Art & Sport

Today the opposite of tomato is 'stabbing a sorry heart with your favourite finger'


graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm
original source: The Times ‘The Game’ 09/06/08

The original newspaper image from which this drawing was transcribed was chosen for displaying a couple of familiar photographic traits, namely that ‘frozen moment in time’, movement & action being arrested, & also the manner in which the image is cropped for maximum effect: the figure diving to the right, in the opposite direction to that in which the ball is travelling, a futile, hopeless gesture, needs not be described in full in order to communicate what the image has to & does, with perfect economy – the punning title ‘Two Feet the Wrong Way’, although perfectly descriptive, was in fact superfluous.

Keen observers may have spotted the presence once again of our old favourite & faithful Modernist grid as the main compositional structure underlying & informing the image, in the form of the goal net, & its making, with the drawing being processed on a cell-by-cell basis.

As ever, I was struck, in the process of making this drawing, just how little football &, indeed, sport in general, seems to feature in a fine art context, as subject matter. As in the case of my earlier ‘Renaissance Men’ drawing & related post, where The Times' art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston drew parallels between the pose assumed, naturally, by a group of footballers acknowledging the scoring of a goal & classic, archetypal compositional methods of historical painting, this might at first seem strange, especially considering the ubiquity of sport, football in particular, in the general contemporary cultural & social landscape, but then, perhaps, photography & the moving image best serve the picturing of sport & the capture of its essential nature, action & drama. Still, sport, especially football, which one associates with being performed in colourful outfits, might because of this be thought to provide suitable scope for artistic endeavour, particularly painting, but this is rarely the case. Racking my brains to think of any suitable images from the history of art, I was sure that Futurism had addressed such omissions & eventually a little light research uncovered one such rare example:


Umberto Boccioni ‘Dynamism of a Soccer Player’
oil/canvas, 1913

Interesting to note that whilst photography captures the frozen moment, at least in the great majority of sporting images, this painting, as Futurism habitually attempted to do, strives to suggest movement, reinforced by its title, which again makes it seem strange that more painting largely failed to follow in its wake, especially when considering the fluidity of a medium such as oil paint.


Michael Browne 'The Art of the Game'
oil/canvas, 1997

Another much more recent example, which yet harks back to a considerably earlier time, tradition & style of painting, is Michael Browne's thought-provoking, challenging Renaissance-idiom portrait of the French former footballer Eric Cantona depicted as, perhaps rather controversially, contentiously, the Christ figure, surrounded by other contemporaneous, recognizable figures from the world of football (in fact, a selection of his then-club team-mates & manager): Cantona was, perhaps, through the force of his idiosyncratic personality - cod-philosophical, self-consciously 'arty' & 'serious', distanced from the normal breed of 'laddish', uncomplicated (English) footballer - & iconic status, a fitting subject for such unusual artistic treatment (& also, perhaps, on occasion a suitable case for treatment!).


Piero della Francesca 'Resurrection' 1463

As can be seen, Michael Browne's representation is based very closely on & refers to Piero della Francesca's 'Resurrection', taking as its template the tight, precise, mathematical composition of the original painting, which sets up an interesting dialogue with, again, Rachel Campbell-Johnston's already referred-to analysis of the photograph from which I transcribed the 'Renaissance Men' drawing.


Leo Fitzmaurice

An interesting body of work, that creatively & skilfully makes use of discarded cardboard packaging & succinctly draws attention to the links between sport & sponsorship - often by purveyors of tobacco-based & alcoholic products - has been produced by Leo Fitzmaurice, who transforms cigarette packets, folded & torn, into models of the football shirts sported (no pun intended) by players &, in replica form, supporters alike: these are exquisite little objects, so convincingly reminding one of the logo-liveried shirts of contemporary football teams, the marriage of corporate identities. Fitzmaurice's cardboard 'shirts' might also be a subtle critical comment on the disposable nature of the replica versions of teams' jerseys, 'must-have' items of high fashion sold to the captive, willing market of supporters at (seemingly) expensive prices & changed in design - often on but the very finest points of detail - on a regular, sometimes annual basis, to be discarded in favour of the purchase of the update, essential to the sense of true 'belonging'.


In terms of football & the broader spectrum of the visual arts, another recent & striking 'collaboration' between the two has been the film directed by Turner Prize-winning artist-film maker Douglas Gordon & Phillipe Parreno, featuring the elegant artistic genius (along with the necessary physical presence & aggression) of arguably the game's greatest then-current player, Zinedine Zidane (another Frenchman, of course), throughout the course of a single match, for his Spanish club Real Madrid versus domestic rivals Villarreal: more a conceptual piece of cinema than 'mere' football documentary, this is arguably the closest coicidence of the game & art yet, located still further in the realm of 'the artistic' courtesy of its accompanying musical score (no pun intended, but an interesting contextual double meaning & coincidence there) being provided by the band Mogwai, who are regarded as inhabiting the more 'avant garde' fringes of their particular artform.

But not a remarkably great deal else: perhaps the subject matter, generally, as perceived, remains too ‘low’ to engage serious artists…it does actually seem to be difficult to reconcile art & sport & the worlds they inhabit & needs they address – the closest I get is listening to the cricket commentary on the radio whilst drawing, but then again, the lack of visuals perhaps lends suitable distance from the cricket to facilitate proper engagement with the drawing, & I also consider cricket, like art - & seemingly being of a more similarly contemplative nature than most other sports - to be a branch of philosophy anyway, thus neatly avoiding any conflict of interests!

The most topical confluence of art & sport probably occurred with the recent ‘Sport Relief’ portraits of various sporting personalities by a selection of artists - not all necessarily of the 'fine' ilk - including Peter Blake (of the boxer Ricky Hatton), Gerald Scarfe (Didier Drogba), Jack Vettriano (Zara Phillips) & Stella Vine (Drogba again & Fabio Cappello): actually, if one considers wrestling to be a sport – rather than, perhaps, entertainment of a pantomimic sort – Blake might be considered to have produced one of the most sustained bodies of sporting art, having long made work based on such subject matter & characters amongst his exploration of popular culture in general as suitable subject matter for the ‘high’ art of painting. Picasso's bullfight images might also be classed within the realm of 'sporting' fine art.


Peter Blake ‘Ricky Hatton’

Soundtrack:


Charlotte Gainsbourg ‘5:55’
Echo & the Bunnymen ‘Ocean Rain’
Cocteau Twins 'Lullabies to Violaine’ vol. 1, ‘Blue Bell Knoll’, ‘Heaven or Las Vegas’
Rachel Unthank & the Winterset ‘The Bairns’
My Bloody Valentine ‘Loveless’

Making various sonic equivalents & crossovers between the latter 3 bands in particular…also, drawing ‘Ocean Rain’ into the fold, considering how perfectly some albums create their own worlds. Whilst the 2 proper Cocteau Twins’ albums seemed somewhat insubstantial on the whole, the collection of EPs from the earlier part of their history to the mid-80s contains much music that endures & sounds, still, like no other, powerful & astonishing. Likewise, little before or since makes quite such a blissful racket as 'Loveless'...peerless.

Yves Saint Laurent

graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm
original source: 'The Guardian' 03/06/08

Amongst the photographs illustrating the newspaper obituaries of Yves Saint Laurent last week appeared the particular one from which this latest drawing was transcribed: quite possibly it’s my favourite of the source material used so far, having a compelling appearance so redolent of the Sixties amongst its attractions which also include the basic composition & the expression in the model’s eyes – as befitting the subject, perhaps, it’s such a stylish image in every way.

The drawing itself is the second made from the original inverted, as in the recent example similarly inspired by Malcolm Morley's habitual method of doing so - again, the process of transcription becomes a more abstract one, resolving itself into a figurative whole upon completion & re-invertion the right way up again.

Obviously being aware of YSL’s iconic status but not necessarily of all the subtleties as to why exactly – I’m no great follower of fashion or its history, whilst attempting to remain stylish at all times, of course, at least in one’s own idiosyncratic manner! - something struck me as being perfect aesthetically, fashionably, yet unusually, whilst keeping an eye on the Euro 2008 football match between Holland & Italy. Traditionally, the Dutch players sport orange socks to match their always vivid shirts but the latest, current incarnation of their strip featured a delightfully surprising variation in the form of sky blue socks: somehow, this just looks so absolutely ‘right’ – my favourites for the tournament, certainly for these aesthetic reasons, which are the only ones that matter…although the breathtaking speed & precision with which the team broke & scored 2 of their goals in the match are perhaps another & footballing reason to be attracted to them. On a related point, it should be noted that the Italian shirts were, unfortunately, a shade or 2 darker than their usual perfect, beautiful, deep azure ‘Azzurri’ blue – a reason perhaps for their less-than-perfect defensive frailities that enabled the Dutch to so ruthlessly defeat them.



Soundtrack:


PJ Harvey 'White Chalk'

More Obsessions...

The very first proper post on this blog featured a reference to an ongoing photographic project that figures within the narrative of the film ‘Smoke’, wherein one of the characters has daily taken an early morning picture from the same spot of the crossroads scene opposite his tobacconist store: ostensibly, the photos – which number 4000 – are all the same, but of course each is different in an infinite variety of details – e.g. weather & light conditions, the presence & passage or absence of human & vehicular traffic.

In a circular coming-up-to-date & similar vein, I’ve recently acquired & read a most interesting little publication, being aware of its existence for some time: Harland Miller’s ‘First I Was Afraid, I was Petrified’. Essentially a short story on the subject & nature of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, it is illustrated, delightfully, fascinatingly, by a series of photographs of the same subject – an ordinary, domestic gas cooker with all points switched to & showing their ‘off’ position, in order to allay the owner-sufferer’s fears of their house being consumed by fire during their absence at work – all ostensibly the same, again, but all showing slight variations on the theme, through light conditions, focus & incidental details, as illustrated.




There's also an amusing little twist at the end. A fine work of art to have, refer to & enjoy.

I’m very aware of the obsessive, compulsive nature of, for instance, drawing &, perhaps, particularly the current Project. There also seems to be a very strong sense of such in my other current reading matter - as previously mentioned, Georges Perec’s ‘Life a User’s Manual’ & the tendency of its narrative to obsessively list, for example, the contents of rooms & apartments in minute detail: it’s a curious read but deeply rewarding in its idiosyncrasies.

Maxximum Emotion

Today the opposite of tomato is "a little down with a lifetime to go"...


graphite & watercolour/20x30cm
original source: ‘The Guardian’ 22/05/08

Contemporaneous with photographic images in the daily newspapers of the anguished faces of surviving victims of the Chinese earthquake, & uncontrollably blubbing incompetent footballers (you know who), appeared the source from which this drawing was transcribed, illustrating an advertisement for the store TK Maxx urging potential customers not to be left upset at missing the bargains available through their latest designer promotion. Scanning through the pages of the newspaper, the images obviously occupy similar weight at a purely visual level, & indeed this one was chosen as raw material because it displayed the most aesthetic appeal to me (accusations of superficiality would be, of course, entirely warranted). However, removed, liberated from its original context, & drawn in monochrome from a vividly coloured source, the image has the potential to take on new meaning for any spectator, dependent on their subjectivity & perhaps assuming no prior knowledge of the source. Interesting to remark, then, upon the recourse to signs to signify such as emotion: here, in an entirely artificial construct, the wildly dishevelled hair, mascara-streaked cheeks, set of the mouth on the cusp of tremulousness & look in the eyes suggest, express a ‘significant’ degree of distress at odds with the everyday reality of the situation – this, of course, is also what acting, theatre, cinema does, in common with this image in both its original form & drawn representation, to varying degrees of convincing believability.

Perhaps the most iconic image of a weeping woman would be Picasso’s 1937 painting of that title, produced subsequent to his masterpiece of the Spanish Civil War, ‘Guernica’, which itself features a grieving female figure amongst its cast, & of which the image below is a related drawing. Aware of the historical, contextual references informing the paintings, one can be utterly convinced of the emotional charge they convey & the resonance they have, however stylized, aestheticized the representation.


Picasso 'Woman Weeping' drawing

Soundtrack:


Elvis Costello & the Attractions 'Girls Girls Girls'
Scott Walker 'Sings Jacques Brel'

Two Sides to a Story...

graphite/60x30cm (3 parts, each 20x30cm)
original sources: 'Daily Telegraph' & 'Daily Mirror' 20/05/08

This image in three parts was transcribed from two original sources, showing an opposite view of the same event, the former appearing in one of the more demure 'quality' broadsheets, the latter from one of the brasher tabloids...interesting to note, however, that both pictures were captioned with punning headlines.

Soundtrack:

'Test Match Special' (England v NZ)

and another of those holiday-time trawls through the dusty corners of the CD collection...


Luna 'Best of'
The Birthday Party - homemade compilation from 'Prayers on Fire', 'Junkyard' & EPs
Bjork 'Homogenic'
Super Furry Animals 'Phantom Power'
Lambchop 'I Hope You're Sitting Down'
Beth Orton 'Central Reservation'
Dandy Warhols 'Come Down'
Sigur Ros 'Takk'
PJ Harvey 'Is This Desire?'
Chris Whitley 'Living With the Law'
Morrissey 'Suedehead' (best of)
Cowboy Junkies 'Whites Off Earth Now!!'

The World Turned Upside Down

Today the opposite of tomato is ‘dance, dance, dance, dance, dancing to the radio’ (& singing along to ‘Transmission’ & other of the songs of Joy Division)


graphite/30x20cm
original source: ‘The Guardian’ 13/05/09

Featuring another drawing transcribed from a newspaper photograph compositionally featuring a distinct grid format (see numerous previous posts referring to the personal addiction to this icon of artistic Modernism), done so on a deliberate, resolved square-by-square basis as much as possible.

The drawing was actually made in the manner illustrated below, i.e. from the original source inverted.


The inspiration for this technique was that of the painter Malcolm Morley, observed doing so in a recently-watched DVD featuring the artist discussing his work in a most interesting, engaging & entertaining manner whilst painting.

The film itself is one of a whole series of interviews with individual contemporary artists produced by Illuminations, going under the umbrella title of ‘theEYE’. The films are most informative, being of a format that allows the artists themselves to talk – at about 25 minutes length – about their work whilst in its company or otherwise illustrated by specific examples of taken from across the individual’s career: the access this allows to the creative process, influences, techniques, etc, expressed in someone’s own words, builds up a fascinating portrait of a particular artist – with instant ‘influential’ results, as can be seen!

Returning specifically to Morley, the technique he currently employs is to take a newspaper photograph, divide it into squares (measuring & then cutting, rather than leaving it in one piece), squaring-up a canvas accordingly, & then attaching the inverted sections of the photo next to the square on which he will transcribe it, enlarged, faithfully, meticulously, in paint, physically working from the top left of the canvas across & down but of course transcribing the photo from its bottom right, upside down. In this manner, the image is only resolved when the finished canvas is inverted to reproduce the photo in its original state, & the working process is thus an accretion of small finished sections at a time – all, in themselves, individual abstract paintings that only exist in relation to their immediate neighbours as the process unfolds.

In this manner, working from the inverted photographic original & from, as habitually, top left to lower right, was the drawing made, being an abstract process disconnected from any figurative considerations, an interesting variation on the usual process of transcription.

Further to ‘theEYE’ films, I intended during the previous post to make mention of Gary Hume’s in the series, which had reminded me of his ‘Water Paintings’ & provided the direct inspiration for the related ‘overlaid images’ composite drawing from the tabloid ‘girlie’ original sources.

Soundtrack:


Scritti Politti ‘White Bread Black Beer’
PJ Harvey ‘Uh Huh Her’
Bjork – homemade compilation from ‘Debut’, ‘Post’ & remixed tracks
Wire ‘A Bell is a Cup Until it is Struck’
Low ‘Trust’
Luna ‘Best of’

and, in memory of Ian Curtis & the anniversary of his death on 18th May (1980),


Joy Division ‘Unknown Pleasures’, ‘Closer’ & ‘Substance’ –
still magnificent after all these years.

Seeing Double

graphite/20x30cm
original source(s): ‘The Sun’ 01/05/08 & the ‘Daily Star’ 14/05/08

As an attempt at something a little different, this transcription features a composition combining the images from two separate photographic originals.
Tidying up at work one day, I retrieved a discarded or forgotten copy of the tabloid newspaper ‘The Sun’. This publication in particular is renowned for its tradition of the ‘Page 3 girl’, in the best pin-up tradition, a topless pose of a young woman, of a so-called ‘glamorous’ nature, & I wondered if it might be possible to incorporate such an image into The Project, given its archetypal standing within the newspaper photo canon, & if such unambiguously titillating subject matter might be reclaimed in some way for art, if rendering such as a drawing, through the process of, might alter its reception & meaning in any way. Given that such examples from the history of art as many of the typical ‘Salon’ paintings of the 19th century as referenced & indeed transcribed recently could reasonably be claimed as & criticized for being made for similar purposes – although perhaps appealing to a more bourgeois audience than the British tabloid press’s target audience – I was concerned that such a drawing might merely fall into the same trap &, whilst a solution was intermittently contemplated, remained on hold as a ‘possibility’, but, then, subsequently retrieving a copy of another such newspaper, the ‘Daily Star’, containing a similar image, I was presented with an opportunity to attempt a different approach than what might otherwise be a more or less straight transcription. Another more recent example from the history of art more obviously displaying such 'glamorous' subject matter might be the work, in general, of the Pop artist Mel Ramos, which often references, in seemingly celebratory fashion, the world of advertising's use of naked young women's bodies to sell products of almost any nature, especially those that might appeal to men's sense of their own masculinity.

Hence the inspiration for this drawing – although itself being done on a considerably reduced scale & thus lacking much complexity - was an example of Gary Hume’s 'Water Paintings', which I saw as part of his exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1999, large-scale works of multiple, overlapping line drawings of nudes, based on magazine photos, punctuated by flat areas of colour (the lines in fact being the bare aluminium surface of the support), where the multiplicity of facial features, breasts, nipples, etc, renders their being read as belonging to any specific figure ambiguous.


Gary Hume ‘Water Painting’
household gloss on aluminium/1999

Bookish

graphite/20x30cm
original source: 'The Guardian' G2, 12/03/08

The source image of this transcription is a ‘photograph’ – convincingly real enough in appearance - of something that doesn’t actually exist, at least yet, the subject being, rather, a proposal by the Chinese architect Zhang Ke for the ‘Book Tower’, two blocks of urban dwellings. The appeal of such a subject, such an architectural idea, at least aesthetically, should be obvious to a bibliophile, although I entertain serious reservations as to whether you’d ever get me up in one of those things, were it ever to be realised. There’s something obviously Cubist about the look of such structures, the forms, planes, appearing fractured, suggesting perhaps the shifting of plates over each other, as though one occupies the privileged position of being able to view the towers from a variety of angles at once - viewing them in the round, in motion, when one considers how architecture is usually experienced, especially in pictorial form, from a fixed perspective - which is at the same time unsettling, somehow potentially vertigo-inducing, through unfamiliarity & the sense of movement, of slippage, of the whole(s) being on the point of collapsing over, into each other. As indeed a stack of books might do, something I’m constantly aware of, given the stacks of books existing on the floor here due to limited proper storage space…

On the subject of books, I’m currently consulting ‘Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing’ a great deal. A broad survey of contemporary drawing practice in all its many guises, the book contains a fine introductory essay by Emma Dexter, locating the place of drawing as a fundamental human activity, how it communicates, an overview of its history, its development & the variety of roles it occupies in contemporary creative practice, all most informative & thought-provoking. I’m particularly interested in the distinctive nature of drawing as an artistic activity & the process of doing so – I love the notion proposed within the essay of the incomplete nature of drawing(s), how it/they are always in a state of becoming & remain so, as opposed to painting which might be expected to strive for & arrive at some sense of completion, although I do subscribe to the idea of Andrew Benjamin of ‘the work of art’, something along the lines where any artwork remains in a constant & enduring state of ‘becoming’, its sense of closure forever deferred due to art’s dependence on the viewer to complete the circle of the work it performs.

Of the featured artists, I’m engaged in aesthetic terms not least by the work of D-L Alvarez, producing ‘pixellated’, grid-format drawings based on archive media photographs of, for instance, aspects of the history of such culturally familiar & significant subjects as the so-called ‘Manson family’ that of course formally reference Modernist pictorial concerns through the explicit statement of the grid, thus recalling the failure of the project of artistic Modernism, occurring at around the same time many of the romantic cultural ideals of the period were turning sour, embodied by such events as those surrounding the Manson clan.


D-L Alvarez '\\\' 2003
graphite/38.75x27.5"


D-L Alvarez 'Mary Mary' 2004
graphite/(in two parts) 21.5x15.375" each


D-L Alvarez 'Rise' 2005
graphite/20.625x28.25"

In a related manner, an artist such as Paul Noble has long been engaged with similar subject matter through his construction of his intricately-detailed, meticulously drawn ‘Nobson Newtown’, an idealistic, utopian social project that has become instead something of a doomed, dystopian nightmare as such are wont to do. Through this, we might link back to the drawing of Zhang Ke’s proposed ‘Book Tower’ if considering the trend in the UK in the 1960s & 70s to replace whole streets, networks of dwellings, communities, with high-rise developments that ultimately seemed to create more social problems than they solved.


Paul Noble 'Nobson Central' 2000
graphite

Again, it’s interesting, in such a context, that Emma Dexter’s essay foregrounds the romantic, subjective nature of a significant amount of drawing practice & how such are regaining a degree of currency in artists’ practice, an aspect particularly facilitated by drawing, & not least the immediacy of its nature, as a means of communication & expression, & its ability to explore & propose any manner of alternative, imaginative realities, how, following Paul Klee’s lead, ‘taking a line for a walk’ can lead just about anywhere one wishes or dreams.


Also, for some fictional relief, but nonetheless requiring equally close reading & concentration, Georges Perec’s ‘Life a User’s Manual’, coincidentally discovered in Oxfam shortly after having encountered a mention, recommendation, of it, ‘somewhere’. Although only a short way in thus far, it has engaged my attention from the beginning, itself describing the nature & form of a jigsaw puzzle which the subsequent narrative then takes, being divided into sections containing a series of short chapters, short stories each, which overlap, interlace & interlock in the manner of a jigsaw. The story is set in a building, divided into apartments (pieces of the whole), which, in a grid form (wouldn’t you just know it - note also the cover design of the edition in question, of grids within a grid...there's no escape!), the narrative describes in a seemingly random fashion, cataloguing the contents of these rooms which in their turn tell stories of the lives of their owners, the inhabitants, which overlap each other in the service of a grander, related narrative: for example, one of the (apparently major) characters is a watercolour artist who, over a period of many years, has sent a series of paintings made on his global travels (in the company of his factotum, another of the building’s residents) to another of the building’s residents assigned the task of converting these into jigsaw puzzles for, upon his return, the artist to reassemble.

Soundtrack:


Rachel Unthank & the Winterset ‘The Bairns’
Belle & Sebastian ‘Dear Catastrophe Waitress’ & ‘The Life Pursuit’

Renaissance Men

graphite/20x30cm
original source: 'The Times' 2, 02/05/08

This image, actually not featured, as might be expected, within the sports pages of the newspaper but rather as its 'Image of the Day' elsewhere, was chosen for transcription for the 'art-historical' reasons described within the text accompanying the photograph, presented here in the author's own words as originally printed.



Soundtrack:


Scritti Politti 'White Bread Black Beer'

Looking Up...

Today the opposite of tomato is the enduring melancholy beauty of the music of The Go-Betweens


graphite & putty eraser/30x60cm (3 parts, each 30x20cm)
original source: ‘The Guardian’ 28/04/08

This image was chosen for transcription primarily for the juxtaposition of the contemporary figure with those fauns in the painting, of a European academic, ‘Salon’, clichéd, bourgeois style popular particularly during the first half of the 19th century & of a type that pioneer realists & Modernists such as Courbet & Manet sought to challenge & render redundant through their art. The art-historical combination of clothed male & naked female figures was a familiar one, & perpetuated by Courbet & Manet in, for example, ‘The Painter’s Studio’ & ‘Dejeuner sur l’Herbe’ respectively & again here in the source photograph, of Russia’s wealthiest oligarch at the Irkutsk Oblast Museum of Art (accessing the institution’s website has alas not yielded the artist & title of the painting in question). The photo’s composition might also be said to follow a clichéd convention in picturing all concerned united in their heavenward gazes.

Soundtrack:


Sigur Ros ‘Takk’
Lambchop ‘Aw C’mon’ & ‘No, You C’mon’

06/05/08


In fond remembrance of the work of the late Grant McLennan, on the 2nd anniversary of his untimely death (upon which I posted at the time), The Go-Betweens in all their glory:

‘Before Hollywood’, ‘Spring Hill Fair’, ‘Liberty Belle & the Black Diamond Express’, ‘Tallulah’, ‘16 Lover’s Lane’, ‘The Friends of Rachel Worth’ & ‘Bright Yellow, Bright Orange’