Haunting issues

While analysing the make-up and scale of the problem within Northampton I took photographs of all of the properties. Each house or flat was owned by the council and had been allowed to remain empty for six months or longer.

Going back a number of years, for a number of reasons, I became homeless and it is an issue which still holds a great importance for me. Dependency issues, mental health problems, sexual predation – all problems which afflict the homeless.

So, one part of me is happy that I have made this series of images but remembering what they represent is a depressing truth. I hope that the sense of sadness and anger is conveyed within them, along with the celebration of the buildings themselves – fibre of a town I love.

And then there is the sense that they are stuck in a past, here in the present and not quite what they should be – hauntological housing stock.

Please pop across to my website and see what you think. 🙂

And onwards…

With the film packed away it’s time to focus on the major body of work under my hauntology heading.

For these pieces I will be looking at Northampton: its buildings from the past, those no longer here and the ones we are set to lose.

If memories make the person then what is a town which willfully destroys its architectural memories? Looming large in Abington Street, opposite where the library is, used to be the Notre Dame Convent and school. By any reckoning, its facade was deeply impressive – but the stone was knocked down to create the parade of (what is now) drab glass & metal £1 shops, pawnbrokers and benches full of alcoholics spilling out from the nearby Wetherspoons & court buildings.

This is a town which ripped up its historic cobbled market place, crushed a wonderful fish market building while paying cash money to dig up earth in the search for more castle ruins. I do not get the mentality of the councils of all hues holding responsibility for the ongoing destruction of our past.

I have haunted venues and locations which haunt, I have a shedload of ideas for what to do with it all and I have a massive excitement to get on with it. But, with 12 weeks to the exhibition, I am trying to reign myself in and do it methodically.

Slim Shady

One of my favourite things to do after analysing and deconstructing an object is to build one out of thin bamboo and thread. In the course of doing this you develop a thorough understanding of its structure and form. The reanimation then takes on its own life.

As hard as I try to stay close to the original proportions, the act of wrapping thread around flexible rods pulls and twists. Soon a new structure evolves, based on the original but with added touches. Recently, I made a structure from acetate sheets – the similarity between that and this lampshade skeleton are striking.

The thing I love best about doing this is the Zen-like state it induces as I thread and slice my finger.

Shine

I’m still at the stage where I feel stupid laying out what the metaphors and symbolism represents within my work. Plus, I’m dog-tired having stayed up to watch some more of the excellent House Of Cards. So I’ll just leave you with the image.

Blah blah blah it’s open source blah credit me if you use it blah zzzzzz

X

Guests and Hosts and Ghosts

Stuttering fragments of memory jarring against a dormant present tense, no one has a clearer understanding of the mind’s ability to create illusions than I do; I’ve spent the best part of the last twelve months in a chemically induced fog where what is ‘real’ ceases to even be a question.

I was looking forward to a talk by Sarah Sparkes. Sarah has curated two GHost exhibitions and began by giving an overview of her work and the reasoning behind GHost.

I loved the idea of ghosts being the remnant of a time gone, a physical manifestation, a presence. My mind immediately shot to the work I had only just completed a few days beforehand: Spawn and Die. My ghosts took the form of chairs within an abandoned train tunnel. We aren’t talking about actual spooks – in the same sense that the removal of something leaves a haunting feeling, a table without chairs. I enjoyed the concept of a ghost puppet being unable to exist without a host to operate it; a duality we see in day-to-day life and when studying physics.

I’ve been working on a series of studies of a lamp in a hand-made sketchbook: True Ghost Stories From The British Isles. It’s the thing which has ground to a halt this week, which is a shame as my next step is to smash the lamp. Surely even a depressed man can enjoy that? Probably, if he can simply get on and do it!

I now have a mountain of books to plough through, a series of photograph studies to mutilate before breaking and resurrecting the lamp. By the end of next week I ought to have a much clearer idea where I am going with this for a final outcome.