....ALL THOSE YEARS AGO.............

I posted on here two or three weeks ago some pictures of John Hunt and Associates taken some forty odd years ago by someone I knew well at that time ...........Peter Mannox

As well as being a talented photographer , Peter was / is a talented sculptor , having come up through Moseley Road School of Art and then the Fine Art dept at Margaret Street - Birmingham Art College.
A friend of John Hunt , Peter got talked in to making a fair amount of fired clay panels that were going to form the wall decorations for an Indian restaurant that we were designing at the time . Needless to say , the client changed his mind , the bricks were thrown out of the pram and the scheme never got built .......forty years ago and clients are still the same................

Anyway........here she is...........a little piece of India...............

......forty odd years old and starting to look her age a little , having lost a few toes and her lower arm along the way , but still looks mighty fine to me .These panels are some 225mm x 225mm square x 70mm deep and are bloody heavy ; they were designed to go into a gridded pine frame 75mm x 75mm square section , each one set individually into the frame................

Even now , I think that the finished interior would have looked spectacular , and I have never met anyone since who would have the ability or the capacity to single-handedly produce so many tiles............these two have survived forty odd years and some eight house moves - and I wish I had more of them.

Thank you , Peter

I don't suppose that you could repair her arm ?

...PICTURE THIS

Saturday , 7th December , and it's the first day of the Macclesfield Open Art Exhibition , the first year that it has been held............

...........  and I have had a couple of works selected to be shown. Both have figured on this page before , but I haven' t had too much time lately to finish any new pieces.

This one was re-titled ' New Order ' for the exhibition , which was more appropriate given Macclesfield's Joy Division and New Order................

.........and this one I selected as it incorporates a really nice small ceramic piece by Jan Lewis-Eccleston who is based at the Longden Gallery here in Macc.

The exhibition runs until the begining of Feb if you can get along.......................

....GO YOUR OWN WAY

      Go Your own way............
      You can call it another lonely day...............

Outsiders in art , the lonely ones plowing their own furrow , going their own way. Sometime last week I caught up with a programme on BBC 2 - ' Imagine ' - a late night magazine programme on the Arts , this particular one on  ' outsiders ' , those who produce art solely through their own driven needs , way outside the normal , conservative , gallery /dealer system that seems to so much to dictate what is ' in '...... a lot of the artists featured were autistic or in other ways socially disfunctional  to the extent that ' art - the act of creation ' was  to a large extent their sole means of expression . Some I liked , some I didn't like , but a fascinating programme.

....And then I came across the work of Paul Laffoley.

...Outsider ?....................the nearest work to this I suppose would be Tantric art , mechanical diagrams ?, architectural blueprints ? instruction manuals ?............or the drawings of A.T. Mann , whose work I have always admired , having come across them some thirty or forty years ago...............

......Outsider ?.....Visionary .?....... born 1940 , he started working in New York as an architect , wanting to design flying saucers and worked on the World Trade Centre towers , although he didn't become a registered architect until he was 50 .

When he was 52 , in preparation for major oral surgery , he was subjected to a routine cat-scan of his head, at which point a miniature metallic-like ' implant ' was discovered in his brain near the pineal gland . a local chapter of MUFON declared it to be a ' nanotechnological  laboratory ' capable of accelerating or retarding his brain activity. He came to believe that the implant was extraterrestrial in origin and the main motivation for his theories and ideas .................and interest in UFOs

Essentially two dimensional - no sense or need for perspective or any other artistic convention as they work to their own rules ..........and whilst in reproduction they look like magazine drawings , diagrams , the scale is misleading - they are not small.............

These are big canvases ,  " combining words and imagery to depict a spiritual architecture of explanation , tackling concepts like dimensionality , time travel through hacking relativity , connecting conceptual threads shared by philosophers through the millennia , and theories about the cosmic origins of mankind "......

Yesssss......................

Laffoley has evolved to viewing his work as an interactive  , physically engaging psychotronic device , similar to architectural monuments such as Stonehenge or the Cathedral of Notre dame and their spiritual order .

My drive out to the day job the following day now seemed rather flat and pointless...............I just find his work fascinating..............

The Outsiders are out there , doing their own thing .........you just have to look for them.............

...AH , BUT I WAS SO MUCH OLDER THEN ...........

........I'm younger than that , now...............

It's very odd , casually trawling through the internet as you do when you have a spare ten minutes or so , to come across - on the internet , there for everyone to see - a photograph of yourself taken some forty odd years or so ago and that you haven't seen since...............

I remember where they were taken - in the courtyard of Queen's College Chambers in the center of Birmingham , so these must have been taken around 1971 / 72 ..........my first job as a designer , working for John Hunt Associates..........John Hunt - tutor , mentor , hero , icon - or just an alpha male better at exploiting my talents than I was ....................

These second two - still working at JHA - were taken later , I guess around 73/74 , when we were working out of Bridge Street and were taken as a group shot for the Midland chapter of the SIAD as it then was , now the Chartered Society of Designers . I'm second from left on the second row , with John on my right . Sylvia is front left , Pauline rear left ......the others....... ?

Same group - I'm second left , flanked by John and Pauline.................Apart from Sylvia I don't remember the others , but then it was a long time ago............

It's very odd looking at this person - time seems to reverse , this person now some forty years or so in the past and seemingly so much older , so far away , some forty years older in time than where I am today .

I am indeed younger than that now........what could I tell him ? My daughter Charlotte's arrival was still a couple of years down the road...........

The photo's were taken by Peter who was a good friend at that time - I still have a couple of clay pieces that he made for an interior , pics to be posted on here in a week or so...........and his blog site is

www.north-fife.blogspot.com 

very worthwhile checking out as he is still taking those pics.

Thank you , Peter .

....ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE.......

.......In a week bookended by emotional appeals for humanitarian aid , both for the typhoon disaster and Children in Need here in the Uk , it's good to know that football at least has kept a sense of perspective..................

Roberto de Matteo was sacked by Chelsea some twelve months or so ago and - unable to agree a severance settlement with the club - has continued to draw his salary at the rate of £130,000 a week and will continue to do so until his contract expires next June. He has trousered some £7,000,000 to date whilst out of work and apparently is in no hurry to look for another job.

It's good to know that in this day and age of cut-throat hiring and firing , some clubs are still prepared to honour their contracts ......

....WORKINGMANS DEAD........

......but at least some of the remains have been recovered............

( Heavily ) influenced by the ' Doctors , Dissection and Resurrection Men ' exhibition that I had seen at the Museum of London , one of the final pieces produced  for my MA show was another in the Archive series , this time proposing that No 2 , Canal Street - the House of the Art Lover - had previously been an inner city hospital , complete with a mortuary room in the basement . This later idea arose from our introduction to Jordangate House in Macclesfield , the location of our installation for the Barnaby Festival , which had indeed seen time as a hospital for the mentally unwell and still had the laying out / mortuary slab in the basement......

..........this time the Cabinet of Curiosities came complete with samples taken from the recovered metal coffins , together with some rather fine death masks produced by my friend Dr Jan Lewis-Eccleston.........  the concept is still based around the idea of ' architectural notation as narrative form ' with the 1/50 plan in watercolour forming the visual centrepiece to the story..........

This piece might well be appearing in the Macclesfield Open art competition later this year

Every picture tells a story................

.........LOST ...IN FRANCE.....

......He's old , he's grumpy , his right knee is knackered , his career is going down the pan - and they live in Moseley  ...........probably even drink in the Fighting Cocks........

.......They are having breakfast in Paris , not talking .................he's reading the Guardian , he's wearing a nice red scarf , she's looking out of the window..............What's not to like ?

Any resemblance is entirely coincidental .

" No harm done , just a-havin some fun at Le Weekend " ..Eddie Cochran

...............I love Paris.........

IF YOUR MEMORY SERVES YOU WELL............

" It is curious to note to what extent memory is unfaithful , even for the most important periods of one's life . it is this , indeed , that explains the delightful fantasy of history " . Marcel Duchamp

Memories , false or otherwise , seem to have been a constant theme of my MA experience , from initial readings through to the final works that I produced .  This one is based loosely on the idea of the Cabinet of Curiosities and takes as its' subject one of Manchester's ' Hidden Gems ' , the Cabaret Theatre that once graced Canal street....................

...........and once you open the doors................

Welcome to the Cabaret.......................

GETTING TO THE END OF THE LINE .......

Well the MA show at MMU is up and running , through until Sunday 13th October , and then that's it , at least for a while as I take a year out prior to signing up for an MFA.........whatever that is........

I miss the college and the discipline of producing work that is assessed / subject to constructive criticism , but it's quite nice to be able to doodle around now for a bit , and I am looking forward to The House of the Magus , together with The Fortune Teller's Shop............ both located in Manchester's Northern Quarter on Turner Street.

And in the meantime , some pics of the MA show.............the last two are of my latest pieces which should figure on here shortly......

COME TO THE CABARET

....Life is a cabaret , old chum , come to the cabaret.................

An appropriate title , I thought , as one of the featured works is ' The Cabaret Rooms '. Yes , it's showtime and having finished my MA course the End of Year Show opens up at Manchester School of art @MMU on Friday 27th September and runs through until Sunday 13th October.....

There is a lot of good work on view , so it's worth a trip if you are in Manchester...........

 

 

 

.............and now the end is near , and as I face the final curtain......with at least some decent work produced ................I ought to say a heartfelt thanks to at least a couple of companies without whom etc etc .- all of you at LCT in Chester who did a wonderful job with the framing - love you lots , girls - and the workshop boys at Bridgewater Contracts plus Geoff - a never-ending source of 6mm MDF. Won't be bothering either of them again for a while now.

 

.......just waiting for the show to start , then......................

...AND THE CARAVAN IS ON IT's WAY..

...and the caravan is on it's way............

Trawling through goggle images whilst researching for an up-coming piece of artwork -  ' The Fortune Teller at the Hose of the Art Lover ' - I came across these wonderful design drawings in standard architectural notation  ( front elevation , side elevation ) for the caravan that forms the centre piece of Terry Gilliam's ' The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus '...........this is a career ? People get paid for designing these sort of things ? Where do I apply ............?

 

 

 

 

 

 

........and the film was wonderful as well............

 

The Caravan is on its way................

Turn it up , turn it up...................

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN ...............

It's been quite a while since I last posted on here ; put it down to working hard on the last part of my MA course , or sheer laziness.............

whatever.

Anyway , to return . Having relocated the entire family up to Manchester in 1980  and starting a new career / partnership in the area , one of the first projects I remember working on was Paddy's Goose , a city centre pub on Bloom Street at the back of Chorlton street bus station. seems a lifetime ago ..............

More recently I have been working pretty much next door at Richmond House on Bloom Street ,  both on the design of the Richmond Street Tea Rooms and - more figuratively - on The House Of The Book Lover , a source for a number of works on my MA course , so I pass Paddy's Goose quite regularly.....

And here it is again...........

...... this time the subject of a painting by Anne Aspinall , someone I know quite well as one of the artists running the Longden Gallery in Macclesfield.. It had never occurred to me that it might be a nice exterior to paint , but here it is in all its' glory............

Check out Anne's work and the rest of the artists at the Longden Gallery at www.longdengallery.co.uk.........
and I should be back on here shortly with my final MA work and news of an exhibition........

....WHEN YOU WALK IN THE ROOM......

....An installation at Jordangate House , Macclesfield , until sunday 30th June , and when you walk into the room this is what you should see..............

..........and the worst thing about exhibiting - the bit they don't tell you about - is the invigilation.......boring ..........so anyone who wants to come along and have a chat........please ?!

......THE ART MOBS OUT TONIGHT...

I suppose it's a bit late to be posting this , but better late than never ; my only excuse is that real life has tended to get in the way these last few weeks , as it does...........Anyway.................

THE BARNABY ART's TRAIL - Macclesfield's Art Festival , is happening 14th / 30th June  - and we have an installation at Jordangate House , Jordangate , in the centre of town.  ' We ' are Angela Davies ( who is doing an MA alongside me at MMU ) , Noel Connor and myself , and the installation concerns itself with buildings and memories.......................A lot of the work I have produced for my MA over the past year or so will be on display , together with Angela's structures and Noel's photographs. If you can get into Macclesfield it's well worth a visit as there are some forty venues open over the fortnight.

In the meantime its back to the MA work..............and I will post some pictures of our installation as soon as I have some .

...LIPSTICK , POWDER AND PAINT......

' Lipstick , powder and paint.......
  Lipstick , powder and paint
  Lipstick , powder and paint
  .....is you is ?.....or is you ain't ? '

Back to the MA - and ' work in progress '...............Having already sketched out some ideas for
a ' Tunnel Of Love ' ride down in the basements , linking the House Of The Art Lover through to the House Of The Dominatrix , this piece takes it a stage further, I suppose to a ' more finished ' state. The idea of the ' ride ' , the ' journey ' is taken here to a more advanced state , starting to tell a story . Our hero buys his ticket - Admit One - and enters with trepidation , as so he should ........for this is a journey that takes him well away from his comfort zone ...........a journey cross the divide ,a journey of trans-formation.........and the ' Reveal ' is a surprise to us all.

Lipstick and paint.......well , you have to make your choices here ; the colours are all there to help you in the predela..............

So put your penny in the slot and take your ticket...............

' ...Then the lights go out and it's just the two of us

     You me and all that stuff we're so scared of........

     Gotta ride down baby into this tunnel of love.....

......But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough

     And you've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above.....'

 

...IT AIN'T WHAT YOU DO.......

' It ain't what you do , it's the way that you do it..
  that's what gets results '..........................

I suppose that having spent most of my professional career designing and/or illustrating interiors for the Leisure Industry then restaurant interiors should figure more often here..............so lets start off with a couple in Manchester.

First one up is Australasia , another one of Tim Bacon's creations and positioned at the entrance to Spingingfields on Deansgate - although if you blinked you would miss it , as the whole of the restaurant apart from the minimalist entrance is undercover , below ground...........................

...................a restaurant in a basement , no natural daylight - and no way of seeing in from the outside ; a recipe for disaster , especially when you are looking for a good lunchtime trade. The interior , however , is particularly impressive without ever being too pretentious - you can eat here quite happily for around £20,00 for a light lunch . Light , bright , airy , this is one of the nicest interiors that I have seen for a long long time . The colour is predominantly white , offset by pale natural materials - bleached wood , linen fabrics , pale lights - and there is no feeling of being locked away underground , it is so light and airy . It took me a while to realise in fact that the interior would probably not work so well if there was natural daylight coming in ; daylight is too variable , whilst in an enclosed space you have full control over the lighting.

 

 All in all a particularly nice interior ; I have worked myself for this particular client and know the designers who created it ; could I have done it any better ? ........I seriously doubt it............... 

 

 

 A really nice experience - and the food is good too..........................

 

 

Meanwhile , across town , another restaurant , another interior - and another client I have worked for.

The new ' French ' restaurant at the Midland Hotel , fronted up by signature chef Simon Rogan with a view to securing the first Michelin starred restaurant for the City .

  

 

Unfortunately  this interior doesn't do it for me - stark Scandinavian furniture sitting in that large open space ? A carpet designed to look like floorboards ? The interior to me lacks warmth and comfort , and does little to enhance the dining experience...............too cold , too overawed by the historical ' not to be touched ' interior........

 

A Michelin star experience ? maybe ..................but meanwhile ,  somewhere in Manchester , Tim Bacon and his team are also working towards a new restaurant with Michelin star aspirations................

 

I know who my money is on.

..PICTURE THIS..............

 

' All I want is a room with a view......

  A sight worth seeing , a vision of you.....' 

 

A  socially inept amateur photographer , an undeveloped roll of film , dodgy nude pin-ups from the late 50s/early 60s , and a mystery............and wonderful illustrations - what more could you want from a book ?

 

Opening up the latest edition of Varoom magazine , an illustration at the bottom of one page caught my eye - Graham Rawle ? ' Diary of an Amateur Photographer ' ? ....never heard of him - or it - and all literally cut out and pasted together like some anonymous note ?...............no technical artifice ? no computer generated images ?

 

Hmmm - a mystery about a mystery............... 

 

 

 

 ........and having tracked down a copy of the book it did not disappoint . The story aside - which is excellent - the way the book is designed and assembled is most impressive . Constructed ( ? - designed ) as a diary / scrapbook each page is lovingly and individually assembled , pages overlapping each other in a way so that you suddenly realise that what appears to be an error in continuity is in fact the previous - or next  - page reappearing as the page you are actually reading is smaller - and stapled in. Each page looks cut and pasted up , just as a real paste-up diary scrapbook....... 

 

 

.........and just in case you think that this is just computer trickery , a photo of the designers desk shows his working method.......boxes and boxes of cut-out type , waiting to be selected and pasted up, 

 

 

Dating from 1997/98 this is real cut-and-paste - ant the seedy world of the late fifties amateur photographer - and the adverts offering various ' services ' live again.

 

Wonderful............. 

' All I want is 20-20 vision..........A total portrait with no omissions..........'

..COCKTAILS FOR THREE

Ohhh cocktails for three.....
It's not natural to me
Hey not for me and you
Should be.....cocktails for two

Working as an interior visualiser , the visuals produced are always at the front end of a project where you have little more than a plan and a mood board to go on - if you are lucky. Its always interesting , therefore , to see a finished project , particularly if it is not one of your own . Does it look like the sketch ?

 

 

Having done this sketch quite a while ago - last autumn ? - for Dre Masso for his new cocktail bar Opium in Gerrard St , Soho , it was quite interesting to actually get to have a drink there last thursday night with Dre.............and , yes , it did look like the sketch although I didn't get to take a picture from the same viewpoint.............

 

 

 

 

The cocktail of choice was Opium No 2........which arrived as a three part drink , complete with smoke...............

 

 

 

 

.............and all the graphics and the sketches on the menu were by Jonathan at www.artistictype.co.uk who introduced me to Dre in the first place . Jonathan's blog posting from 13th march shows some of the sketches he did............

 

 

 

 

.....' Cocktails For Three ' ?

 

Check out Terry Allen's ' Lubbock on Everything '. 

 

 

 

 

 ..........and thankyou , Dre , for the drinks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

..WHEN THE WHIP COMES DOWN

Kiss the boots of shiny, shiny leather
Shiny leather in the dark ,
Tongue of thongs , the belt that does await you
Strike , dear mistress , and cure his heart

It has been a bit quite on here recently , mainly because - with a second stage assessment coming up in January - I have been concentrating on work for my MA course and trying to develop my illustrative style. The second stage of the ' Tunnel of Love ' is well on its way to being finished , together with three new pieces  - ' Cabaret Burlesque ( Cabinet of Curiosities ) ' and ' Backstage the Hoochie-Coochie Girls are Getting Ready ' , both from the House of the Dominatrix , together with ' The Back Lot ' from the House of the Art Lover . Hopefully all pieces should be finished by Christmas , but it still surprises me how much time and effort they take.

Anyway , in the process of working on ' Cabaret Burlesque ' I came across the work of photographer Maria Coletsis. Maria obtained a Master's Degree from the San Francisco Art Institute , where she specialised in feminine identity and sexuality. Always having been interested in subcultures , she began photographing the fetish scene whilst working in London as a commercial photographer. Through this she met a professional dominatrix who wanted pictures for her website , and from here a whole new world opened up.

The images and texts on the Dominatrix and their dungeons interested me for a number of reasons ; firstly ( and obviously ) because one of my focal points on my  MA course is ' The House of the Dominatrix ' , investigating both the persona and their environment; I can never understand why with this most theatrical of spaces most dungeons illustrated on the Internet are all almost totally devoid of any sense of theatre at all , certainly within the UK , and at least part of my work was to try and address this through designing a top-end bordello/dungeon on Canal Street in Manchester. I posted a comment on here some while ago on a book that I had picked up in Paris - ' Maison Closes Parisiennes ' - which detailed at length the establishments in Paris at the beginning of the 20th C , and the quality of design and finishes was extremely high . The other point of interest , however , was Maria Coletsis approaching this from the point of view of investigating established sub-cultures and the question of feminine politics .

One of our Context lectures on the MA course offered an option on 'Feminism', but after what seemed an interminable sequence of images of ' yarn-bombing ' , ' tanks covered in quilting squares '  and  ' a never ending shopping list embroidered onto a roller towel ' my enthusiasm and sympathy had wained somewhat . All the images seemed to do was to re-inforce the stereotypical idea of feminism as a passive /craft based ideology. Maria's series of interviews with Dominatrix from across the globe seemed to offer another perspective altogether , where the woman fully controls the situation and dictates / defines any relationship purely on her own terms. You could argue here of course that for this to work then the male has to be fully compliant anyway , and the role only works in a male orientated world but nevertheless it provides a different point of view .

 

 

 

One of the aspects of the dom/sub relationship that suprised Maria was that the typical male sub , far from the timid and shy person she was expecting , was generally a high powered exec in an extremely demanding position , and the role of the sub allowed them - for a period of time - to relinquish all responsability and decision making ; for once , to give up all control. Having run a design practise where everyone is looking to you for the answer , I can relate to that.

 

Interestingly , Maria recalls seeing one ' super good-looking guy go into the bathroom and appear as a dog on a leash , wearing only a thong '.............................one of my own works suggests our hero dressing up in a dog-costume at The House of the Dominatrix...........

 

 

 

There is a DVD to go with the book , and you can see a full interview with Maria discussing the book

at  www.youtube.com/watch?v=67pnMjEMwlw

 



Hhmm- wonder if they will let me have another go at my Context Presentation ?