Entering the Memory Vortex #2

Let’s introduce one new thing by talking about another. Let’s not. Let’s do nothing, but stare at memories of the East Lancashire Moors. For what else is there to do?  We can wander round places we have never ever been to, that’s what.  Let’s enter the Memory Vortex.

Entering the Memory Vortex #1

Let’s introduce one new thing by talking about another. Let’s not. Let’s do nothing, but stare at memories of the East Lancashire Moors. For what else is there to do?  We can wander round places we have never ever been to, that’s what.  Let’s enter the Memory Vortex.

The Theory of the Duck #3

There is good and there is evil. In between, somewhere, is the duck.

These words, spoken by Accrington artist and visionary Tim Whittaker, come back to haunt us in these ribald, brittle, stretched months of 2020 and 2021, where ghosts of the threshing floor rise to meet us.

These photocopies hark back to another, happier time and maybe presage a third.

We just need to locate the duck.

You have to act. Burn them, commune with their indolent, witless, stolid spirit. Or photocopy them endlessly to erase their presence.
Maybe you can draw on humanity’s creative commons to give you another answer. It’s what the internet is for.

I’m staying in my lane. To be precise, Hollins Lane. But that stops in Baxenden. Where then?

The Theory of the Duck #2

There is good and there is evil. In between, somewhere, is the duck.

These words, spoken by Accrington artist and visionary Tim Whittaker, come back to haunt us in these ribald, brittle, stretched months of 2020 and 2021, where ghosts of the threshing floor rise to meet us.

These photocopies hark back to another, happier time and maybe presage a third.

We just need to locate the duck.

You have to act. Burn them, commune with their indolent, witless, stolid spirit. Or photocopy them endlessly to erase their presence.
Maybe you can draw on humanity’s creative commons to give you another answer. It’s what the internet is for.

I’m staying in my lane. To be precise, Hollins Lane. But that stops in Baxenden. Where then?

The Theory of the Duck #1

There is good and there is evil. In between, somewhere, is the duck.

These words, spoken by Accrington artist and visionary Tim Whittaker, come back to haunt us in these ribald, brittle, stretched months of 2020 and 2021, where ghosts of the threshing floor rise to meet us.

These photocopies hark back to another, happier time and maybe presage a third.

We just need to locate the duck.

You have to act. Burn them, commune with their indolent, witless, stolid spirit. Or photocopy them endlessly to erase their presence.
Maybe you can draw on humanity’s creative commons to give you another answer. It’s what the internet is for.

I’m staying in my lane. To be precise, Hollins Lane. But that stops in Baxenden. Where then?

Sleep Life Bedroom-Bathroom-Toilet 2

Where do we go and what do we do when we sleep? There is plenty of activity and sensations to document. And what of the space where #SleepLife happens, how do they change? This is one such document, of a space in Accrington that needs a new #SleepLife, and quietly suffered a temporary interregnum. It’s old one has ended.

Sleep Life Bedroom-Bathroom-Toilet #1

Where do we go and what do we do when we sleep? There is plenty of activity and sensations to document. And what of the space where #SleepLife happens, how do they change? This is one such document, of a space in Accrington that needs a new #SleepLife, and quietly suffered a temporary interregnum. It’s old one has ended.

Seeing Red #2

This post is the second in a series that was originally to be called a ‘Study in Scarlet’. Both titles are appropriate given where Albion finds herself in late October, 2019. Balm is given by way of some old comics that somehow passed down to the Curator by way of his father. Plus some altered photographs of West Yorkshire and pictorial catharsis.

“………………………………….It seems a humiliation
to let you go to your ships with our treasures
unfought—now you have come thus far
into our country. You must not get our gold
so softly. Points and edges must reconcile us first,
a grim war-playing, before we give you any tribute.”

Futbol Moderne #2

Football has always kindled a creative spark for me. I remember very little about my first games from the 1970s but can vividly remember the atmosphere of pent up rage, hard-bitten humour and machismo. And the “Fauvist”, iridescent green of the pitch.

When young my love of football also found expression through my obsession with kits from the 1920s and 1930s. Why, I wondered, couldn’t the 1970s footballer wear the (to me) much more elegant styles of the inter-war years?  During the same time (1977-1983), I was engaged in painting the “Lace War” armies of the C18th Austro-Hungarian Empire. This  venture got out of hand very quickly. Somewhere in my parents’ loft marches every regiment that fought at Waterloo (Airfix HO/OO scale figures) and a fair number of figures depicting the terrible opening battles of the First War.

During 2011-12, I returned to examine this thematic link, discovering that there may be more in it than my pre-adolescent whims let on. These are sketches from a day long “draw-in” in Leiden’s then un-renovated Scheltema. The day also saw me down a crate of ale, with the aid of a cheese sandwich. The uniforms are those from all combatant armies of The Great War.

 

Post Ides Idling 2018

These are photographs that I wanted to make into photocopies, but didn’t. Not because of their suitability or otherwise as I’m not sure whether the concept of suitability, as such, plays any part in this particular reproductive process. I still think that the grey furze of the photocopied image does to some extent replicate the film between your sight and inner sight. In that respect anything photocopied (in effect performing the act of taking one step away) brings us one step closer to understanding something.

But sometimes the time between the photograph, or drawing, or the discovery of the objet trouvé, takes time to determine. In this series of posts I also wanted to show you what East Lancashire looks like in winter from the top of a bus. I’ve had many an adventure on the bus to Manchester, and heard lots of stories, like “what would die first in a desert, a rat, or a camel?”

Who can tell?

Time doing nothing is not time wasted. (Georges Remi).