Developments in location, methods and titles.

Due to moving house during the past few weeks I've had little access to most of my usual collage materials as they are all stuck in a variety of boxes and bags.  Therefore I've taken it upon myself to make new collage materials.  The above is created through photoshopping some old images together.  This will eventually be printed out and used as a background for a physical image. 

I have some kind of primative prejudice against using computers too much in the creation of my work.  All the textures and shapes in the image above are derived from abstract animations I made years ago printed out in black and white and then recollaged together again in different permutations - so technically the source material of the above image was in itself a digital image - though also the animations were (mostly) derived from pictures I made physically so they have never been entirely computer generated.... still... I have been using computers to aid the production of my artwork for years now so I have no reason for my silly prejudice and simply must accept that it's something that I use quite a lot and there's no reason why I shouldn't allow myself to use them more.  Especially if it's in aid of making much better physical artwork.  The above is not too far removed from a normal collage anyway - it's still all cut and pasted, shrunk and darkened in places.  All of this I could achieve physically though it would take me several trips to a photocopier, lots of black marker pen and tonnes of wasted paper.  So making it this way actually makes slightly more sense.  I can later print this at any size I like and then augment and develop it through physical methods scissors and glue - therefore coming full circle.

The above are four samples of another digital enhancement. 

After finding a full colour photocopy of nothing discarded on the floor (image here (15.5.12)) I scanned this photocopy and recoloured it through photoshop.  These are now ready to be printed and used on future images.

This is me admitting myself partially into the computer world... even though I was already there anyway.

Finally I'll leave you on some working titles for some images to be made once I've sorted out a desk in my new flat - suppose I could call the desk my "studio space" and call my work "my practice" if I wanted to be a little bit more arty sounding.  Thing is I don't.  Anyway the working titles for some designed on post it note images are:

1: Disorganised shambling organic mass (mess) aspires to be incandescent multicoloured light (life) form.

2: A green light at death forces us into forever.

3: Control mechanism at the centre of everything manifests itself in collapsing chasms.

A more (or less) finite microcosm of confusion

This is (perhaps) my first proper attempt at photocopy art - which I wasn't aware had ever existed as a movement at the time (2009 I think).  It was exhibited by Contents May Vary in the Urbis when they were nominated  for the Best of Manchester Awards... which makes it sound as if it was on the wall (which would be quite impressive) - but it wasn't - it was on the floor next to their exhibition as a page in a free magazine. 

The brief for putting this image together was the question "Does the spectator run the show?" - I think how I interpreted this was to present an answer to the question by visually presenting myself as the spectator in the centre of the image and overlaying it with another image of myself but at a different angle.  One is "spectating" the other is imagining and making some internal interpretations and visualizations.  

What I think I was trying to get at was that I don't think there should be line drawn between spectating and creating and that I thought the question was invalid.  I don't personally like to call myself an artist because I think it sounds poncy and presumptuous.  All I do is experience existence and try to express my own baffled interpretation for whatever reason it is that I feel that doing that is necessary.  

Perhaps I produce artwork to try and make sense of the world and myself - like trying to create some perfect image of everything all at once so that I can finally see exactly what is happening and have some hold on the world spinning and spilling around me.  Sometimes I don't know whether I'm spilling out or spilling in.  I see myself as a spectator but also as an interpreter of my spectating.  By making this image I'm spectating myself spectating and interpreting.  The reason I'm posting this now is that this mode of self portrait is similar to my more recent image Self Diagrammatical Blood Speech.  

Aesthetically the two are quite different but they are both displaying a circuit of how my confusion is channeled into more a more (or less) finite microcosm of confusion.  I suppose as images go these are both very different from my usual artwork as a lot of what I create is very abstract.  Do I need to create more work that resemble intuitive diagrams rather than typical abstraction.  Perhaps an image of the world - every single person trapped and confused going through the motions and finding their identity crutches all with separate observations and interpretations.  This kind of terror of a shared existence was also done recently in this image:  Heads Multiply in Limited Tubes of Ruin. (I used to have difficulty naming work until someone told me that art should be named after what it is an image of - because some of my work is quite complex, strange or/and hideous it results in a title that is long, wordy and perhaps hard to fathom.  So the title is for you to read it for what it is and the title should aid you in your understanding of the image).

I've come to the conclusion that I don't want to make pretty pictures and I don't want to just sell things - what I want to do and what I should do can be different things all together but in this case I should and want to be making more interesting work.  When creating abstract images that bear no relation to anything but dead and horrible swirling death voids then I'm not really feeling or saying anything... in fact it's an absence of saying anything to the point where it infects the mind and I find that I've not really thought about anything properly for a long time especially in my artwork so it's probably time to really think things through and make something that really does encapsulate everything and this time do it properly.

3.6.12 - 15.5.12

3.6.12 - myself and possessions are ready to be thrown into a box and moved up the road - as soon as a destination is clarified.

2.5.12 - Delivered some artwork to Bolton and bought a very good hat for keeping the rain off my head (and also makes me look a little rakish) - it may be noticed that the images in my diary have little correspondence with the text I add below them- or that you may notice that the image or the text has no bearing on anything at all and is nearly or entirely intangible.

1.6.12 - 2nd exhibition at the Bankley Gallery.  The first being this and my second being this.
There isn't much comparison.

31.5.12 -  culminating in a dazed dead head whirlpool to the self centre
Time becomes an object rather than a subject.
Thoughts are formed to be private and screeching.

30.5.12 - Cells ignore individuality and flock into tight knots of copycat strands of normality.
I have a good chance of being normal.
Does this mean I am actually losing after all?

29.5.12 - the spinal green barrier liquifies, condenses and allows interchanging - an urge for escapism. 

28.5.12 - Just one more reason why I don't want to go to anymore house parties.  Tribal weekend rituals become a part of a society of ants. 

27.5.12 - A diagram of a proposed house move.

26.5.12 - remember I once added together a lot of numbers that were significant to me and came up with the number 26.  For some reason I built a superstition around this number and ended up thinking that I would likely die at the age of 26.  This obviously never happened.... unless perhaps it did - (if you were to die would your mind be in so much shock that it would imagine itself to be alive - like in some deep internal microcosm of your head some spark was pretending to be you. If that was the case then perhaps there's no need to fear death simply because you'll always find a way to trick yourself into being alive.)

25.5.12 - I typed about 20 old notebooks up on my computer a few years back just so I could recycle the paper and free up some space.  The majority of these were first draft ideas, stories, essays, attempts at poetry and lyrics and an awful lot of scribbled drawings.  Inside these notebooks there was a general air of confusion and a terribly overbearing malaise and self indulgence.

24.5.12 - in the same time illusion - tricking it’s inhabitants blocking the view of the clean areas .

23.5.12 - the same objects placed at different angles in different places.

22.5.12 - Skeletal structure and spinal column supporting a head of void stood on a circle of decline.  Power is limited to convey garbled basics blueprint fragments of the complex and uncomplex matters of the heart association 

21.5.12 - the red rift breathes in the blue squares and swallows them in towards doorways, conduits and pathways . 

20.5.12 - an atmospheriod breaks through the linear something into a moment of action.  Taking a situation or scenario completely based in the abstract within my head and attempting to make it into a coherent sensical readable thread which means something to everyone.
Invite a visitation - return nothing of value.

19.5.12 - the plans for movement take on a definitive shape to leave the piles of others' tasks that mount up all over my internal scenery.   Cut old notepads and envelopes from an accumulated mess into a cabinet of everything. 

18.5.12 - non continuous yellow spark into red listfulness.

17.5.12 - the excursion of a bleak mountain region over a faked dark region of nothing.

16.5.12 - A stab into the empty.  Develop ways of working with negative space.  

15.5.12 - This is a photocopier photocopying nothing at all in full colour.  The blur of green would be the lid of the photocopier.