Sleep Life Dream Log #1

A few weeks ago the Photocopier collated some answers about the sleep life of important professionals in the music business, in the upstairs room of a Groningen pub. Some of those answers (spread over four separate posts) are to be seen here. One can only wonder; what  does sleep really mean to us,  during our never-ending lives?

Sleeplife #2

Together with two good friends of great artistic repute, the Photocopier has embarked on a new, ongoing project called Sleeplife. Quite what Sleeplife means is anybody’s guess. But the Photocopier and his friends agree on one point: Sleeplife is pretty much all we have left.

Given the subject of sleep has been misunderstood, abused or harnessed into many things over the years that have nothing to do with it – or employed as the courtier to our rampantly egotistical and psychotically-squeezed waking state – it’s maybe time to add to that confusion.

We are all agreed on that.

The first seeds of confusion – and eventual absolution – were sown in a gloomy December week in Brussels, a city with many lives and psychic arteries.  Manifestos, explanations, actions, reflections and other artistic or socio-cultural bricolage will all be photocopied and added here; as is my wont.

These posts will show the Photocopier’s modest contribution.  The work of Charlien Adriaenssens and Larissa Monteiro are “deep linked”, daddy-oh. They may, or may not post about Sleeplife. Who can tell?

Sleeplife #1

Together with two good friends of great artistic repute, the Photocopier has embarked on a new, ongoing project called Sleeplife. Quite what Sleeplife means is anybody’s guess. But the Photocopier and his friends agree on one point: Sleeplife is pretty much all we have left.

Given the subject of sleep has been misunderstood, abused or harnessed into many things over the years that have nothing to do with it – or employed as the courtier to our rampantly egotistical and psychotically-squeezed waking state – it’s maybe time to add to that confusion.

We are all agreed on that.

The first seeds of confusion – and eventual absolution – were sown in a gloomy December week in Brussels, a city with many lives and psychic arteries.  Manifestos, explanations, actions, reflections and other artistic or socio-cultural bricolage will all be photocopied and added here; as is my wont.

These posts will show the Photocopier’s modest contribution.  The work of Charlien Adriaenssens and Larissa Monteiro are “deep linked”, daddy-oh. They may, or may not post about Sleeplife. Who can tell?

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.”

Seeing Red #1

This post is the first in a series that was originally to be called a ‘Study in Scarlet’. Both titles are appropriate given where Albion finds herself this 20th day of October, 2019. Balm is given by way of some altered photographs of East Yorkshire and East Lancashire letter nonsense.

Hige sceal þē heardra, heorte þē cēnre,
mōd sceal þē māre, þē ūre mægen lytlað.

In a curveball that maybe typifies this topsy-turvy time, the featured image has very little to do with Albion at all. Its origins are Estonian, but its provenance is unknown.

Futbol Moderne #1

The 1970s and 1980s were the era where I began to watch football matches in Lancashire and the North East. Initially accompanied by an adult (a pal’s dad, my dad or my granda) during the mid-to-late 1970s, I attended my first games on my own around 1984, with my first serious away trip being spring 1987 to watch Newcastle United play Manchester City at Maine Road (0-0 if you must know).  Football has always kindled a creative spark for me. I remember very little about the actual games from the 1970s but can vividly remember the atmosphere of pent up rage, hard-bitten humour and machismo. And the “Fauvist”, almost giddily bright splash of green of the pitch. This somehow opened up a feeling I could only express through drawing.

During the same time (1977-1983), I was engaged in painting the armies of the C18th Austro-Hungarian Empire in full; specifically that which had fought during the later Wars of the Spanish Succession (covering 1740s-1760s). Somehow that dovetailed with obsessively drawing footballers from the 1920s and 1930s. Football history was a subject that, back then, was often ridiculed by my increasingly “casually-clothed” peers.

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”(accompanied by a crate of ale, which was polished off day-tripper charabanc style, with the aid of a cheese sandwich). The uniforms are those from all combatant armies of The Great War.

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.

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.

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. I wonder what’s going to happen when giving answers to everything stops being a going concern.

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.

I Never Tell Anybody Anything #4

A reminder that life can be flippant. O, cleanse my flippant soul. By the powers that be, o, stop me from thinking everything can be a joke.