November 2017 - Museum of Photocopies

Bubbles #3

Sometimes I think my life, especially that part of my life I have spent living in the Netherlands is akin to being stuck in a bubble. Or sitting in a greenhouse floating through an endless void. Of course, both situations have their advantages.

The curator found this photocopy in his coat pocket after a night out in Blackburn, Lancashire. Mid 1990s. Given its unknown provenance this slip of paper must be a contender for the most forlorn wish never granted.

Photocopy of a fairly perfunctory pencil sketch of a photograph of a woman sitting on a designer couch. Image taken from a glossy magazine. Imagine if this image was the sole remnant of how we lived in the 2000’s. The silent, unseeing mystery pointing towards the void, akin to looking at a painted sarcophagus.

Photograph of a sketch in byro and felt tip and pencil. The subjects of the drawing are diverse. One is from an advert promoting one of the many devices of the “Nokia Years” (aka early internet, pre-smartphone era) where modern people needed a whole array of digital aides to go about their business. The other is from a photocopy of a famous photograph of three girls crossing a road in Amsterdam in 1970. The (almost brazen) sense of nothingness of this image whispers something to me about the Netherlands. I’m not sure what.

Bubbles #2

Life seems to be led in a bubble of our own current fancies. This is true of the Netherlands where I live, where my longstanding obsession with images of the descent from the cross and the last judgment are often put politely to one side.

Over the summer, I decided to throw out all my old papers and photocopies and paintings. My friends Paul and Dan rearranged them for me and added their own mark. The resulting works were shown – and remained – in Rotterdam.

The three new works somehow managed to have an air of the Baroque, and Northern Renaissance images I have long admired. Details of two are shown here in black and white and colour. A third piece is the result of a happy accident born of mild annoyance at the original work, an irrelevant, insouciant circumstance that this otherwise quiet country often throws up. Ah, vanitas, vanitas!

A photograph of a photocopy of a photograph of a print work showing pop star Justin Bieber moonlighting as Napoleon crossing the Alps. The image was seen at a show in Rotterdam. The main interest for the curator was the reflection of the strip-light which added a great deal of drama to the original. The photograph is taken at a deliberately rakish angle which adds further (in the curator’s opinion ) to the image’s presence.

Photograph of a detail of a work from the exhibition, “Hold on to the Paper”, Rotterdam, 2017. The image (suitably apocalyptic and “recreated” by the curator’s friend Paul) shows old drawings and scraps and photocopies from the curator’s collection.

Bubbles #1

Life seems to be led in a bubble of our own current fancies. This is true in the Netherlands, where I live, where my longstanding obsession with images of the descent from the cross and the last judgment are often put politely to one side.

The three new works somehow managed to have an air of the Baroque, and Northern Renaissance images I have long admired. Details of two are shown here in black and white. I wonder what’s going to happen when giving answers to everything stops being a going concern.

Photograph of a photocopy of a photograph of a detail of a work from the exhibition, “Hold on to the Paper”, Rotterdam, June 2017. The image (suitably apocalyptic and recreated by the curator’s friend Paul) shows old drawings and scraps and photocopies from the curator’s collection. Pleasingly, this image in particular looks like the plate from an old book on art history.

Photograph of a photocopy of a dip pen and ink drawing showing an East African soldier from the First World War, an Askari, holding a modern tablet. Drawn in 2013 or thereabouts, the curator thinks this drawing symptomatic of his Leiden bubble.

Blue #5

Memories can be cut out and rearranged. But that doesn’t make them better or any easier to grasp. Looking at these three new additions to the museum, the curator can’t help but wonder what binds them outside of his own random attempts at fusing or displaying memory. Maybe not even that. Maybe they should be pondered in silence, without recourse to thought.

Photograph of a letter from an ex-University friend, circa 1993. A lot of letters from that period were full of such declamations and anecdotes. And the actions of the writers always seemed full of adventure, wit and brio; totally at odds with the curator’s Accrington sojourn.

Photograph of a collage of a colour photocopy of a photograph of a mysterious duckboarded path on Ilkley Moor, West Yorks. The pen and ink graffito is a typical response from Richard the Photocopier when presented by such a visual prospect.

Photograph of two photocopies set side by side. One is a collage made out of newsprint, ink, pencil and tracing paper. The other a photocopy of a pencil drawing of the curator’s father in January 1970. The Photocopier’s father always wore stylish (if not trendy) clothes for the (aspirant) working/lower middle orders in the period.

Blue #4

There is a peculiar shade of blue that pervades certain parts of Accrington. Not always seen, it can nevertheless be sensed as a strong visual memory over long periods of time and sometimes in other places, far removed from this former manufacturing town in East Lancashire. The blue can be put to various uses. In modern parlance, it is a “positive” force. And the curator invoked it to solve, or put to bed a number long-standing obsessions that seemed only to muddy the waters during the indeterminate early 2000s.

Photograph of a colour photocopy of a drawing using dip pen and ink and coloured ink wash. Richard the Photocopier drew a number of these preparatory, private sketches in the early 2000s, in a bid to rid himself of Slav, Teutonic and Finno-Ugric folkloric images that had pursued him – to very little purpose – from a very early age.

Photograph of a colour photocopy of a collage comprising two drawings, using mixed media. The images were inspired by a book on ethnic Hungarian costume found in the Museum of Ethnography (Néprajzi Múzeum), Budapest 2003.

Photograph of a damaged colour photocopy of a black and white drawing using dip pen and ink of various ethnic Hungarian folk costumes. Date, 2004. Coloured ink was applied to the photocopy by the curator immediately prior to photographing it.

Blue #3

There is a peculiar shade of blue that pervades certain parts of Accrington. Not always seen, it can nevertheless be sensed as a strong visual memory over long periods of time and sometimes in other places, far removed from this former manufacturing town in East Lancashire. The blue can be put to various uses. In modern parlance, it is a “positive” force. And the curator invoked it at various times during that strangest of decades, the 1990s.