Ubiquity

In the traditional manner in which serendipity has occurred here at TOoT, on numerous occasions in the past, so flattened drinks cans (reformed thus, one might assume, as ‘roadkill’) have returned to consciousness thricefold recently.

In the first instance, one was found & considered to be suitable enough object-matter for a return to drawing such that a drawing was duly embarked upon, before a pause occurred allowing reflection upon the efficacy of continuing such an endeavour (essentially, this concerned matters of available daylight hours, & the seasonally dwindling nature of, in which to pursue what would be such a labour-intensive task involving not only the representation of the crumpled surface of the can but also that of the sheet of paper upon which it had been placed for the purposes of active contemplation of both): photographic evidence of the decisively abandoned/postponed circumstances is hereby presented.

Following this, it came to my attention but a few days later that, amongst the selected work on exhibition at the John Moores Painting Prize 2012, was a painting by Laura Keeble, entitled "I’d like to teach the world to sing!" made upon the support of a flattened Cola-Cola can (to be found amongst an online gallery of the exhibition, & also, with a brief explanation of its coming-into-being & in the company of two similar works, at the artist’s website here).

The very next evening, A & I happened to be visiting a local theatre where the cultural produce currently showing included a substantial retrospective exhibition of the work of a number of years of Wales-based artist Terry Setch, featuring, amongst other subject/object matter, representations (as elements within compositions in the form of large scale digital prints) & actual examples of such found detritus embedded within mixed media polythene-sealed paintings-collages-objects, most striking ‘pictures’ indeed.

Suddenly, following a period of hibernation, flattened cans – ‘my’ flattened cans, ever-deferred at the point of embarkation upon a ‘big project’ - were everywhere to be seen!