Saturday 28 January 2012

....PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION .......

........and so to my M.A ....the starting premise was to re-visit four buildings that I have worked on in the centre of Manchester with a view to exploring / investigating the possibilities of re-modeling them through the medium of drawing ;  ' architecture as drawn ' exists as a different discipline to ' architecture as built '.

Essentially I have spent the first term - this is a two year / part-time course - deconstructing my usual working methods , and reading a lot - an awful lot. The first main assessment point looms in May , for which I have to produce three essays  ( approx 4500 words ) together with evidence of work in progress , all presented ' in a style which reflects your topic '........    Hhmmm . I am essentially on a graphics lead course , and looking at previous students' submissions most have presented in the style of magazines , pamphlets and - in the case of Jonathan of Artistic Type - a beautifully presented and bound hard-back book. My back-ground is not text and type-setting , it's the built environment......so lets have a think about this .

How to present three essays in a style that reflects my practise ? 

An architectural drawing ? but how about the text ?..............so then I thought ' How about doing it as a walk-through installation , an exhibition ? ' ..........all the text , then , the essays could be laid out as text on the exhibition walls , and the whole of the written work - the essays - will be presented for the assessment as part of a full set of A3 working drawings for the proposed installation . A built form including text that will exist as a set of drawings.
                  
This is the initial plan layout that I did , just mapping out a progressive route through an installation picking up the salient points.


I then started blocking it out as a 3D birds eye view - entering at the bottom the route takes you through the ' Learning Agreement ' ( the initial statement of intent for the course ) , past the ' Methods of Inquiry ' and the ' Strategies of Thought ' walls ( both 1500 word texts ) , past a mapping model showing the locations in Manchester , past the ' Learning Record ' wall and on to the Four Rooms..........

The texts , the essays , when laid up on the walls should then look roughly like this....................on , then , past the Four Rooms , which form the central context of the exhibition and of which more in the next posting , and to the Bibliography - all essays should have a good bibliography . This being an installation / exhibition , though , one should of course Exit Through the Bookshop ..........all the books / references nicely displayed........


Hhhmmm................I could then of course follow up with a model  , but first of all I ought to write those essays..........

Sunday 15 January 2012

.......REMAKE / REMODEL........


......One of the nice things about living out in France for five weeks or so at a time is that you realise that you can live independently of the t.v / papers / radio and can avoid being drip fed what is mostly background noise........On the downside , however , sometimes more important stuff can pass you by......... 

What I hadn't realised , until I was reading one of those ' Who Have Passed On This Year ' lists beloved of newspapers around this time , was that Richard Hamilton had died last September.



I had first come across his work when I went to Art College in the mid-sixties , so his iconic work ' Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different , So Appealing ? ' would only have been ten years or so old at that time and still cutting edge, at a time when a lot of ' Pop Art ' was still being painted , still being produced . His work was profoundly influential , particularly at that time when he was head of Fine Art at Newcastle . I can certainly remember visiting the Robert Fraser Gallery in 65/66 when his suite of works based on the Guggenheim Museum in NY was on display , and I think what stood out then - and has always stood out - is that he always refused to be pigeon-holed , categorised , into any one style.

Within the system , be it educational or the big wide world , there is always a suggestion that you as a practising designer should ' find your style ' . Richard Hamilton refused to - all his works are quite different , yet there is always something resolutely / recognisably ' Richard Hamilton ' about them.

 

In 1966 Hamilton curated the Marcel Duchamp at the Tate Gallery , and painstakingly recreated Duchamp's  ' Large Glass ' for the exhibition  - assisted as legend would have it by Brian Ferry , who was studying at that time under Hamilton at Newcastle and whose later works would include ' Remake / Remodel ' with Roxy Music and his own album ' The Bride Stripped Bare '.......again , I visited the exhibition and was more than intrigued by the ' Large Glass ' , a work I had first encountered in ' The Bride and The Batchelors ' by Calvin Tomkins.

For a full appreciation of his life and his work check out his obituary at

...........and have a good look at some of his work - it's worth it......' Towards A Definitve Statement On The Coming Trends In Mens' Wear And Accessories ' for example...


 

Saturday 7 January 2012

..CRAWLING FROM THE WRECKAGE.......

' I regard my work as diaristic ; the city can be read as a palimpsest, of layers of erasure and overwriting . The need to document the transient and ephemeral nature of the city is becoming increasingly urgent as the process of enclosure and privatisation continues apace. ' 
   Laura Oldfield Ford


A book review in the Observer last December introduced me to the work of Laura Oldfield Ford and ' Savage Messiah ' , a catalogue of urban rambles , pamphlets , now collected together in one large tome . The low-tech cut and paste approach sets the tone ; the pencil sketches capture the feral nature of the project based around the decaying edges of London , recording ' no false promises of a brighter , better , more sanitised tomorrow....instead she focuses on areas haunted by an urban dispossessed , which regeneration seeks to concrete over; city wastelands where fortress-like old tower-blocks rise , with their Escher-like walkways and their ' recreational ' open spaces...............


The Encyclopedia Britannica defines palimpsest as ' scraped again ', a term referring to any inscribed surface from which one text has been removed so that the space can be used again for another - and , as Rodolfo Machado notes , some architectural drawings could be regarded as the equivalent of a palimpsest.

As I get deeper into my MA course , of which I must post more on,- I am beginning to understand that my initial premise of investigating and proposing alternative realities for three or four buildings in the centre of Manchester is requiring a lot more thought - and reading - than I initially had envisaged , calling into question the whole concept of 'remodelling' , the understanding of 'memory ' and place . 

Savage Messiah records a different East London , a different Lea Valley to that currently being transformed by the parachuting in of a brand new / shrink wrapped / security patrolled urban experience , a pre-packed landscape for the ' Olympic Experience ' that has no grounding in the area , no sense of memory or place , no sense of belonging , no relationship .........a landscape devoid of content .


and is by Iain Sinclair , himself an investigator of the city in the gaps , the areas that fall through the cracks in the structure and who writes with far greater clarity and insight than I can ..........and the sketches are good, too.