| A combination of a full moon, and car park lights turned the kids playground into an ideal setting for some night time photographs to use for my 365 project. | ||
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| Just as I started to take some shots of the playground a couple of young lads turned up and promptly parked their bikes between me and subject after I had spent some time carefully looking for the best shot. Somehow I felt uncomfortable and thought perhaps there might be some confrontation even thinking my camera is at risk, although I am used to this exposure when I’m photographing the burnt out cars. I find the best form of defence is to engage people and explain what I’m doing and why so that they take some interest in this strange man with his camera. | ||
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| They didn’t seem that interested in what I was doing and I heard one mutter something that “Miss so and so would say that was great” I presume Miss was a teacher. I enquired if they had seen any Burnt Out Cars on the park knowing they would say no because the burn outs are few and far between at the moment. I also pass the park regular and look across the open space to were in days gone by I would see the rusting wrecks - Happy Days. But to my great surprise yes there had been a dumped car over in the overgrown area far from the main road, so that’s why I missed it. | ||
| I was half annoyed and half very relieved, annoyed because I had missed it but relieved because torching cars still goes on in the area and who knows I might see a revival. | ||
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| The lads were playing football using great light conditions and the walls of the play area (to save them having to keep fetching the ball) and once they forgot about me and my camera they began expressing themselves with trick shots backwards and forwards over the wall, and aiming for the basketball basket. | ||
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| Returning home I evaluated that perhaps although they had this apparent couldn’t care about art strut about them, they did put my business card with a picture of my artwork in their pocket. |
Friday, 27 November 2009
Theres Hope For The Future Availability Of Models For My Artwork
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
Artwork Delivered for the Exhibition at Aston University Business School
| Saturday Morning I delivered 2 art pieces for the Arts and Business Visual exhibition at the Aston Business School. Normally I deliver the work a few days before the installation date to The Framers in the Custard Factory and that’s all I have to do, they install the exhibition and next time I see it is at the private view a few weeks later. However, this time the printing of one of the pieces was held up because the inks in the printer have been changed, that’s not just replacing a cartridge with the same cartridge, no, in January 2009 Action Graphics invested in a major upgrade to the inks for the machine that prints my images onto glass. |
| The quality of the work produced with the new ink is outstanding but each photograph that hasn’t been printed previously with the inks has to go through a calibration process to match the output with my original file, this process can take the best part of a day |
| There’s some good news if you purchased one of my photographs before 2009 because that would be printed using a unique process that will never be repeated |
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| Martin The Man Responsible For Printing My Photos on Glass |
| Anyway all this extra work for Martin who prints my images onto glass for me has meant that deliver took a little longer. Because I didn’t want to rush this important process I arranged to take the work direct to the venue. |
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| And there alongside the new work was Shared Earth which the Business School purchased last year, I have never seen the piece in situ at the University so it gave me the opportunity to record the work on the wall. |
| You can see all the work in the exhibition here via the Visual website |
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Networking at the Fire Station Open Day
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| The local fire station at Billesley recently had an Open Day and so I popped along not so much to queue to sit in the cockpit of a fire engine or have a beefburger (even though they smelt delicious) or ice cream but to do my own public relations. There were fire crews from all over the South of Birmingham attending so a great opportunity to talk collectively about the trends in the dumped burnt out car scene in the city and introduce myself and my art practice. | ||||
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| There has been a massive decline in dumped burnt out cars here in Birmingham which is a great success story for the local council and the brigade but it does nothing for the state of the local culture and art scene not to mention my livelihood. I’m sure I can’t blame this crisis on the credit crunch, no its far more intentional, conceived and controlled by the authorities than that. I have been actively involved in sourcing burnt out cars for my art practice for about 5 years and in the beginning I could drive around selected areas over a weekend or Monday morning and find a burnt car. Today I would find nothing because: | ||||
The major benefit from the fast clean up has been hiding the results of vandalism from the vandals and therefore they have forgotten about doing the activity, they are no longer reminded of their conquests and it is therefore not in their consciousness and routine. | ||||
| At this point I should point out that I notice I’m getting my terminology mixed up – a benefit for the community and environment is no good to me, but I’m sure you understand | ||||
| My visit to the open day was aimed as a fact finding mission and a chance to make face to face contact and introduce myself to the people I speak to on the phone, to reassure them that this person who telephones them at 5am to 7:30am asking for details of burnt out cars is not some kind of nutter. I am also very aware that they do a very important and dangerous job and the last thing I want to do is get in the way. There are also various legal issues for me to consider primarily with data protection and because of the nature of the vandalism: crime, forensics and insurance claims. | ||||
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| I fell foul of the law one day in Kings Heath when I began climbing all over this vehicle only to be told that it was a scene of crime, my argument to police officer as he considered arresting me was that there wasn’t even high res tape let alone a sign around the vehicle, never the less in my eagerness to get snapping I should considered the situation more. | ||||
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| Here’s a resulting photograph from that car. | ||||
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| Even though the firestation is transformed into a theme park for the day there was still a contingency should someone dial 999 and sure enough as I was leaving the sirens started and a couple of appliances left with blue lights and sirens in full flow. | ||||
Monday, 27 July 2009
In Search Of That Elusive Burnt Out Car In The Wilds Of Deepest Warwickshire
I was at the cricket club last night having a few pints after watching and photographing the first team when the second team came back to the clubhouse they told me about a dumped car that was in a ditch not far from were they had been playing at Ansley near Nuneaton.
Its been so long time since I found a burnt out car (February I think) so I wasn’t bothered about travelling about 50 miles for the chance of some pictures. I spent ages trying to find the burn out going off the beaten track up some beautiful country lanes, in fact I might go back there to take some scenic photos one day but I wasn’t prepaid to waste the space on my cameras media card, also it had started to rain and the light was deteriorating (and this is Summer).
I asked a few people and one woman told me that when she first saw the crash she thought it was her brothers but was relived to find it wasn’t. Eventually I saw a lorry parked at the bottom of a hill on a sharp bend and there in the ditch was a Citroen saloon car. Unfortunately it hadn’t caught fire.
It was hard to see how anyone had survived the crash: there was no sign of bodies, no sign even of blood stains but at the same time it was impossible to see how the occupants had got out, Furthermore from my experience of attending burnt out cars I know that the emergency services would hack into the panels to get people from crumpled wreck, but there was no sign of any struggle.
There was no smell of petrol which was a good job because the battery was still connected and damaged bare wires and lights would have ignited the fumes. And ha presto there’s my burnt out car.
The owner of the lorry was a scrap metal dealer and was interested in a few components he dragged the car up the ditch but in so doing buried the end of his tow rope underneath a from there we couldn’t push it back.
Monday, 13 July 2009
Backwards and Forwards to Rowans Gallery Brackley
Last week I went to Rowans Gallery to replenish the stock of my work there. It’s a journey of about 40 miles down the M40 and about 10 miles through the beautiful English countryside to Brackley. I often expect to see Jenson Button driving some very expensive sports car (that is anything but a Ferrari) or indeed formula 1 racing cars in the streets of the town it is after all the home of the Brawn racing team. www.brawngp.com
While I was there I met Elaine Coe who was the featured artist in the window, I persuaded her to pose for a picture with her great artwork.
No sooner had I got home than I had a phone call from the owner Sally Eaton with news that more artwork was required as she had sold my previous delivery, this week we had one of our artist meetings so I went there armed with pictures.
If your in the Northamptonshire/ Oxfordshire area Rowans gallery is well worth a visit because there is a cross section of great artwork from artists who practice in all art disciplines and mediums.
| Rowans Gallery |
| Unit 1 Market House Courtyard |
| Brackley |
| Northants |
| NN13 7AB |
| Website: www.rowansgallery.co.uk |
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
Usted nunca Mira de la misma manera, de Nuevo | I didn’t expect a Spanish inquisition
I’m considering two versions of You Will Never Look at Them in the Same Way Again along with my usual English version how about a Spanish version
Estoy considerando dos versiones de Nunca Vea de la misma manera, de nuevo junto con mi habitual Inglés versión acerca de cómo una versión en español
and indeed why stop there how about French
J'envisage de deux versions de You Will Never regarder de la même façon avec mon habitude en anglais sur la façon dont une version espagnole
or even Mandarin
我考慮了兩個版本的你永遠看他們以同樣的方式再連同我通常英文版本如何西班牙文本
I know your impressed but I haven’t been on a crash course of languages far from it because that would be a waste of time, like most English people I find it impossible to grasp any foreign language. It amazes me how someone like the England football manager Fabio Capello within weeks of taking on the job dispenses with the need for a translator and is fluent when talking to reporters.
A few months ago I came across a blog noquedanblogs.com that regularly posts different and interesting photographs
And also video
http://noquedanblogs.com/video/no-hibi-carneiro/
if this link doesn’t work try YouTube
I had a good look on the site but couldn’t figure out what it was about or what country it originated from, I continued following the blog because it is visual and then I came across Google Translate not only was I able to read the blog but I was able to send them a message just to say I appreciate their work.
And then I got thinking surely people will appreciate I have taken the trouble to speak to them in their mother tongue and this has really worked well with my Flickr site when I comment on some ones photos I first find out were they are and then use translate to input two versions. The vibes (hate that would but it works) I get have been really good and it seems give me an edge. noquedanblogs.com have also started to include an English version with each photograph.
However, it looks like Google are being too clever (for me) and spoiling my USP because I read they are developing software that will look at text on a webpage and then translate it for you depending on your location. Although what happens when say a Greek person living in the UK wants to read a Greek site, but wants it in their mother tongue?
On a final note and returning to Fabio Capello I notice most if not all of the footballers from around the world take on and learn English however, as I also follow US Major League Baseball I notice this is the exception with the imports from the Spanish speaking countries in that game. Perhaps they trust their translators more and haven’t heard about the Italian Chelsea manager Claudio Ranieri who sacked his translator when he was told that his translations bore no relation the managers original message, he was making up his own version.
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Great news from the Bourneville BA Visual Arts Degree Show 2009.
I went along to the Birmingham University degree show at Bourneville last week and enjoyed some high quality work; I think I enjoyed it more because I had a friend Nita Walters giving me a guided tour.
My Guide gives some scale to this piece
Now this is very helpful because the show is spread out over several building extensions and floors, but it was great to have someone contextualize each piece of work, I am not a great one for interpreting artist statements and I find this spoils my enjoyment of art, I really hate it when the artist does not want you to know what its all about. I find its very important for me to spell out the detail of my work and this aspect was discussed at length during my “Artist Talk” at my exhibition “You Will Never Look at Them In The Same Way Again” at the Solihull Gallery back in February this year. But I’m sticking to my guns.
This is Nita’s work she managed to get these old TVs from the excellent recycling site http://www.uk.freecycle.org/
Her statement reads
“As an artist, my interests lie within the relationship between my own personal experiences of neighbourhood and that of my neighbours. My experimental audiovisual pieces tie into the perception of place, memory, personal boundaries and its psychological effect on the self.
Although my current work is bordering on social documentary and anecdote, the act of obtaining interviews through personal intervention is as important as the work itself as I attempt to translate my experiences from my own artistic standpoint within an installation context.
My interventions have led me to collecting digital subjective anecdotal accounts from strangers who pass me from person to person. From these interviews I translate the essence of feeling regarding my experiences of this process through audio and various media. The act of obtaining these interviews has affected how I see my neighbourhood and its openness to exploration within communities that I see as becoming more and more disparate at street level.”
I received a text message to say she achieved a First and also gained the Emma Jessie Phipps award for Outstanding Studentship
Here's some more work from the show and a link to the website
Interesting work about a film, this photograph is positioned in such a way that the viewer cant stand back further to focus it.
Nita has a break on furniture made from cardboard
Still on the cardboard theme as you can imagine there is something going on in there
and sometimes your not sure if objects are part of the show or not
