Portal to the Past

Recently intrigued by what might lurk behind the mirrored door of a particular bathroom cabinet, upon which items-in-current-use are placed for ease of access, curiosity got the better of me & thus I ventured on...

Imaging the surprise in discovering what appeared to be a veritable treasure-trove museum of perfectly preserved products &, particularly, packaging design, albeit on a small scale. Absolutely fascinating stuff, the results here presented as simple photographic record, firstly offering a comparison between examples of contemporary & 'historic' product packaging (note, for instance, that 'Immac' is now 'Veet', & the likelihood is that other items & names might no longer exist at all)...


and then the old items existing independently, as stored, in the manner of nothing less than a time capsule: appearing, perhaps, as though the cabinet had been stocked by the Blank Workshop. Without as yet engaging in further research, the packages appear to date from, probably, the 1970s, possibly a little later, maybe even earlier (the 'Algipan', for example, looks positively vintage in the bold simplicity of its matter-of-fact design), but, whatever, reference the past, & the time of one's childhood, in a profoundly palpable manner: what an aesthetic treat.


Coincidental to this delightful aesthetic discovery, I've just finished reading Howard Sounes's cultural survey of 'The Seventies', which, based upon the premise that the decade as generally perceived in retrospect was something of an artistic wasteland & the stereotypical 'time that taste forgot', endeavours to subvert this theory & accordingly features an interesting selection of art & its makers across a broad spectrum of disciplines during the decade in question, including popular music, the visual arts, architecture & literature. Although mostly covering already familiar examples - Davids Bowie & Hockney, Andy Warhol, Monty Python, the Sex Pistols & 'Jaws' (as novel & film) for instance - the chapters on cinema I found particularly enjoyable & informative, from the naturalistic tradition of directors such as Martin Scorcese & Bob Rafelson & movies such as 'Five Easy Pieces', which brought such an iconic screen presence as Jack Nicholson to prominence, through the protracted, harrowing gestation of Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now' to Woody Allen's classics 'Annie Hall' & 'Manhattan'. Similarly with some of the architectural highlights built to a finish during the period such as the (former) World Trade Center, Sydney Opera House & the Pompidou Centre, there's many a fascinating & enlightening back-story to be relayed in the details of their conception & creation.
Overall, there's an entertaining blend of well-researched first-hand anecdotal evidence & contextual explication - often cross-referencing - that continues throughout the book & its coverage of the times' more colourful cultural characters such as Norman Mailer, Bob Marley & Hunter S. Thompson, whose tale makes particularly amusing reading, as indeed does that of the Sex Pistols. Jolly good stuff, & recommended reading.


By way of another coincidence, & referencing another indispensible publication, the legend on the side of the box of 'Algipan', as featured amongst the photographed contents of the bathroom cabinet, reveals the product's manufacturer to be a 'Wyeth' corporation, a name which, in an art context, has recently returned to my attention, courtesy of the almost-topically recently-deceased Andrew Wyeth's 'Helga Pictures' being amongst the books retrieved from storage. Although ignored by the surveys & histories of modern art, & dismissed by progressive, modern criticism as, mostly, a mere illustrator working within the confines of a tradition of realist American art, Wyeth's intense study of the single subject Helga Testorf, over a 15 year period, through a variety of painting techniques & drawing, comprises a profound & compelling record of the artist-model relationship & the possibilities of communication of mood & atmosphere & the passage of time (albeit at an apparently glacial pace but for the obvious occasional changing of seasons) inherent in such a sustained body of work: as the still, mute, self-contained centre of the universe of interiors & landscapes, light & shade, created & recorded by Wyeth, Helga makes an endlessly fascinating & wonderfully contemplative subject.



The most recent drawing, of a nude though not consciously inspired by the example of Andrew Wyeth & Helga, returns to the theme of being processed from a source displaying something of a degraded appearance: in this instance, however, rather than being subsequently photomechanically 'distanced', the original is used as the immediate model, itself having been subjected prior to reproduction to some obvious form of 'vintage filter' treatment that softens the finer details in the manner of Gerhard Richter's blurring, 'unpainting' technique.


graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm
original source: 'The Times' 2 26/01/09

Soundtrack:


PiL 'Metal Box'
Portishead 'Third'
Black Box Recorder 'England Made Me'
Pet Shop Boys 'Art'
Jesus & Mary Chain 'Darklands'

If it is possible for something to sparkle blackly, then that's what 'Darklands' does, another bleak beauty from the archives that fits the prevailing, enveloping, comforting sonic aesthetic.

Artistic Inspiration

Today the opposite of tomato is 'Moderate or Good, Occasionally Poor'*


graphite & putty eraser/diptych 40x30cm
source: 5th generation B&W p/copy of colour p/copy from reproduced original photograph

Related to the previous drawing & its print media origins, this most recent example was also sourced from an arts publication available via the day job, in this instance a brief article in the March issue of ‘Artists & Illustrators’ promoting the work of the painter Anna King.
In its original form, this source actually comprises two horizontal format images, easily recognizable through their obvious differentiation as being a reproduction of an example of Anna’s work above a photograph depicting the artist herself, against a suitably distressed wood-panelled backdrop that references the particular nature of her aesthetic. However, taking a colour photocopy of these two images together as they appear on the page & then subsequently subjecting this copy to the photomechanical ‘degrading’ process of numerous stages of monochrome copies-from-copies results in a homogenizing effect (‘de-photographizing’ the photograph of the artist in particular) that enables the images to be read on the same visual terms, suggesting they could be used in combination ‘as one’ by the simple expedient of ignoring, removing, the white space separating them as copied, thus incorporating & continuing something of the notion of ‘duality’ introduced by this drawing’s predecessor via that particular source image’s creator Francesco Valentino. This marriage of disparate source images through the intermediary of a process of reproduction might be something to be considered for further exploration...

Further to the work of Anna King, it’s certainly a welcome discovery. The artist’s website features a generous selection of her paintings, for the most part of post-industrial wastelands, down-at-heel, decaying, delapidated, on-the-edge-of-urban, 'inbetween' spaces, unpopulated places that display signs of one-time human habitation but, as depicted, appear abandoned & on the verge or in the process of reclamation by nature. The limited palette of greys, earth browns & dull greens - although themselves subjected to an infinite, delightful variety of subtle changes in tone & hue, expertly modulated - are perfectly suited to the subject matter & give the paintings their quiet, subdued, contemplative air. Other images of isolated cottages or woods sheltering beneath expansive pale grey skies of a gentle luminosity communicate a similar quality of the encroachment of the elements & the vastness of natural space, the sense of which is emphasised by the paintings' often 'widescreen' horizontal format, Ivon Hitchens-like, cinematic in scale. Technically, the works display a loose, painterly brushwork combined with an equally exquisite element of informal pencil-drawn line that describes architecture & other man-made structure with just the right sense of suggested impermanence. This drawn aspect of the paintings is a particularly attractive feature, especially so, of course, in the context of this blog's commitment to drawing. All in all, Anna King's work is wonderfully compelling, slowly revealing the subtleties of its quiet secrets of the forgotten & overlooked, & a find to be treasured.

Soundtrack:


Throwing Muses 'In a Doghouse' (CD1)
Portishead 'Third'
Moon Wiring Club 'Shoes Off and Chairs Away'
Lambchop 'Is a Woman'
Rickie Lee Jones 'Traffic From Paradise'
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds 'The Boatman's Call'
Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man 'Out of Season'
Black Box Recorder 'England Made Me'

* Another listening pleasure, briefly interrupting TMS as it does during its BBC Radio 4 transmission, is to enjoy, from a landlubber layman's perspective, the consequently entirely abstract qualities of the Shipping Forecast, the mantra of distant names evocative & the whole strangely soothing within the comfort of the home 'studio'.

On the Edge of Cool

Today the opposite of tomato is a mess - or if it ain't, it'll do 'til the mess gets here...


graphite, putty & plastic erasers & papiers colles/30x20cm
source: 3rd generation B&W photocopy of colour p/copy of print-reproduced photograph

Returning for source material from the recent brief sojourn on the Internet to the print media as previously, but broadening in scope from the limits of daily newspapers, the image from which this drawing was processed originally graced the cover of the November/December 2007 'Scandinavian' issue of the excellent & irresistible textiles publication Selvedge, access to the hard copy of which is provided courtesy of the day job: it is such a beautiful & compelling image, straight in with a bullet to the upper echelons of the hit parade of favourite photographs, being the work of Francesco Valentino, & featuring the modelling (by Maria) of fashions by Michiko Koshino against the backdrop of the 'Icehotel' in the village of Jukkasjärvi near Kiruna in Sweden. Given the cold & snowy spell in which the UK has been gripped, there's a pleasing topicality about the discovery of such an image, & something rather enjoyable too about having an excuse to stay indoors in the warmth whilst engaged in the transcription process.

As in all of this year's work to date, the drawing is based immediately upon a photomechanically 'degraded' image a number of generations down the line from the original source. In this particular instance, the presence of the hanging animal pelts to the left of & behind the human figure (a concept informing Valentino's work is that of contrast & duality, which, aesthetically, contributes in no small measure to the appeal of the image whilst also providing food for further thought) inspired an attempt to realise this textured aspect of the drawing in more physical form: the shapes of each of the four separate segments, skins, forming the whole were carefully torn from a sheet of paper (the edges thus providing another form of 'drawing') & then pasted onto the base page, overlapping in places, this 'object' then standing slightly proud of the surface of the whole page, its edges destined to catch & hold some of the pencil marks subsequently applied-erased in the course of the habitual drawing process. Alas, the surface of the paper used (the same type as the base) proved largely resistant to the breaking-up effect I hoped would take place under the pressure of erasure (something like a better quality Fabriano paper, as I used to use when making larger-scale charcoal drawings, has a lovely crumbly surface that breaks easily & aids the creation of ragged textures and suchlike), thus these pasted elements of the drawing are not as textured & distressed as envisaged, & the drawing as a whole consequently not quite as 'object-like' as intended : note to try something different in future.

Soundtrack:


Portishead 'Third'
'Test Match Special' WI v Eng 1st Test, days 2-4

Addictive listening in both cases: Portishead's 'Third' is lodged in the mind, unshiftably, to be returned to obsessively at present, its sonic aesthetic & consequent mood feeling most appropriate to the the times: whilst TMS, when available, is an essential accompaniment to the working process - good company, passionate, informative, erudite, amusing & greatly entertaining, conjuring images of & creating another world, without making any demands for interaction other than that one listens, absolutely perfect. Excellent First Test of the current series, proceeding in stately fashion before a rapid, thrilling & unexpectedly early denouement. It seems fitting too to acknowledge, with regret, the passing of the estimable TMS scorer Bill Frindall, whose learned presence & subtle interjections will surely be missed: RIP.

Good Things in Small Packages

Brought to my attention by my lovely friend Rebecca & originating via this press release on the University of Gloucestershire website, comes news of another must-see-&-follow artist’s blog, namely & documenting Dan Young’s intended year-long project of a painting-a-day, beginning last November & continuing apace. Another ‘Old Pittvillean’ (as is the aforementioned Rebecca, artist-blogger Kirsty Hall & yours truly), Dan’s series of small format oil paintings, luscious & seductive, comprises simple still lifes of, naturally, all manner of small objects (or fragments of), that have some relevance to the given day - those that might be overlooked or unconsidered, at least as subject matter for painting - elevated to the realm of art, from wooden toy figures, art materials (from pencils, pastels to pans & blobs of paint & even a small mound of dry ultramarine pigment that seems very Anish Kapoor), a Brussels sprout (on Xmas day, of course), half-eaten biscuits, crocheted mushrooms to clumps of earth &, most topically today, a snowball.
The contextualizing blog entries accompanying each of the paintings have an enjoyable deadpan humour to them too, as befits many of the subjects depicted, & the work is made available for ebay auction, with the result that a pleasing amount appears to have sold. As this mere dry description could never do the endeavour justice, please visit the blog now for a real treat!

Whilst being a noble endeavour in its own right, a purpose of Dan’s enterprise is to provide inspiration to make time during the demands of the day to do something from which one can gain enjoyment & satisfaction, one of the fundamental disciplines that also underpins my own efforts, in drawing & blogging, believing such to be of the utmost importance.

More examples of Dan Young’s paintings & digital art are to be found on his artist's website – enjoy, for example, the series of tent paintings, pitched in snowy locations, again suffused with that sense of incongruous humour.

All good stuff & always pleasing to make a Cheltenham reacquaintance in some way - thanks Becca, you're a star.

Distanced Past...

graphite & putty eraser/20x30cm
source: 6th generation p/copy of original B&W image from University of Gloucestershire 'Pittville Studios 07' brochure

Another example of a drawing processed from an immediate source ‘degraded’ through numerous stages of photocopying from its original state, in this instance not a newspaper reproduction but rather an image chosen from an academic prospectus.
Again, each subsequent generation of the process of mechanical reproduction loses something in the way of detail & tonal subtlety, establishing increasing aesthetic distance from the source, as then, further, does the act of drawing.

The appeal of the image resided in both its delightful & always compelling ‘retro’ style, its obvious ‘archival’ nature, & also its relation to examples (such as 'Folding Dryer' of 1962) of Gerhard Richter’s painting from the early to mid 1960s, based, in best ‘Pop’ art tradition similar to those contemporaneous works of Andy Warhol, upon product advertisements from newspapers. In this instance, both the product & stylings might be of a more glamorous nature than those typical of either Richter or Warhol, but the vintage places it firmly within such a context. Although the details may change over time – obviously, with new product, the ‘latest thing’, always to market in the interests of the economy – still the essential language of selling (lifestyles & aspirations attached to the goods themselves) remains constant, & there’s something irresistible about the visual aspect of advertising campaigns, however awful the fascination might be. Interesting to note the scale of the television in relation to today’s drive into the gigantism of widescreen & wall-sized ‘home cinema’ systems...

Soundtrack:

The Beatles homemade compilation of tracks dating 1964-66
Portishead 'Third'

Further into the Process of Degradation...

Today the opposite of tomato is No Country for Old Men


graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm
source: 6th generation B&W p/copy from original newspaper photograph 'The Guardian' G2 16/01/09

Being the second in the nascent series of drawings processed from ‘degraded’ photocopies (in this instance the 6th copy-of-the-copy) taken from newspaper photographs. Taken out of its original context of advertising expensive underwear (at the same time, of course, shamelessly, relentlessly self-promoting the garments’ model), the accompanying Guardian article amusingly reads the image in terms of a still from an example of nouvelle vague cinema, at which its chic manufactured glamour & atmosphere of a certain edgy, politely-transgressive cool surely aims. Degraded through the various stages of photocopy (‘de-photographized’, at least from its original state, albeit through another photographic process), the image emerges from this & subsequently the drawing process in a suitably distressed state that subverts its original intention into something altogether more distressed & perhaps abject, anonymous, that suggests a certain seediness more representative of cheap pornography, & relates to something like the work of Gerhard Richter derived & 'unpainted' from such sources, examples of which might be found on the artist’s website here.

Soundtrack:


PJ Harvey ‘Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea’
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds ‘The Boatman’s Call’
Laura Veirs ‘Year of Meteors’
Portishead ‘Dummy’, ‘Portishead’ & ‘Third’
The Associates ‘Fourth Drawer Down’

As ever slightly out of step with & just behind the times (the preferred location), the most recent musical investment has been, at last, in the mighty Portishead’s third album, ‘difficult’ not only perhaps in its 10-year gestation (again, an admirable pace at which to work) but also in its sonic aesthetic; harsher than previously, electro-industrial & somewhat ‘post-apocalyptic’ in a manner that recalls nothing so much as the sound of the immediately post-punk late 1970s-early 80s (when, coincidentally or not, we ‘enjoyed’ similar socio-economic conditions, the spectre of mass-unemployment, the fearful uncertainty of the future, etc), particularly with the use of vintage-sounding, Kraftwerky synthesizers – ‘Third’ indeed might reasonably be regarded as a sister to & peer of, for instance, Joy Division’s ‘Unknown Pleasures’, with which it shares a palpable sense of claustrophobia (one might suggest it best be listened to, at least for a fuller effect, through headphones or otherwise in a small, enclosed & darkened room). The monochrome photograph of Portishead radio station that illustrates the CD’s booklet provides a fitting visual analogue, having about it a certain quality of dystopian bleakness, but the sound nonetheless is exhilarating, humanized by Beth Gibbon’s expressive, often haunted, vulnerable, fragile voice, the softness & femininity of which complements the generally stark brutalism of the instrumentation, clashing guitar & alternately pounding, snapping, rattling, echoing robotic percussive rhythms (a title such as ‘Machine Gun’ offers a fair representation of the sound of the song to which it puts its name). There’s a satisfying air of experimentation abroad, too, in addition to the overall development of the band’s sound: songs change direction discordantly &/or end unexpectedly, the unrelenting urban machinery of electronica is suddenly leavened by an acoustic lull or brief, folky, pastoral interlude such as 'Deep Water' that recalls Beth Gibbon’s other work ‘Out of Season’ (& PJ Harvey, too) only to be followed immediately, ironically, by the aforementioned blazing ‘Machine Gun’, or a free-form saxophone, otherworldly, adds another layer of texture. As a musical departure (although certain aspects were signposted during the course of its predecessor, on a song such as 'Over', for example), it’s undoubtedly a brave one, an intriguing & rewarding artistic development, & a compelling experience, one that rather seems to fit, essentially, the recent aesthetic direction the drawing has taken.


In similar vein, this week saw the initial viewing - again at last, after much procrastination - of the Coen Brothers' modern-day existentialist Western 'No Country for Old Men', another unrelenting experience, minimalist, harsh & brutal in any number of ways, but compelling in its lean-scripted narrative &, as ever courtesy of Roger Deakins' cinematography, visually ravishing even in its dry desert landscapes. Another landmark in the Coens' canon, although undoubtedly their bleakest view yet, with fine performances from Javier Bardem (in the menacing, pneumatic gun-wielding presence of whose character, the malevolent Anton Chigurh, one becomes transfixed, horribly), Josh Brolin & Tommy Lee Jones, the film also ends unexpectedly & thought-provokingly, with a non-traditional resolution (of sorts) that provides no moral answers or sense of justice or feel-good factor (as, for instance, 'Fargo' & 'Blood Simple' do, eventually, to varying degrees) yet seems to embody, to personify its title.

Recent Discoveries

Featuring today a couple of recent discoveries via the wonderful world of art periodicals, access to a small selection of which being one of the few perks of the day job.


Firstly, the exquisite pencil drawings of Marie Harnett, as featured in the Alan Cristea gallery’s ‘Young Contemporaries’ exhibition & trailed in the February edition of Artists & Illustrators magazine.
The artist’s website offers a generous selection of various series of drawings, all of which are based upon film stills, finely detailed & having very much their own atmosphere distinct & existing independently from the source. It’s only when one takes note of the dimensions of the drawings that it occurs just how remarkably miniature they are, smaller even than they appear on the website, which makes them all the more compelling, as ever the handmade nature of the drawing process working its magic.

On a related matter, the revamped Artists & Illustrators website offers a portfolio feature, where anyone who might care to register – for free – is then able to exhibit up to 9 examples of work: I’ve recently done so & uploaded a representative selection of work from last year’s photographically-derived Project.

Also the beautiful, seductive painting-object hybrids of Shane Bradford, as featured in the February issue of Art of England (which website offers generous access to the publications back issues). The work on show illustrates examples of that included in the artist’s exhibition ‘Hermetic Seel’, whereby copies of the various volumes of an edition of Chambers Encyclopedias have been subjected to a process of dipping in emulsion paint, the excess of which not absorbed by the pages of the books dries into wonderful stalactite forms, forever poised, transforming the original books into painted objects that relate to & reference the work of other artists in the place they either are or would be located in the encyclopaedias - in the examples here, in turn Frank Auerbach (with the physically worked-back-into broken surface which suggests nature of Auerbach’s heavily-impastoed, lava-like painterly surfaces & further emphasizes the object quality of the work), Turner & Rothko.


Shane Bradford 'Volume 1:AAB-AUT'


Shane Bradford 'Volume 14:TSU-ZYG'


Shane Bradford 'Volume 12:ROS-SPA'

There's theory attached to the work that, as ever, one can either take or leave (I always post my own contextualizing, justificatory ramblings with this very much in mind), but still the paintings stand independently of this & can be appreciated in & for themselves.
Bradford, of course, is not the first or only artist to have worked with the idea of the dipped painting/object, but I find them endlessly compelling & seductive things, perfect illustrations of one of the possibilities of paint as a medium.

Degrading

Today the opposite of tomato is the bottle of love


graphite & putty eraser/20x30cm
source: B&W p/copy of 4th generation colour p/copy of original newspaper photograph from 'The Guardian' 27/11/08

At last, over 2 weeks into the new year, a new-old drawing, being, in the absence of any great illuminating flashes of inspiration, a development of last year’s photographically-derived Project rather than anything radically different, this in keeping with the overarching concern with process as subject.

In the interests of creating a degree of aesthetic distance from the outset, the original newspaper image (such still providing the source, from last year’s archive-backlog) in this instance has been subject initially to a degree of surface erasure & then to various stages of photocopied reproduction, with each copy subsequently serving as the ‘original’ for the next, thus resulting in a process of degradation of the quality of the image from step to step, creating (through this act of partial, cumulative destruction), ultimately, a somewhat ‘distressed’ new ‘original’ from which to draw.

With the drawing attempting to remain faithful to the tonal appearance of its model, the result takes on a faded, indistinct appearance, where particular detail & any sense of clarity are lost, similar, perhaps, to the paintings of Luc Tuymans, an artist who also allows himself to become in some way distanced from the photographic sources from which he works, through various processes both technical – e.g. making watercolour sketches as a transitional object - & temporal (the point at which an image becomes so familiar, so banal, as to lose its meaning & thus liberated for purposes of transcription & representation).
These reproductions from the exhibition catalogue ‘The Painting of Modern Life’ (of photographically-derived work & as previously mentioned at the very beginning of last year’s drawing Project) illustrate the familiar appearance of Tuyman’s paintings, with the first also serving as a coincidental reference to late-last-year’s drawing of the Mumbai terror atrocity suspects, an example of a number of drawings processed from originals of less-than-perfect quality (cf. also the Baader-Meinhof one).


Luc Tuymans 'Prisoners of War'
oil on canvas/2001


Luc Tuymans 'Passenger'
oil on canvas/2001

It’s also possible, of course, to alter the quality of the reproduction of the finished drawing itself through the application of a different, less subtle, higher contrast scan setting (in fact the software programme’s default option)...



Whilst on the subject of photography (as always-being-the-basis-of, of course), The Guardian last week published this wonderful image, considered by Michael Nyman to be his 'best shot': the main attraction being, naturally, the grid format of the composite image, itself featuring a selection of a larger sequence.


Michael Nyman

Soundtrack:

The Triffids 'Born Sandy Devotional' & 'The Black Swan'
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds 'The Boatman's Call'
Cocteau Twins homemade compilation of 'bric-a-brac'
Neil Young 'After the Gold Rush'
The Associates 'Fourth Drawer Down' & 'Sulk'

Drawing & Photography...

digital juxtaposition of newspaper images

In the wake of last year's Project, a pair of recent newspaper reproductions of archive fashion images, made topical by certain circumstances (the demise of a long-established business - Viyella - in the former instance, & the passing of the designer Ted Lapidus in the latter), inspired this playful juxtaposition of drawing & photography. Both images are so redolent of their times, visual signifiers of particular periods that one recognises instantly as being not one's own, with such clarity & directness, & perhaps all the more intriguing & entertaining for that: aren't the 'His 'n' Hers' tweed complete outfits in particular quite simply fabulous (& surely due for a revival, as are such wonderful poses in fashion shoots), just the sort of attire, indeed, that might be sported by the idiosyncratic dandies who populate the fictitious village of Clinksell & the creative hub of the Blank Workshop therein. The economy of line in the drawing of the ladies' tennnis outfits is also most admirable for the manner in which it communicates.

Without wishing to intrude upon territory most interestingly mined by miss milki, this post as illustrated at least allows the coincidental opportunity to offer congratulations upon the first anniversary of her delightful blog 'A Spoonful of Sugar' (one of my favourites to visit) & wish a Happy Birthday & sincere hopes for another year's eruditely informative cultural commentating, on all manner of interests, notably also architecture & photography, a visual medium in which she produces & exhibits.

Soundtrack:


The Triffids 'In the Pines', 'Born Sandy Devotional' & 'Calenture'
Neil Young 'After the Gold Rush'

Being the fruits of the immediate post-Xmas music purchasing, not exactly new but essential additions to the collection all the same.
It felt time to invest in proper CD versions of the 3 albums that comprise the pinnacle of The Triffids' achievements (these having been devotedly owned on vinyl, back in the day), compiled in expanded form & beautifully presented by Domino.
Although the sonic aesthetic of the production of each of these albums is radically different, bestowing upon them a singular quality, from the informal, intimate stripped-down basics of the remote sheep-shearing shed recorded 'In the Pines', a sketchbook in nature (with the lovely personal essay & lyric booklets accompanying each disc, & particularly the facsimile handwritten notebook, a veritable treasure-trove of references, ideas & works-in-progress, included in the 'Born Sandy Devotional' package providing a visual analogue to such), to the glossy sheen of 'Calenture', with the dusty, gothic-romantic grandeur of 'Born Sandy Devotional' - at once full of images & evocations of both vast, parched, scorched empty landscapes & storm-tossed skies, & yet claustrophobic in its brooding, humid intensity - occupying some form of middle ground between, still they are unified through the quality of (the sadly late) David McComb's songwriting - of love, loss, longing, alienation & salvation, deeply personal yet universal - & the band's performances, epic in scope & realisation or restrained & tender as required, which resonate with no loss of breathtaking wonder or emotional charge across the 20+ years since their original releases (coinciding with the period of the greatest triumphs of Australian fellows The Go-Betweens & also the astonishing early series of releases by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: squaring the circle encompassing, of course, is The Triffids' bassist Martyn P Casey, subsequently to become an enduring Bad Seed, powering their mighty rhythmic engine).

Similarly with Neil Young: 'After the Gold Rush' retains the complexity of its alternately rustic charm & emotional power, & the integrity of its vision, still, timeless.

Works of art all.

Illuminating Times

Today the opposite of tomato is 'a secret in the shape of a song'


graphite & putty eraser/diptych 20x60cm
original source: 'The Guardian' 10/12/08

In what might be the last official act of The Project (at least that being the intention), a coincidence occurs, neatly, forming something of a circle. In the very first drawing of the year & The Project as it was to become, the original source from which it was processed featured an illuminating burst of white light, as does this example, albeit on a more dramatic scale: whatever the circumstances depicted (always, of course, being of no particular importance, form over content being the guiding principal in the choice of images to transcribe, to 'de-photographize') the photographic effect is the same, with sharp contrasts of light & dark prevailing.

Again one muses upon the presentation of imagery as mediated: the drawing as processed, of course, becomes one more step removed (which distance, as ever, increases to this present point, through the subsequent scanning & blogging procedures), but the dramatic action as depicted, a classic 'frozen moment in time' as captured in quintessentially photographic fashion, is already aestheticized for consumption, for considered analysis, in comfort & safety, by the time it appears in the newspaper.

Regarding the image content of the drawing, there's a certain something about the attitudes of the human forms, the figures' 'choreographed' movements - however instinctive these may be under the actual circumstances of real time & space as photographed - that vaguely suggests Matisse's 'The Dance': coincidental to the processing of this drawing, I've been reading a most interesting & lavishly-illustrated monograph of the work of Allen Jones, often featuring figures engaged in the act of dancing.
In terms of the subject matter of active social protest, the survey volume 'Vitamin D: New Perspective in Drawing' features this drawing by Sam Durant.


Sam Durant 'Boys Throw Objects at British Forces, Belfast 1976'
graphite on paper/2004

By way of further coincidence, the theme of incendiary civil unrest might also be found depicted in the artwork accompanying Lambchop's recent 'OH (Ohio)' CD (mentioned previously here),


which brings us rather neatly to...

Soundtrack:


Lambchop 'OH (Ohio)'
Cocteau Twins 'Lullabies to Violaine' vol. 1 (CD 2)
DJ Shadow 'Endtroducing'
Moon Wiring Club 'Shoes Off and Chairs Away'
Belle & Sebastian 'The Life Pursuit'
Low 'Trust'
Sparklehorse 'It's a Wonderful Life'
Lambchop 'Is a Woman'
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds 'Abattoir Blues'/'The Lyre of Orpheus'

As the processing of the drawing straddled the cusp of old & new years, so, inevitably, did its accompanying soundtrack, resulting in 2008's listening being rounded off by two enduringly stonking albums, Sparklehorse's beautiful, brittle 'It's a Wonderful Life' & the masterpiece that is Lambchop's 'Is a Woman', as perfect as it's possible to imagine a suite of music to be, where every note as written & performed, & the intervals between, & the warmth of the underlying electronic burblings, are so exquisite in form & so subtly weighted as to seem effortless in conception & realisation: this is unquestionably art of the highest order & most certainly 'the opposite of tomato', the research into which continues, however, into another year...