Cracks in the City

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Not before time, here are some photos from the exhibition I was involved in at One Fox Lane as part of Made in Roath 2018. The exhibition comprised artists involved with Foxy’s one way or the other whose work responds to living in, navigating through a city in the midst of change. I was delighted to have work alongside Vaida Barzdaite, Imogen Higgins and Ian Cooke-Tapia.

Despite my horrible illness in the run up to the event, I managed to pull together some of my work from the developments at Central Square. Along with my photos, I also exhibited four A1 screen prints which I printed with the help of Shaun at Printhaus. I’ll do another blog on those in more detail.

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My signs were borne out of my need to remain in bed. Plans for Lino cut signs were abandoned in favour of channelling my ‘inner Matisse’. Armed with a load of redundant photocopies of my work, some offcuts from a local framer and a bright, shiny, sharp pair of new scissors I knocked out these babies.

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Cheap, cheerful and instant curation!

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The beginnings of my journey into linocut also makes a guest appearance.

To complement my exhibition we had Metropolis running on a loop. It would have been wonderful to cut out the story and instead have a string of those wonderful images of the city – above and below ground. Unfortunately this was beyond my wit in the time given, but thanks to Dan we did have a stupendous new soundtrack. This imbued the entire space with amazing atmosphere. Check it out here:

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Not shy to ask people to pitch in, our opening was a ‘bring a bottle and a plate of something lush’ party. None the worse for that – especially when the space is as glorious as One Fox Lane.

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Repurposing the signs after the event into funky little notebooks

Karl Schoemaker

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While in London recently I was lucky enough to trip across a fab gallery on the South Bank, in the Oxo building. I was drawn in by the arresting black and white photographs of prison cells in South Africa. Stark, disturbingly brutal but really beautiful photographs of the long abandoned holding cells of the Baakens Police Station in Port Elizabeth where numerous political activists were among those incarcerated.

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It’s worth quoting Shoemaker directly on his project:

Gaining access from the building’s owner, once inside Schoemaker discovered graffiti documenting names, dates and crimes.

Taken over three months, Schoemaker was mindful to never spend more than two to three hours in the cells, afraid of becoming desensitised to the enormity of the history recorded on the walls. 

“Its also a foreboding and frightening place to visit on your own” adds the photographer.

Schoemaker captured the images alone: “The place was dark and dank, and to shoot the cells properly, I always closed the heavy cell doors which gave me the feeling of being trapped. At other times I would go down and simply read the stories scratched into the walls, not photographing anything. But sitting with their energy, imagining the emotions they felt.”

Instagram: @karl_schoemaker

Getting back into the swing

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It would be fair to say that after my initial flurry of activity setting up this website back in March 2018, it has not seen any action.

It is not because I haven’t been busy. Far from it. Since the loss of my darkroom facilities last March, I learnt in triple quick time how to digitise my 35mm negatives and manipulate them on my brand new (then) MacBook Pro. I also learnt Instagram and WordPress. None of this stuff comes naturally to me, so once up and running I heaved a great sigh of relief and promptly forgot all about it.

Meanwhile, I have been enjoying creating linocuts, silk screen prints (with a little – ok – a LOT of help) and taking lots more photos – mainly, but not exclusively, of the continuing developments at Central Square in Cardiff.

My current mode of working is to develop my negs in the dark of the night in my bathroom and hang them up over the bath – about as old school as it gets. From then on it is all digital as things stand. I would love to get back to darkroom prints. There really is nothing like them. But for now this does have its advantages.

I have quite a backlog of photographs to put on this website. While I sort that out I’ll write occasional blog posts with gloriously de-contextualised images. Hope you enjoy the one here!