Sunday 28 June 2015

'Mental Mapping': Give Credit Where It's Due





‘Mental Mapping: New Work By Andrew Smith & Hugh Marwood’ is already over a week behind us, and there remains little to do but sort out the digital archiving, and find places to store the returned work in my increasingly over-stuffed house.  It does occur to me that there are some loose ends to tie up regarding certain pieces of work in the show, and I’ll discuss ‘Cement Cycle’ in its finished state, and the most recent pair of ‘Map’ paintings, in upcoming posts, but this will be the last relating to the show itself.

Life moves on, and I’m currently involved with entering certain pieces of the ‘Mental Mapping’ work for a couple of Midlands open exhibitions.  It’s too early to know if they’ll be accepted, but at the very least it’s an attempt to have them out in the world, rather than stacked up against my walls.  There’s even been talk of entering ‘Orfeo’ for a film festival, which is something I’d never have predicted.  It seems the ripples may continue to expand for a while.




Anyway, while looking over my shoulder, it would be remiss not to thank properly, all those people who helped us realise the exhibition in one practical way or another.  Therefore, be it for design of publicity material; distribution of said material, or generally spreading the word; video editing and final production assistance; exhibition hanging; catering help; cake baking; or for their interest and general encouragement; - many thanks to:

Chris Cowdrill, Pauline Dorey, Paul Drury, Tim Durham, Suzie Fletcher, Emma Goldfinch, Lorel Manders, Dianne McDermott-Crampton, Shaun Morris, Paul Ray, David Weight & Jolan Woolridge.

Thanks also to Tammany Heap, Jessica Litherland, Jo Harrison and the rest of the team at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum.  The venue was everything we could have asked for, and everyone concerned proved very helpful throughout the whole process.

I should also express appreciation to my employer for allowing me a cheeky morning off to take the show down on a school day.

I came away with copied pages from the comments book and it was gratifying to see that the reaction was generally favourable, even where people were a little confused.  Thanks to all those who visited the show, attended the Private View, or took the trouble to write something encouraging.  Amongst my favourites, are these two:

"Interesting - But baffling", (two consistently enjoyable sensations, - personally speaking).

"Memory, Impression, Groove, …", (what's not to like there?)




And finally; to Andrew Smith for being at least fifty percent of the whole deal, - cheers, mate, - I enjoyed every minute.








Wednesday 24 June 2015

Mental Mapping: "And There's No Time To Think"*



'Mental Mapping'. (Foreground): My 'Cement Cycle'. (Background): Work By Andrew Smith


Well, our exhibition 'Mental Mapping: New Work By Andrew Smith & Hugh Marwood' came and went, and already feels like it's receding in the rearview mirror at an alarming rate.  I haven't been even remotely able to keep up with events in real time here, so we're very much in the realms of retrospective speculation from here on in.  Actually, the tragic nature of fleeting time was evident even in the midst of the show.  Knowing it would be my only chance to spend time alone with it, I deliberately went into Rugby Art Gallery & Museum a few hours before our Private View, to spend a while thinking about what we’d achieved before our guests arrived.


(L.): 'Orfeo'.  (R.): My 'Map 1-4' 


When we secured the exhibition slot, last year, I assumed I would exhibit a selection of existing work, along with anything new that  I might complete in the interim.  However, in the event, both Andrew Smith and I ended up producing two bodies of completely new work specifically for the show.  In fact, my participation in last September’s Melbourne Arts Festival’ meant that all my ‘Mental Mapping’ work was actually completed in about eight months.  Only now am I coming to terms with just how hard I’ve actually been working during that period.

Personally speaking, it became clear this would be the case once we’d arrived at the exhibition title and I started to think seriously about the themes it suggested.  It felt like a real opportunity to pin down the relationship between various urban texts, and the layers of meaning they might release, with reference to specific familiar locations.  The first two elements have existed in my work for some time, but the third felt somewhat underdeveloped.  I’d attempted something consciously site-related in my stuttering ‘Belgrave Gate Project’, but that felt like a bit of a false start.  As it turns out, the current ‘Map’ paintings provided an effective escape route from those conundrums, being essentially a return to a more formally focused, abstract mode of picture-making - but with added cartographical value and found texts from my chosen sites.


My 'Map 6, 7 & 5'


Furthermore, the itch to work in other media, besides painting, could be scratched - I now realised, equally well within the exhibition’s overall thematic premise(s).  My photographic ‘Cement Cycle’ project, and the ‘Orfeo’ video collaboration with Andrew are the fulfillment of that.  ‘Cement Cycle’ is the first time I’ve envisaged my own photography as something exhibitable in its own right, and feels like a distinct widening of my repertoire.  In reality, it may be that ‘Orfeo’ is the real pivotal piece in ‘Mental Mapping’, for a couple of other important reasons.


Andrew Smith & Hugh Marwood, 'Orfeo', Digital Video, 2015


The first is that it marks my most successful attempt, to date, to collaborate with another artist on equal terms, and with a consequent leap of faith.  It involved a definite move away from my default comfort zones in several respects, and not a little experiential learning on the hoof.  I’ve been through the whys and wherefores of the film in a previous post, but I am genuinely gratified by how well it has been received, generally.  Despite its obscure, elliptical qualities, people seem happy to stay with it, and to enjoy being benignly confused.  I hope this means there’s a richness to both the imagery and the language, that transcends any need for definitive meaning.  One viewer claimed to be genuinely moved by the twilit image of spilt paint, (always a delight to discover it’s not just me), whilst another felt that the vocal tone of Andrew’s narration struck exactly the right note.  I remain painfully aware of some of the film’s technical shortcomings, (mostly in-camera), but all of this makes me rather proud of our little film, and genuinely happy that we made the attempt.  I certainly hope to do more work in this area in the future.


Anyone Want To Buy A Plinth?


The other obvious point about ‘Orfeo’, is that it forms a clear bridge between the two, distinct bodies of work on show.  It’s the point at which my attunement to the resonances of place; - my sense of ‘being there’ as thoughts and feelings unfold at a certain site, meet Andrew’s expression of the subconscious through the weaving of obscure, often absurdist narratives.  It’s within those that he projects his own, often deeply personal, internal accounts onto the objects and situations around him.




‘Orfeo’ was, I suppose, a case of me inviting Andrew to weave an account around my chosen surroundings, and to do something a little deeper or more elliptical with them than I might have otherwise achieved.  In passing, I’m struck by the fact that he acknowledges the influence of Kevin Lynch’s ‘The Image Of The City’ [1.] on his concept of the film, just as it was on ‘Cement Cycle’.  In my case, this is fairly explicit; - the organisational logic of the five pairs of ‘Elements’ derives directly from Lynch’s ideas, and the captions incorporated into each image are my re-written interpretations of certain sections of his text.  In ‘Orfeo’, it’s far more nuanced I feel, - more veiled in poetry perhaps, but the influence is still evident to me in a number of ways [2.].


My 'Cement Cycle', (10 Pieces), Inkjet Prints On Concrete, 2015


This contrast between internally derived (Andrew), and externally derived (Me) stimuli, is probably the crux of the exhibition.  Only now, do I really appreciate just how superficially extrovert my own paintings may look in relation to his, - in terms of colour and sheer wordiness, if nothing else [3.].  It seems that Andrew’s strategy for dealing with his own psychodramas is to turn to internal investigation, whilst mine may be to become visually extrovert, and to run off at the mouth.


Andrew Smith, (L.): 'Flag',  (R.): 'The Way Things Happen', Computer Drawing , Inkjet Print
On Paper, (Centre): 'The Art Of Camouflage', Acrylic On Canvas, All 2015


In the light of this, Andrew’s largest painting, ‘The Art Of Camouflage’ feels like a key work.  At first glance, it’s less photographically oriented than his other canvases, with more than a suggestion of classic Surrealism, and even a hint of Cubist space.  However, the implications of a profile head populated by submarines, are pretty clear, and a tendency towards (partial) concealment, and an urge to dive beneath the surface are key themes within all the work surrounding it.


Work By Andrew Smith


Andrew's more photographic paintings are generally suggestive of still-life arrangements or domestic interiors, but I’m unable to avoid also reading them as spaces one might inhabit.  The odd viewpoints, ambiguities of scale and deliberate unfocusing of imagery owe a clear debt to Gerhard Richter, as does the care with which they are painted.  However, they remind me, even more, of the paranoid way that David Lynch’s film camera will regularly close in on some, suddenly threatening domestic detail at moments of extreme psychic disturbance.


Andrew Smith, (L.): 'Family Portrait', (Centre), 'Little Navigator', (R.): 'Mummy',
Acrylic On Canvas, 2015


What becomes apparent from spending time with the paintings, and in conversation with Andrew, is that certain implied narratives run through both the paintings and the accompanying digital prints, as a body.  This is most overt in the recurrence of two implied characters,  ‘Little Navigator’ and ‘The Wound Dresser’.  They lend their names to a pair of paintings, but also conduct a written exchange in the print, ‘Conversation’.  Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that the final line of dialogue reads, “But words are not for explanation”.  My own initial interpretation was to see the Navigator as male, and the Dresser as female, and I hold to that view.  However, having gained extra insight from Andrew, I now realise there is something more darkly Freudian about ‘The Wound Dresser’ as a painting, than I might have originally imagined.  What might seem benignly symbolic of female domesticity, actually imply something more emasculating, it seems.


Andrew Smith, 'Conversation', Computer Drawing, Inkjet Print On Paper, 2015

Andrew Smith, 'The Wound Dresser', Acrylic On Canvas, 2015


It’s not really for me to delve too deeply into such psychosexual undercurrents here - not least because there is, I’m sure, more than a little autobiographical content in Andrew’s work.  It’s perhaps sufficient to add that there is more than a suggestion of something lost, wrecked or discarded in the multiple images of wooden debris, abandoned furniture, scattered drawers, and castaway references which recur throughout the prints.  It would be for Andrew to fill in more specific detail, but perhaps words really are not for explanation. 


Andrew Smith, 'We Must've Taken A Wrong Turning', Computer Drawing,
Inkjet Print On Paper, 2015

Andrew Smith, 'Blue Lagoon', Inkjet Print On Paper, 2015


What is evident in Andrew’s prints is a willingness to incorporate photographic imagery with a variety of other modes of depiction, and to operate through several layers of potential meaning in each piece.  The photographic aspect allies them superficially to my ‘Cement Cycle’ in the exhibition, I suppose, as well as to ‘Orfeo’.  However, I think the more meaningful connection would be the attempts that both of us habitually make, to have numerous parallel ‘realities’, (or more likely, - fictions), running through our work.


Andrew Smith, Prints 


By bringing together these separate streams within an expressively neutral, digital realm, Andrew creates an arena in which each statement, representational convention, or implied medium, is introduced on equal terms with everything else.  His is a form of virtual collage, in contrast to my own, distinctly material form.  That interplay between media, and the leveling-out effects of digital translation are things I’m keen to take more account of myself in the near future.  The examples of Dan Perfect, Sigmar Polke, Christopher Wool, Charlene Von Hayl and Albert Oehlen have all stimulated me to think about all this in recent weeks.


Andrew Smith, 'The Way Things Happen', Computer Drawing, Inkjet Print On Paper, 2015

Andrew Smith, 'On Arrival', Computer Drawing, Inkjet Print On Paper, 2015


Whilst ‘Mental Mapping’ may be pretty small beer in the grand scheme of things, it feels like a significant advance for me, both artistically, and in terms of belief in my own abilities to make something happen from soup to nuts.  It also proves that creative collaboration can be an equable and rewarding process that need not involve endless frustrating compromise, as once I might have foolishly believed.




It’s been a wholly positive experience for me overall, and represents my acceptance that, if you’re at all serious about producing art, then going public with it periodically is all part of the deal.  If the individual, original art object is to retain its validity in an increasingly mediated world, (no question, in my mind), then sheer presence in the room remains its greatest strength, after all.  Tucked away with the work in my back bedroom, for months at a time, I live on top of it to such a degree that, in the end, I can hardly see it anymore.  Putting the work in a neutral space, open to the response of others, is the only real way to tell how much progress has been made, and if it really can cut it out there in the world.

An exhibition can sometimes feel like the end of a particular creative phase, but actually, I see the whole process as far more cyclical than that.  As I sat with our show for a while, I was thinking about the clues it provided to what might come next, as much as about what had just concluded.



*   Bob Dylan, 'No Time To Think'.  From the album, 'Street Legal', CBS/Special Rider Music, 1978

[1.]:  Kevin Lynch, ‘The Image Of The City’, Massachusetts USA, The M.I.T Press, 1960

[2.]:  Lynch himself wasn’t adverse to a little playful obfuscation it seems, as can be seen here

[3.]:  For people who know me well, the wordiness might not be such a surprise.




Tuesday 16 June 2015

'Mental Mapping': A Room With A View





Last weekend saw me back at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum’s Floor One Gallery for the private view of our exhibition, ‘Mental Mapping: New Work By Hugh Marwood & Andrew Smith’.







It was an enjoyable afternoon, and whilst my photos don’t necessarily tell the story very well, there was a steady flow of people through the gallery, with the room being well populated for a lot of the time.  Inevitably, I was in conversation for much of that, only remembering to grab photos during those occasional lulls when people had drifted outside to replenish their glasses.  Anyway, It was great to catch up with a variety of both old and new faces, and pleasing that the function seemed to flip back and forth between people genuinely engaging with the work, and just enjoying a relaxed Saturday afternoon social.  Everyone had travelled to be there, so many thanks are due to all for turning out on a rainy afternoon and making the event a success.





I’ll compile a proper list of all those who’ve assisted us with the practicalities of ‘Mental Mapping’, once the dust finally settles.  For now though, I should specifically thank my friends, Lorel Manders, Suzie Fletcher, Paul Drury and Pauline Dorey, for helping to keep the refreshments flowing, and Emma Goldfinch for baking the cakes.




'Mental Mapping: New Work By Andrew Smith & Hugh Marwood' continues until 18 June 2015 at: Rugby Art Gallery & Museum, Little Elborow Street, Rugby, Warwickshire, CV21 3BZ.








Monday 8 June 2015

'Mental Mapping': "The Next Day Was Hanging Day..." *



'Mental Mapping': My Half


After months of hard work by Andrew Smith and myself, and an inevitably intense last two or three weeks, the ‘Mental Mapping’ exhibition is finally up at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum’s Floor One Gallery.  I suppose there are always things one might have done differently in retrospect, but I’m actually very pleased with the exhibition generally, and happy to stand by the work I have on display in particular.  That feels significant, because neither Andrew nor I are massively experienced as exhibitors, and because pretty much everything on display was produced specifically for the show in well under a year.


'Mental Mapping': Andrew's Half

Andrew Smith: Inkjet Prints


For my part, I had tentatively exhibited work in a few open exhibitions in the past, whilst my participation in 2012’s ‘If a PicturePaints A Thousand Words…’ show felt like a big step forward, (particularly as it suggested my own somewhat ‘late flowering’ as an artist might be starting to justify itself).  However, this feels like something else altogether, not least because Andrew and I made most of it happen for ourselves, (with the help of a small number of key individuals), - from making the initial phone call that secured the gallery slot, to finally hanging all that new work on the walls.  As we put the work up, and I saw that it was all paying off, I realised just how invested I have been, (and remain), in the whole project.  When we started all this, I didn’t know for certain if I could pull it off, - but was happy to try.  I now know I can - and would be happy to do so again.



Shaun Morris & Andrew Do Battle With Floor One's Tricky Curved Wall 


Anyway, the images here tell the story of how the show went up, and how it looked as I quickly grabbed a few photos, just prior to trundling my kit out of the building.  As ever, the logistics of the hang, and the ever-insistent ticking of the clock, meant there was little available time to really reflect on the work in any meaningful way, beyond being satisfied it was well situated on the walls.  We have a Private View planned next weekend, and I intend to spend all day with the show.  That will be my real chance to reflect on the work, and the dialogue between Andrew’s and my own, properly.  Inevitably, I’ll write a more considered post about that when the time comes.


My 'Map 7' & 'Map 5' Paintings (L), & 'Cement Cycle' Photographs (R)

My Paintings. (L - R): 'Map 6', 'Map 7', 'Map 5' 


Sharp-eyed regular visitors here will, however, notice a couple of previously unseen paintings in my half of the exhibition.  ‘Map 6’ and ‘Map 7’ are the largest, and pictorially most complex of the set, being a return to my customary 1metre-square format.  They’re also the last things to be completed, with ‘7’ having reached a conclusion just 48 hours before I packed my half of the show.  Turner, of course, used to complete paintings on the walls of the Royal Academy, but that was showmanship more than necessity, and this felt tight enough for me.  It did mean there was no time to tell the world about them ahead of their hanging, which is also something I’ll address as soon as possible.  It’s still too early for me to really see them for what they are, but, as they went up on the wall, my feeling was they stood up well enough amongst the rest of my pieces.


My Paintings. (L-R): 'Map 1', 'Map 2', 'Map 3', 'Map 4', 'Map 6', 'Map 7'



Of course, experienced hands would tell me that all the slightly emotive stuff at the start of this post is a bit meaningless, until we can satisfy ourselves that people have seen, and hopefully - responded in some way to, the show.  I don’t think the venue could be much better in terms of potential footfall, housing, as it does, Rugby’s municipal Art Gallery, Museum and Library, together in one building.  The whole area of publicity, PR and marketing (ugh!), is something I’m sure I could usefully become a lot more intelligent or strategic about in the future, but I think we’ve made a reasonable attempt, for novices.  My hunch is, that’s the whole area many artists of a certain age or temperament might find the biggest chore, but there’s no point putting all that effort into the actual work, if you don’t make some attempt to blow a trumpet about it.  It’s an exhibition, after all; the clue’s in the title.


The Venue


In the light of that, my last job of the day was to wander around the centre of Rugby in search of kindly disposed enterprises that might display one of our remaining posters.  As I made my way back to the van, through the Clock Towers Shopping Centre, I came across another example of my painting work that I’d long forgotten about.

In a previous incarnation, I was employed for many years at a now defunct company in Leicester called Farmer Studios Ltd.  Our work included a wide variety of creative projects for the retail, leisure and museum sectors, - including the themed clock that still presides over Rugby’s shoppers.  I had a hand in the paintwork of that piece and, whilst it hardly reflects my current aesthetic preferences, I was pleased to see that it’s still working, and in relatively good condition.


Farmer Studios Ltd: 'Themed Clock', The Clock Towers Shopping Centre, Rugby


I reflected on how far I’ve come in finding my own voice since then - and how differently focused my creative energies now are.  In those days, I earned a living realising other people’s dreams in a wholly commercial arena.  Regardless of whether or not I ever gain any material recompense from my current efforts, (not necessarily the point, but you know…) - it does feel a bit like it’s my time now.  Nevertheless, it should be acknowledged that the practical skills, and experience of making something happen, gained in numerous leisure attractions, shop windows and themed displays, equipped me to go through this process with pleasingly little drama or real stress.  I may not have always appreciated it, back then - when deadlines or working conditions were getting silly, but nothing is wasted it seems.


I Was Hardly Going To Ignore This View, Was I?


I’ll compile a proper role call of all those who have helped us with ‘Mental Mapping’ once the dust really settles, but at this stage, I should thank Tammany Heap, Jessica Litherland and Jo Harrison at RAGM, for their guidance and for trusting us with their building, and fellow artist and staunch ally, Shaun Morris, for helping us to get everything on the walls.





'Mental Mapping: New Work By Andrew Smith & Hugh Marwood' continues until 18 June 2015, at: Floor One Gallery, Rugby Art Gallery & Museum, Little Elborow Street, Rugby, Warwickshire, CV21 3BZ.




* Bob Dylan, 'Rosemary, Lily And The Jack Of  Hearts', From The Album, 'Blood On The Tracks', CBS, 1975