' & 'space_time_06 [Green Light]'

 

'space_time_05 [Undertaking]', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Paint Pen, Ballpoint Pen, Ink
& French Polish on Panel, 300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

Here are the latest of my 'space_time' panels, along with a few relatively facile clues. It doesn't feel like too much further explanation is necessary at this point. A few further insights into this little run of small-scale works can be found here, and here.

'space_time_06 [Green Light]', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Paint Pen, Ballpoint Pen, & Ink
on Panel, 300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning..." [1.]

Inner Ring Road, Leicester, February 2024

Inner Ring Road, Leicester, January 2024

[1.]:  F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Great Gatsby' London & Dublin, Penguin, 2000/1925

Completed Paintings: 'space_time_03 [Perdu]' & 'space_time_04 [Memento]'

 

'space_time_03 [Perdu]', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Screen Print Fragments, Paint Pen,
Ball-Point Pen, Ink & French Polish on Panel, 300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

My creative energies mostly turned towards painting as 2023 turned the corner into 2034, and these little panels have been appearing relatively rapidly (by my standards). As a body, they seem to be serving as a kind of test-bed for various motifs, which will (I hope/assume) continue to evolve and mutate as more such pieces appear. Those layered motifs (and texts) themselves represent the numerous theoretical and emotional responses which emerge, along with subsequent (possibly quite arbitrary or capricious) associations, as I repeatedly haunt the same relatively overlooked corner of inner Leicester.

So far, so customary. This is essentially the same modus operandi that I've adopted for many years now. It is clearly what I do. And, as cartography continues to play an active role just now, any amateur sleuth with access to Google maps can easily detect that the territory under examination is still that portion of West Leicester traditionally known as St Augustines/Blackfriars. Bordered by the River Soar to the west, and the inner gyratory road to the east - and with Great Central Street and the ghost of a long decommissioned rail route running through its heart, this little zone is one to which I have been drawn repeatedly for longer than I can remember. Indeed, numerous posts on here can attest to that.

I suppose this might lead one to  suspect that things have all just become a bit stuck - or even that I'm (literally) raking over the same old ground with diminishing returns. And yet, these little panels (along with the slightly larger associated works from last year) actually feel surprisingly fresh to me, just as my own responses to the terrain continue to provoke and delight me. I think this is for two key reasons.

'space_time_04 [Memento]',  Acrylics, Paper Collage, Screen Print Fragments, Ball-Point Pen,
Paint Pen, Ink, Spray Enamel & French Polish on Panel, 300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

Firstly, the neighbourhood itself has undergone such massive transformation and redevelopment over recent years (and continues to do so), that it hardly resembles the same landscape I traversed just five or ten years ago. As a result, the possible narratives and emotional responses it may have one engendered are themselves continually refreshed. The strata of history buried beneath newly-laid tarmac and paving may prevail, but the present (and future) are up for grabs in ways that could not have been predicted when I first began to perambulate there. As the titling of these panels attests, space and time are inextricably entangled, and past/present/future all remain nested within each other in a multi-dimensional exchange.

The very processes of transformation, along with their associated memories (real, imagined and constantly emerging), are the real 'subject' of the work, as much as anything more specifically defined. The lines of the street plan may remain (relatively) stable, but the spaces and flows between them are where the real drama lies.

The second point worth making relates to that idea of continual flux - and in particular to the manner in which my emotional responses and thought-processes may be activated during/following any given journey along well-trodden routes. As work from a decade ago demonstrates, the key process remains relatively unchanged. Back then however, the use of found texts was often enough to elicit a kind of ambiguous frisson, with any further shoe-horned associations being perhaps a little 'route one' (in my mind at least).

Since then, my readings into such relatively pop philosophical ideas as Hauntology and Psychogeography have themselves led to the somewhat more elevated ideas around Situationism or the even more deliciously abstruse writings of Deleuze & Guattari et al. If much of the stuff at the apparent Philosophical 'top-end' remains pretty obscure to me, it has, I believe, started to liberate the nature in which my own thought processes flow around those cartographical delineations. Key to this are the ideas of trajectory and the 'line of flight', as well as the notion of rhizomes as the preferred model for explaining experience and knowledge to ourselves.

If the Situationist notions of the 'drift' and the city as an intellectual/emotional playground essentially validate my own humble activities, then it is perhaps D&G who point to more organic, less 'organised' ways of freeing the mind once immersed within it. Any point at which one's feet/wheels/lens/attention come to rest is essentially just a taking-off point for ideas and associations which may fly-off in a million different directions at any given time. These may themselves entangle with each other in a potentially endless complex of shifting nodes and new combinations. Coincidence, chance, tangentiallity, transverse shifts and apparent arbitrariness are all grist to this mill. Essentially there is only one map, and any pathway (be it neural or geographic) might ultimately connect to another - as we move around it in a perpetual state of becoming. In this context, perhaps one might traverse the entire globe, or simply the same small patch (through time), to much the same effect - providing one remains openly engaged.

Or something like that...

Derelict Mirror (Happy-ish New Year)

 

All Images: Central Leicester, New Year's Day, 2024

The festivities are behind us, and it's time to peer trepidatiously into the future. I can't claim this was the most uplifting of Christmas/New Year periods, being largely characterised by yet more school-borne illness and a seemingly endless procession of Atlantic storms. Thankfully, the virus has departed, but each subsequent extreme weather event served to both lower the mood and raise the water levels - to the point where my own neighbourhood here in Leicester was subject to a full-on flood alert for a couple of days. I can only hope the immediate emergency is abated, and that we dodged a bullet here (others have not been so lucky) - not least as moving valuables upstairs and taking midnight walks to gauge nearby river levels is hardly a relaxing or creative way to spend one's precious leisure time.

Nevertheless, the creative life is about adapting to events as they present themselves, not as we would idealise them. Even between seemingly interminable downpours, there have been brief windows of photographic opportunity, and the chance to grab a bit of much-needed two-wheeled exercise. If life gives you economic/political gloom, environmental collapse, climatic catastrophe, illness and despondency - then find an attractively waterlogged bit of waste ground to symbolise the mood - that's my motto. I've passed by this portion of nondescript, derelict vacancy many times, but this time the standing water and briefly atmospheric illumination transformed it into something actually worth documenting.

To be sure, it's the kind of bleak subject-matter to which I'm often drawn, and perhaps captures the exhausted and demoralised mood of this particular nation, in several ways. Nevertheless, there's no denying its obscure beauty and wealth of visual texture. To simply observe and document is at least to engage, and creative endeavour is ultimately its own reward. To extract stimulation from the least promising circumstances is a generator of hope - and thus a political act in its own right.

Who knows? 2024 might even see a (marginally) less dysfunctional government replace the current criminal regime. That's if we can avoid a slide into full-on populist fascism, of course, but for now - let's look on the bright side...

Completed Paintings: 'space_time_01 [Le Temps]' & 'space_time_02 [Wood Gate]'

 

'space_time_01 [Le Temps]', Acrylics, Paint Pen, Paper Collage, Screen Print Fragments,
Ink, Ball-Point Pen & French Polish on Panel, 300 mm x 300 mm, 2023

Demands on my time and attention (from various directions), along with repeated bouts of minor ill-health, both intensified and multiplied towards the end of this year - making a degree of conscious time-management increasingly necessary. My choice has been largely to prioritise the continued production of new work over such distractions as social media and the like, with what spare time/energy remain. While the imperative to tell the world about my every move may have dwindled to the point where I currently experience regular impertinent/impatient elbow jogs from Instagram, there's some satisfaction in maintaining the generation of what I still regard as the real (i.e. physical) 'content'. 

Anyway, the festive period, and accompanying educational pause for breath, allow for a little end-of-year catch-up. 2023 ends with a clutch of modestly sized, multi-media panels in play, with the two shown here being the first to reach resolution.

These pieces originate in the same small zone of Leicester that has inspired a slowly-expanding body of work over the last couple of years. The general desire to connect specific, mapped territory, through time, with numerous layers of possible meaning and narrative has long been a constant in my work. It's also fair to say that some of the motifs, as well as the general collaged mixed-media approach adopted here, are hardly unfamiliar either. What does feel like an advancement is the increasingly oblique, intuitive, or simply impetuous, manner in which  mental/emotional/associative lines of flight are triggered by my repeated passage through certain points on the map. The intention is to allow this particular rhizome to continue to entangle itself through these little panels as 2023 turns the corner into 2024.

'space_time_02' [Wood Gate]', Acrylics, Paint Pen, Paper Collage, Screen Print Fragments, 
Ink, Ball-Point Pen & French Polish on Panel, 300 mm x 300 mm, 2023

Completed Painting: 'Untitled (From The New School ) 17'

'Untitled (From The New School) 17', Acrylics & Adhesive Stars on Panel, 
300 mm x 300 mm x 106 mm, 2023

Here’s another recently completed ‘From The New School’ painting. The overall rationale behind this series was explained long ago and can be read elsewhere.  Suffice it to say, each one is intended to reflect some specific aspect of, or set of assumptions about, institutionalised education in visual/stylistic terms. In some cases, the focus has been relatively specific. In others, the themes are possibly a little more more generalised (or just based on my own intuitive responses to another day spent earning a crust on the school premises). Clearly, each one also acts as an opportunity to consciously try my hand at a different aesthetic trope or method of application (even if most revert to some form of hard-edged formalism by default).

 

In this case, the intention was to cheerfully embrace a form of kitsch, 1960s-style Pop naivety, possibly reminiscent of ‘Yellow Submarine’ or George Harrison’s clumsily-painted ‘Rocky’ guitar. Competing colours were juxtaposed on a whim, and masking of straight edges deliberately avoided. Brushwork showed little regard for surface refinement, and the general attitude was one of ‘if in doubt – stick something else in’ (including fluorescents, pearlescents and sparkly stars).

Harder rock sounds and Glam stomping had long since replaced lysergic nursery rhymes in the charts by the time I began my own secondary school career in the mid '70s . However, It's fair to say that some wistful memory of the psychedelic late 60’s (including a degree of vestigial utopianism) still lingered on in diluted form. That all seems a very long time ago, but even now, I  sometimes detect a whiff of incense and peppermints in some of the New-Agey ‘wellness’ agendas that have appeared in education of late, as a constrained attempt at strategic stress-relief. I’m also regularly surprised just how persistently a quaint, untutored primary-school sensibility lingers amongst many of our teenage charges - even as our harassed teachers struggle to instil the principles of colour-theory, composition and ‘The Formal Elements of Art’ in the limited time available to them.

 

Groovy (man)!

Quicksilver Communication [trans_late/re_configure]

 

All Original Images: Central Leicester, August 2023. Photo Manipulations: October 2023

[Appropriated/Translated/Reconfigured Texts]:

Because the planet is so close to the Sun, daytime temperatures can reach highs of 800°F (430°C). Without an atmosphere to retain that heat at night, temperatures can dip as low as -290°F (-180°C). At such temperatures the tenacity value obtained for the metals of low melting point is affected by the duration of the test (due to ‘the creep’). Supercomputers (such as those at the Met. Office) solve complex mathematical equations based on well-established physical laws to model the behaviour of the weather and climate. However, outcomes that are not measured cannot be counted, evaluated or upheld, and it’s little wonder if you struggle to know who or what to trust. The consequences are real: democracy is threatened and, in some extreme cases, civil unrest and even armed conflict erupt. The concept of spirit is far less familiar to most and the sense of isolation in a fragmented world pervades all corners of the community. We all yearn for connection. Many people use the words 'soul' and 'spirit' interchangeably. Some use the word ‘spirit’ as a synonym for ‘ghost’, but neither is applicable in this context.

A place with a strong sense of community spirit is somewhere with high levels of interaction, trust and shared standards of behaviour that enable people to build communities and to knit-together the social fabric. Generally speaking, when someone doesn't stick to the terms of a contract, or a guy shows up two hours late - or forgets to pay his phone bill on time, we don't brutally kill that person in the town square. These rules reduce handling and transportation requirements for wastes that otherwise would need to be managed as ‘dumps’ - but greenhouse gases produced by human activity are altering this cycle beyond natural variation. One of the biggest challenges for local economies is not the lack of attractions, but a lack of vision. Right now the mood is the lowest I have ever known it, and even the humble thermometer is gradually being phased out in favour of a digital instrument or a thermistor-based gadget.

 

The problematic identification of some substances, and their dubious experimental role, led us to wonder whether the choices of ingredients were not only based on technical factors but also influenced by cultural aspects. From the contractual history (and in the associated images), we can see that a wide variety of alchemical goals were pursued. The problem is that the number of cases of mining digital currency remains hidden. We all lead busy lives, and inevitably tend to live in silos, so the only assumption made is that of the form of the distribution function for the velocities in the electron swarm. Ancient alchemical procedures have been transmitted over centuries as written instructions (and copied onto manuscripts hundreds of times by scribes), but they can still predict large-scale changes in global climate in the future. Machine shackles are fitted with low-conductive ebonite cone seatings, which will enforce a code of conduct for Big Tech to ensure advertising deals are struck on fairer terms.

IMPORTANT: Following exposure to any chemical, the adverse health impacts you may encounter depend on several factors. Crucial details can easily pass unnoticed, or may even be misinterpreted when recipes are considered only in their textual dimension. It is increasingly recognised that cultural and community participation can act as an important health asset, and that the spirit is a sort of medium for transmission and communication. Put-on disposable gloves IMMEDIATELY before cleaning spills. Each piece of broken glass should be carefully removed and double-bagged.