How to re-write your own history in 5 minutes

I have 5 minutes until the kettle boils. It's 6:40 ish, and my sinuses are grating like sandpaper. Lying awake at 4:23, I turned over a few things in my head- the usual... reflecting on the strange dream that preceded my awakening (it featured antique leather boots for women) and the task of rewriting my entire mythology in the context of youth culture and consumerism, as it was originally written back in 2005, but which I decided to abandon in favour of positivity and community spirit. I was relieved to be able to get back to sleep for once. Usually I just lie there until 6:25, when I drop off 5 minutes before the alarm goes off. Nobody is interested by positivity- as Tolkien said it makes for good times but lousy storytelling. Thus I am returning to something meatier, that people might actually notice. Radio 4 have made an entire career out of doom-saying.

Precision injection dinner party

 

These images were captured at a location that Ivan and I found today. It is a disused industrial facility that once plied a trade in precision injection moulding. While the ideas surrounding the possible uses that we may put the space to are vague, the excitement and inspiration that the space has provided is encouraging. Possibly a dinner party.

Feeling thungry or Hirsty? Hirst on the go

Damian Hirst's shop on London's New Bond Street

Haven't got time to pop into a gallery to buy contemporary art? Need that special something but only 30 mins for lunch break? Here's the solution: ultimate statement in valueless art-cum-consumerist trash, Damian Hirst ephemera and spin-crap-pop for the masses. OOOH me first!

Afghanistan bullet holes

Was lucky enough to see the opening of piers' new show at Aubin gallery- a lovely little space in Shoreditch that was revamped for the show. I believe the gallery has only been there a couple of years, but it seems to be surviving, like the rest of the area, with a kind of trendy momentum that supersedes recessions... I guess all the visiting trend-hunters need coffee and beer, and if you have restaurants and night clubs then your area can thrive. Certainly doesn't have artists studio's and design companies like it used to - but that's gentrification for you :)

Of particular note was this new piece- 'a painting of a chinese puzzle ball' - though piers wouldnt tell me how it was done! It consists of 6 heavily carved concentric spheres, originally mastered in Ivory by oriental master craftsmen.

The little school girl

Autumn has brought with it the inimitable heavy leaden skies the pre-empt wet cold winters. Their density is almost insufferable, their grey mass almost tangible over head. There is, as a result, a claustrophobic feeling to these cool early mornings. The sun barely makes an appearance and usually spends the brightest part of the morning veiled behind the greyness, issuing forth little more than a milky white circular silhouette assuming that we are lucky enough to see her at all. On one such morning, as I drove the regular morning commute, I was arrested by the vision of a small girl walking by herself at the side of the road. Her school uniform was well presented and more or less complete to a standard the school rarely had the pleasure of from the majority of its students. Her hair, nut brown and tied in a neat ponytail, looked shiny but modestly kept. She wore an expression of something between serenity and studious concentration as she unscrewed the cap from a small pink plastic milk bottle. Her satchel, strap across one shoulder, matched not only her hair colour but her eye colour too. I remember being struck by their roundness and their vulnerability- as if they had never been troubled by even the slightest unsavoury vision nor the blandest tedium of mass communication- their was an undeniable innocence to their gaze. Indeed her whole aspect issued a wholesome glow of just-rightness that somehow didn't seem Goldilocks-sickly or affected. Her being seemed impossibly wedged between the heaviness of the sky and the burdens of modern society, able to support both immense pressures of both without visibly bending or stressing at all. My gaze followed her as she walked in her simple way a few yards- I felt like I had been watching her for hours yet it could only have been a few short seconds as my car passed her stretch of pavement. She uncapped the milkshake and took the delicate swig of a mystic princess, with a deliberate yet gentle action that was the essence of economy. I was transfixed. As soon as her image had left my peripheral vision my eyes immediately leapt to the rear view mirror to confirm that she was not some small mirage. My focus readjusted to the small reversed image in the mirror just in time to see her tilt her head slightly away from the cap of the little bottle, and spew an enormous jet of pink liquid all over the pavement, where it formed an unnaturally large puddle of pinkness that persisted for a long time in my rear view mirror.

Watched by a spaniel, separated by a fence. They stand firm

Rural Postcard: Stanton Moor

My Public

The fundamental factor underlying my success here in Derbyshire as an artist is my public. My attitude has had a lot to do with it, my subtlety of presence and my ability to blend in surreptitiously- but the over arching detail that has dictated my creative impact on the midlands is my public. My public are generous, sophisticated, impartial, mildly ostentatious but suitably refined. My public have the individuality and iconoclastic artistic taste that my level of output requires. My public are dedicated, obsessive collectors of my work and followers of my various rambling expressions, be they photographic, written or other.

The only thing is my public do not know who they are yet. You see I havent told them- and they, bless them, are completely unaware that I even exist, let alone live in their rambling dale strewn county. I will of course tell them, but I am just waiting for the right moment. I don't want to scare them off you see, by being all Grayson Perry about it. I just want to- you know- saunter up to them, or near to them, and quietly nudge their consciousnesses into my general direction. A sort of existential 'ahem'. Then the rest of it, that whole first paragraph up there, that'll all just fall right into place.

I'm just waiting for the right moment.

Won't be long now, I can just feel it.



At least I think I can feel it. Yes. Maybe.