There is something about these "naturally occurring" images which totally intrigues me. I love that the highest art and aesthetic is possible in the most ordinary places, and is not dependent upon magnificent settings. I love that they are readily available no matter what, and that all it takes is the heightened sense of framing to see. It is choice and visual preferences, and in a way, looking in the same way I would look to sketch, making these photographs sketches. A hundred people in a street given a blank frame would not place them in the same way, and even random scattering of frames would not produce the same results.
There is an inner series of choices going on. Some of these are difficult to explain, like why I sometimes like things centered, and why I sometimes like things to lead out of the image. There is such a joy in flattening shapes out, and making them all equal by abstracting them. I adore the shapes created with offcuts, and have made work from offcuts of paper, card and mdf from a kitchen fitters. My local glass shop has a supply of strange shaped offcuts I am welcome to use - but I really can't take advantage of that until I have a proper workshop. As it is, I tend to keep offcuts from work for their shapes and future work. I'm spilling out.
It's the shapes... I say "naturally occurring", but of course such shapes are usually by products, and the discarded negative. The placing of the patches of street tarmac and fittings is dependent on function, and yet I can read meaning and composition and create links. It's all evidence of something, and not just of roadworks. It's evidence of humanity and nature.
I have a lot more of these....
and many more.....
In fact, I have even more images from some years ago, during my degree, taken on my non digital film camera, which are languishing in folders amongst many other photographs and slides, waiting to be scanned and digitised for use one of these days. Many other collections include, bark, trees, skies, clouds, objects, shadows, hands and other more abstract series.
I often use images of bricks in work, as a background, signifying the realm of humanity, really. And yes, recently I have been collecting again:
I must have hundreds of brick photos. I love to use them in moving image work in backgrounds, sometimes negative, as to me they signify the presence of human, the earthbound realm and the solidity of culture which continually changes and is subject to forces. They are something of a universal language and shared memory.
I know the street images are extremely reminiscent of the work of the Boyle Family:
http://www.boylefamily.co.uk/
I've been trawling their archive to work out when it was I first saw their art. I remember it distinctly. I think it must have been in the mid eighties when I was in my early 20s, and before I studied art. In those days I was very drawn to art, but felt totally, I don't know, that it just wasn't for me, that I wasn't brilliant enough or something, that I had to know what I was doing completely, and could immediately draw things in their true likeness. Well, I don't think that now, and if I came across a young person like that I would encourage them to pursue art. I did eventually, in a very roundabout way.
The Boyle Family are a mother and father, daughter and son who were all artists and worked together. The father died in 2005. As the children grew up, they became more involved in the practice. The pieces that struck me were replicas of street locations which had been chosen through a random pinpointing. They find the place as near as they can, and replicate it. Their whole process is about travelling to and being in that location, and allowing that practice to generate the work. The pieces themselves are brilliant facsimiles, and look stunning in the gallery:
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Bergheim Mine Study, World Series (1974) and two Rock Series studies (1972), British pavilion, Venice Biennale 1978. Boyle Family.
Holland Park Avenue Study, London Series, 1967 and Cobbles Study, Lorrypark Series, 1976. Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh 2003. Boyle Family.
2nd July 2013
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I have been thinking more deeply about what it is exactly about bricks. Bricks represents to me the construct of psychology, and the structure or pattern of thoughts we as humans naturally create. I am interested in collecting the images of irregularities in brick walls - whether by design or by weathering. Sometimes the pattern is still fairly regular, and the variations are within the individual bricks themselves, with different colourings due to the chemical constitution or happenings within the firing processes. Recycled London brick stock make the most interesting walls. The real treasures to find, however, are the cracks, the fissures, the crumblings. I also like the abrupt transitions between styles, or those odd patches of damp or bleaching. these to me are like the individual psychological constructs - it is all the same material, but always unique, and always that belief in solidity.
The street compositions look at the given elements abstracted from their function, and regarded totally for different qualities of line, shape and density. And above all, they are all about the relationships between these, and the balances and imbalances they infer. I realise they are ready-mades. They are ready made compositions, ready made photographic drawings. Further, all photography could be said to be ready-made imagery.
I was thinking of the work of Keith Arnatt:
http://www.maureenpaley.com/artists/keith-arnatt
His photographs are the far end of the spectrum from the Boyle Family, but related in accepting as art what is already there.
Pictures from a Rubbish Tip 5 Keith Arnatt 1988-9
Pictures from a Rubbish Tip Keith Arnatt 1988-9
As well as genuinely offbeat and humorous conceptual art, Arnatt's photography from dumps and rubbishy places are outstandingly beautiful. He looks at these subjects purely through the lens of composition, and while he forces us to see them through painterly concerns, we can still see exactly what they are, and can still imagine what they might feel and smell like.
Similarly, street compositions and bricks still retain exactly what they are - they are not disguised or distorted. They are reframed or recontextualised.
3rd July 2013
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