Disposition of the Organic

I've not done any work of any real tangibility this last month - not that I have a "creative block" or anything just that it's all mostly been scribbles, writing and designs in my little red notebook.  So in the spirit of my last blog post this is about another photocopied booklet I made back in 2006.

With the slightly overdone title: Disposition of the Organic.  This was a smaller book than Nightmares About Teeth - I wanted to half the cost of photocopying and also the amount of time spent putting it together.  The title sounds like some sort of vague metaphor of life - as if the cross hatched office doodlings inside were somehow illustrative of all our existential concerns and questions and that between the lines somewhere there are answers palpitating themselves through the abstract and the not quite as abstract.  Or as if I thought the book was bleeding some pained confusion.  Whatever effect is had on the passers by I gave it to I doubt it effected them as profoundly as I thought it would.  I did get an exhibition by handing it out - though it was one of those free for all Autonomous Art exhibitions run by rich kid revolutionaries in a squat in Manchester's Northern Quarter.  I'm glad my creative career has moved on a bit since then.

I drew most of these whilst working at NTL - I had a little notebook I kept during my training - many Customer Service jobs give you three weeks of sitting in a class room getting paid to sit and doze off whilst your supposed to be learning computer systems.  The picture to the right is a futuristic building complete with glass domes and a bridge connecting one end to another, underneath the bridge you can see the shadow of someones normal house - not sure if I was trying to illustrate architectural growth - how the past is left hanging around even in the most inconsequential ways. 

I think I was probably stabbing in the dark at nothing in particular, just passing time and building up areas of shape and pattern - my target whose face was made up of anyone and everyone... except it wasn't an aggressive stab, just carving at the mid distance colours with a rubber knife.   I think I was probably just beginning to to articulate what myself and was moving away from the underside of a cloudy fog of prescribed medicines.

There was little chance of me socialising in NTL as I just didn't want too - the illustration to the right shows I was sliding introvertedly into snide aloofness.  I was even enjoying my lack of communication with my work colleagues - like it actually made me better than them - I was developing a secret confidence which was projecting itself right at the people around me - I was actually manning battle stations and getting ready to create barriers between myself and the normal people that like to sit around the office talking to one another.... This was a long time ago and I don't think I actually felt quite as disturbed as it sounds but there was a less than secret egotism and superiority developing in me at this point.  The seeds of such were planted in school by all the people who didn't like me.  I programmed myself with a "I'll show you all and make every last one of you pay" attitude from a very early age.

So like some caged throb in a dark place the deathly strangeness grew and became unapproachable and alien - I had to come up with ways to camouflage it - one of which was self deprecation... so every time I say I'm great I somehow contradict it straight afterwards with a self directed insult.
I've started to wonder if that's the best way though - am I at a stage now where I don't need to do that anymore?  Is it time to kick the self deprecation habit - enjoy that I'm actually doing well and if I can carry on making artwork and following my heart I may actually end up making you all pay after all.

Thing is though arrogance is likely one of creativity's greatest obstacles, I did this drawing and obviously felt so big headed that I thought it was interesting enough to put into a book.  It's not a bad picture as such but it's not that great either - none of these pictures are that great and maybe I was never convinced they were.  I went through a two year stage of producing paintings that were just large circles stuck to each other.  I got very obsessed and drawn into a very basic and boring method of painting that didn't in reality look very good after it had been done.  I also made a few jerky animations that took me months to make. With clunky editing and sombre and over done monologues.  When I think I'm some kind of genius - things start going wrong.

So it's actually really good to keep myself in place - otherwise I end up wasting my time building something that I over hype until it ends up becoming disappointing.  Though the failed projects have all ended up being useful in some shape or form.  Even this booklet has ended up being useful in future collages, animations and also it's been something to write this blog post about.  It's allowed me to type all of this and allowed me to think about things out loud through a keyboard.  Blogging is odd because it's not just thinking aloud to yourself your also thinking aloud to pretty much anyone who happens to sit down and read this.  How many people - who know me, or don't me - have sat down and read this and thought very negative things - or maybe just laughed at the fact I exist - or got bored after reading the first few sentences?

Feel free to write something horrible at the bottom of this by the way.  The internet is pretty good for supportive compliments but I don't get much harsh name calling.

Nightmares about teeth with death conjecture

Nightmares about teeth was a small photocopied booklet - or what would now be referred to as a zine - I produced in 2006 after first moving to Manchester.  The title comes from me having recurring nightmares about teeth - so a simple title and a very common anxiety dream - though mine were very varied, not just teeth dropping out but teeth regrowing, teeth melting, pulling out endless piles of pulverised, bleeding and shattered bone, teeth turning into metal, teeth teleporting away and then back again - lots of staring into mirrors and finding out they are back before they vanish again - other variations - the background setting was often some kind of old disused building refurbished by a futuristic cabal.  People walking around stone circular cells scraping their hands against walls until they'd worn away everything before the shoulder - whilst I'm in the corner with a face of metal.  My responses during these dreams was either shock or complete and total complacency.

 This book also had networking and dating potentialities.  I'd hand it to other creative types, leave it lying around on buses and cafes and quite frequently handed it to interesting looking and pretty women with understanding eyes.  Being very shy and nervous as a human being and attempting to make my waking reality a little more likeable than my sleeping one, I tried to somehow throw a little bit of my internal world at passers by - I didn't have very much opportunity to observe their reactions as I usually exited the scene at super speed. Over time my sense of self worth and identity has grown from this skulking covert into the loud mouth I am today.  I don't have those dreams about teeth anymore either - and I'm generally in a position in my dream world where I usually end up outwitting everyone I come across - brain monsters aren't quite as scary anymore.

Have I, therefore, accepted that gradual decay is inevitable?  Death is perhaps not the big event we think it is.  Not essentially the end.  If you die and then you become nothing (as in void).  Do you then have to be something  to have a concept of nothing in order to become nothing and to be nowhere.  So if your are something perceiving nothing then your still something.  Imagination slowly forming shapes, places and ideas - becoming tighter and simpler before getting even more complicated  with an expanding awareness going into your own little infinity with it's own population.  Theoretically we could all be in the imagination of an already dead being.  When you look into your own eyes in the mirror are you staring into the confused circling remains of "God"?

The universe apparently began approximately 15 billion years ago because of some huge chemical reaction.  The most solid and touchable fact is that we are somewhere and this is all something - and going on all the time within our thought processes is endless conjecture.  Chemicals bottled in skin sacks, absorbing and expelling resources and ideas until our bodies fall apart into dust, grit and cloth.  The electrical charge in our brains either dies out or carries on into somewhere else - I don't believe in an afterlife as such but I say that it's fairly logical to theorise that this electrical charge of drifting and dissipating consciousness is capable of creating a small self involved bubble universe based on memory, dream, neurosis and all the other remaining feelings.  There's a very good chance that if this is true then we are all recurring endlessy from one universe into another and each time we copy ourselves we are like simulacra and becoming less and less true to ourselves - and the world around us becomes more and more distorted and full of error in every death, like an image being photocopied over and over again losing it's sharpness.  Life isn't moving in a figure eight of infinity - it's more like a spiral going downwards and downwards to a centre which leads nowhere except to a badly drawn blurry mark that's burning smokily into forever.  Our mind dissipating with every regurgitation into a body and life less and less suitable.

Eternal return of many kinds does seem to recur throughout many spiritualities, philosophies and sciences.  Somehow when I walk through a city or town on a busy day I can feel the concentricity of life pulling me down some whirlpool of bleak everything - I've concluded that my only way out is to think and feel positively as much as possible, then my electrical charge may actually come up with somewhere ten millions times better... this universe here is like being stuck in the head of some mental patient - who is bleating tongueless through every wall, ceiling and floor. 

100th Twitter Follower and Dead Light Receptor City

Social networking sites can be harnessed into some sort massive marketing tool by self centered attention seeking creatives, like myself.  But as a scissors and glue technological and social insect with little understanding of marketing or the interconnectedness of all things I only have a vague understanding and therefore not much inbuilt respect for such things as Twitter.... however I have developed very slowly an interest in all things Twitter - Margaret Atwood being my follower has been a significant ego boost.  I'm sorry I don't always get the chance to read everything that everyone else tweets about as I always feel that I'm going to miss out on something amazing or something important (but not that amazing).

I decided that I would send my 100th follower a picture in the post - just a little one.  I copied the idea off Islington Mill who gave their one billionth follower free tickets to some gig.  I'm not really that bothered about how many followers I acquire - it's not like some sort of numbers game - I just like trimming off my thoughts, fears and other feelings into a concise 160 character sized space.

So just to the right you'll see the picture I sent to Richard Crossan - I'm glad it's gone to someone because if it stayed with me it would have existed in a small and insignificant cupboard with tonnes of other forgotten experiments whilst in the home of a near stranger it's able to acquire it's own uniqueness and be a one of a kind tiny little curiosity made of photocopies biro and whiteboard marker pens in a 50p cream and gold frame from a charity shop.
It's called "Death Fissure" because it looks like pressed in and nullified tearing of dead light receptors (and I should know - my house is like Dead Light Receptor City)

Exhibitions and some war news.

After painfully taking down the installation at the Bankley Gallery last weekend (photos here) I borrowed the Gallery's comments book and scanned in all the pages - the response was entirely positive but then people are often polite and generous on the surface (either that or I am actually totally amazing). 

Here they are:

It was very hard work putting it up and even harder to take down but the overall effect and impact of the work both on people and was certainly worth it.  The photos will definitely look good in my portfolio and I'll be able to submit ideas for similarly large scale projects to other galleries.  It's funny but I didn't really realise how well I'd achieved what I'd set out to do until about half an hour before I had to take it all down... then I got all teary eyed and nostalgic and wished I'd wandered about it a little more... this didn't last though because as soon as I started taking it down I realised how annoying it was going to be - so then I was thrown back into yet another evening of frustration. 

At the same time as this exhibition I have had some work in another exhibition running (which is still on now - until the 5th August) on 50 Beech Road in Chorlton at The Everyman Gallery which has two of my framed pieces for sale.  Feel free to drop by and have a look at everyone's work.

It's been good to have these two exhibitions because one was conceptual experiment widening my scope and creative ability and the other is more of a commercial venture where I can leave the business side of things in the hands of my lovely art dealer.  I wonder if in a few years this will all develop in some brilliant direction where I'll have enough reputation and money to actually not have to work in my day job anymore.  That's always been the dream, to make existence that little bit nicer and to be able to do what I like to do and put myself in a position where I don't have to do anything else.  I have some interesting ideas in my mind for future projects - smaller and larger scale, for a while I think I'm going to work on smaller scale ideas and explore narrative and bring something of myself into the abstraction because so far I've not really been saying anything except that there's nothing at all to be said and that under the surface the world is some kind of big, swirling, non-stop, chaotic and inescapable pool of everything.

When I focus on myself I know that I'm finite and that if I dig deep into the centre of myself to the very beginning there's actually nothing in there any more- like the foundations have all rotted away and they need replacing with steel supports so that I can put something beautiful inside - or maybe unearth something beautiful that's been buried under so many years of thick and constantly developing defence barriers.  Everything has been pooling outward trying to attain some sort of gainful permanent growth and building strategies to fight against the howling enemy.  My efforts for most of my adult life have been directed towards some kind of war against a faceless and bodiless enemy - who is still out there, and I'm not surrendering just yet - it's just that I have hidden resources and places to explore, nobody understands them yet, I need to understand them myself first.

L ell Hell + Infinity (except not - unless it is (better when paused))

About 2 years ago I was asked to participate in an exhibition about the alphabet - where each artist was assigned an individual letter, I was assigned the letter L... I thought about the notion of loops and as I usual I ended up thinking about infinity and regression and the idea of constant concentric circles moving outwards and inwards leading back to the same thing though slightly regressed each time - inwards or outwards is usually hard to distinguish, so much that negative and positive almost bore little difference.  The exhibition never actually happened and all traces of it's future vanished.  The below video is what I put together to be exhibited and due to the disappearance of this exhibition this is actually the first time it's been seen... a small fragment of it at least (though you'll likely be able to guess the ending):

I think it must have been the non existence of this exhibition/screening that led me away from creating painstakingly jerky abstract animation - that and the fact that I was getting annoyed with my computer crashing from filling it with too many video clips interspersed and collaged with tinier and bigger video clips - also I realised whilst pausing any of my animations at any point that I had created thousands - if not more - compositions that could be used and exploited in later work (all my animations are better when you press the pause button and they stop moving, talking or doing whatever it is each one does).  Tonnes of patterns and textures from these animations could be cannibalised into new work if only I printed each frame out one by one - and then through the use of a photocopier, a pair of scissors and lots of glue sticks I could produce randomised black and white collaged artwork at a very face pace - and then use the collages to collage into each other again and again and see where this leads too.  In effect this is actually a project spanning about ten years - from when I did my early paintings and collages that were turned into cut and paste animations to my animations being turned into cut and paste collages and eventually a large scale installation - it's all very much a potentially infinite project that could get denser but also larger over the years if I continue at it... going jerkily along a path of constant permutation with a background philosophy and fascination with void, infinity and forever dead cells regurgitating themselves into living cells like when a black hole singularity explodes at the other side into other universes.  Or lungs breathing out and in until crushed into dead dust which gets breathed in and out by lungs - some kind of constant recycled forever.  Which brings me to another animation I made called "Line Line Line Line Line Line Line - - -- -" which was meant to be added onto forever and ever and ever into a long neverending thread of forever and ever.  I got as far as about 30 seconds - here it is:

There comes a point - in the consideration of infinity - where ones patience begins to run out entirely and one realises that infinity cannot be created or even fully imagined - and I've started to think more about the idea of the finite - of finding something limited and whether anything truly limited can conceptually exist in a world of never ending interconnectedness.  Is it possible that I'm looking for something finite within my work and that I should instead of looking into void space I should be hopping off my concentric conveyor belt and looking at the central steering wheel and get everything into some kind of perfect balance - then the inconceiveable distance may come into sharp focus and all these people, objects and concepts surrounding me may actually just become a wall of blank nothing on all sides.  Or perhaps not.  Anyway here's another video just to put in there because I can - last animation I made around the same time I was getting back on the photocopier - it actually almost conveys some kind of near - infinite photocopying existence - one which I seem to have ended up living in:

With any luck the price of photocopying will increase beyond what I can afford and I'll be propelled out of the machine like it was a sneezing whale - or I may just die at some point, that's what happens to most things living.  Is the point of death finite but the void of the hereafter a constant grind of static meaningless stuff? Does that meaningless stuff eventually coagulate into a puddle of interconnectedly chaotic logic - like the life we are living now?  The imagination of nothing manifesting itself into something and everything.  Oh no!  That sounds like another thought about infinity on it's way - where's that steering wheel?  Evasive action or battle stations?

Distorted Interior Barriers - Exhibition Photographs

Here are some photos of the now completed exhibition at the Bankley Gallery - this first set are of the entire room (from various angles) in order to demonstrate the overall effect:

Secondly some close ups of the walls:

And finally this is a sidewards panoramic shot of the entire shot looping towards the doorway (i you tilt your monitor on it's side and scroll through this it's like your taking a very fast and improbable spin):

 

For anybody who was unable to attend the preview the show will be open on the weekend on the dates of 9th, 10th, 16th, 17th of July between 10am and 5pm.  It would be lovely to see you there as these photos are only a very slight and weak representation of the overall effect of the work.  I will actually be in the gallery over these weekends at these times and I'm going to use the time on my own without the  to start writing a story - it's not actually going to be a proper story or narrative but likely an element of a future project (writing has always been of interest and finding some way of fusing word into imagery seamlessly would be great - in a way that people would want to read and look at a picture at the same time, so it's something inbetween the two - the words likely operating on some visual and narrative level creating something immersive, textural and literary all at the same time - like a graphic novel - but without any characters).  So anyway the door is open over the next two weekends so hopefully see you then.

First evening of exhibition preperations

Interesting evening doing my exhibition preparations at the Bankley Gallery last night - here are a few photos:

This first one was actually taken on Sunday after I moved all my materials over by taxi (except for the materials I forgot which is very typical of me) the framed images aren't going to be part of the main concept but just put along the side - as I may be able to actually make some money from this if they are about...  One hundred or so squares of collaged photocopies are on the floor with the exception of the one I staple gunned to the wall - as a little bit of test to see how it would look. Yesterday evening I did the same with but with about thirty squares, using them to cover the upper perimeter of the gallery walls - then I cut shapes out of the squares and staple gunned those do underneath - which had the resulting effect:

So it's a case of creating this contrast between white and densely interlaced infrequently repeating patterns and the whiteness of the gallery's walls - the next decided step was to staple gun more squares in places so the patterns could reach the bottom of the wall:


Then repeat the previous movement of cutting shapes out of the squares and moving these further downwards too - some of which to stretch across the floor and right into the middle of the room:

And there you have it - a very simplistic summary of an entire 12 hours work - didn't include all the stuff about bruising my hand, breaking a mug, breaking my staple gun and making a very lazy and quite dull introduction and quick removal of some very day glo colours - I'll get colour in this eventually, I think.... the next step will be to place some white paper in selective places underneath all the pattern tendrils on the floor - this will hopefully make the white from the wall appear to see into the floor in a similar fashion as the photocopies do.

If you haven't already confirmed whether or not your attending the event via Facebook feel free to do so now just here if only to make me look really, really popular.  Speaking of which I have another preview event two weeks after this one on Beech Road in Chorlton somewhere - completely different kettle of fish as it's all framed work and with other artists but it's good all the same, two exhibitions in one month and then possibly not another one for the rest of my life - who knows?

Gloop, bones, repeat, death, endless (in colour)