second hand bargains

well, sorry for delay.
i saw this the other day as I digressed from route to find a cash point.
it made me think of your golden butts, graves and skull. Are you making charms?
I thought as i wasn't doing golden things id found one instead. which in one sense true, someone had collected and saved and been gifted these precious items at times that we can only guess at and now it sits in the pawn shop, waiting like your items, to be found and its story made new sense of - second hand bargain indeed.
So what of steve and his golden fleece - i like it and yes the first 2 photos are the ones and i agree that to wait for jon to photo seems too much. I also wonder at your struggle with the photo issue of good quality photos, what is your intention for the pieces. I like the blog as the end point for some of this work - where the process of thinking and making is revealed meaning sometimes you only have your phone and so that is what is used which may mean shit quality but it is about capturing the thought at that moment. But I can see your thinking in that some of the work is like a satelite or moon and is self contained and finished in its own right, but just because its shot by jon doesnt make it mean more - its an addition unneccesary in the work, that is unless your interventions are part of a documentary revealing your process and you in the work. the skull piece is a nice piece it does lots and i think works, because i know all the thinking and making. Im interested in how if you were to show these photos if there would be a text accompaniment to reveal the process, because i wonder if they are presented without they are just nice photos of a golden skull and then it does other things. I like the idea perhaps of the conversation of you and tim walking to place it, or you and kim about not wanting to let it go. nothing too obvious or didactic
I agree that perhaps you dont have to golden something from every find, it seems that the skull and fag end works and the grave stone doesnt - perhaps its to out there, because i like the idea of the arbeograph being done, i think its the conecttion to people. the skull, fag and tree graffiti will only be found by a small number, i can imagine the person who scratched the tree returning to the site and rediscovering the gold addition and wondering why, its the same with the fags and skull. Whereas the x on the grave is to public and tricksy - x marks the spot? i like the quietness of the other pieces. It like talking to someone at every site - it cant always be done, but then its not always nessascery.
I like it when our collaborations grow in an unforced way, a new way reveals itself and we grab it and add it and it makes the whole thing better. I think this is a good dogma to follow.
I like that we cant see the end and at the momnet it feels good and winding, and its not right to force it to be something. Lets keeping going and looking and see what reveals itself.

All cleaned up

Cig packs had all been cleaned up today - gold butt kicked to the side. Wonder what she thought-

not a proper posting

This is not a proper posting just some ideas I want to put out for discussion. I'm in a real try things out frame of mind and the skull pictures made me think about photography and the quality of image we use. If I use my "Just good enough" Approach I suppose the images from my phone for this posting before were problematic for me so I've gone back and re shot it. I took 60 or so pictures and did an edit. I gold leafed an X on a headstone to mark the spot - felt guilty and cleaned it off I don't think I'm a very good graffiti artist although I suppose there is a history to desecrating graves which I don't want to be part of. I also gold leafed a cigarette butt and then a packet of gold players as this was just a bit to obscure and after Jonathan's comments about the somebody finding the skull I thought of the secret chain smoker finding the gold leafed packet and it made me smile. I also include image of "Ceramic spade shaped Ridge tiles for your information (The ones my dad shot off with his 4/10. So I think the pictures are better but maybe the don't need to be- I sort of like the intervention but then again I don't think we need to do this every time we go off the beaten track - Maybe the rules stay as they were but we develop work from it - like a conversation with somebody or the skull which becomes something in it's own right. Talking of which I think it needs to be a diptych piece a close up and a context shot taken simultaneously with two camera's - what do you think am I getting dogma obsessed OCD or just becoming an artist again.

Golden Skull

Well I set off at half seven this morning. I had been toying with the idea of getting Carl or Jonathan to come with me to take the picture and then I thought this was just a silly way of trying to raise the idea - Like we talked about putting words into neon making them mean more. So I thought I needed to take the picture and I'd thought about what I wanted. I suppose the idea is the work but I needed a picture which would look good in a portfolio when I was talking about the idea - to hook people into it- which meant I needed a stand alone image - this could be part of a body of work. There is a certain crapness to this idea which I like and dislike - the gold objects are just really desirable you just really want them and walking away from it where I found it in the woods I felt a bit like Gollum leaving his precious.

I've just got in and I'm sort of half happy with my pictures - didn't quite get exactly what I wanted but got some interesting pictures. The sheep must of been weary of the mushroomed up hippies trying to eat them as they kept running away from me. Tim came out and I was talking to him about imaging the skull inside the head of a sheep which he seemed to like but I was finding it really hard.

This is not a off the beaten track posting it's me trying to work something out about the relationship between a product (Photograph) and the idea of foundsight and Dogma. I don't think I need to do this kind of thing every time but perhaps we do need to raise the product and I'm beginning to like the idea of suggesting that "It must be art as it cannot be anything else" as a proposition. I've decided art practise is good at raising propositions for new ways of thinking - maybe not so good at exploring them.

So my favourite picture is the close up in the spot I found it which is where I left it. Which is honest quick and documentary - so it can be a poor picture but still do it's job. Maybe I don't need the other pictures but I like them as standalone images in their own rite so I'm glad I bothered to take them. I'm also glad I did the work - fist real art thing since Artemis last year which is shocking as I've only just realised. Be interesting to know what you think. Ps I like your Blackpool postings and will do a proper of the beaten track this weekend.

two things

here is the first - blackpool , as ever the dogma of site of digression and then the digression.
I like how the bins in blackpool have the word blackpool on as if you would forget where you are!
Also i like the bent sign, a metaphor for the whole place i think.
I took the building site as its one of thise demolitions that then show the insode of someones house, the wall paper and paint choices. Once a place - a home and now a site. The perfect example of the definitions, if we need clarity. I like the traces of peoples activity, and wonder if those who lived there walk past and still consider their wallpaper and remember the furniture - like kates lost objects.
I suppose i thought about your fag end finds and wondered at the people and the things that happened there, the secrets the hidey holes etc, i like in your last entry the idea that our finds dont need to be grand, but small discreet and quite. - which relates to the next lot of photos.
I found the house after seeing the shell shop and the carved coal, we had gone off the main street to find a off the beaten track. Andrew and I tried to talk to the man in the shop about whether he had coal carved in the shape of a piece of coal, but he didnt want to talk and perhaps thought we were idiots! Andrew though now privvy to the off the beaten track thing, also now ponders interesting places and finds. So the word is spreading and so it grows.
After the walk round i bought the peter liversage book and a man in there talks about a shop in blackpool called STEALS, its strap line being "theres no place like this place, anywhere near this place, so this must be the place" a perfect title for this body of work i think, but also just a great sentence. I am going to find the shop next time im there, and take a good photo of it.

So to the next thing. These 3 photos are from an ongoing collection i am keeping - found balloons.
I wanted to put them up because of their link to the cigarettes but to the whole blog. I find them often, some with messages and some that are just escapeys. I love the poetic ness of a let go and then found balloon. i always reply to the notes, sending a postcard of the farm and where it is on the map. - they come from all over. I started photoing them and recording their resting place about a year ago. it seems that even though the person who launched them will never know, there are taken notice of and i think of who the person might be. Its interesting that at the wirksworth talk i did someone asked whether me being and artist making work about the farm had affected how my family look at the farm? i said i thought it did because they now bring things or tell me things that they think i might like - and this is one of those examples - found balloons, we all look for them, to the point that someone picked one up and left it in the cab of the tractor, so spoiling the find in one way but adding to it in another.

Bit of a rubbish one

Well I tried to go off the beaten track I didn't get out much last week so it's another dog walking one. I like the red berries as they are a winter colour but really rich. I like winter light it feels somehow more important and the dawns and dusks stretch your shadow long. I then explored a bit and found the remnants of some sort of binge smoking which I couldn't really work out - if it was one person chain smoking or a gang of kids. I've seen a woman crouching down having a fag a few times. I think she is hiding her habit but if she had smoked 3 packets of Bensons surely even with chewing gum the smell would give her away. So that's it very much not contrived but then the whole thing is very contrived which is a good thing. Perhaps a conversation and then something which connects the blog or website to the real world like a sort of marker - you know how you tag files so you can recognise it on a computer. I've just got some gold leaf for a project I've been thinking of doing for a while and I thought of badges then I thought of the marks workmen leave on roads or the crosses on trees that are going to the chopped down - this is a bit like the Geo site website we talked about but it could a lot more personal.

dogma

well my first attempt at following the dogma of photo the start of off roading and then photo the find or place, is here. i wanted to go to mr straws house but it was shut, so what i found was this faty matty graffiti. I initally having known nothing of the house and not wanting to look it up before hand was hoping to find a house of straw, or a house where everything was made of straw, but instead what it is timewarp. In an attempt to find the house i had to ask directions and asked a man in the middle of worksop, who was happy to talk of mr straw and his story. I was in worksop for a meeting and told fellow meeters of our of the beaten track mission and so they wanted to join me. It seems that this may be turning into an community engagement project. I was keen to enter a time warp, like an alice in wonderland moment of heading off the track and finding something magical, like your 7ft juggler. I like the romance of this digressing, that we hope for or perhaps expect something unusual by moving off our route. Well what we found, my band of merry digressors and I was the 'faty matty' graffiti. It such a kind poetic slur, and I like its link to mr straws name - matty is a faty and mr straw is ...well, im hoping he is made of straw.
I like also how the graffiti subverts the national trusts timewarp romance, bringing us back to the reality of now. So faty matty keeps me in the present and reminds me to not get caught up in the meaning of something, but to focus on the actuality - its a house, in worksop.



Which leads on to my second attempt to go off the beaten track, i diverted from my route back from wirksworth. I turned off to Southwell, home of the catherdral. It was the cathedral that was the start of my idea, i have seen it on antiques roadshow and have always wanted to visit. So my first pic is the cathedral, linked to seeing the sign and then thinking of antiques roadshow. My second photo is of the graffiti i saw as i drove into the town. I love how in being rightous about one thing it upsets another. The graffitti spoils the persons desired pristineness. I like how it links to the cathedrals underlying desires.
In following my new dogma of speaking to people whilst off roading, i asked a woman in the cathedral about the site where the graffiti was and what she thought about it and she said she didint know, but she would look. I like how the engagement with people makes me and perhaps them think and see differently. I like my new addition to the dogma.

My last photo is a window inthe catherdral, its made from small broken pieces of glass collected from the site when they rebuilt/refurbed the catherdral after the civil war. Its like a patch work quilt, its an improvised thing. When i asked another lady about it she said something i really liked, something like - the glass became treasure again. Which linked really well the the gordon matta clarks - fake estate work i was talking to you about - the slivers of land that he bought in new york. But also made me think differently about the pieces of broken china i find and keep and what all this says about place. So i have started reading about place again and also more of gordon matta clark. He did a piece for the centre of architecture and urban studies, where he shot all the windows out with a rifle - nice.