Stating/Showing

Vault Art Fair and the brand of Glasgow (here I am stating – there I am showing).

Under one guise and then another – and then another. I journeyed West yesterday over to Glasgow to meet a friend, first of all, for coffee and then we took a walk through Kelvingrove park, over the hill passed Park Circus in the sunshine – the chime of Glasgow University tower donning against the odd cloud hanging in the sky. My friend then left and I journeyed with another old pal down to King St. – venturing in to Transmission Gallery I caught up with the resource room in the basement, got to grips with its goings on. I then took a step out of the glass door and headed further south towards the river Clyde. I arrived early at my final destination – the Briggait and found myself cut off from the vault inside. I stood waiting at the door for tickets that I needed to get in – but then a member of the filming crew passed by (he was head camera man, and happened to be friends with the other person I was with at the time). He soon returned to the door where we stood and gave us both a film crew pass.

Inside there was stall upon stall of art for sale or art for commissioned value or art for oysters. Commercial standing stood next to not-for-profit artist groups – and together they stood pretty well.

All in all I am happy with the submission I made to The Mutual – a story-cum-interview with fellow artist and writer Sophie Frost, attached to the back of an A3 page – folded to perfection in to a ‘pamphlet for sale’. Together with the pamphlet and the backing design we were asked to put together a flag: this flag then performed as a title for the work enclosed in the pamphlet and was also screen printed to bespoke canvas bags, scarfs and bunting – all of which are too for sale in an increment of prices.

For the speeches, I was asked to make the most of my film crew pass – for this I climbed the stairs to the surrounding mezzanine and ‘spied’ on the goings on from above! Then back to the train, back east again and now rain – yet more rain. Its as if I had dragged the representative weather with me and now I sit underneath the cloud.

footnote
“She would always, without fail, wear a scarf – but on my arrival her neck was bare. At the back of the stall there was a neatly folded yellow screen printed scarf, left for someone to wear – why she did not have it wrapped around her neck I did not give any time to know: I said she had to put it on – and from that point onwards she became to me who she always was. It all felt complete and its as if I had never left!”

It has been a while since I last posted on here. This is because I have moved to a larger and grander living arrangement where one half of a open plan space exists alongside another, one side being my studio, the other my living space:

Bounce and haul-ass

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Sitting on the bright orange plush sofa in my open plan loft apartment I relax, having just listened to a rendition of some other song or other on Jazz FM. I turn my head to the corner of the room looking passed the spiral staircase in front of me. There, in this corner, I see my desk. I stand up from the sofa and step back on to its cushioned surface – giving my vision more panoramic height I survey the rest of my apartment and its contents. To the left of the desk and heading back in to the centre of the space there are several pieces of cut wood ordained with oil paint and beeswax varnish. At the foot of these ‘props’ sit several counted objects of similar colours, shapes and sizes.

Two movements come to mind as I stand on my sofa in place of sitting still. One is to bounce, just once, as if a trampoline exists beneath my feet. The other is to haul-ass to the other side of the room passed the staircase to join in with the objects.

I make the first move and bounce once on the sofa. The sofa implodes beneath me and I end up on the floor of the living area behind staring at the underside of the coffee table. I then stand and begin to move awkwardly towards the stair in the centre of the room. I turn and look back at the orange sofa – it’s more like a deliberated sculpture now. Bright and ornamenting it reminds me of an office-cum-staff room I used to take breaks in, which housed a similar couch for lounging on next to the curator’s personal assistant. With her insistent typing she declined every hot cup of tea you offered her, instead you laid back and watched her send email after email and answer the phone with a flash of an arm movement – her face was painted with the colour of the monitor screen she stared at whilst speaking.

I make the second move now. I haul the sofa and my ass from one side of the apartment to the other – there it is to become a colour-way for a new set of paintings or props in the ‘studio’ area of my open plan habitation. To do this I have to take a half moon trajectory around the central staircase – reaching a quarter of the way I stop pulling, take a peek down the steel steps, half moon around the orange mess itself, and push for the rest of the journey. One half moon tipped with a tangent of another, slightly smaller half moon. After hauling my ass, the sofa transforms and reaches another possibility in its existence.

I bounce, and then I haul ass. I break and then I drag the breakage from one context in to another, as if moving from one continent to next with the flick of a switch.

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The adventures of Kim-bob and me [part 1]

I slid open my phone to access saved contacts; under favourites I find Kimbal’s number and press dial. The phone nears on connection and then fails – I lift the phone away from my ear and press re-dial, this time it connects, but alas to a foreign dial-tone: he is on his travels again but still he answers:

Hi Richard how are you, I am currently in a queue for a bus in Athens having being scolded by the police for attempting to hitch a ride to the shore, I’m not island hopping I am undergoing a performative exercise that will result in an exhibition in Manchester at the end of June. It’ll be more like the end of July at this rate. Hi Kim, is this costing me a bom? No it is me though, I have to pay to accept calls – oh and that reminds me, I have little credit: but how are you? I’m good – I just wanted to touch base on the project we discussed last month forwarding the residency we underwent last year. Oh okay. Well, can we speak when I am back in the UK? Okay. Will call you beginning July. Good luck.

It is now July and I get around to calling again just before my journey to London from Edinburgh with East Coast, after tracking Kim’s location on Facebook I map his current capacity on the road back to London from Manchester. Whether he is on a bus or as passenger in someone’s car I’m not so sure, but I slide open my phone to access saved contacts; under recent conversations I find Kim’s number and press dial – I anticipate a foreign dial tone but it never comes, instead it connects to UK fluidity: it dials, and dials some more. I get to the point of counting the dials as if I am counting the turns in the road as I chase Kim on his bike around South Tottenham. I say to myself only two more rings and then I am done – I don’t like leaving voice messages so instead I draft a text message in my head: a sort of haiku in place of prolonged conversation:

My hotel is near
Greenwich is that too far for
You to come meet me?

Kim answers a few seconds in to the first draft. Hi how are you I am currently on a bus back to London the exhibition went well. Not so bad thanks the weather is shit here in Scotland. I heard the storms will meet me in London on my arrival. Are you hitching? Yes. Okay, can you speak? Erm, not for long don’t have too much battery can you email me instead? Okay.

Email to Kimbal:

Hi Kim,

I am about to walk down to the train station for the 3.30pm East Coast train to London Kings Cross, I arrive I think around 8pm. Are you around this evening to catch up? We could do with talking about this in person and get our ideas together.

I have to find my hotel first, which is in Greenwich – is that near where you are in terms of transport? If it is lets meet up for a beer and get this ball rolling.

Also, I think we should build a schedule to get drawings and written texts sent to one another – start building up a dialogue and a library of one another’s ideas. How about once every two weeks on the Friday we post something to each other. I will take your address down later…

I will be at my emails on the train as I have editorial work to do, so will catch anything you send back.

Cheers

Richard

Fourteen days later dually image

[a nod to handstand technique]

I am heading backwards in to the south again, for the second time in a week. Soon I will hit England with the North Sea on my right hand side and the track towards Cumbria on my left. As the breadth of the country matures pasts its bottleneck the coast will slowly disappear as the train heads inland. The clouds, according to the weather report, will close in on the train to the eventual point in time where relativity excludes itself from our spearheaded location. If the earth stopped moving the atmosphere would maintain its viscosity across the surface of land and sea: high winds would rip us from the earth at speeds beyond macro-recognition and the skies would blur between you and the next solid object. Instant death would hit you in a matter of milliseconds. 

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In editing these two trains of thought I would have to extract one from the other and place them side-by-side. This editing would efface any tautological misreading allowing the reader to cross-reference one narrative with the other. But on a whole one stream of access to the idea is relative to the other. 

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If I had your speed and you borrowed mine for a second or two we could work out what displacement lay between us: as your window seat catches up with mine we get to enjoy an expanded lapse in time where visual contact is exposed and slowed. Your face flickers gently with recognition. Mine probably makes the same involuntary contortion as always, and for a brief calculation we stare in to one another’s eyes with exacting measure. 

“Image directories. One image holds the centre of the next image. This image gives away its centre as it knows its own centre will have space on the image that comes after…”

To opt-in and opt-out: on image conference and directories

Question: How many times can you cut and how many times can you paste? And which tools do you use to defy the appropriation of an image, bypass its content and connotations – how much does it become about ‘cut’ and then ‘paste’.

I think we cut and paste from conversations we have.

Mild chats to full blown heightened infused arguments – afterwards and during reflection, we tend to cut and paste elements. Try a conversation you have with your camera. You have a direct dictation of the image’s content in terms of the still-life in front of you, and your conversation is to have this still-life recorded using the correct lighting, the right sort of angle – I suppose this can be widened to a conversation (or a conference) between the camera and the tripod and then you, the eye’s and the fingers that press the shutter release.

The conversation is then exposed. And there is a direct, then, cutting and pasting that happens in your mind as you say, “I will photograph this with a 5:7 ratio, but I will edit it square not rectangular… so I can cut this bit out, and this bit and the next bit using this next bit as the centre of the image. The centre of the conversation… the centre of the conference.”

You then stand up right, hands placed carefully on hips, and you stare back at the still-life in front of you questioning its content: you decide to take another two or three shots, one or two maybe with flash, using the camera as your conversing tool.

But what then of the post-production process. What then of ‘non-wet’ photography and its apparent freedom and its actuality in ratios and measurability? A quick change from one size to another, attributing printing quality and deriving web capability. One colour mode to the next colour mode and then back.

So you finally have two images that you are both happy with, both the camera and yourself that is. But in terms of the installed composition – you want to excerpt more of a collaged framing. So… you take one tool and place it in one hand… and you take another tool (something with a straight edge) and place it in the other hand: the camera sits there and watches, just as always, documenting your approach and your changing and shifting of an image.

You take one tool to the image: cut.
You take the next tool to the image: cut again. You take the other image, which matches the prior-image in size and ratio exactly, and on this image you paste from the other.

You then do the same to second image, opting-in to a mirrored affect. Following the same movements You take on tool to the image: cut. You take the next tool to the image: cut again.

You then end up with two image that speak to one another. Or two images that have the affect of you, and your camera, staring in to a mirror… asking a question of the reflected inspection.