May 22, 2016
The art of social engineering
The desire to change society for the better is a driver for many people. It...
Blue Motorway M1
Concrete. Solid. Certain and unchanging. Travelling on the motorway network, the miles of similarity is both reassuring and unsettling. The human condition is an ever-changing state and the a static certainty is abhorent. However, risk-adverse and fearful, perhaps it would be better if nothing ever changed.
With or without help the world will never stay the same. However these colossal monuments perhaps demonstrate our futile attempts to take control and bend the rules for our own advantage. Or perhaps it is simply a question of budget. An accountant’s pragmatic solution and globalised view. Enjoy.
Big Skies Sketch 1
Big Skies sketch with cars and tower block. Painted on cartridge paper with oil paint and depicting a low level communal building under a turbulent, flowing sky.
Brick Wall
This is a brick wall and not even one I have really seen before. However, in thinking about borders and boundaries of any kind what better sums it up than a brick wall? Obviously, I like a nice bare wall to hang my pictures on or just go direct and put marks on the wall but as a barrier, well, marathon runner hit it, the UK super-group Pink Floyd sing about it and of course there is the proverbial hitting your head on it.
Pink Floyd’s album ‘The Wall’ uses the wall as a metaphor for the alienation, isolation and dehumanisation of Pink whose story is being told. Betrayed and exploited, Pink’s wall represents his fascist embrace and loveless existence. By pulling down his wall, Pink’s dictatorial tyranny ended and the possibility of emotionally re-connecting with humanity was once again possible. With this in mind, this picture been selected. All things change and the depiction of crumbling brickwork in this wall means that it too will ultimately end in collapse.
But in a world without walls, where will art be hung?
Cerne Abbas Giant 003
While modern relative to its misconceived Iron Age origins, the lines of its form do link to an ancient node, a time of archetypes and primeval forces stirring in the depths. Like graffiti, like a Banksy out of chalk, out of mischief, devotion or homage to the landscape of Dorset’s South Downs this huge figure is barely seen from the vantage of its own hillside. A depiction of violence, desire and power up close unseen just as the cosmic forces that have driven us since ancient days.
What difference is there between this and the modernity that thrust forth concrete tower blocks? Both look back to civilisations that lived in fear and awe of the gods, of sprites and spirits and faerie folk, those embodiments of truth and power, forever the great mysteries.
Cerne Abbas Giant 004
Dripping Red M
Number Plates – Individual
Taking note of personalised number plates around the city gives you an insight into just how many people want them. Are there so many of us that are against the system? Is there a desire to fight against authority and assert the individual self like number six in the prisoner did?
However, there is a price to this. Some number plates cost so much that the only way to afford such an item is to hold extravagant wealth. Can any true rebel be a beneficiary of the system they fight against or does it mean that in this social order, only those at the top can be identified by a name rather than a number? Asserting yourself against the system is an illusion perpetrated by those that govern the system or aspire to. The revolution has been bought or stolen by the establishment.
Finance Doodle 001
Blood and money and taxation.
It comes as no surprise, especially when those not stealing a living are called ‘The Little People’. Do we have to wake up to a world become too big?
Subway Flyover 001
Places where no one goes. Abandoned, subterranean, on the boundary between above and below.
What events occur in places like these? Descend to the lower and despair.
Big Sky 001
Big Sky 002
Nighttime Flats 001
As the night deepens and to our eyes at least, the solid structures melt into air.
Marx believed that the system sowed the seeds of its own destruction. However, he was mistaken and despite itself, goes from strength to strength.
Orange Haze 002
Split Level 001
True blue history blue
The extension of the M3 motorway across the English South Downs caused political protest, not from the usual suspects of the day of the loony-left, but from true blue Tories.
Built through SSSIs and historic chalk downs.
Gateways and golden ratios
Pylons are the consequence of a competition win and in theory these massive, imposing structures are supposed to be invisible against the grey skies of Britain.
This is not the case and the march of these towers across the landscape seems more an invasion than mere infrastructure. We are being taken over by Greek ideals, to a time when spirit and beauty were intertwined.
Carbon as concrete motorway 001
Motorway drawing
in charcoal
Carbon as concrete motorway 002
Motorway drawing
in charcoal
First and Last and Always
Towerblocks 002
As part of the clearance of the slums, Nottingham’s inner city was transformed by the modernist’s aggressive purity and utopian social engineering.
Thrusting vertically against the passive, horizontal plane rose Truth made manifest, pride, certainty and vigour realised by the endeavours of young poets and philosophers, architects of the Brave New World