Momentary Presence/Absence (sooty shadows)

I photographed the lengths of rope on Wednesday in a studio setting. This was a much more orchestrated process compared to the scanning of the ropes, which I have been doing recently. Setting up the ropes was much more tricky than I thought mainly because I wanted to suspend them and be able to get the whole length of the rope in. I selected a grey backdrop which softened the coarse nylon orange rope. The rope lengths were surprisingly heavy, even small pieces. Initial experiments involving a line of fishing wire going across the studio where I tied the rope on, failed. The weight of the rope pulled the wire down and the rope was only partially suspended. I then noticed two metal eyes, in the ceiling and they were positioned in a good enough place where we could tie the rope. Brilliant! The ever patient Cai, who was the studio technician, threaded fishing wire through the eyes and then attached two pieces of rope. Cai then helped me set up the right lighting and finally I could begin photographing the ropes. Once the ropes were suspended they looked magical, as though they were on a stage for a performance. I mused on their life, thinking about where they had been before I picked them up from the shoreline in Kent. It was interesting to think that they had been discarded, lying flaccid on the shore. Suspended they appeared majestic. I selected two very different lengths of rope, one long piece that was tight and neat at one end with a small bristle of fibres at the other. The other was less tightly bound and each end had unwound into unruly sections. As they were suspended their forms unfolded. I began photographing them and fixed on the rope to begin with. I worked from distance then close up. I moved the light source around. As I did this I noticed the shadows from the ropes altered, either virtually disappearing or suddenly emerging soot black. The camera began documenting these momentary impressions which were like drawings of the softest charcoal on the grey paper. I found them mesmerising and seductive. Somehow the shadows dominated the stage and as quickly as they were created, with the touch of the lamp's off switch, they evaporated.

A grain of sand in the hem of Madame Bovary's winter gown *

* Sebald, W.G., The Rings of Saturn, 2002; Vintage (London). (P8) I have begun to read W.G. Sebald's book, The Rings of Saturn. It is a record of a coastal walk through East Anglia by Sebald that prompts reflections on past cultures and people. I really like the way it meanders down metaphorical pathways and places which seem on the periphery. It feels both lucid and eccentric in its subject matter. The quote which is the title of this post, just seemed so complete and beautiful to me. In the book it explains that Flaubert who wrote Madame Bovary, saw the whole of the Sahara in this grain of sand in her gown.'For him, every speck of dust weighed as heavy as the Atlas Mountains.'I love the significance and weight given to that one grain; how potent it becomes. It has made an interesting connection for me with the work I am doing with the ropes. I took them last week and began scanning them on a large scanner. The aim was to achieve a similar image as before but with a better quality finish. As the process was happening, I noticed how beautiful the motion of the light passing underneath was. There were reduced beams of light that momentarily flickered as the rope was scanned. It created a shadow on the white lid of the scanner; a ghostly imprint. I videoed this action with my iphone which has not come out brilliantly but it is like a sketch. Tomorrow, I can hopefully continue this process using a better camera and give it more time.

Humbrol Enamel Paint

It's been a strange period in the project. The momentum from the drawings has dissipated and other elements have been crowding into my vision, such as the ropes or other responses to my site visit in February. Plus I have been weathering a virus on and off for some weeks so it has all really disrupted my flow which is frustrating. I do always try and stay philosophical though because sometimes these blips in progression are quite useful (in hindsight). It can allow one to re-focus, re-analyse the ideas and work. I do find myself getting rather desperate during these periods and despondency creeps in. Every action feels so exposed as you think 'is this it, am I on the right track now or going into cul-de-sac?'. No matter if I go through this cycle a thousand or more times, I panic, then I relax and its all ok until the next big wave. During this period of flux, I had an urge to go to a model shop in Hereford and buy some Humbrol Enamel paints. I've always liked these pots of paint especially the drab colours which they usually come in. My brother used to make airfix kits and there was always the painting of these models with the appropriate shade of Humbrol. It was an activity that I was definitely excluded from, being the in the 1970's. So I probably harboured ambitions to use Humbrol paints for sometime. It still feels like a very masculine environment in the model shop. I like the size of these Liliputian paint pots. Obviously Humbrol are making good money out of these but I love the fact that the paint is doled out in small amounts. I started to use the paint on blanking out areas of hand drawn maps on tracing paper that I was working on. I like the way the paint sits on the surface of the paper, all glossy and opaque. I then looked at the details and symbols on the OS maps which indicate things like caravan sites or youth hostels. I have been taking some of these symbols and hand drawing them onto graph paper in multiples. Using the Humbrol enamel paints, I have hand coloured these symbols, so i ended up with 168 camping sites or 224 beacons. I also looked at the details often drawn on coastal maps such as shingle or mudbanks and then translated these onto the graph paper. I enjoy the repetition of drawing these symbols yet they are never exactly the same and you can see each symbol has a different quality. Taking these drawings on graph paper, I began playing with light and shining a strong light source through the paper which makes the graphic qualities of the paper, luminous. Where the Humbrol paint sits, it remains opaque and solid, the symbols almost floating. I started to layer these drawings up so I had one with Beacons on in an orange colour behind another with grey campsites. I inevitably seem to come back to wanting to find the latent in my work. It's always the unexpected in my work which fascinates me.

Return to ropes

On my previous visit to Kent last month, I collected a whole bundle of ropes from the shoreline. They were odds and ends, pieces of rope that had been cut or discarded or lost. There were different types and lengths to choose from; orange, blue, soft yellow, thick, thin, unwound, huge coils or tufts. I decided to select orange rope mostly with one piece of yellow thrown in. For practical reasons I picked up just a few lengths. As I alluded to in my previous blog entry I love the material quality of ropes and find them fascinating. I was recently given a copy of the film 'Ropemakers; Memories of Chatham Dockyard" by Prue Waller. It explores the previously bustling Naval dockyard in Chatham through different memories and scenes but perhaps the most beautiful & mesmeric part for me is the rope making shed. Waller shows the processing of raw hemp into twines of rope in this antiquated building with original machinery that twists the hemp into long strands of rope. From a soft unprepossessing fibre, there is a magical transformation into strong coarse rope that will tether and secure the shipping world.
This pile of old rope (money for..?) has been sitting in my studio patiently waiting for me to give it attention, on the floor in a cluster of orange tangle. Even as it sits in a still life it has energy and intrigue. I have kept observing it whilst I try to wrestle with new drawings of power stations and large container ships. At the end of my last day in the studio (wednesday) I could no longer resist it. I swept it up off of the floor and took it to my scanner, placed it down on the glass bed and waited to see what the scanner would produce. The results are dream like, with the orange rope being absorbed into tones of grey. I kept moving the ropes to re-choreograph the image and new arrangements came to light. Progressively as I made the first scans, fibres were left on the scanning bed and obscured the subsequent images.

I began the process of scanning again.

With the assistance of my Dyson vacuum cleaner after each scan, I made some new images. There are still some loose rope fibres which can be detected but they are less invasive in the images than before.
After each scan of the ropes, I then scanned these loose fibres that had been left on the bed. Like a ghost or shadow of the presence of the ropes before hoovering the 'fibre drawing' up.

My next move may be to progress these rope scans onto a bigger scanner as I am working on an A3 size. I will have to take my Dyson with me though!

Yesterday I went to an exhibition called Made in the Middle which is a showcase of contemporary craft from across the Midlands. Much of the work was very exciting and in particular there was one artist called Imogen Aust who "makes one off objects that comment upon craft itself'. She worked in ceramics in strong colours but one of her pieces included rope threaded into a ceramic wall mounted disc. My rope antennae must be in full use because I came back with the images of her work in my mind and then woke up at 4am with my imagination buzzing. I began to develop rope ideas in my head until 6am.

http://www.madeinthemiddle.org/

Hello Kent

A visit to the site again was a welcome return to the place. I went down on Friday 23rd February. After a very positive meeting with a creative company Francis Knight in the morning I made my way to the estuary. It was an unseasonally mild February day and as I drove down the dusty potholed track to the site, it was a glorious feeling of relief to be back. The light was soft and picked up the textures and myriad of colours of the marsh grass. A herd of cows grazing with their calves looked like a scene from an American plain.

Driving down the track was time consuming trying to avoid all of the huge potholes and rough ground but then it made me re-evaluate time; refocus. I've been caught up in the constant overload of information and activity that seems to be required for life now. As I parked the car at the end of the track and opened the door all I could hear was birdsong and the wind. I just sat there for ages listening, not needing to move or do anything.

Using the car as a base I began drawing. I became obsessed by this tangle of bramble that grew obstinately in a field in front of my viewpoint. I was fascinated by the way it clung onto the patch of ground, its mass of deep purple thorned stems, turning in on itself, creating a clutch of growth. I just drew it obssesively for about 2 hours. In between I was photographing all of these cargo ships that I could see drifting along the sea wall. They became like modern day prison hulks, except they were moving more objects into to Tilbury and taking waste out. A constant exchange of nonsensical activity while I made primal marks on paper and looked at a bush.

A Glossary of Stitches (tethering and wrapping)

My temporary studio in the dining room. My main studio is too damp and cold at the moment.

These drawings I have made in the last two weeks, mainly in the temporary studio. I had a dip in my work after Christmas and found it really hard to reconnect with the work but this last week has been more fruitful thanks in part to a visit to my friends in Brecon who made some pertinent comments about my drawings which helped me find a way forward. This all coincided with the devastating news that the Conservative Government are revisiting the idea of a new airport on land very close to where Estuary Dialogues is partly situated. (please see earlier blog for more details about this).

I have begun to add some embroidered sections to the drawings as a new layer of surface and texture. In preparation for this I looked at a book on embroidery with a glossary of stitches. I chose a very simple cross stitch in the shape of an 'x'. I have always loved this symbol, since I first discovered the work of Tapies. I did not want to get too fixated on it though so I have also tried to do abstract marks by piercing holes randomly in the paper and letting the thread move about these piercings without any preconceived ideas.

Since beginning these new stitched marks, I have been thinking about using rope in some way to make a drawing on a large scale. Living on a boat for eight years, I became fascinated with old canvases, sail cloths and ropes. I am attracted to the tactile nature of these materials and their investment in the functional nature of their purpose. Ropes are so integral to boats, to tethering and wrapping, that I find them to be almost sacred objects.
A recent visit to Tate Britain to see a retrospective of the work of Barry Flanagan began a reintroduction to this humble material.
To quote from the accompanying leaflet on Barry Flanagan; Early Works 1965 -82

Flanagan continued to challenge traditional ideas about sculpture, employing unexpected materials such as hessian and rope. ...... He explored his own response to materials, which he considered the fundamental constituent of sculpture. A length of rope marking space within or between rooms could also be understood as a drawn line.

Airport proposal is devastating

My heart sank when I heard of the proposal for a new airport to serve London in North Kent which Boris Johnson the Mayor of London has persuaded the Conservative Government to consider. The airport would be built on the Isle of Grain which used to house a power station (now decommissioned), runways extending into the estuary.
About two years ago I spent the most magical day in Grain, on that very land which could, if not saved, be forever sunk under swathes of concrete. I took the road from Strood out of the bustling Medway towns that sit one on top of each other with no apparent seams separating them, to the relative isolation of Grain. The further I travelled, the more desolate the landscape became and the more fascinating. Life existed in small pockets of habitiation, a small convenience store, the lifeblood of an otherwise deserted place. Perfect for exploration. I parked the car next to the estuary beaches, unloaded my cameras and tripod and walked along the shore line. The sun was shining and the light was crystal clear. I looked across the estuary and clearly distinguishable was the pier of Southend in Essex. The mud was a physical barrier between Kent and Essex, a dinner table for the numerous species of wetland birds.
I made my way around the coastline, in the direction of the power station and I found archaeological treasures like the second world war pill box with bricks saturated in graffiti. A strange tableaux occurred when I looked through a wire fence obscured with inhospitable hedgerow plants to see a buffalo grazing in front of the power station. I crossed a concrete inlet, an old water pumping station for the power station. Its deep twin troughs sucked in the tidal waters with a sign strictly forbidding any person to swim in these potential watery graves. My footsteps followed the curved shore around to face the Isle of Sheppey. I loved the fact that as I sat there, I was on the edge of the land. Before me sat an island in which nestled the mouth of the Medway. As I looked across to Sheppey, in the centre of the estuary lay an old fort, still intact. I wanted to swim out there, to see its latent treasures. I imagined meeting the artist, Stephen Turner out there and chewing the cud as the tide swept out to sea, swirling around the base of the fort. Over tea, we would discuss his Shivering sands project (Seafort) and our mutual interest in this strange but mesmeric landscape.
I walked on and encountered the site of a redundant car park which had long forsaken its purpose as a place for the employees of the power station to park their vehicles: a very JG Balladian kind of place. The car park had no entrance or exit, a grassy bank provided a barrier of inconvenience for any car left. In the corner a skeleton of a car remained, burnt out, its carcass existing like a swatch of fine venetian lace. Individual components had been carefully lifted out and arranged on the ground like critical samples containing the genetic code for Dagenham. In this patch of rough hard standing lay the hope of nature reclaiming this place. Native plants were emerging through the cracks with bright yellow flowers on architectural stems seemingly thriving where once the repetitive choreographed routines of car tyres had resisted them.
I tracked my way back, past the pill box which had become the HQ of the 'Grain Crew', boldly emblazoned on the damp brick work with reluctance that once I entered my car and drove back to civilisation, this day of vivid experience would fade like a scene from Brigadoon.

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/is-the-world-ready-for-boris-island-6291617.html?origin=internalSearch