carpet brushing…

walking through albert square today i stumbled into the dismantling of carpet, the giant installation for britain in bloom made from over 60,000 flowers and 900m of turf, emblazoned across the victorian neogothic magnificence that is our town hall over the last week.

described by m.e.n as 'an elaborate carpet design in specially scented and colourful flowers' and 'an artistic nod to the city's Cottonopolis past', i have watched with interest its development from the laying of long rolls of turf last weekend to the laborious efforts of over 100 volunteers as the intricate design took shape along the lengths of lush turf. consequently i am somewhat loath to be the sort of smart arse who would pour scorn on such an ambitious looking artwork for the city, especially one that ostensibly brings colour, beauty and green life into an urban landscape with precious little of these! but from the outset something has been troubling me which today’s vigorous brushing only magnified.

at first sight it seems churlish to be finding fault with this harmless floral confection, a blaze of green and pink laid out as an oversized carpet across the cobbles of the municipal square – a guerrilla greening, a radical intervention into an institutional space, a formal symbol of authority and paternalism - a perfect example in fact of much contemporary art practice that seeks to challenge and contest the stranglehold endemic in today's heavily branded consumer oriented cities, one that engages in those 'tiny revolutions' so beloved of Bourriaud and his participatory relational art practices.

to the casual observer the city council, in its endorsing of this extravagent creation, might even appear to have responded to the current exhibition in urbis, urban gardening, whose introduction exhorts cities and its citizens to ‘make your city a greener, friendlier, healthier place and maybe even help save the planet’.

but on closer inspection its not all roses or in this case Anastasia chrysanthemums. like so much of the official bluster and rhetoric of the city, carpet is all surface and illusion – the project literally has no roots, no soil in which to grow and flourish, no sustainability. today’s clear-up operation eloquently conveys the weaknesses of yet another ill conceived imposition on to the urban landscape.

the first clue lies in the very title – carpet not garden or meadow or even lawn – not alive with the potential to permanently enhance the fabric and experience of the city, a city in desperate need of more places to sit and enjoy the simple pleasures of grass and flowers, to contemplate and be part of nature - those birds, bees, ladybirds, caterpillars and butterflies that inhabit green places and bring countless benefits to our parched lives.

the second clue is its ephemerality, built-in decay and obsolescence, the whiff of wasted effort and money overpowering any scent from the 60,000 imported and cut chrysanthemums! ephemerality in itself of course isn’t a flawed concept – it’s a familiar one in locational, site situated art practice, its very unexpectedness or wrong place-ness jolting the passer-by into the contemplation of something otherwise easily overlooked. no, the concern is the woefully missed opportunity in the growing and importing of so many beautiful flowers simply to be cut and dyed to create a pretence, an indulgence, an urban folly. the futility of this feverish activity for a 4 day installation is perhaps symptomatic of an ongoing shortsightedness and lack of vision of the city authorities and its various partners, quangos and funding bodies that borders on bloody mindedness, even a form of vandalism. the carpet itself is of course well intentioned and beautifully executed - part of a wider european tradition of floral carpets - and whilst i'm not suggesting the laying of this one perpetrates any vandalism, it does reflect a wider policy of the council to litter the city and its surroundings with a variety of short lived floral displays in expensive and invariably ugly planters that once withered serve only to emphasis our disconnection with nature.

vertical gardening paris style

that carpet should be the city’s prime installation at the same time as the truly inspiring urban gardening exhibition is a best a coincidence, at worse a feeble attempt to pull the damask wool carpet over our collective eyes, fooling us into believing it is actually engaging with the issues, projects and valiant efforts illustrated at urbis, some grassroots, others largescale but all achieving green revolutions in cities across the world.

as the introduction to urban gardening points out,

‘city life often leads us into a lifestyle where the natural world is kept at bay, buried beneath concrete and tarmac and obliterated by the seamless edged glistening city of glass and steel’.

wow, they could be describing Manchester today - and that can’t simply be brushed under a giant floral carpet…

brunswick triumph - andrea booker wins CUBE open

stop press...!!

i have waxed lyrical in previous journal entries about brunswick my tangled and disshevelled heartland, the mysterious moated kingdom on the edge of town whose inhabitants are amongst the most talented, creative and curious i have had the pleasure of meeting since i emerged dusty and bewildered from the archives of the museum just up the road. seeing the city and the new century through their eyes has been truly inspiring, their patient education and befriending of this old fossil a generous and unexpected bonus. it is always a pleasure to accompany any of these bright young things on one of their adventures and a pleasant self imposed duty to praise, draw attention or otherwise support their various endeavours and practices.

you might also recall that my last posting included some details of andrea booker's beautiful exhibition a long time ago at the chapman gallery, an output of her recent residency at the university of salford's fine art department, as well as a part of the lrm's marvellous get lost festival. only running for three days, i was lucky to catch a glimpse of this rather elusive artist's work - andrea, typical bluestocking, is rather shy of publicity preferring to work somewhat anonymously driven more by her private obsessions than for recognition or glittering prizes!

but the game is up for this brunswick stalwart and failed recluse...

andrea has just been announced as the winner of this year's CUBE Open. the judging panel made up of juneau projects, lucienne cole and kwong lee choose her from more than 100 applicants, selecting fourteen artists for this year’s exhibition.

their press release says,

'the artworks that will be exhibited offer differing meanings and parodies in relation to our own ‘displacements’ of identity conveyed through the urban landscape and architectural consequence.'

the preview is friday 1st august at 6pm at cube, and the exhibition will run from the 2nd august to the 6th september. it promises to be just as strong as last years cube open curated by hilary jack and paul harfleet of apartment, so do make sure you visit.

andrea will be artist in residence at CUBE in 2009 and receive a bursary of £1000 to support her practice. for more details about cube, their residencies, programme and exhibitions go to their website http://www.cube.org.uk/

congratulations miss booker. here's to a long overdue opportunity to see an even bigger and bolder a long time ago plus a glimpse into the processes, practices and reflections on the city from this emerging artist cum rescue archaeologist. her work eloquently illustrates that action really does speak louder than words, ironically and appropriately enough through the cherishing and displaying of abandoned lettering, their pathetic, patinated and frequently damaged appearance heightening the poignancy of their rescue.

against the pristine and clinical setting of the gallery and separated from their normal setting in the built environment performing their neon duties of advertising and announcing the commercial, the institutional and spectacular, the subliminal backdrop to our quotidien life, booker's practice reveals society's collective schizophrenia and identity crisis - the contradictory demands for newness and innovation, set against the mandatory veneration of vintage, the antique and 'authentic', the construction of self predicated on what we buy and own, the venues we frequent, our lifestyles and status signposted and directed at every turn.

...ooh and apologies to cube for any accidental pre-empting of their press release!! i'm just so excited...

reflections, pavements, loiterings

the last two or three weeks have been so filled with the surfeit of events, happenings and get togethers that i envy when i read of their regularity in the far off capital of londinium, that i haven’t had time to reflect on them, let alone write about them. i'd forgotten how transformational meeting like-minded strangers can be - hearing their ideas and seeing the city through their eyes has been a privilege.

at last i find myself with some space to absorb all this visual and intellectual stimulation and hope that my own inadequacies have been challenged by the exhilaration of the last few weeks.

it all started with TRIP, the psychogeography festival and conference on 19-21 june and Get Lost the manchester loiterers' activities around the city in june. my bluestocking friends paul, maureen and chris were contributors to TRIP with a pansy walk on the 21 june, and i joined them on this navigation of the city. paul's reflections of the experience can be read on his blog... http://thepansyproject.blogspot.com/

i can heartily recommend the loiterers blog for inspiring reflections on the city and its hidden secrets, plus details of their monthly derives and city wanderings, which are welcome to all: http://nowhere-fest.blogspot.com/2008/06/ruinous-recollections-fellow-wanderers.html

...many thanks to morag rose and alan smith for their fantastic work, imaginative and inquisitive minds and infectious love of manchester! and for doing something...

the conference was an exhausting 3 days of wide ranging papers loosely connected to psychogeography and the city, inviting new ways of reading, connecting to and challenging its many narratives, histories and futures. there was a lovely archaeology paper by peter connelly from york archaeology trust, and my young friends darien and rob presented ideas behind their current project 'ruinous reflections, artistic drifts through post-industrial manchester' currently showing at upper space gallery, newton st, northern quarter. sadly i missed the preview on the 27 june but it seems the rest of manchester made a huge party of it and a great time was had by many of my young bluestocking associates.

the curators have taken a poetic darkly gothic notion of the city and its histories and brought it to fruition via the investigations of 5 very different artists, employed you might say as archaeologists revealing hidden layers as they dig below the surface. as they explain:

'Behind the visible built environment of the city lurk fictions and memories. Neglected narratives echo through the red-brick ruins, literary psychogeography where spectres of a forgotten past ghost-write their tales onto the decaying urban fabric. Taking stories from notable historical figures connected with Manchester, the five artists taking part in Ruinous Recollections will present a mental mapping of the city that constantly evolves over the course of the exhibiton. Artists: Barney Francis, Bec Garland, Nick Hamilton, Paul Harfleet, Victoria Lem.'

what makes this show intriguing in comparison to many others exploring similar issues is the deconstruction of the shadowy impact of the curator, that high priest or wizard of art, plus the chance to witness the evolution of the ideas and processes intrinsic to artistic practice. art and the private view always have something of the magic trick about them - unveiled and revealed only when perfect, framed, hung and displayed, all creases and problematics worked out. here the artifice is explored, made transparent, the journey involved in fact made more remarkable.

do visit this rare opportunity to see work in progress prior to the exhibition 'proper' next year, or at least delve into their blog which has details of the various works being created: http://ruinousrecollections.blogspot.com/

jane samuels abandoned building project made headlines at the green room for get lost, her plaintive photographs of decayed and forgotten buildings around manchester, modern ruins charged with all of the eerie beauty of the gothic fairy tales of our childhood, made more poignant by their peculiar ordinariness, unsettling in their familiarity: http://www.theabandonedbuildingsproject.com/

over in salford at the university's chapman gallery was another beautiful ruinous recollection, a long time ago, the work of another brunswick artist andrea booker. frustratingly only showing for three days between 23 - 25 june! http://www.arts.salford.ac.uk/exhibitions.php

i managed to race over there on the final day and am still in mourning that this artwork, both a physical and metaphorical exploration of the city's rapid regeneration and a labour of love, even obsession, a veritable urban rescue dig, can no longer be viewed. whilst other artists photograph, record and document the loss of whole sections of the city, languishing unloved before demolition and clearance for the brave new world of glass and steel, andrea has been rescuing and collecting their visceral physical remains. a long time ago explores the melancholy of the urban ruin through the display and manipulation of the giant lettering so recently an optimistic declaration of functionality and utility.

still reeling from all this ruinous recollecting, last thursday gave fresh impetus to musings that seem to have become infused into the whole landscape.

brunswick is an ever present absence on the oxford road corridor, the universities and their acolytes surrounding, obscuring yet permanently fixed towards the estate, absorbing and subconsciously reflecting its tangled careworn beauty. the fine art department and its graduate institute miriad sits at the crossroads of chorlton on medlock, their mutual history and development inseparable. it’s no accident that much of its creative output concerns the inner city and in recent years apartment in lockton court has nurtured the talents of many of its art graduates.

pitfall and potential: image, art and the 'public' was a symposium with dr. steven gartside and rut blees luxemburg discussing notions of visibility and disappearance of art in the urban landscape, a contemplation of the relationship between the city, its various communities and the art academy.

the symposium was a prelude to the launch of a new non - gallery space, pavement, based in the institution but conceptually facing beyond it – turning the rarefied somewhat elitist world of the academy inside out, making its outputs available to passers-by from the everyday world, literally on the pavement.

its press release states:

'Pavement is a new exhibition space housed in a former drapery store. The window space, which cannot be entered by the public, provides a highly visible stage for the display of international contemporary art. Any threshold existing between the institution and the outside world is absent; the work can be seen by the public, day and night. A distant glance engages the viewer and the work invites their scrutiny. Pavement will allow for the exploration of potential differences in the relationship of contemporary art to an unconventional institutional setting. The work on display will seek to utilise and exploit its position of visibility in order for its significance to be explored and to generate a wider response.'
http://www.miriad.mmu.ac.uk/pavement/

'pavement' launched with caliban towers by blees luxemburg. originally installed as a billboard sized commission, its 'public' setting was underneath a railway bridge in shoreditch, london. it depicts a group of tower blocks at night, opening up questions about the relationship of image, architecture and location. as i’ve pondered elsewhere in this diary the tower block as social housing is in crisis – as pavement nicely put it, embodying 'a shift in meaning from a site of exclusion to one of exclusivity. the re-staging of caliban towers in manchester is particularly apt. in its new setting the work questions the ways in which we utilise urban space; perceptions of class and social status and the location and purpose of 'public' art'.

caliban towers is showing 7 days a week, 24 hours a day in the window of the righton building on grosvenor street. the perfect viewing is at night followed by a stroll further down the road past sandbar and the mcdougall centre to the junction of upper brook street.

fresh from the luminous gaze of the photographer’s vision, look again across the mancunian way to the tower blocks ahead and appreciate their forlorn beauty, their sturdy simplicity, as they face the city and an uncertain future...

miss niblock goes to the degree shows...

last weekend was surely one of the busiest in the art tarts calendar for quite some time - whilst i was attending atranspennine08 on friday evening there was also a castlefield preview in full swing as well as the manchester metropolitan art and design degree shows launch night.

the degree shows are always worth a peek - sad as i was to miss the opening night i certainly wasnt going to miss out altogether, so i ventured into the holden gallery and the warren of buildings around the park that make up the art department next day. my favourite companion mr stillingfleet accompanied me and we made a splendid afternoon of it...

interactive arts had some meticulous and gorgeous work this year and as a collection was probably the most consistently impressive - amy davies' ladybird installation has to be a highlight, a whimsical detailed labour of love,

whilst surreally and mindbogglingly wonderful was contanimation by harry shotton and gavin sodo.
next door was the eerily beautiful aural and visual masterpiece wallpaper music by molly macleod, like contanimation obsessive in its attention to detail and atmosphere.

there was a noticeable museological turn across all design courses, with cabinets of curiosity, taxidermied animals, found objects, vintage storage boxes and a plethora of books and bibliographies - books scavanged, books transformed, books metaphorically and physically dissected. mr stillingfleet put it down to the combined might of mark dion's installation at the manchester museum and two brilliant years of the alchemy project!

equally 'just a tiny amount' nick park-style with its intricacy and peculiarity was nadine patterson's series of minute models depicted in action on a multitude of postcard sized films and spookily dismembered and put to bed in a salvaged print block cabinet, that mr s and myself found highly covetable..

moving from building to building and show to show, encountering photography, painting, sculpture, embroidery, ceramics, furniture and jewellary in the boxy 1960's setting of the chatham tower, the high ceilinged spendour of the grosvenor building or its peculiarly spooky cellars is a voyage of discovery, a haphazard journey through the fertile minds of this years newest talent. each year there are themes and ideas that dominate and unexpected delights to savour. just when you think you have a favourite course or a preferred area of interest, something leaps out of leftfield and makes you reassess everything you thought you knew about art, its processes, its ability to infuse all the senses and its impact and influences..

eve bennetts story of birds is a perfect example. on initial examination a quirky study of a ceramic bird, a browse through eve's sketch book and accompanying storyboard reveals a minor tragedy that has become part of her family mythology. a sound recording of the tale behind this beautifully rendered 'murder scene' creates an extra layer of meaning to this highly personal and beguiling installation.

never disappointing, always thought provoking and sometimes sheer genius the degree show is a microcosm of the budding art scene and well worth a visit. degree shows are open to the public, are on every year at institutions all over the country and free of charge...manchester and salford's shows have just finished but there are others to watch out for this year culminating in new designers islington and the fabulous truman brewery showcase on brick lane. dont play safe and wait til these bright young things have become well established -visit a degree show for the sheer vibrant unpredictability. highly recommended...

killing castlefield? journeys through a forgotten urban treasure...

the castlefield basin is the original Mamucium, largest single contributor to the prosperity and growth of manchester, its influence spanning 2 millenia – home of the Roman fort, the world’s first passenger railway station, the Museum of Science & Industry, as well as epicentre of our very own Granada TV!

the transpennine railway was the last element in the economic and industrial infrastructure that gave the region its global importance in the 19th century. the castlefield basin connected the leeds - liverpool canal to this new ‘superhighway’, making the region one of the most densely populated and urbanised places in the world: its network of warehouses, canals and viaducts a vivid palimpsest of the city, its cobbled streets a rich repository of 2000 years of enigmatic lives, escapades and adventures, unknown heroes of the industrial revolution.

until recently hailed as the Jewel of Manchester on the city’s tourist websites, boasting a dedicated Castlefield Visitor Centre and with teams of specialised urban rangers on hand to guide visitors and tend the upkeep of this precious archaeological heritage park, its future seemed secure and bright. bustling with al fresco restaurants, loft apartments in listed warehouses, its own annual carnival and boat rally and a community of narrowboat owners, it was a mini venice or amsterdam, a model for manchester’s cosmopolitan aspirations. now, once again faced with neglect, dereliction and an uncertain future as developers close in and for sale signs proliferate, the shortcomings of similarly acclaimed flagship developments are put under the microscope. the predicament of castlefield is symptomatic of prevailing policies of urban branding and regeneration, effectively taking the cityscape out of the public sphere and into a precarious privatised realm.


for arttranspennine08 i will record my explorations deep into this forgotten treasure - heritage centre, Roman settlement and heart of the transpennine rail-and-waterways, exposing the fragile fortunes of our urban topography on my dedicated blog killing castlefield, an examination of this granddaddy of urban renaissance and success story of the nineties triumphantly designated ‘Britain’s first Urban Heritage Park’.

join me on this journey to explore narratives of the city past and present, interrogating accepted orthodoxies surrounding dominant models of urban renewal. i shall post my photos, my thoughts and itineraries, the things i find out, and the people i meet throughout the length of this summer's exhibition.

follow this link to killing castlefield: http://killingcastlefield.blogspot.com/

artranspennine launch night at manchester's international 3

it’s been a hectic couple of weeks for apartment, the brunswick bluestockings and myself. we each appear to be packing a few months worth of projects into the next 3 weeks…

barely unpacked from our icelandic adventures we have variously been ridiculously busy guiding a group of artist/curators around the berlin art scene and biennale, curating the final stages of the forthcoming artranspennine exhibition, organising an archaeological dig and local history project for a nearby junior school, preparing a psychogeographical walk and writing a paper for next week’s TRIP conference on the pansy project as a de certeauian practice of everyday life http://trip2008.wordpress.com/, and planning a paper / panel discussion for the intersections conference on 7 july in leeds http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/conferences/intersections/.

hopefully we will manage to do justice to all these commitments. hilary and paul have certainly kicked off the challenge with stalwart work in berlin and a fantastic response to artranspennine08…

fresh and grubby from my school dig i managed to get to friday’s preview at the international3 and added my rather too wordy pamphlet to the growing pile of artist’s flyers and ephemera on the table. looking round the gallery i stopped to admire the pencil drawing of the pennine way emblazoned across the whole of one wall rapidly being filled in by participants and was once again struck by the elegant beauty and simplicity of atp08 as a concept.

atp's brief physical incarnation this weekend has been an opportunity to inaugurate and celebrate the exhibition and unite the 60+ simultaneous but locationally separated artworks - a temporary embodiment of its transformed landscape - whilst the projection of the interactive atp08 blog across the opposite wall became a vivid visualisation of the potential and impact of this truly viral experience. from its beginnings as a muscular showcase for regional art institutions, heavily reliant on public funding, artranspennine 08 has transcended gallery dependency and embedded itself into the 'contemporary', the material and metaphorical topography of today's world, requiring only the goodwill, energy and ingenuity of the artistic community to make work that reflects and responds to the everyday and the extraordinary with its myriad challenges and possibilities.

back at the display table i had a little chat with the exhausted duo about the magnitude of the responsibility ahead as it begins to sink in that more than 60 artists have submitted projects and interventions in locations as far apart as liverpool, sheffield and hull, and that the task of processing, publicising and liaising has another 6 weeks to go!

visit atp08 for constant updates, artists of the week and news and reviews as the exhibition unfolds: http://atp08.blogspot.com/

the perils of pessimism: or how to alienate friends and never influence anything...

iceland - soaring mountains, rugged terrain, study villages and of course the endless snow...

returning from iceland and the edifying jolt of the geography and terrain, the pragmatic hardiness of the people and the inspiring diy yet sophisticated cultural life they have made in that surreal physical and metaphorical landscape has resulted in what might be regarded by some as an epiphany.

descending from the mountains into seydisfjordur...magical!

apartment, the nerve centre of my residency and spiritual haven, the ideas lab and backdrop to my ramblings and ruminating these past few months, is where my theories are tested and my assumptions challenged.

meeting today to catch up with paul and hilary for the first time since the reykjavik artfest was notable for another in an increasing series of disturbing revelations about the deep core of my pessimism and somewhat jaundiced eye. the resultant stifling effect is a far cry from the 'curious eye' of irit rogoff or the 'archaeological imagination' of michael shanks, my cross disciplinary gurus...a troubling impediment to any really effective investigations of the city or contemporary cultural landscape!

its a constant and uphill battle to overcome this knee jerk 'glass half empty' attitude. whilst not wishing to become a pollyanna figure (sorry paul!) with galloping enthusiasm for anything and everything (that would be both ridiculous and ungainly at my great age!!), my natural inclination to pour scorn on the new or inability to consider recurrent quandaries with an open mind is the greatest enemy of the radical thinker, situationist or flaneur.

to illustrate - my journey home was marked with an excitable inner dialogue filled with the wonders and charms of iceland and the lovely friends made there, reams of illegible scribblings in my notebook, followed by increasingly unflattering comparisons to my home town, its rampant consumerism and cultural redundancy. and by the time i had downloaded images on to my facebook page my slump into lazy invective against the metropolis was complete.

my favourite boat in iceland...

by contrast, for paul the journey back was a smooth dreamy glow of triumphant exhaustion, followed by an unexpected tour of the city from unfamiliar perspectives afforded by a wrong bus or two and the idle imagining of what our icelandic friends might make of a visit to manchester. from these new vantagepoints he rediscovered his city remembering much that is exciting and endearing about it and determined to engage more with the bits he neglects to explore or simply takes for granted.

looking with a curious eye or unusual gaze must be at the very heart of the urbanist or cultural critic and i have, as always, much to learn from the energy, enthusiasm and playfulness that is central to apartment's artistic and curatorial practice.

practical vernacular architecture - survival huts at regular intervals are a life saver in the long frozen winters

over the summer months i shall be busy preparing for 'killing castlefield', my emerging response to artranspennine08, and an evening at apartment, celebrating the completion of my residency with the launch of the feral flaneur pamphlet or 'radical ramblings from the edge of the city', and pigeon house press, publisher of 'the bluestocking guides...' to life, art and everything in between.

the motto and esprit de corps for these humble outpourings will be the cheeky, ubiquitous feral pigeon, perhaps the ultimate symbol of modern life and how to survive it – the much maligned rat with wings, loathed and demonised by city strategists but cherished and appreciated by an eccentric and motley crew of potting sheds potterers, allotment dwellers, bird racers and fanciers; a ragged assortment of humanity, the ultimate practitioners of the everyday, the epitome of the curious eye and de certeau's resistance to the impositions laid down by the planners...

the feral pigeon symbol of the city...

with this little emblem as my guide i shall endeavour to focus my gaze in the true spirit of the flaneuse and bluestocking with open mindedness and optimism, with an eye out for unearthing the unusual, the off-the-beaten-track, the audacious networks of people busy creating something out of their world and giving the city its depth and vigour, its real heart and beauty. as de certeau pointed out, it is always people that make the city, people and their activities that give the city its soul and character.

if my visit to iceland has taught me anything it is about the richness of experience forged out of isolation, frequent solitude and necessity. there is always something going on. my task in this busy metropolis must be to delve deep, both into the streets and into myself, leave my world-weary prejudices and lazy assumptions behind to discover, delight and document the city in all its situationist glory….imagine and reimagine the city as others see it, as others live and experience it .

they start their careers early in iceland!

....well they do say travel broadens the mind!