moderninity

goggle

2012-01-13T09:17:00.000-08:00

men at work

2012-01-07T08:40:00.000-08:00

fellowship centre

2012-01-07T02:47:00.000-08:00

sleep harlequin

2012-01-01T14:30:00.001-08:00

auto

2011-12-31T02:07:00.000-08:00

midnight man

2011-12-26T13:11:00.000-08:00

a pond is just a small sea: bilberry dam

2011-12-23T02:29:00.000-08:00

magnus mills - how to deal with the masses

2011-12-18T09:39:00.000-08:00

since the days of George Orwell, a sizeable bulk of british literature, television and film has felt compelled to deal with the unhappy lot of the working classes, their exploitation, (as well as their chirpy, rough diamond like ability, natch). quite a bit of this stuff is written by wavering middle class graduates, giving it the inevitable patronising air (even sadder that so many of these made it into the labour party and sold it out).

the writer magnus mills is something different, a working class writer with an inside out view of the worlds he writes about, and an all encompassing perspective.

most of his books look, one way or another, at the same problem - how do the people in charge of a system keep it going? how do you deal with the bulk of the population, whose demands and desires (for comfort and security, leisure and pleasure, a sense of life) can only be met if they are willing to undergo the discomfort and insecurity necessary to create the conditions for prosperity? Who must sacrifice leisure and pleasure in order to make the money necessary for leisure and pleasure? Who gives up their freedom, in order to create the conditions necessary for freedom?

This explains the cyclical nature of his novels, the feeling of inertia, of running on a treadmill that leads to disaster.

the problem for socialism, i think the film maker krystof kieslowski said, is that eveyone wants to be more equal. the problem for capitalism is that it only runs in one direction, and eventually, the centre fails to hold.

a supermarket worker from sheffield will rarely be willing to take the place of a peasant on a pakistani hilltop, just to make the world a better place.

...

sheepridge circular

2011-12-17T03:24:00.000-08:00

mushrooms

2011-11-12T11:18:00.001-08:00

tryptych (abandoned)

2011-11-03T02:28:00.000-07:00

window shopping

2011-11-02T03:38:00.000-07:00

supermarket

2011-10-04T13:02:00.000-07:00

Jastrzebie

2011-10-03T13:46:00.001-07:00

autumn

2011-09-30T02:29:00.001-07:00

seperate floors

2011-09-27T02:26:00.000-07:00

at night, trucks go past the window

2011-09-24T02:24:00.001-07:00

the fool and the cowboy

2011-09-20T00:57:00.000-07:00

swings

2011-09-11T08:20:00.000-07:00

fourteen

2011-09-11T03:13:00.000-07:00

cafe sizzler

2011-08-20T03:45:00.000-07:00

silo

2011-08-19T01:32:00.000-07:00

urban pixie pants

2011-08-12T08:16:00.000-07:00

meals in the basement

2011-08-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

arcade

2011-08-06T08:36:00.001-07:00

the park in winter

2011-08-05T01:26:00.000-07:00

decorating

2011-08-03T04:48:00.000-07:00

people appreciate your help if you do exactly what they tell you. when you start to enjoy yourself they become slightly disgusted.

beside the sea

2011-07-31T04:38:00.000-07:00

"evil run guesthouses"

2011-07-31T04:37:00.001-07:00

golden dragon

2011-07-29T00:37:00.000-07:00

garden of england

2011-07-22T23:00:00.001-07:00

sheds

2011-07-20T02:27:00.000-07:00

mitcham lane

2011-07-18T12:23:00.000-07:00

clochard man 1986

2011-07-17T05:22:00.001-07:00

horsebox

2011-07-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

cyclone days

2011-07-11T09:24:00.000-07:00

rotor

2011-07-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

you can't go back (like a stream)

2011-07-06T01:19:00.000-07:00

saloon bar, late

2011-06-29T13:36:00.000-07:00

men with dogs

2011-06-23T00:42:00.000-07:00

teatro

2011-06-03T11:03:00.000-07:00

nothing works

2011-06-02T03:01:00.001-07:00

( tony lives next to the ) recycling centre

2011-05-25T00:53:00.000-07:00

camper

2011-05-18T12:10:00.001-07:00

butane

2011-05-17T10:04:00.000-07:00

lounge lizards

2011-05-17T10:03:00.000-07:00

apostles

2011-05-13T09:35:00.002-07:00

pontiff

2011-05-10T13:19:00.001-07:00

cardinal

2011-05-10T11:30:00.000-07:00

nebula

2011-05-10T01:56:00.000-07:00

reflection 1

2011-05-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

number 6

2011-05-03T00:52:00.000-07:00

easy e

2011-04-15T01:09:00.001-07:00

pop

2011-04-07T11:05:00.000-07:00

sumo

2011-04-05T11:34:00.000-07:00

polka

2011-03-25T01:51:00.000-07:00

nerd

2011-03-20T00:24:00.000-07:00

bombs of love

2011-03-18T04:50:00.001-07:00

beware of the sharks

2011-03-02T10:25:00.000-08:00

barrels

2011-02-25T04:16:00.001-08:00

last spire

2011-02-21T02:20:00.000-08:00

shopping in lidl

2011-02-06T05:05:00.000-08:00

why we draw

2011-02-06T04:17:00.001-08:00

10,000 yrs ago some prehistoric savants were drawing on the sides of caves. Before that they might have been drawing in the mud or on the side of rocks, who knows? When picasso first saw these rediscovered drawings he was aghast - "we haven't learned anything!" he said. What he meant, all the techniques he thought so novel had already been put into practice, by some caveman no less - before painting got sophisticated. If Og and Ug had managed to invent oils and canvas they might even have got round to knocking out some rembrandts/

So why did Ug and Og start drawing. Perhaps they thought it contained magic (or that was what they told the rest of the tribe). No doubt, deep down, they started drawing for the same reason we do it today. Because when you draw you learn to look, and when you look you start to see, and when you see you start to understand. Looking at those prehistoric drawings we understand what a bison IS, what it means, even more than if we were looking at the actual animal. The essence has been distilled.

In the same way, great writers write about the human experience in order to comprehend it. Their prime motive isn't narrative or entertainment (although these may be happy by products) but understanding. It is this main drive that seperates art from entertainment (novels from books, Battleship Potemkin from Transformers 2). In the same way, purpose, and the nature of the impetus behind it seperate art from the artistic, from craft, design or draughtsmanship.

Its more complicated than that, perhaps. Drawing is a two way process. We look, see and take in information. We try to understand. When that information comes back out it takes a bit of ourselves with it. This gets mixed up with the final product. So, the process of creation also gives people the chance to understand themselves. How well the artist handles this two way process will determine how 'successful' the work is.

A lot depends on their in built capacity to absorb stimuli in the first place. Its true, I think, that art is rarely a product of the heart, many times a product of the mind, but mostly a product of the nervous system. Thats why Ug and Og started having fits and visions, and the rest of the tribe left them alone to doodle on the walls.

barge st

2011-01-30T07:16:00.000-08:00

the comedians

2011-01-16T09:04:00.000-08:00

garages

2011-01-11T09:24:00.001-08:00

tomorrow (doesn't know)

2011-01-04T10:53:00.000-08:00

so, someone asks, why the obsession with skips and containers? if i had to come up with a reason, and i don't even know that there is one, i'd put forward the suggestion that they work well as a metaphor. boxes, similar, brightly coloured. stuff arrives in one and gets thrown away into the other, and somehow everything keeps moving around ....

unicorn

2011-01-03T11:11:00.000-08:00

jadwiga in crete, portrait

the burrow

2010-12-30T15:53:00.000-08:00

someone with a chain around their neck is a slave

in wraclow pt 2

2010-12-16T11:49:00.000-08:00

the buildings in the town centre use colour in the a gorgeous way, and its interesting to see where the flats i've spent the past couple of days photographing have taken their new colour schemes from, and how the effects are different in the two locations. where the effect was modern and vibrant in namyslow, here it is strangely old fashioned, opulent and sumptous.

its sad to say, once you get anywhere outside the town citys central square, the place becomes increasingly run down and hit by a rash of graffiti. i cant make my mind up about graffiti. i like then idea of people cutting loose to express themselves and taking ownership of their surroundings etc. but in practice a lot of graffiti is s*** and a lot graffiti 'artists' are s***. their talent and ambition limited to half scrawling something along a wall.

in wraclow, it just makes the city look as though its covered by a thin patina of uninteresting dirt.

perhaps there needs to be some graffiti code of honour

if the buildings better than you are, leave it alone!

i don't know, i still think people should be able to adapt the places and spaces they live in, but they should want it to be better, you know what i mean?

In Wraclow

2010-12-08T00:40:00.000-08:00

we set off with heads heavy with metaxa. the train chugs along slowly, like the buses, like many of the cars, its been operating since the 60s 0r 70s and has the same look, the same feel .... theres the impression that so much round here has stalled and it gives it a certain atmosphere. its like 70s britain with computers and mobiles.

the impression is strongest once we start passing through the suburbs of wraclow. theres a real grit to the place, once again enlivened by the occasional splash of vivid colour. i could get some awesome pictures here, but i realise it would take me a couple of weeks at least to do the place justice, and i dont have the time. shame.

it makes me think how important time and age is in giving a place a genuine atmosphere. in places where change and progress is constant, theres so often a sense of dislocation, of impermanance. how do we manage this, whats the desirable state of things? its a bit of a paradox.

i think we have to design for change, to allow for a sort of gradual accumulation of events, a steady improvement, so that its not necessary to continually scrap places and redevelop, redevelop. just let things roll along.

bed

2010-11-30T11:02:00.000-08:00

your future our clutter

2010-11-21T05:48:00.000-08:00

theres a new fall album out next week. just thought you might need to know that. new Fall album.

* * *

so, whats it like?

seems to me, the last three albums have seen the band reaching for a certain sound, but not quite getting there. not that it matters so much - with the fall success isn't always the point... this record see's them ditching the sparse sinuous quasi funk of the previous two efforts and return to what they were trying to achieve with Heads Roll, only this time they absolutely nail it. have to tell you its a great ****ing album.

the sound is deceptivly simple - rockabilly, some very primal rock n roll riffs, combined with phat electro sounds and studio hi jinks. if Heads Roll saw them hit a wall, this record sees them break through it, and once again discover something new. the first thing that gets your attention is the vibrancy. if theres something new the latest line up have brought to the band its a sense of fun. thats right this is a lot of fun - pop with guts.

as there should be though, theres that indefinable noise at the edge of perception, something you're always straining to hear, but argh not quite, that drags you back for repeated listens. something in the way the sounds lock together. whatever it is, it stops fall records losing their sell by date.

you can tell that mes is enthused too, because this time he's put together a complete set of lyrics, a whole albums worth! i remember, he said he wanted Heads Roll to have a lyrical thread running through all the songs. except (to my ears) that just seemed to consist of shouting "i am the living leg-end", at the start of each song.

this time though, as if to give you your refund, you get two intertwining lyrical threads, tying all the songs together - one dealing with his recent hospital experiences, the other the bull**** world of equity and finance. plus all sorts of random observations - like how to 'keep draughts from your glass fronted art home' being a favourite example.

so what next? i'm hoping they return to have another go the techno funk of Reformation and IWS. most likely they'll do something completely unexpected. heres to that.

walking down this road
a beautiful lake i see and behold
its gorgeous
yet all i see is a slippy floor

branding the landscape

2010-11-18T09:13:00.001-08:00

Is there too much public art in the landscape? reports say that there has been a massive boom in public art commisions in the UK over recent years, and I’ve applied for a few of them myself! so I’m playing devils advocate here, or being a hypocrite, whatever way you want to look at it.
all the same, it seems you can’t go anywhere now without there being some sanctioned artwork there to explain the place to you - telling you what you should be thinking and explaining how you should be feeling. isnt there room any more for ambiguity, or an individual respone. can’t a place just be a place?
the adlesburgh scallop (pictured) makes a good case study. a source of recent controversy, its detractors say there is nothing wrong with the artwork itself, but its location was beautiful..more beautiful without it. it is an unnecessary detraction.
the artist says that they dont understand the work - that it was created especially for that location. the insinuation is that as an artist, her response is more valid than everyone elses. more valid than the place itself, which should serve as a setting for her work.
the council say it works because it has attracted more visitors to the site. nature on its own is boring, and hard to sell. who wants to be left with only their surroundings and their own thoughts? best to give them the ‘proper interpretation’ so they can think about it the 'correct way'.

and this i think now is the real role of public art - an exercise in branding and marketing, a logo for the landscape

the lost bike

2010-11-13T06:53:00.000-08:00

cargo

2010-11-09T10:06:00.000-08:00

boathouse

2010-10-23T01:43:00.000-07:00

victorian architecture (commercial)

2010-10-23T00:47:00.001-07:00

19th century shop front and office building - details

and so

what goes for the suburbs has to go double once you reach the town centre. when you see the level of detail that went into creating the most ordinary shop front, and compare that to the effort and thought that goes into designing a major new development - well, its embarassing frankly. you can only imagine that your average modern architect would have been treated with little but scorn by his 19th century counterparts, for his sheer lack of care, ambition or imagination.

you might say that i just dont understand 'modernism' - but i reckon i do. what i don't like is how its become an excuse - for people who arent really bothered about what they do to disguise their shortcomings. "i didnt add much detail because it would have detracted from the buildings lines". or rather i couldnt be bothered to think of any and suffer from a lack of inspiration.

major shopping developments arent seen as grand developments but get designed to the lowest common deminator. no unnescessary distrations, just keep them moving, mindlessly chewing on the cud of their own brains until they go outside and throw up.

the victorian era is sometimes portayed as one of repression and hypocrisy, but perhaps its time to look around and think - who really lacks passion and sincerity.

caravan

2010-10-21T09:45:00.000-07:00

boxes

2010-10-21T09:43:00.000-07:00

victorian architecture (domestic)

2010-10-18T23:58:00.001-07:00

details from a former townhouse, now a series of rundown bedsits

started a small flurry of work again, which is a bit of a relief, after not doing much for two weeks. i have my excuses though! biting the bullet, it looks like me and J are going to try moving in together, leaving our respective rabbit hutches for somewhere with that unknown quantity, space ......

this involves moving from the town centre and fartown respectivly, into lockwood. as we continually pass from one fringe of huddersfield to another, with their late victorian terraces mingling with more recent attempts at construction, it reminds me forcefully of something i've been noticing for a while.

the way, around the turn of the last century, even the most ordinary dwelling was gracefully decorated - with wonderfully carved eaves and lintels, sculptural keystones or stained glass panels above the doors etc. at no little expense and time i'm sure. its as though ornament was provided as a matter of course, as a necessity ....

compare that with the more recent houses, which as a matter of course, are no more than the necessary boxes, it seems like we've undergone a regression. we no longer expect our homes to be anything special, on the outside anyway. interior is the imprisoner of concience ....

part of this maybe a matter of budget and labour costs, but i wonder if its also a sign of how far responsibility has been taken out of the hands of the labourers and artisans. theres a sense that before, all these details and carved masonry were provided as a mark of personal pride and satisfaction in the work. now of course, the thing is to just do your job and stick to the plan, with no questions asked.

whats ironic, is that the houses which have had the most care lavished on them are now at the bottom of the property ladder, as the prosperous flee to the suburbs, to their reassuring boxes..

this morning there was a drunk having a fit at the bottom of my lane, his second of the morning. business is back to normal.

canal

2010-09-27T01:02:00.000-07:00

soundclash dubplate style

2010-09-26T02:54:00.001-07:00

its not very often i blog about music, but today i wanted to write about a little appreciated album thats close to my heart.

in the mid 80s, some of the jamaican record producers who'd earned their apprenticeship under the 'dub inventor' King Tubby went on to pioneer a number of digital recording techniques. indeed, many of the most influential records came out of Tubbys own Firehouse studio. after watching, somewhat amused, from the sidelines for a couple of years, he decided to show the whipper snappers how it should be done.

Soundclash Dubplate Style combined the innovative new techniques with Tubbys long studio experience to produce a sound that was suprisingly natural and organic. i always imagine him picking through decades worth of reel to reel tapes to find the right piano chord, the perfect tom tom roll ..... all of this surrounded by the lovely warm bass, all top end removed, so it flows along like a river. unlike his proteges, Tubby wasn't just interested in creating sounds that were sharp and fresh, but making the music deeper and emptier than ever before ... in doing this, he laid down a template that would influence electronic music for the next two decades (and counting).

imo, i don't think anyones quite got there in the same way. the following year Tubby would be shot dead outside his studio

when i'm drawing, i have this record on in the background a lot. it helps me understand me how you can use space to make the meaning more intense, how you can rearrange fundamental elements so they create different moods. also, it chills me the hell out

and finally, no discussion of this record would be complete without mentioning Fuzzy Jones excellent toastin during the intro to each song. "when it comes to sound business" he shouts "its we who run the scene!"

and who can argue with that?

grey st

2010-09-24T01:15:00.001-07:00

ampitheatre

2010-09-18T06:10:00.000-07:00

in the age of tourism, scenery is just another commodity

ariadne's room

2010-09-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

the search for salvation frequently raises more questions than it answers

out of season

2010-09-14T01:19:00.000-07:00

rock pool

2010-09-14T01:03:00.000-07:00

every good child hates annotation

2010-09-14T00:48:00.000-07:00

at the school where i work part time, the part of the art exam every kid resents is annotation. having to 'explain' your thought processes, after all, is an unnatural act and runs against our better instincts.

nothing kills the act of creation like dry analysis. once you start relying on method over instinct, you're a dead duck.

once youve lurked around in the background for a while you start to realise - the exam system isnt set up to make things easier for the kids, or even the teachers. its set up to make things easier for the bureaucrats - grading just becomes a matter of ticking boxes, as does the kids work. theyre taught to follow a procedure - assessment objectives

this bleeds into higher education as well. a lot of college kids dont want to work things out for themselves. they just want to know what steps they need to follow to get the grades, to reach the correct conclusion.

theres the fear of course, that if you follow your instincts you'll make mistakes. but mistakes are the only way you really learn, down deep where it matters.

which is a long winded way of saying - i'm trying to write up the summaries for my design projects and its making me tired of them. i guess art is superior to design, architecture, all that crap after all

lilo

2010-09-11T06:57:00.002-07:00

andromeda

2010-09-08T01:08:00.000-07:00

normally, i'd avoid pictures of people staring into the sea like the plague, but in the context of this series, i think it works.

parasols

2010-09-08T01:06:00.000-07:00

tw*ts in lynx and the wolfman

2010-09-02T11:06:00.000-07:00

pineapples

2010-09-02T04:47:00.000-07:00

chips pasties and guilt

2010-08-11T09:27:00.000-07:00

just over a year ago i lived in a flat opposite the secondhand market in town. sometimes, if i was up that early for some insane reason, i would sketch the characters drinking their cups of coffee outside at 6 in the morning. having found this sketchbook at the bottom of a drawer last week, i decided turn the sketches into the picture they always meant to be - a glimpse of people with cavernous lives.

Yorkshire vs Modernism

2010-08-10T22:48:00.000-07:00

a few months ago i went back to York for the first time in fifteen years. forgotten what a great place it is, just the way the city and its surroundings are laid out - with a lack of self conciousness, and full of the things that appeal to real people - ginnels, winding lanes, half concealed squares and stairways... this might be going over the top but it struck us as a place where you could be human

it helps that its historic stature makes it resistant to the fascist tendencies of modernism*.
in my own town and many others across the country, places with genuine character, that had taken the time to grow into themselves, have been swept away to make room for the theories of repressed academics.

the results are anodine and loveless. it wouldnt be so bad if the theories worked ... but modernism, at heart, is about taking things out, turning life into a bland hum.

*watch The Fountainhead by the way, its a hilarious po faced satire about all this ... about two thirds of the way through watching it, my friend turned round and said "this guy needs to take the cork out of his ass .."

cohabitation 2

2010-08-06T11:43:00.000-07:00

cohabitation 1

2010-08-05T02:27:00.001-07:00

stunning

2010-07-28T01:18:00.001-07:00

call waiting

2010-07-28T01:16:00.000-07:00