GHOST WATCHING

Darkness, screams, a ghoulish train conductor and the tale of sisters who went missing on a night train in Eastern Europe at the turn of the last century - an evening of stunning theatrical entertainment was promised...

...well it wasn't in the evening and the event lasted little more than ten minutes, but it was one of the most impressive pieces of theatre that I had experienced for a long long time. I had read a review early in the year of a show entitled 'Dystopian Wonders' appearing at the Lowry Theatre, Salford, last May - which I'd missed. Dammit, it sounded wonderful - "a morbid show-woman and a sinister preacher invite you to their bizarre exhibition of curious nameless bodies" ...an installation? An event? A walk-through theatrical experience? And who was Maria Carnesky, the show-woman who had produced it? The theatrical experience that breaks away from the confines of the proscenium arch convention has always interested me, from the radical street-theatre of post-revolution Russia and the dynamics of the Bauhaus experiments to the Happenings in New York in the Sixties and contemporary art installations. So when we found out that Carnesky's Ghost train had now found a permanent home in Blackpool opposite the South Pier we headed off to find it.


Housed in a single story building with a quasi Victorian fairground side-show front, the conductor invites you to "Pay your money and step right in - not for the faint-hearted, dear!". We walk through the curtain into a station waiting room somewhere in the Balkans in 1910 - faded missing women posters adorn the walls, along with destination boards to exotic cities. The clock-face on the wall swings open and a figure emerges (the missing girls mother?) to relate the back story to the adventure. Screams are heard, doors bang open and the old woman appears, to take you by the hand and guide you into the waiting train, stroking your hand and staring at you intently. This is no ordinary ghost train ride...



The ride then takes you into another world, the train running on a continuous loop through the darkness; actresses - the missing women - appear and re-appear in different guises, different stages of distress, different tableaux appearing as the story unfolds. Unnerved, you escape from the train at its destination, walking to the exit past the ghosts as they take their good-byes around you. As an experience I found it exhilarating, a most enjoyable piece of (promenade?) theatre. Peopled by, presumably, drama students, it seemed to me a most effective way of reconciling a fairly intense dramatic experience with real life setting. And where else would you expect to find a Ghost train other than within a fairground?



Real life versus T.V. reality shows - I hate them, vain attempts to elevate the relatively mundane experience of the everyday to the level of high drama. But what if it works the other way around... what if high drama appears under the guise of an everyday straightforward investigation? What if the concept is inverted? I can still remember the furor 'Ghost Watch' caused when aired on BBC 1 on October 31st, 1992. A nice friendly Saturday night show on ghost watching hosted by Michael Parkinson and Sarah Greene - what could possibly go wrong? Filmed weeks earlier, the narrative was presented as a live transmission, scaring the wits out of over 12 million viewers and resulting in 30,000 phone-calls to the BBC within an hour and the programme subsequently being banned from being re-shown, meriting its own entry on Wikipedia. Reality T.V.? maybe the public can't cope with too much realism after all... maybe the ghosts are still in the machines...

For more information on Carneskys Ghost Train visit http://www.carneskysghosttrain.com/ - they have just re-jigged the web-site. Personally I preferred the earlier version done in the black/white jerky format of a silent movie, but then I'm not a web designer so what do I know ? You should also visit http://www.carnesky.com/ for more information on the wonderful Maria Carnesky and her productions. If you want to watch 'Ghost Watch' it's available on a DVD under the imprint of the BFI -British Film Institute, an indication perhaps of how highly it is regarded ...and don't say that you haven't been warned.

ON REFLECTION...

Late on in 2008 I went down to London to see the Francis Bacon exhibition at Tate Britain. Having only recently come to appreciate his work, it was a unique opportunity to see a large number of his paintings together at one time and to get a glimmer of his working process - a feel for his artistic development over a period of time. The exhibition was extremely impressive and one left with a feeling of emotional exhaustion - very powerful works.

One room in particular remains in my mind, being a room hung with dark sombre portraits. 'Man in Blue IV ' shown here was one of them, together with another three or four similar canvases; large ( some 2000mm x 1400mm ), brooding, austere, the canvas sucked you in as you approached, the dark field of background colour enveloping you in its cloak. Except that it didn't, because as you approached you suddenly became aware that the canvas was framed and glazed and your eyes, your focal point suddenly shifted to picking up the reflection of the gallery, the group of three or four people looking at the painting with you, the lighting in the room, the crowds moving through the gallery behind you. It immediately became impossible to appreciate the painting in its state as a independent artifact; it now became a background, a component in a constructed image of the gallery experience. The second and third images posted here, whilst not of the same painting, demonstrates this effect quite clearly.

And this got me thinking - at what point, certainly with contemporary art, does a canvas become glazed, and who decides? It certainly can't have been Bacon's intent, when painting the canvas, to have it viewed in these circumstances - the surface texture, the visceral effect of paint on canvas is now subsumed to a reflective surface that highlights the environment in which the canvas is hanging at any given time. Is it a curatorial issue, a decision by the owners to provide a degree of protection? And why is it deemed necessary? The Rothko 'Four Seasons' suite hanging in the Tate Modern has never - god forbid - seemed to require this treatment and a brief consideration of how their power would instantly be totally compromised by glazing would suggest that it is a fundamental issue when it comes to determining how a canvas should be viewed; an issue moreover that I have to my knowledge not seen discussed elsewhere. Comments please?

Nevertheless, an excellent exhibition and one that lead me on to read 'Francis Bacon's Studio' by Margarita Cappock - a fascinating exploration of Bacon's studio as it was left after his death. Both forensic and archaeological in its depth and scope, it was occasioned by the purchase of the studio by Dublin City Gallery and its subsequent dismantling, removal from South Kensington and reconstruction in Dublin, where it is now on permanent display. Leaving aside the more esoteric question of ' is it now still the real studio?', another curatorial debate, as an investigation and analysis of his working methods it reveals far more about Bacon than perhaps he would ever have wished. It remains silent, however, on the enigma of the glazing...

THE FUTURE STARTS HERE...

The images above are of a scheme that we produced some 2 years or so ago at RCA Interiors for a site in the Northern Quarter, Manchester. It had strong links to both the musical and bar culture of the city. The current owner had approached us with a view to converting the upper floors of the site, currently empty and in poor state of repair, into a boutique hotel of some 30-odd rooms together with a re-vamped bar and club on the ground and basement floors. The idea was then to thematically structure the design around the Manchester music scene.

Having spent a good 12 months developing the project, opening up the centre of the long thin site with a full height glazed atrium and finally achieving the nod of approval from the City Planning department, the client then decided to pull the plug on the whole project on the grounds that it wasn't what he wanted at all and we were wasting his time; refusing, needlessly to say, to pay us. Immensely frustrated, the plans, sketch, model and ideas went back into the cupboard to rest alongside other lost opportunities, and there they would have stayed...

At around this time, completely independently, I had started to consider applying for an M.A. course at University. I had completed a B.A. course in Art History - mainly on Renaissance Art - some 12 years previously and realised that I was missing the mental stimulus and the buzz of ideas. Or, I was thinking, maybe I should apply for an M.A. at the old Poly, in the Art Department - brush up my artistic skills? Hhhhmmm...

Then, via Jonathan at Artistic Type, I was introduced to the dynamic of the 'Design and Art Direction' M.A. course at Manchester Metropolitan University - a course that seemed to combine both the rigours of intellectual discourse and thought processes with the hands-on approach to creative development. A number of thoughts and ideas then began to coalesce ...what if? ...could I? ...maybe if?

The upshot was an application and subsequent acceptance onto the course, starting in September 2011.

So where do the pictures posted above fit in? My submission for the M.A. is essentially to re-visit 4 or so sites that I have worked on in Central Manchester over the years. Outside of the real-world parameters dictated by practicality, commerciality and the wherewithal or otherwise of clients, an alternative past and future would then be constructed for these sites, investigated through the dynamic of architectural presentation but with the opportunity to overlay texts, narrative, artworks and illustration to create the experience of an alternative reality.

A House for an Art Lover, A House for a Book Lover... the site in the Northern Quarter? A House for a Music Lover...

The future starts here...

...ITS ALL IN THE MARKERS...

...and before anyone says anything,yes I know that the markers shown on the web site header are the old stubby Magic Markers; I still have a box of them lying around, and whilst they must be at least 10-12 years old most of them are still working - unlike most of the Letraset / Tria markers I have, which seem to have a working life of about 3 days... maybe the cap is badly designed or something, but they dry up very quickly. Magic Markers for me, every time please.

Rant over.

So welcome to the blog site, a rolling review of my thoughts and ideas on stuff I have seen, stuff I am going to see, and maybe some stuff that doesn't even exist yet apart from in my head. At this moment I am still actively involved with RCA Interiors, but will be concentrating more and more on developing my ideas on a purely visual basis - visuals of the past, the present and the future... a work in progress... enjoy.

Oh, and the first thing I must do is to credit Jonathan at Artistic Type for designing and setting up the web-site. Without whom...