Hands, Please

Takis the Greek

2012-01-20T18:19:00.003+01:00

I didn't even know his full name, just calling him 'Takis the Greek' on the rare occasions it came up. Normally this was brought about by some passing mention of La Défense, or the Île de France (that my poor apprehension of spoken French had compressed together).

And so it happened that I finally managed to see the Signaux Lumineux (1987) on a bright and breezy New Year's Day. It was, to me, long overdue, having carried around a little stapled booklet of poor, high-school-photocopied depictions for all of the intervening years. Though I didn't browse through very often, I knew the handful of images so well, transferring it with the certainty of treasure from one folder to another at each house- or city-move.

We walked at New Year, a little dazed from the night before, and wearing too few clothes for the wind tunnel Champs Élysées, from the far, West side back towards town. I took one photograph of the work, framed against the shiny blue bank-buildings, but it doesn't come close to the stolen, too-dark, folded photocopies.

The Nunnery (above and below)

2011-11-25T17:09:00.001+01:00

Berkel-Enschot village outside Tilburg, a good hours’ drive through the heavy lorry traffic to Eindhoven, was our temporary residence for Dutch Design Week. This recently vacated Trappist Nunnery, set back from the road behind ivy-covered gates became too large a building for the dwindling superfluity*, and simultaneously crowded in by the encroaching town.

In a quarter of the ground floor, sixteen theatre producers and playwrites have made home, walking the distance between the living rooms, bathroom and kitchen over cold, inlaid marble floors.

There were many remarkable things about this place, but that which set me shuddering was the expertly recounted story of the nun who spent the last two years of her life in solitary confinement. “Up there, behind the darkened window…”

This space is only accessible by climbing to the top of the building, then up another laddered stairway to the eaves of the chapel. Ducking under the beams along the narrow wooden walkway brings you to a trapdoor, which leads in turn to this tiny chamber.

If the story lent gravitas to the architecture, then this room pressed upon your superstitions until you squeeked; a dirty mat, a hand-painted cross, a fogged and distorted view through the glass to the chapel below, and cold like outside.

* Apparently ‘Superfluity’ is the correct collective noun for Nuns, but that unfortunately here suggests an excess, when the opposite is actually the case…hmm…But isn’t it good to learn a new (use for a) word?!

Fruit Pastels

2011-11-08T10:32:00.003+01:00

Ok, so it's a stretched 'kid in a sweet shop' analogy - but there's something that appeals to the child in me about art materials; about sequences and sets of alike things, boxes full of possibility. Invariably they look better in the box before you actually do anything with them...but this time, this time, I say to myself, will be different...

Chris has passed on four small boxes of Unis*n pastels to me, as well as this much coveted big box of 72's, having had them lay dormant 'for ten years'. These are the best pastels money can buy, if you can tame their fat, crumbling, awkward nature. The pigments seem implausibly intense, and much pleasure can come from simply crushing their chubby faces into a piece of paper and looking at the results...

But that was before, and now I am going to do marvellous things with them...

Fungi to be with

2011-10-28T18:27:00.001+02:00

A couple of weeks ago - the tail end of our October heatwave, was perhaps not the ideal time to go foraging for mushrooms in Epping Forest, but we managed without difficulty to fill up two boxes brim-full. To one who is most used to the perfect white caps of shop-bought varieties, and who is (still) impressed by the fact that a little mushroom is easily capable of killing a man, we seemed to have gathered a right armfull of skull-and-crossbone varieties. But, arriving late back to meet our man - aka Andy "fungi to be with" Overall (I kid you not)- we managed a hasty identification process with his car engine already running. Those few we took home looked dreadful in the kitchen strip-light, and I chickened out after slicing up a little fella that had a colony of bugs inside. Still a bit squeemish, it seems.

Tempelhof

2011-09-21T10:02:00.002+02:00

Staying as we were in the district of Neukölln to the South-East of the city, accommodating many of those affected by the ten year squeeze on Kreuzberg, it’s impossible not to be struck by the expanse of the former city airport Tempelhof that spreads itself out and buffers up on the edges of that quarter. A vital source of food and equipment during the Berlin blockade years of 1948 and 1949, when Soviet forces cut off all channels of supplies to West Berlin, the site has been closed to air traffic since 2008. Now designated parkland, the runways have been taken on by roller-skaters, kite-boarders, dog walkers and cyclists; community gardens have sprung up, and the terminal building itself has been partially utilised as a venue for music, art and fashion. We walked the runway on the night we arrived, against the ten-metre painted arrows and under relentless rain, feeling mischievous and very, very small. The vast building, and foregrounding it, the vast airfield makes it plainly apparent how minute a body seems when measured on an industrial scale. After half an hour we seemingly hadn’t got any closer. It was one of the biggest bulit structures of the 20^th Century, nearly a mile long, and with space to land a plane (Hitler’s plane) on its roof. Apparently its ‘lower five levels’, (the mind boggles) have been flooded because they were laid with booby-traps, and even today three remain underwater.

2011-09-11T15:59:00.009+02:00

It’s 6 years and a few weeks since I last saw Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the dense grey field of more than 3000 undulating concrete columns close to the Brandenburg Gate in the historical heart of Berlin. At that time, I was writing a dissertation about the problems of Monument building - specifically in post-war Germany - where the debates were raging on the painful 60^th anniversaries of so many dark days. I had been impressed then by its silent impact; spacious and oppressive simultaneously, cool, even in mid-summer, as you're slowly submerged within its volume.

This time, like the last, it was with equal measures of delight and uncertainty that I witnessed people sitting and standing on, leaping between, or playing hide and seek around the concrete blocks; direct proof that once turned over to its rightful recipients – and irrespective of the steps taken to minimise the ‘wrong’ kinds of interaction – people would do as they pleased.

Diamonds on the floor of the 243

2011-07-09T20:24:00.001+02:00

As the bus became more crowded I got slowly pushed into the boxy bit by the middle doors, next to the rusty revolving posts that act as the hinges, accompanied by a beep. It’s maybe the worst bit of the bus, it looks and feels the grubbiest.

But lo,

I saw a diamond! It was pretty sizeable (maybe 5 Carats), half buried in the crack left by the retractable wheelchair ramp. I tried not to look at my find too intently, for fear I might attract attention, I just (casually) slid my foot forward to cover it up. Looked out the window, thought what to do with my new-found fortune.

Afterwards, at Dalston Kingsland, mothers with buggies entered the equation, and I had to move again, leaving the diamond behind.

2011-07-03T11:39:00.003+02:00

Friday morning at the Royal Albert Hall for Catherine’s Convocation ceremony was a grand occasion. The golden Albert Memorial on the fringe of the park opposite so reflective in the sun to be near impossible to look at, and then once inside, a kind of vibrating hazy colour - no reflected light at all. 20^th Century organ compositions, three trumpeters, a slow procession of gowns and hoods and staffs and caps trimmed with gold preceded the thousand names and handshakes. Catherine somewhere near the middle. After the ceremony proper, an emotional address from an elderly looking Sir Terence Conran, (stepping down this year as Provost of the RCA) read like a call to arms for the irreplaceability of the arts. He broke down several times, each time greeted by a standing ovation, which was strangely fitting. ‘I love this college’, he almost whispered before sitting down, unable to continue. Nobody quite knew what to say after that.

The Fall, and some near misses

2011-06-19T13:49:00.002+02:00

Kate and I headed out one early Sunday morning to take aerial pictures of the mini roundabouts around East London in search for the flyer image for the Event Gallery exhibition next month. The initial curiosity of these forms is that they occupy a strange mid-point between an object - a thing, and an image. They are sometimes obeyed as objects, and driven around, but mostly people fly joyfully straight over them, showing little respect for the fact that they are still, technically, roundabouts. It also turned out we weren't nearly early enough to avoid the traffic, and the makeshift ladder and cantilevered wooden arm with gaffer taped tripod had to be hastily dismantled every few shots to allow buses, scrap collecting vans, lastnight's drunkards, and endless cars through.
From above they are transformed, revealing more clearly the hand-painted spiral, and the traces of their use (and abuse). All the while I had Mark E Smith in my head, singing "I hate roundabouts, just cant find my way...around!"

Image: 'Aggregate!', © David Murphy/Kate Owens 2011

Good Catch

2011-05-11T11:24:00.001+02:00

Billingsgate market at 5am on a Friday is a hectic blur of activity; thousands of boxes of frozen, prepared or still active sea-beasts being bargained over, shifted around, kept fresh with tonnes of ice. I walked around, still asleep, after driving to Canary Wharf in a total dream state.

Shouting, wet slanting floors, stacks of cash being counted.

My eel man was doing just that, sleazily turning the corners of crumpled twenties with a licked finger, belly out.

I had gone with the intention of buying an eel, to photograph, but my feeble imagination had gone only as far as imagining a dead or prepared one, not draw after draw of very alive looking specimens. “Don’t come any fresher than alive”, he said. I took a ‘small one’ with a slightly dodgy eye. Slapped into the scales. “9 quid”.

He squirmed on the passenger seat beside me all the way home, trying to find the way out of a knotted blue carrier bag. As a distraction I put on the radio - awful early morning Radio 1 jingles.

This was all becoming quite distressing (for both parties), and after the pictures I faced up to what was necessary. Two hours and a sharp boning-knife purchase later, he was scrubbed and gutted and chopped and sitting in a green marinade in the fridge. I was shaking slightly.

Campeggio! Vista! Panoramica!

2011-04-20T23:53:00.002+02:00

Five nights under a concrete canopy, the tent battened down with an assortment of mismatched screws in the place of pegs. Some might consider 20 Euros a night for such a spot a bit on the steep side, but this was the week of the furniture fair in Milan, and a collective sense of reality was temporarily suspended. Not a room was to be had across the city, especially to latecomers like me who only began to consider booking after the Christmas holidays…

The vibrations from the road (think M1) rattled the tent with a continuity that became actually quite soothing, and my sleep deprivation came from the hard surface rather than the noise. This, though, is no sob-story. The traditional* rain that accompanies the fair was nowhere to be seen. Instead, warm sunny days, dusty pavements, a diet of carbohydrates and caffeine. One can’t see that much design on an empty stomach.

The maps we got our hands on, replete with yellow numbered dots, were suitably secretive to make it all a bit of a treasure hunt, a hunt nevertheless extended over ten square miles, 400 venues, and with expectedly varying rewards.

On the last day the heels fell off my boots from all the walking, but by then I was so exhausted not to mind at all, just clipped along the street with the little nails sticking out.

The boots gave up before I did. (small victory)

(*if five years running counts as a tradition. Last year was a volcanic ash cloud AND rain, which surely makes up for any sense of exaggeration.)

In the cave (mostly)

2011-03-30T09:19:00.000+02:00

Lastnight something of a personal milestone – my first 3D film. Though secretly I’d hoped to see some explosive blockbuster, we went down to the Renoir at Russell Square to see the late showing of Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

The Chauvet Cave, discovered in 1994, is home to the earliest paintings known anywhere on earth. Beautifully drawn Rhinos and Elephants and Horses thirty thousand years old, interspersed with bear scratches, and the drip drip of cliff-water that slowly encases everything in a calcite coating.

The small crew, four including Herzog himself, were reverential to the point of shaking; the cave will never be open to visitors, and there was a strong sense that this was perhaps the only chance a film crew would be allowed access. We feel vicariously the weight of expectation upon them.

It is an experience that’s physical in the looming walls and thrown shadows, the images bulge, as wide-eyed and crane-necked as we are.

Over the course of the day aspects of the film have drifted in and out of my imagination. It is almost a sequence of defining images, but somehow none were as affecting as this one: At the back of the cave, where carbon dioxide levels are so high to only allow a few minutes of access, Herzog’s guide points out a rock column that hangs from the ceiling, rendered with the only representation of human form found on this site – a woman depicted from the waist down being consumed by a bison, becoming the bison. Nowhere is the thrill and limitation of this film so clearly defined. From the narrow walkway on which the crew must remain only half of this image is visible, the other behind in darkness - tantalisingly close - but nevertheless impossible to (ever) see. The film presses desperately at these barriers, tries to stretch them, but returns each time unfulfilled. We are reminded momentarily that we are not in the cave.

The film ends with an unusual postscript that spins the whole thing further from the straight documentary format, (closer in fact to other of Herzog's works) Belching chimneys fill the screen as we are told that a few miles away from the cave is France’s biggest nuclear power station, the steam it produces used to heat a tropical biosphere where crocodiles thrive. A line is drawn between the cave and the biosphere; its inhabitants – including pink-eyed albinos – and us. A curious, ominous closing.

(Picture courtesy Plancas67 www.flickr.com/photos/43212985@N08)

Eelvis has left the building!

2011-03-15T10:12:00.000+01:00

Being the actual headline of the article I was sent last week. All my talk of eels had reminded Mark at Water Weights in Great Yarmouth that last year they had helped relocate a five year old male from the Macduff Marine Aquarium in Banffshire, North East Scotland, back to the North Sea using one of their bags (a borrowed crane, and a great deal of patience). The aquarium had named him Eelvis - after the flurry of excitement that established a concrete link between the 18th Century Pressleys of Lonmay, Aberdeenshire, and the Presleys of Tupelo six generations later.

Eelvis as a young man

(image from www.macduff-aquarium.org.uk)

2011-02-05T10:24:00.000+01:00

It tends to be the way with these things, but as soon as the exhibition opens, some of your interest in it all closes down. The struggle, and worry, and effort and care simply evaporate, and bring a detachment that leaves you, like everyone else, on the outside; hungry already for the next thing, to do it all over again. The deep enjoyment is in the process, that much is clear, and when it is done it fends for itself, even against you.

Video Interview with Michaela Freeman - IDEA13

2011-01-26T10:15:00.002+01:00

http://idea13.org/2011/01/video-david-murphy/

2011-01-06T10:42:00.004+01:00

Open Until February 11th
CoExist Gallery
North Road
Southend-on-Sea
SS0 7AB

2010-12-18T16:02:00.001+01:00

After some nervous weeks of anticipation, a fantastic company called Water Weights have agreed to sponsor my forthcoming show in Southend, and furnished me with two two-tonne bags that now hang from the rafters in the gallery. Jon, Curator at CoExist, went beyond the call of duty and gingerly climbed to the top of a very high ladder to tether the shackle to the beam exactly 7.6m above the ground. I just stood helplessly at the bottom of the ladder attempting to offer moral support (and ballast).

The top picture is one I swiped from the web sometime more than two years ago - before I kept track of where I borrowed things from...there are many pictures like this to be found on a routine search; much hard-hatted posing, thumbs up, big grins...

Yesterday I found myself in Liberty on Regent Street where the mannequins have all been decorated with frog-helmets. In my efforts to avoid detection I forgot to switch from black and white, and seemingly forgot also to focus, but it is a frog, I promise.

2010-12-08T09:39:00.001+01:00

With three days left in Edinburgh, I'm beginning to think again of digging the car out of its mini ice-age. The street is silent and almost unpassable, they called in the army, apparently, to break up the motorway ice that stranded so many the night before last, and it has been said that the Peruvian salt - shipped over last week amid smug grins from the Transport Secretary - is useless in such low temperatures. It has produced a never-before-seen 'sandy' snow, pushed into dune-like mounds at the sides of the roads, failing to melt; under the sodium streetlights it all feels quite extraterrestrial.

The nights I have returned back late, I have seen foxes running noiselessly between the houses, occasionally stopping in their tracks to look back, right at you.

Image, Untitled, © David Murphy, 2010

2010-11-22T21:04:00.000+01:00

The story of the Sheep Heid Inn, Duddingston, Edinburgh, is like all good stories in that nobody seems to have the definitive version. Its history - though generally assumed to be 'significant'- is one also specked with numerous 'reputedly's', 'supposedly's', 'allegedly's' and general vocal debate.
There has, it is said, been a pub on this spot since 1360 - which would make it the oldest licensed premises in Scotland. It has the kind of glow and soft, dense atmosphere that, I would imagine, blurs the distinction nicely between day and night. I would also predict that they have a few nice ales on tap, including a dark house brew that I could easily hazard a guess at being quite delicious.

One thing that can be verified beyond reasonable doubt is the presence of a skittles alley just behind the bar, where on Sunday a peaceful group of youngsters were animating the historic scene.

2010-11-07T12:16:00.000+01:00

The bulb blew in the projector.

It isn't my projector, and the projector's real owner knows not that I have it. The story might be a familiar one - the bulb, like no other bulb you have ever seen is, of course, only stocked in specialist shops in the U.S, and a replacement is likely to lighten my pockets.

Regarding the cat, I wouldn't normally post such a picture as this. I spent last week in Istanbul - a city better known (I thought) for its packs of wild, itchy dogs, lying in the sun, curled around the furniture of the street looking half-alive and half asleep. But here instead I found a feline kingdom. Nobody told me. They move in the perimeter of every scene, and unlike the dogs, they have the ability to charm. Between the biscuits and milk and morsels from tourist tables they do just fine. The cats will inherit the city.

Overhead Project

2010-11-06T10:25:00.000+01:00

My first day proper at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop resulted surprisingly in some experimental OHP action in the Project Space - as I waited for keys to the studio where I'll be for the next month or so. On a dingy day, the satisfying glow of the screen, and the warmth from its inefficient motor kept me occupied for hours.

2010-10-10T15:04:00.000+02:00

Back in London, after vaulting over the North Sea.

The picture above is by Harold Edgerton - early pioneer of flash photography and strobe lighting.

The picture at the top shows some impressive ditch jumping that I 'borrowed' from a book entitled 'Polders!' by Adriaan Geuze.

Cut Up

2010-09-28T10:32:00.000+02:00

My leaving gift from M4gastatelier was presented on the night of the opening, and is something very special. A rack of nine scissors, operated by one handle.
The picture on the back of the packaging helpfully showed bank details and other incriminating evidence being shredded by a smiling lady.

The Arcimboldo Effect

2010-09-19T11:18:00.001+02:00

The 'stacked table' which awaited us after Marianne Theunissen and Chris Baaten's opening in Diepenheim consisted of rounds of bread and roasted vegetables strung from the ceiling. We took turns sawing sections out - jenga style.

2010-09-15T16:13:00.002+02:00

I gave myself such a shock lastnight. Though it's scarcely believable, I had just put the bike things up to dry here earlier in the day, and as it got dark it creepily morphed into a hi-vis terror whilst my back was turned. I nearly dropped a plate.
After I'd come to my senses, checked the cupboards and double-locked the doors, I managed to hold the camera steady enough to take a few pictures. Working on a computer all day is simply not good for me.

An Antidote

2010-09-11T21:42:00.001+02:00

'At the most we gaze at it in wonder, a kind of wonder which in itself is a form of dawning horror, for somehow we know by instinct that outsize buildings cast the shadow of their own destruction before them, and are designed from the first with an eye to their later existence as ruins.'

W.G Sebald 'Austerlitz'
Image: Untitled, © David Murphy, 2010

Diving and Swimming

2010-09-06T21:37:00.001+02:00

In addition to doing a spot of outdoor swimming myself recently, I have been reading 'A Springboard in the Pond: An intimate history of the swimming pool' by Thomas A.P van Leeuwen.

It probably shouldn't come as a surprise, but the Dutch had initiated swimming instruction as early as 1767, under the direction of the well titled 'Netherlands Society to Prevent Drowning'. Members of the public though had to wait until the opening of the first 'bathing barge' in 1844 - anchored in the Amstel River by Dam Square. The picture above - slightly deviously - is neither Dutch nor 19th Century; but an instructional page of diving positions depicting the 'legendary' swimmer Annette Kellerman from Bernarr Macfadden's 'Encyclopedia of Physical Culture' (1928).

2010-09-01T20:59:00.000+02:00

What I should have posted yesterday was a true picture of summer, something like this.

I took this two months ago, on the second day of my cycle from London to Amsterdam, somewhere in a criss-cross of fields close to Colchester. As in Britain, government initiatives and subsidies have transformed the role of the farmer almost beyond recognition. In the Fens of East Anglia the government pays farmers to re-wet the very lands that previous generations fought so hard to reclaim. Here similar stories emerge - The fields of Holland providing wheat for Russian Vodka; ponies for the (apparently huge) market amongst teenage girls; havens for wading birds. The notion of progress has always been problematic, but here we are witnessing deliberate reversals as the only (profitable) way forward.

2010-08-31T23:07:00.000+02:00

The last day of summer

My time in Amsterdam has one month left to run.

I moved three new drawings, in various states of completion, from the studio to the 'other' room

in search for the spark that might push them forward. I threw things away, swept, hoovered, pulled the curtains wide. September still marks its presence with the feelings of returning to school, of returning to work, of returning to routine. Not yet. But the dust-free tidiness brought focus again...

On a different note (and though it feels like tossing a stone into the sea,) there will be an (informal) presentation of the work I have made here on the evening of September 24th. It's a Friday. Come for home cooked delights, mid-price wine, and (obviously) great art.

2010-08-30T15:20:00.001+02:00

North Sea Dip

This is a very familiar sight to one who grew up in the North East of England, and who spent a lot of time on the beaches there in every season. Like its counterpart on the other side of the water, this spot close to Castricum aan Zee looks magnificent in the mist and rain. It feels far more natural to me to be walking in this than the hot heat of earlier in the summer. The couple of days we spent up at the beachhouse there coincided with the weather-man stating that there would be 36 hours of ceaseless rain, and in between swims and quick walks in the dunes, we sat sandy-footed indoors with the windows battened down.

(Thanks Reuben and Eva...)

2010-08-26T22:51:00.000+02:00

A hanging garden four floors up. Industrial lifts can be very photogenic.
In the far-right of the picture a snippet of the underwater themed mural that adorns the liftshaft is just visible. Here on my floor there is a suggestion that we are nearing the surface - the water is getting paler, we have just passed a mermaid...The basement though is pure black, spotted with ugly, toxic looking fish.

2010-08-25T15:03:00.008+02:00

The wise man built his house upon the rocks...

Houses that are built on sand in the Netherlands - particularly those occupying the sandy ridge that runs parallel with the sea to the West command higher prices than those built on the boggy peat and mud further inland. In a country where there is almost no rock sub-strata, sand foundations are highly prized. Close to the town of Abcoude trucks and diggers dumped and compacted sand ready to build on, the contours of this tyre marked terrain picked out nicely in the afternoon sunlight.

2010-08-18T15:32:00.000+02:00

The Cruquius Machine was the most ambitious and beautiful of three stations used to drain the Haarlemmermeer Polder of water between 1849 and 1852. It is the polder in which Schiphol Airport now lies - 4.5m below sea level. Over three years the Cruquius's boilers burned 800kg of coal every hour of every day, pumping 800 million tonnes of water back to the sea. Built by Harvey and Co., Cornwall, England with some Amsterdam steelwork, it is thought to be the largest steam engine ever built, and is now a museum.
The model above is interesting because it represents the original plans for the Cruquius, with 13 pistons driving 13 pumps around its perimeter. In reality - and mathematically more simply - there are only 8.

2010-08-12T23:11:00.000+02:00

Yeoman Bontrup

On July 2nd the Yeoman Bontrup tanker caught fire while loading aggregate material at the Glensanda Superquarry in the Scottish West Highlands, near the Isle of Lismore. (above)

The quarry, which is 7 miles from the nearest road is one of the largest and most remote in the whole of Europe, and everything arrives and leaves by sea. Now the tanker resides at the port of Ijmuiden where yesterday I saw it being partly dismantled and rebuilt. (top)

(above pic. thanks to A Kilchoan Diary - www.kilchoan.blogspot.com)

2010-08-12T08:09:00.003+02:00

About two miles from the almost-island of Marken, North of Amsterdam, the heavens opened. In a way we had already been quite lucky, managing to evade for several hours the blackening clouds that surrounded us on three sides. Drenched, took shelter in this tourist-trap of a shop. There were no complaints from the proprietor at the swarms that had squeezed themselves in from the rain; with such a captive audience he was doing a roaring trade in Delft-Style ceramic items, coloured clogs and wooden tulips. The till was pinging.

2010-08-08T08:45:00.000+02:00

Amongst the drivers and the shuffling cars at the taxi rank, an old round man stands to one side. There are officials there already, in fluoro-jackets marshalling people into suitable vehicles with speed and efficiency. The old man wears a black cap with white letters spelling ‘SECURITY’ across the front in that way that is too big, white and obvious to be the real thing. He doesn’t wear the same jacket as the others, and it’s not difficult to see that his presence is only just - and awkwardly - tolerated. In his right hand is a whistle, which he raises to his mouth many more times than he actually blows, often just letting it hang limply from his lip as he looks searchingly at the line of cars. The official guys, in that slightly hyper way you relish the rush of people, fall to loud chatter and jokes in quieter moments. The round man takes the initiative and blows quickly twice on the whistle, waving to the next driver to make his way forward. He too is awkward. I just stared at this theatre. Nobody says anything.

A Fishy Tale

2010-08-04T09:33:00.000+02:00

I found out yesterday that the Father of Baron Münchhausen made the same trip across the North Sea from Harwich to Hellevoetsluis as I did last month. (According to The Surprising Adventures of Baron Münchhausen - Chapter 15) Some small differences between our two voyages became apparent. I took the ferry, whereas he galloped on the back of a blinded marine-horse, across a sea-bed landscape 'equal to the Alps in magnitude' (!) with trees bearing fruit of huge crabs and lobsters (and a strange hybrid creature between the two) and threatened by enormous, hungry fish (see above). After three hours, (and saving the life of a drowning girl), he arrived on the beach - out of breath ( 'the lack of air was becoming an inconvenience'), where he promptly sold the horse for 700 Ducats.

tag this!

2010-08-03T12:56:00.000+02:00

The thirteenth Century Muiderslot Castle, 15 km South East of Amsterdam was built initially to tax the profitable trade route to Utrecht. Now it stands faithful to its seventeenth century renovations, both inside and out. Flicking through a historical picture book in the museum shop I found this image from the 1940s, the lettering so reminiscent of roller graffiti! I think it was painted with the intention of protecting the castle from bombing during the second World War, but there were no details regarding this in the book.

2010-07-30T17:14:00.000+02:00

Anguilla anguilla (?)

I would like to believe that this is an eel. (and not a snake)

Eels are historically as important a part of the Dutch diet as they were to the masses of East London, and by 1472 King Edward IV had granted a licence to an Amsterdam fishery to supply Londoners from Billingsgate Market, stipulating that one ship must always be anchored there with plentiful supplies.

I think of them as almost composite creatures; they are able to travel over land, and survive well in both salt and fresh water. Born, according to current information, in the Sargasso Sea, their migratory instinct is so strong that they return back to the Sargasso from the streams and lakes of Europe at the end of their lives to spawn. For this journey their eyes increase in size, and their colour changes to a dark silvery blue.

(...no mention of yellow and red...)

2010-07-27T18:08:00.000+02:00

Fresh off the developing table, the first tests of the 'Surfacing' series we took last week.
The land sits below sea level at so many points in Holland, this work was intended as an illustration of its rightful position. Were it not for 400 years of Dutch engineering, keeping the water out with a variety of technology, the sea would reach the tip of the orange measure.

This clearing, in the middle of Amsterdamse-Bos Parkland was 3.8m under.

Surfacing, 2010

2010-07-25T11:09:00.001+02:00

After the frenetic football induced orange crush that swept the city for the first two weeks after my arrival, Amsterdam has returned to a slightly sleepy state. This is holiday time, and coinciding with what is turning into a hot sticky summer, residents are retreating to the countryside or to the beach.

My Studio here, which faces East, has its thin white curtains drawn for the mornings in an attempt to keep the ambient temperature down a bit. The masking tape which has been holding up various things in the studio is melting and slipping, and every now and then there is a crash as things fall to the floor.

One of the first things I have finished, and sure enough one of the first to succumb to gravity it this small drawing.

It's called Kiss the Future

Back for the weekend between London and Kent for a friends wedding. The day after the wedding we went for a walk in Hyde Park to the red pavillion at the Serpentine. This is a strange feeling indeed, envelops you in a glow, without really containing you at all, and the red makes you question your eyes. The greenery that surrounds seems harsh all of a sudden.