Heads multiply in limited tubes of ruin

Made this last week though took a while to upload it onto my blog - simply because I spent the weekend in lovely Llandudno exploring various brilliantness.  The doom and gloom of Manchester and city life in general may have eroded my spirit into a cynical inward looking feedback loop - where my self analysis and all that looping personal history, notions of identity, and every other piece of personal trash just tumbles around and around getting tangled and intertwined with  everything and everyone else - until in my head we all get mashed together into one self centred conglomerate of conflicting ideas.  A city isn't the best place to have this kind of feeling because you end up projecting these feelings onto other people - being sat on a bus or walking down a busy high street and wandering through observing a huge bunch of big blank heads and face traffic.

This picture is a representation of people, crowds and their containment... whether you want that containment to represent streets, buildings, houses, buses... I actually thought of buses at first but it actually makes me more of nightclubs - maybe it's the fact it's bursting with vain self possessed faces caught in bursts of overly loud colours... or perhaps I just don't like nightclubs very much.  Containment in this case is in relation to everywhere you could possibly be confined to - such as a familiar route to work or a habit like my own of trying not to step on cracks in the pavement.  I ran over loads of pavement cracks a few months back to catch a bus - gleefully feeling let loose and free after so many years.... then lots of bad events happened since which have actually made me think that maybe my superstitious precautions where right to follow after all.

This is the first picture I've done in a very long time that represents anything real and tangible - I'm reacting against people describing my work as psychedelic, because I always associate psychedelic art with stoners and images like this - which isn't at all my desired aesthetic.  So for the moment I'd like to veer away from swirling abstract vortexes and head into the representational.  In my recent installation - all throughout the wall covering abstraction there were non deliberate organic shapes - all trying to twist themselves around each other into recognisable form human or anim al form.  This is made me think that maybe I should try to escape from the abstract and bring these forms into lives of their own but still retain some form of gloopy terror.

As with my previous two entries this was put together on sheets of black A3, so I've posted each individual sheet below for closer examination so you can have a closer look.   Oh and by the way it's titled "Heads multiply in limited tubes of ruin".

Thinking fluid fragments

This is the picture I put together this week, I've entitled it "Thinking fluid fragments"

It looks really small.  A problem with trying to put a long horizontal image onto a blog - it's tricky to know how to fit it on screen so it can be viewed.  The above shows how the work should be displayed but doesn't allow you to look at it closely.  Therefore I'm posting the image on it's side, separated into it's three A3 pieces.  So you can tilt your head or monitor to the side scroll down and have a closer look.

For me it's all about thought - how I'll move from one feeling of tangibility to another and feel somewhat entirely in flux adjusting and editing myself as go along.  The words and colours pass through and get destroyed and rebuilt - crossed out as they pass by like busy traffic at light speed.  Some elements drift along dead, silent and unused - like forgotten trivia and empty memory.

There are also the dominant traumas and the excuses I make to myself all of which create sharp stabbings and ring out as clock towers over and over again until the vibration gets duller.  Thoughts move block like - falling bricks sucked sidewards by an impossible tornado - viewed from above it's like the schematic of a far away space station.

This part of me is a cell of rearranging elements.  Some recognisable and comforting stream of identity and self recognition - "here I am and here are you - this is me and that is you" - I get along in a constant static of learned behaviour realising that I'm much more confident and assertive than I thought - stood by the counter talking to the civilians and all the while living in my own internal world whilst reality clicks away against my surface... an efficient if unwilling participant cog in the whole system of everything.

In my next picture I should devise some kind of chart, like a list of what every colour and pattern means in the whole scale of the image.  That way I can start making very bizarre intuitive schematics of inexpressible feelings and ideas.

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.

Pictures probably not at an exhibition

I've not made a blog post over the last week or two because I haven't really anything new or exciting to up date it with - I've been continuing with the promotion of my exhibition and wall paper pasting bits of very familiar texture onto bits of old cardboard boxes.  During preparations for making my huge collage at the Bankley Gallery it did occur to me that perhaps I should exhibit some normal pictures too - because I might be able to sell them and actually make a bit of money.  I would have to make sure there was enough room and I'd also like the images to fit into context with the larger scale installation - which may be difficult.  Also it may be difficult to transport them - especially this one.

Well if there is a wall or area spare at my exhibition perhaps I could disorganizedly display a few of my A1 pictures from last year along the wall.  Disorganised because that's the whole point of my exhibition - instead of the usual clinical deadness of most galleries I want the actual space to be the art rather than just contain it in a boring unreachable bubble.

So in this post I am going to run through all ten of the A1 collages I could or could not display.  This is because I have nothing more to talk about at this juncture - and this blog is all about covering my past as well as my present and future.  A full blown coverage of me in all temporal forms.  Well the image to the left is the first of ten of the A1 images I made in the space of a two months.  Possibly one of the most complex and the one that took the longest I think as I wasn't quite sure what I was doing - saying that though it's possibly the most naturalistic.  I see it as a scream of linear crying out from a chaotic limbo.  Or a wall built against the harshness of everything else, blending in as it extends away from the centre of something.

Next I made this piece which is based on a doodle I did the morning before at work - I was more aware of trying to create a narrative in this case it is a narrative of an exploding biosphere - quite simple as a narrative really, no people involved in the process, no actual characters - somehow a pressure builds within a self contained system.  It builds to the point that it self destructs.  This could probably be a good analogy of just about anything - like stretching an elastic band too much, or brushing your teeth too hard or watching your stomach expand to an improbable size.  If you follow the image from left to right you can see two versions of the same structure, the latter versions shattering.  All things reach a certain pressure point and then they break. 

Either that or they maintain a stable equilibrium where they float on by just going about there own business - unaware like amoebas, no proper pressure just the dull blankness of non awareness, like the way that a cell stretching forward from a plant may feel - it's still a form of decline and a form of stretching thinner or fatter but emptier along a course of bleak non meaning.  The left image has issues I feel with being a little bit too over designed and too perfect.  It recalls my circle obsession I had for years after finishing university.  The spheres do not actually get across any true sense of the cause and effect they are trying to imitate.  This one isn't a complete failure at all - just an experiment in a long line of experiments.

This is an experiment in reaction to the piece of experiment above - to use the same collage method but with a more chaotic approach - though still with another system.  This time it was to layer over the top of one another over and over again an E shape.  So with these E layers I eventually came up with this odd semi symmetrical structure - texture is used as the final layer along with black for the purpose of outlining the structures - to me it calls to mind a rotting similarity in a pile of disused unoriginal souls all spraying their same old coolness for a brief spell before the fire dies out and they all go into their dead holes.  I didn't use the letter E in some sort of homage to any Madchester scene, I just liked the shape as I don't tend to use many square shapes and thought maybe it was time.

Then I started applying my techniques to some quite familiar types of composition.  The left image being a cityscape and the right image being an explosion.  Through my texture and my methods they are quite unique stylistically though compositionally unoriginal - the first being like any old cityscape and the second being like a pop art explosion.  Both pieces are relateable to it the sense that they both actually look tangible.  I did actually sell the cityscape image at the Didsbury Arts Festival last year for £150 so maybe, now that I think about it, I should frame up the explosion and try to sell that too.  Though perhaps not at my exhibition - because I'm already having second thoughts about putting all this work up.  Not only because it wouldn't fit into context but because I don't know if I can afford the frames at the moment.  Even very cheap ones.  Still - I'm glad I'm writing about these.

This image of a partial nexus also took quite a lot of time - I went into it with no plan at all - so it developed entirely organically until I tried to organise it into a finished piece that was coherent - which I somehow managed to do - so it looks structured but has a very real uncertainty - possibly my favourite in many ways out of all the images.  This was not sold at the Didsbury Arts Festival but ALMOST sold.  Almost isn't really good enough though - it's now in a fancy frame at my art dealer's flat... framed the wrong way up.  Dear dear dear me.

And then we have one of my least favourites.  It doesn't depict anything my internal world at all though I'm not sure it's trying to - it's just another dabbling with compositions - another experiment and it seems to do the experiment well but at the same time doesn't really discover anything or do anything new.  One thing about it though is there's a chance that if it was framed there is a certain demographic who would want to buy this.  I'm thinking people who like spiritual art which when you actually look at it is actually style over substance and bears no relevance to spirituality - like a simplified diagram of karma or "energy".  I sort of like the strange circular hieroglyphs - it's like code in another language.  With funny little flags going up into the air and weird wavey dragon beams.  It makes absolutely no sense at all but you really do just have to try things out and see how they go.  Not everything you produce can be brilliant and even if you don't like it there might be someone else out there who does even though you completely hate it - in some ways I sort of dislike quite a lot of my art - it's very hard to separate oneself from it and view it objectively.  Subjectively I actually hate this piece.  Proper hate.

This one I actually really really like even though it doesn't necessarily get across anything about "my own internal world" it does actually look like something in a way that I want it to look like something - it's not massively original but I really directions and the colours and everything about it.  It's just really good.  It reminds me of the rain.  I like the rain, but it's more like a slow rain, a rain that slows you down and is slowed down and that stops everything - rain being turned into stone and coagulated into thin pillars making funny animal sculptures in the sky.  That sounds like a pretty cool world to me, a magnolia, frozen to stone and rainy world.  This picture works better than the one above because it has better colours and it makes sense in a physical way - it's essentially a surrealist landscape though I wouldn't call it that at the time I made it - I was dead impressed even though nobody else was. 

I was just wondering - completely off topic - if my exhibition goes well and if I get more from it, with the possibility of getting commissions (I can dream) then maybe I could dispense with the traditional method of making pictures in rectangles and move onto building images in shapes that are more exciting.

Last image - and boy am I tired now.  This is like some sort of loony tunes logo being attacked by spikes of annoyed children's consciousness.  Except it's not that.  This is the final piece I did based on a image I drew on the back of an envelope - it's quite a striking composition and though I didn't like it when I made it I like it now in hindsight.  The original envelope drawing was a tonne of sharp speech bubbles speaking pattern stabbing into some centre of nothing - giving the impression of either a centre speaking or a centre sucking - it also looks like toothache, like teeth being pulled.  The red is full of pain and torture.  All the above interpretations of all these pictures are completely subjective to me.  If you really want to know what I think any of them mean then they all mean the same thing - they are all conveying me, all sort of lost and doing my own thing, on my own, because that's how I do my thing, there is no involvement in my work from you or from anybody else.  Your free to interpret but the meaning of this to me is actually just my feedback loop of abstract lawn mower noise.  I have no idea of whats going on and when I look deep down into my soul or anyone else's I know that deep down there is a big gaping nothing.  That we are all sort of illusions of ourselves.  I know this and then I don't know it, and then I know it again, then I don't know it.  And so on.  My artwork is expressing this knowing then not knowing - it's like some sort of rip tide between the world and the empty.  The nothing and everything existing simultaneously in my head, though somewhere there's a sense of a presence which is actually a big glowing interesting something, though not sure what it is.  Though it is a thing. 

Well anyway I'm going to stop writing now.  I have some actual tangible problems to solve.  Like getting some sleep.

Sequence

rt,  

At the moment this is my most recent collage. It's a sequence of five interweaving A2 size pieces of paper. I'm thinking to frame it using clip frames and a long curtain rail.  I'm slightly tempted to continue the sequence and see how it progresses, as this piece has a narrative, like a story board, it conveys that something is happening and various factors are influencing other elements.  Quite simple. The circle falls apart from due to a rise of energy - light and/or temperature is in it's atmosphere and the matter involved is converted into new shapes and patterns.

Isn't that exciting? The old story of circular construct getting more energy, then disintegrating and leaving a waste product of hands and faces falling upwards and downwards and accumulating like sediment on the inside edges of unwashed cups and saucers.

So there it is.  Simple.  Except not really.  But I think that good art is made to look simple.  This work isn't as simplistic as I make it out to be.  It actually took quite a bit of thought, and I almost didn't bother finishing it because I found myself being given an exhibition next year all to myself and I need to work out precisely what I'm doing so it was very tempting to just not bother completing or even considering this sequence of works.  I may decide to carry it on further and further until it becomes some kind of 21st Century Waterlilies but instead of depicting waterlilies it's depicting the breaking down and displacement of clotted cells due to a hydrogen heat (and time) wave.  Hmmm...  Think I've just convinced myself to do more.  But then again where does the story go from here.  Should I show the construction of a civilisation.  If you look at the last image you can actually see life evolving, weird structures and suggestions of spinal columns forming in the ashy leftovers.  Is there a chance of this becoming something organic and choatic before all of progressively become structured but in a very deluded way.  It could all be some sort of not very subtle metaphor of life and the whole big bang shebang. 

Well it's good to know that one thing leads into another, and that it all kind of bleeds together into some seismic irrelevance.  I actually have so many other projects on my hands I can imagine this being something that I could keep carrying on with on when I reach an impass with any of my other projects.  Something that I can approach in a relaxed way, because if it seems to go on forever there's no point in setting myself any impossible deadlines stretching away into the infinite.  That would be like stressing over the all together uncontrollable inertia of actually realising that I'm a breathing thing doing things on a big spinning thing.