Should his feet venture out, would his legs and his body still follow?
November 2024
Just bought an early Lecia Rangefinder (from the 1930s) at auction. I’m working on a verse led video piece I wrote a while ago. It describes a photographer whose later life has been overtaken by dementia.
It’s a way of telling a story whilst also deconstructing the telling of that story during the duration of the piece. As his mind fragments, closes in on detail, reorders, so does the picture against the narrative.
It was only after I’d written the piece and later decided to make it into a video that I realised I would need a Leica camera as it is mentioned by name in the verse and is fundamental to his perception of precision.
I asked around – I put the word out, but no luck. So to the internet I went. After three failed attempts I got serious. Finally I won a bid. The piece has been voiced. I’m now filming other segments. Watch this space. It’s called:
PARALLAXED: par·al·lax ˈpar-ə-ˌlaks. : the apparent displacement or the difference in apparent direction of an object as seen from two different points not on a straight line with the object.
Credit Newcastle Chronicle
In June 2021 a time capsule was buried in Newcastle Cathedral - to be opened in 100 years. My poem 'Perseverance' (which considers the Mars probe landing from an earthbound perspective - and is printed over my photo of Lynemouth Bay on the Northumberland coast) has been included in the capsule.
One of the main themes of my work is to start from the absence of something. The idea of putting this piece into a box which then disappears into a hole, only to be seen many years after my demise, seemed appropriate; to in some ways represent the entire cyclical process.
**GREAT NEWS** the PAPER TRAIL exhibition previously suspended due to Covid-19 has now been re-organised to run from 27 Feb 2021 to 27th November 2021 at Maidstone Museum. See below.
100 pieces of heritage paper spanning 100 years have been given to 100 artists to create a piece of work. Invited by appletye.org to be one of those artists, I have been allotted the year 1991.
Towards the close of '91, one rather large event dominates - namely, the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I decided to divide the paper into 15 pieces and send a piece to each of the 15 union republics of the former Soviet Union, attached to an explanatory letter. The final piece is now a short video. It pulls together my own narrative with various slogans sourced from Soviet posters, hinting at commonalities from what might appear at first sight to be politically polarised perspectives.
"There are many things I could have done with this fragment of paper – but in the end I decided to look outwards, to give it away, in much the same spirit as it has been given to me. This act reflects the use of paper as a vehicle for communication across the preceding centuries.
It is a small gesture, and one which has no overt ‘political’ intent. It is simply a token of good will towards you and all the citizens of your country."
(extract from the covering letter)
(extract from the covering letter)
Caroline Street: The absence of something…revisited
Caroline Street: The absence of something…revisited - view from the top of the street
**UPDATE: This project received Arts Council funding and was shown at the OVADA gallery in Oxford spring 2019 Title: Neither Use Nor Ornament
***UPDATE: SCULPTORVOX...is the name of a new print magazine which features my early work at Caroline Street . The subject of this edition (Jan 2018) is 'The Geometry of Nothing'.
Malmö Folkets park, Baltic exhibition 1914... click here to see more
a UK/Swedish project : FREE TRADE
The basis of this project, which will encompass photography, moving image and the written word, is that two contemporary spaces – the soon to be developed Malmo Quay in Newcastle upon Tyne and Malmö in Sweden - form the jumping off point for a semi-fictional narrative. This narrative looks at issues around migration and trade between nations over time.
the Multo calculating machine - manufactured in Malmö and imported into Newcastle in the 1950's
My collodian glass plate of the Multo in 2015
'White man' demonstration near Malmo Quay, Newcastle.
