Proof "mural" (Post now updated with new images 27.01.2017)

Here are the last 7 month's worth of images of the non so gradually changing "mural" outside of Proof in Chorlton, Manchester. (This post updated on 27-1-2017)

Dead Cat Transaction

I applied for the Chorlton Arts Festival back in September with two proposals, one of a normal exhibition and the other to interfere with and distort an area of public space.  Like most applications for arts related things I listed my accolades and wrote the proposal in a way that I thought would come across as arrogant and off putting.  So I was quite surprised to be allowed to complete both of my proposals as two separate intertwined events.  So there is a lesson in that.  Coy, evasive, polite Englishness isn’t the best approach to writing artistic proposals and confidence is not necessarily arrogance.

I went to set up my “installation” or “mural” on Sunday morning at 5:30am.  At 6:30am a man came up to me asking if I had permission.  I pulled the brochure out of my pocket and opened it to the right page.  “See.  Outside Proof.  This year.  That’s me.  I’m here.”  I told him.  I asked him if he worked there and then he said he owned the building.  After which he got inside a black cab taxi’s driver’s seat and drove off.  So maybe he is the owner or maybe he just enjoys saying he is the owner of buildings.

 

Speaking of tall tales after this I was approached by Jesus Christ.  Or someone claiming to be him.  Though in reality one of Chorlton’s best histrionic old men.  He didn’t remember me speaking to him 2 years ago.  But why would he?  He has so much effort invested within his performance that the real world barely drizzles into him.   Would Al Pacino recognize you even though you saw him on the telly once?

 

I forgot my phone and was meant to be meeting the festival instagrammer some time around 9am so I had to walk home.  At this point it was all just about almost finished and I was in a sleep deprived self involved feeling of artistic fanciful freedom from the realities of flesh.  This was then destroyed when I turned the corner and saw what at first I thought was a sleeping cat.  But as I got closer noticed it was a cat with it’s organs ripped out, that had been tossed about violently and broken and spattered. 

In visions like the above you become confronted with the truth.  That underneath the clean walls and flat surfaces everything is reducible to gloop, the plastic lives we live doesn’t go anywhere beyond this surface so when the true nature of gloop and death is shown to us we just recoil because it shouldn’t exist in our tiny, self limited worlds.  The end of our lives is usually hooked up to some tubes and needles and all our conflict and war comes to whatever it rationalizations or lack of rationalizations we have.  Death is not beautiful in our culture.  Dead cats with their intestines on the pavement are not beautiful to me.  It was the biggest attack ever on my aesthetic sensibilities.  But it was the most real thing I've seen all year.

Much as this disturbed me I repressed the experience after I dealt with it.  And considering it now then I realize that the work I’ve created is in a sense attempting to operate on the level of a dead cat.  It is essentially street art designed to be inaccessible.  Unaesthetically pleasing.  Following no plastic populist Golden Ratio.  Making no references to anything but itself.  It is untidy, in terms of production, execution and in presentation.  It’s a part of me that is laughing at clock towers, mobile phone shops and hospital beds.  The dreary compartments and hospitality of the different places we phase into.  Every life a series of transactions.  Bound in a Social Contract none of us ever see or sign.   We are doing their very best to be unchallenging, appealing and boot licking too each other as possible.  That’s how you do self promotion.  “Share me, like me, want me then I will share you, like you, want you.”  Most people don’t like a dead cat.  Most people wouldn’t share a dead cat.  Most people don’t want a dead cat.

 

So come and be annoyed by my aesthetically jarring “mural” or “installation” outside of Proof in Chorlton.  Or be surprised that it doesn’t really live up to my write up of it.  And that you actually like it.  Like it.  Share it.  BUY IT.  BUY ME.  BUY ME. CONSUME (insert more counterculture anti-capitalist clichés here, perhaps a cartoon of David Cameron being spanked by Rupert Murdoch.  That would be clever.  That would affirm everything.)

 

Also I will be exhibiting at Tea Hive in Chorlton for the next few weeks.  I set up that exhibition on Monday.  So there is plenty of stuff there for you to initiate one of your many life transactions with.

Scremples

I chose not to get a new phone from EE and decided to go for a SIM only deal.

The words pass in and out carrying no personality or consequence

I find there is a perverse pleasure in keeping my old phone

Perverse?  Now this sounds interesting.

Because my screen is cracked and broken and the USB port does not work

Oh no.  This isn't going to be perverse in an interesting way.

Therefore having a phone of a bad quality that is five years old is anti establishment

He enjoys sitting in his own rubbish, he enjoys the smell of bad breath, he walks dead

The way that the camera on the phone takes very low resolution pictures

Therefore making the presentation of his work look lazy and amateur



False Statue Corroding In An Acid Bath of Linear Stuff

Evaluating myself on where I am now and in the past seems to be a useless way of evaluating creative development.  In that my current state is fluctuating and altering whereas the images produced in the past stay still until they are reused or reinterpreted in the future.  So it lacks a temporal placement for evaluation.  Something unimportant 5 years ago can become important now.  And I won't even remember where the original idea came from but the idea or image will still exist.  Existence is temporary and changeable whereas images can be fixed and (more) permanent.   Perhaps this is why I'm often working in temp jobs.  Because something about the unfixed glue of my being means that I can only adapt but never fix into place.  Never become a false statue corroding in an acid bath of linear stuff.

Uncomfortable

I've come to the realization that my artwork is in an uncomfortable inbetween place in the art world.  It is too angsty, hard edged and sharp to be considered as decorative art (the sort of canvases that the majority of people buy are soft and edgeless.  High resolution close ups of drops of water etc).  It is too messy to be able to be graphic design or illustration (close up fussy obliteration of pixelated dirt).  It is too fashionable and conceptual to be Fine Art and too traditional and full of effort to be conceptual art. 

It's almost as if I've done everything I can to create a unique product.

Program

The localization of accumulated shapes has no fixed or relevant centre and is therefore not a localization but more of a constant dribbling.  Behind this is me.  I get impatient with everything being disconnected, as it's my composition, intuitive or not, that is to blame for a lack of cohesion and a lack of reason.  Reason is celebrated these days by the people who have no belief outside of the concrete "facts" that they can read.  Plagiarized knowledge read from magazines, Google or heard in conversation with people they believe to be "intelligent".  Intelligence only being a word when someone decided to label someone who has read lots of stuff and can work things out based on the things they have been told to think.



Future Moment

Due to the process of creating collages from years of self generated materials, one of my images can actually be said to have been created over a 10 year period.  In the image above parts of it are from 2009 and parts of it are from. 2012 and 2013, but the final image itself was put finalized in 2016.  So when labelling the art, and the year it was made, it is possible that I could label with the title, price, and then a series of specific years.

The issue with this method is that I can't actually remember what years certain parts of the image were made.  So I just put the current year onto a new piece of artwork.  Though the issue with doing that is not a practical issue but a psychological one.  In that I don't feel as if I producing my own work as I am stealing the imagery from me between 2001 and 2015.

Unlike some people I am changeable and the me that I am now is not the me that I was 6 months ago.  Therefore I can renounce all responsibility for anything that I have done in the past.  So in the creation of new work forged from old work I am stealing from the ideas of someone else.  Though that person doesn't exist anymore so it doesn't matter so much.  And technically that person is me or some previous product of me.  Even if me has now become something else.

There is nothing wrong with living in the Future Moment.  People talk about the Present Moment far too much these days.  What can be done in the Present Moment?  What advances can be made?  The Present Moment slips away stupidly whenever you try to grasp it.  Attempting to influence the Present Moment is attempting to stand still on an escalator.  Whereas if I make decisions in the here and now and predict what will happen and what use the repercussions of that action will have, then I am able to create and influence the Future Moment.  Events are malleable and can be influenced therefore decreasing anxiety.

In terms of the Past Moment.  There is no need to think about that.  Especially if you have a method of collaging the past into a future.

Ukatrax

From the sky upwards everything was a red so lacking in light that it hung heavy. An isolating glob sphere container for the death world Ukatrax, home of the Ukatraxians, the dominant life form of Ukatrax.  Who built their cities with compressing green and miscalculated maths.  Their habitats were stacked above one another without function.  Their only design was a hole in which to throw away the bones of their children. Each mile of bodies would indicate a dead slave generation.  The smell of history's rotting dust was Ukatrax's most celebrated aroma.  We are dead forever.

Remote Distance Reserve

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My first blog entry of 2016.  Mostly due to me being busy making artwork and also not-busy being interested in sharing my work publicly.  At least not complete images.  On my Facebook group I post incomplete fragments of the images being produced (which makes sense as my work is essentially a very large accumulation of incomplete fragments) and this blog was originally started to show how I progressively created my installation at the Bankley Gallery back in June 2011.  Almost Five years ago.  So this blog at times feels as if it has outlived it's use.  In the following years after the installation I did some fairly interesting writing on here.  Existential stuff and analytical thoughts about my creative progress.  Some very good explorations of different voices and different ways of analysing my work and thought processes, and this taught me a lot about writing.  So I don't regret keeping a blog.  Just wondering why it should exist, what I can achieve from still having it?  Should I leave it alone and not use it again or shall I post things as and when they become appropriate?  See what I end up writing.  One tactic I use to employ would be to make the font smaller on a paragraph like this, giving the illusion that my self doubt in this blog is minor.  Allowing the more self promotional aspects paragraphs to gain size in font, if not in content.

Apologies for not writing much on my blog this year.  In fact, this is my first entry.  The above image is a new picture I made.  It is called "Remote Distance Reserve" (working title)  I have been very busy the past few months staying in and making lots of artwork. Being busy creatively.  I will be having two exhibitions at the Chorlton Arts Festival this year.  Details here.

Now to finalize I would say that I could post a new image on here every week in order to build up towards the opening of the festival.  And towards any other exciting things that may happen in the next month or two.

Art on Fashion Interview

An interview for Art on Fashion has been published - also for the rest of this week the blouse with one of my patterns on it is on sale at 15% off.  A lot of them have already sold which is nice news as hopefully I should have some nice commission money at the end of June.  Me and Claude Cat both need more money.  There are more products coming out through this company featuring my work so I'll likely share them as they occur.  They have, in all honesty, been very pleasant to work with.

The image I chose for the interview was the one I thought was least complimentary.  I think I did this to challenge my ego (which needs to be challenged as much as possible) and also because I didn't want to look too posed and cool (because I am not).  Also my living space has done all the posing for me, to do more would just look silly.

I actually prefer this one:

13th - 21st May OUTSIDE PRISON CONTRACTS EMPTIED

13 - 14 OUTSIDE potentials,  Repeated escalations.  Misapprehensions.  Apprehension.  Somehow they don't fit into me.  The box labelled with apprehensions of mis or non missed is soggy.  When lifted it falls to pieces like wet bread.  No matter how stale. 

Hope always leads to more hope.  The things that go wrong appear to be created to distract me from the developments that are ongoing but towards which I feel a frustrated impatience.

Conclusion:  

Enjoy any temporary distractions (within "reason").  

Ongoing developments will develop.

15 - 17 PRISON drama.   The idea that this will last forever.  That somehow everything is always locked in place and will always repeat itself.  Until I wither away into a living dust way past the end of my life sentence.

Sometimes I wonder how I arrived here in this city.  Why I am with the people I am with.  How we are in a shared experience of standing around an atrocity.  These are not questions.

It's not a central problem.  The problem is in the walls.  The problem is the surfaces.  All their forms and differences.  Shapes which tear one another apart.

Flowers led into inverted darkness.  A false daylight.  They cannot feel the sun.  They can no longer breathe.

Conclusion:
We have everything else to blame for our problems.

18 - 19 CONTRACTS are in the process of being built.  Potentialities are starting to surround me.  This makes me happy but also overwhelmed.  Perhaps my chemistry at this point in the week is unable to deal with this.  People at my normal job now know about my double life.  There are some exaggerations that are both amusing and terrifying.  Can I live up to my own mythology?

My chemistry.  Everyday my wall chart looks down on me.  My enemy and myself.  Everyday it grows.  The future has more and more key dates.  This is both my attempt at planning ahead but also an unhealthy method of controlling the future.

Does this method work?
Yes.
Is that a problem?
Not yet.
So it will be eventually?
Not if I plan ahead.

Conclusion:
Feel positive about the fact that I am amazing and that I am prepared.

20 -21 EMPTIED despite my reassurances.
Moments of voidfullness.... voidfullness is very difficult to fill.
Voidfullness would prefer that I get into bed and forget that I am real.
Conversely when I do this..., I feel more real in my inactivity.
Staring at walls or the insides of my eyelids.
My body feels all the more real in inactivity.
When my body feels real that is when I feel I am human.
Sometimes I wonder if "human" is just another word.
A category.

Conclusion:
"Human" is just a category.

Close Ups

I have recently been going through all my patterns on Patternbank and adding descriptions so they are more likely to be found on their search engine.  In the process I've zoomed in on a few of them and noticed how intricate some of the details are and how these can be utlized for future artworks.  Lately I have been focusing on pattern making but more specifically on securing new pattern contracts.  I have about 3 or 4 in the pipeline which is good news though they do take a while to materialize.  I do plan to return to making actual artwork at some stage and due to my work organically growing from previous work I have deduced from these close ups that the artwork is actually producing itself in my absence from making it. 

I am thinking that when I turn 35 I will start making artwork again.  Using printers and collage techniques to take it to a new level.  There are all sorts of shapes and forms that are making themselves known to me and this method has a certain autonomy to it.

Anyway here are some close up images to help demonstrate that artwork is still being created by me.  It is just hidden deep within my pattern designs waiting to be utilized at a later date.