Symbolic Forest

As summer comes in, it seems as if every weekend there’s something artistic or creative to do. Last weekend it was the Bristol Comic Con (which we missed), and the Southbank Bristol Arts Trail, which we didn’t miss; or, at least, didn’t miss all of. The Southbank Bristol Arts Trail, in short, is a weekend event where creative people around Southville throw open their doors and turn their houses and/or gardens into galleries for everyone to visit. And it was the weather for it: we toiled around the hills of Southville, trail maps in hand, all the time seeing other people doing the same.

We didn’t see all of the venues, nothing like all of them; there were 51 listed on the map, scattered over a pretty wide area. Off the top of my head, they tend to blur into each other, especially nearly a week afterwards. We definitely saw: the Wonkey House on Mount Pleasant Terrace; people from “Number 40” at, erm, 40 Mount Pleasant Terrace; textile designs^* on Allington Road; paintings by Terry Williams on Birch Road; and lots of other wildly artistic open houses whose owners’ names passed me by. We finally ended up at a second house on Birch Road where we saw various bands and performers play. Rachael Dadd served us tea, and her band The Hand played, along with The Wraiths and The Fingerless Hoodlum. We relaxed in the sunshine, the warmth of the garden, and K caught a sunburn.

Like everything else, we walked home wanting to do more ourselves; wanting to create things; wanting to have things to show ourselves. There are so many local art events, I wonder how people have time to make art in-between them sometimes.^** We walked home, and then straight away started planning to go out once more. Because, we’d been told: “those people over there are in a really good band, and they’re playing tonight – you should come along, you’ll love it.” That’s another story, though, for another blog post.

* some a bit like the “crochet bomb” which I keep telling you I’m making

** the next one I’m currently aware of is the Easton Arts Trail, coming up in about a month’s time

Keyword noise: Allington Road, art, artists, arts trail, Birch Road, Bristol, folk, gig, live music, Mount Pleasant Terrace, music, painting, Rachael Dadd, South Bristol Arts Trail, Southville, Terry Williams, textiles, The Fingerless Hoodlum, The Hand, The Wonkey House, The Wraiths.

Last week: the cinema, as I said. Yesterday, we happened to be around the Harbourside, so popped into the Arnolfini to see one of the current exhibitions, “Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie: Class Hegemony in Contemporary Art”. It’s a touring exhibition that has travelled around various European venues in the past three years or so, changing and unfolding each time as the artists involved respond to the discussions their exhibition provokes. In general, though, it questions the concept of working as an artist; the sort of people who work as artists, and the ways in which the art world will automatically perceive an artist and attempt to classify their work based solely on their background and origins.

As part of the exhibition, there was a talk by local artist and academic Wayne Lloyd, on the Bristol art scene. We were intrigued as to how he would describe the local art scene within the context of the exhibition; and were rather disappointed when his talk seemed entirely context-free. It was a description of a few local “artist-run spaces” which have occupied rooms in the city centre in recent years; a small part of the local art scene, but one that Lloyd clearly knew well. However, description was all we got; no sort of synthesis, no concept of how these spaces fitted into the art world or into the city itself. I would have hoped, at least, for an attempt at explaining why those specific artists did what they did.

I was left slightly puzzled as to how the talk was meant to fit with the rest of the exhibition, almost (but not quite) to the point of putting up my hand and asking a question at the end. I’m not entirely sure what the question would have been. “Given the exhibition’s title and subtitle, how do these spaces demonstrate that there is (or isn’t) a class hegemony in local art?” sounds more like an exam question. “How many people from Hartcliffe or Withywood visit these spaces?” sounds a bit flippant and glib. “Given the exhibition’s title and subtitle, how the hell was any of that relevant?” just makes me sound too ignorant, especially when everyone else in the audience other than me and K seemed to think the whole thing very meaningful. Maybe they were all part of the hegemony too.

Keyword noise: Arnolfini, art, artists, Bristol, Lapdogs Of The Bourgeoisie, Wayne Lloyd.

A bit of an arty weekend for us – well, an arty Sunday at least.

First off, the Bristol Artist’s Book Event – or, BABE – at the Arnolfini. The whole gallery was turned into a market for the weekend, so that people working in the field of “artists’ books” could sell their wares. Even though we couldn’t afford to buy very much, it was interesting just to treat the event as an art exhibit in itself. I’m not sure I want to become an artist’s book collector, in any case; for one thing, I wouldn’t have a clue how to file half of the things on display. They are wonderful objects to appreciate in their own right, though; hand-made, hand-bound, artisan objects. They are something I could make myself, if I had a mind to it – well, possibly not the hand-bound books, but you know what I mean. Anything can be art, after all, if made with an artistic event or viewed with an artistic sensibility. My eye was drawn to a folded concertina of a book,^* a book of photographs produced by walking through a city and taking photos looking upwards at predetermined intervals. Too few people look up as they walk the world; I had trouble recognising all of the locations even though it was an area I knew well. It unfolded like a little Box Of Delights, drawing the reader in, yet fiddly to use with clumsy mind and fingers.

In the Arnolfini, we were hailed by a sandwich-board chap, laden with all sorts of things,^** and a big sign saying “DRINK MORE GIN!” He gave us fliers for a corresponding exhibition at the Central Library, to go alongside BABE. We wandered across to College Green to find it, which was easier said than done. The exhibition, of artists’ books from the city library’s art collection, was squirrelled away in a conference room, in a part of the Reference Library normally well out of the public eye. When found, though, it was excellent, partly because the city library has a very good collection, and partly because of the access visitors got. We were free, under the invigilator’s beady eye, to pick the things up, read them, investigate them; quite an awkward job given the nature of some artists’ books, needing to be unpackaged and unfolded and probed gently but persistantly. The collection was biased mainly towards the last 20 years, but there were some earlier things; a pamphlet with Eric Gill illustrations, for example.^*** Some were up-to-the-minute: things we’d seen on sale at the Arnolfini a few minutes before.

Finally, wandering into the Old City, we saw a placard for a temporary exhibition at the Centrespace Gallery, on Leonard Lane, tricky to find if you’ve never been before, as Leonard Lane is barely more than a doorway in a wall. You can tell it’s a street, though, because it has double yellow lines along both sides, despite being so narrow that most people could probably touch the walls on both sides at the same time at many points. The exhibition was “Dark Stars and Bleeding Hearts”, an art show by a local artist we’d not heard of before, deadgirl, also known as Keri Gardom. You can see examples of her art on her website:^**** it’s brightly-coloured acrylic illustration between black outlines. The most common tag on her website gallery seems to be “morbid”; and she really should consider selling prints of her work, as well as originals. They’d sell in their thousands to “alternative” teenagers who can’t afford to spend £250 on a painting. What caught my eye, though – apart from the free sweets for visitors – was her palette. Not the selection of colours in her work, but her physical palette, sitting next to her easel in the middle of the room. It was piled up thickly with layers and layers of used paint, two or three inches deep. I wanted to take a picture; but she was busy talking to somebody else, I didn’t want to interrupt, and taking a picture of her palette without asking would be far too intrusive – like posting a photo of someone else’s desk.

In general, we felt inspired. Inspired to do things, ourselves, to get creative, to finish off our current artcraft projects. We almost went back to the Arnolfini, where one of the stalls at BABE was selling used printing blocks and sets of type. Not that we have a press, or forms, or anything else that printers need, but vintage typography can be beautiful, and the type itself even more so. Expect the Symbolic Forest Press to make an appearance one of these years, even if we don’t quite manage hand-printed or hand-bound hardbacks straight away. The world is creative, and we can be creative too.

* Unfortunately, me being me, I didn’t get the artist’s name

** although the only things that I can remember dangling off him were stripy paper bags

*** Unfortunately, me being me, I didn’t get the writer’s name.

**** Update, September 3^rd 2020: the website appears to be no longer online.

Keyword noise: Arnolfini, art, artists, artists books, Bristol, Bristol Artists Books Event, Bristol Central Library, Centrespace Gallery, College Green, Dark Stars and Bleeding Hearts, deadgirl, Keri Gardom, Leonard Lane.

A spare weekend: we went wandering, in the car, and on foot. We drifted through the moorland village of Levisham, as untouched a village as you’ll find in Yorkshire, with one road wandering through it across a broad green. Ambling downhill, we reached the railway station. We watched a train pull in, and shunt about, great clouds of steam rising in the December cold.

Prowling around the station, we discovered its Artist In Residence, Christopher Ware, in his studio. We chatted a little while, and studied his prints of bucolic trains. He can’t have many visitors on a day like that; hopefully we were a welcome distraction for a few minutes.

Keyword noise: artists, Christopher Ware, heritage, Levisham, North Yorkshire, North Yorkshire Moors Railway, NYMR, railway, studio, Yorkshire.

Over the years I’ve had all sorts of plans for art projects which have never quite got off the ground. So I’ve never had to answer the question: how would I feel if I did something Artistic, which became famous all over the place, but nobody knew it was me who did it.

The local news here was full of something similar, recently. All around Yorkshire, in Goathland, Kilburn, Arthington and Braithwell, mysterious stone heads have been appearing; and some then disappearing again. Intriguing, you could say. I’m strangely attached to the idea of mysterious heads – which are reminiscent of some of the stranger stone crosses on the Yorkshire Moors – popping up in the night. Rather like crop circles, in a way.

Unfortunately, though, the mystery of the stone heads hasn’t lasted very long. Crop circles were a puzzler for a few years, back in the 1980s. The stone heads have been a mystery for a few weeks; but they’ve only stayed a mystery for a few hours now the story has hit the national news. They are apparently made by a chap called Billy Johnson. Presumably, he’s done it all for the publicity;^* as he left some easily googleable clues attached to each head, it’s fairly obvious that he wanted to be found. Artists have to make money somehow, after all. Personally, I’d rather it had stayed a mystery, though.

Mysteries are good for the imagination. An anonymous sculpture, appearing out of nowhere, is something to tantalise the mind and get you wondering about all those things sitting just around the edges of the known world. A self-publicising sculptor called Billy Johnson – whether he’s real or not – is dull and mundane by comparison.

* and I’ve just helped, haven’t I. Oh, well. Billy, if you’re a self-googler and you’re reading this, I’ll tell you where my own street corner is; you can leave one there and I’ll make sure you get some more publicity for your website.

Update, August 29^th 2020: This post originally linked to the website about Billy Johnson’s stone heads, which was easily findable if you did an internet search on the words attached to each head. It has since disappeared completely from the internet and the domain name bought by an entirely different woodcarver. However, the “friend of Billy’s” who set the site up is part of the “digital fiction studio” Dreaming Methods who seem to have used the publicity from the story to distribute more of Billy Johnson’s stone heads rather more widely than he could do on his own. If you want to see Billy Johnson’s work, you can find a lot of it scattered around his local area, near Barnsley.

Keyword noise: anonymity, art, artists, Billy Johnson, Cudworth, Barnsley, Goathland, Kilburn, mystery, performance art, sculpture, stone head, Yorkshire.

The other week, I wrote about W Heath Robinson, and how I first discovered him: illustrating the children’s books of Norman Hunter. He wasn’t as good for the stories, though, as a later illustrator, who is much less well known. His name is George Adamson.^*

Adamson’s work is, in a sense, much more mundane and ordinary than even Robinson’s. Robinson is, in his “mechanical” work, an artist of ridiculous things. Adamson, though, makes ridiculous things look ordinary. Like, for example, a Mayor having to take his tea in a bathtub:

Robinson’s machines look entirely plausible, and their workings are out on show. Adamson’s machinery, though, is hidden away. It’s magical, because you can’t see how it might do what it’s supposed to; it fits Hunter’s descriptions of machines that can do the physically impossible. Some of them are sinister: very 1950s in design, plain cases with the occasional dial or switch, presumably painted grey or pale green. Others are more complicated, but their working is never obvious or spelled out. They are wonderful depictions of machines which never do as they are supposed to.

* not to be confused, of course, with George Adamson

Keyword noise: art, artists, George Adamson, George W Adamson, illustration, Norman Hunter, Professor Branestawm, Heath Robinson.

A few months back, I saw, on a friend’s bookshelf, art books about members of the Robinson family: Charles Robinson and his better-known brother William Heath Robinson; and I resolved to write about them here. It’s taken me a while.

The wonderful thing about Heath Robinson’s work – apart from the army of identikit men who keep his machines running – is that everything looks entirely workable, in a certain sense. Everything looks as if it should fit together and run smoothly, especially with his little arrows and dashed lines to show that this moves that way, that cog turns like so, and the lever over on that side swings round to hit the golf ball over here.

The first place I came across Heath Robinson, though, I found him slightly unsatisfactory. In the 1930s he illustrated two children’s books by writer Norman Hunter, about an absent-minded inventor called Professor Branestawm, a creator of amazing, fantastical, physically impossible inventions. Robinson’s illustrations were just too possible—although they may well have worked, they could never have done everything described in the story. I was, as a child, disappointed. I much preferred his 1970s illustrator—but I’ll tell you about him another time.

Keyword noise: art, artists, Charles Robinson, Heath Robinson, illustration, Norman Hunter, Professor Branestawm.

Do you go through phases of liking different sorts of art, different fashions, as you get older?

The other day someone said to me: “all teenage boys go through a surrealist phase”. And, it’s true, I had a surrealist phase when I was a teenager. Some of them – Salvador Dalí, for example – never grow out of it.^* Most do, though, and go on to other things. When I was small, I was also a Heath Robinson fan, and it took me a while to realise that he had ever done anything other than the bizarre machinery cartoons which made him a household name.^**

So, did you go through art phases when you were younger? What artists did you like then that you really don’t care about now? I want to see if this is true in general, or if it just applies to floating rocks and lobster telephones.

* Magritte, on the other hand, did grow up – I assume he just had strange fetishes for bowler hats and sleighbells.

** I have more to write about Heath Robinson soon, but no time to write it now.

Keyword noise: art, artists, fashion, Heath Robinson, phases, Salvador Dalí, surrealism.

Almost anyone you ask will tell you: they hate the sound of their own voice. I have a similar relationship with my own face.

This is at the top of my mind, because I received an email today, with a couple of photos of myself in it.^* They look horrible, I have to say. No fault of the photographer, just that I look terrible anyway.

The common connection with the sound of your own voice is that just as you rarely hear your own voice as other people do, you rarely see your own face that way either. When I see myself in the mirror in the morning, it somehow doesn’t register, because it doesn’t look anywhere near as bad in my mind as it does in photographs. I’m convinced I’m not the only person who thinks this way, though. I’m sure there are relatively few people who are pleased with the appearance of their own face.

It makes me wonder about artists: specifically, artists who produce a lot of self-portraiture. What drives them to do it? Is it a narcissistic obsession with their own appearance? Or, as I’d prefer to think, is it instead more the reverse, an obsession with controlling their appearance because they’re never satisfied with it.

* And lots of other people too, of course – from when we all went out on Boxing Day.

Keyword noise: art, artists, narcissism, portrait, self-portrait.