Uncommon Ground

 

 

http://uncommonground-artscouncilcollection.org.uk/exhibition/

 

 

"Drawn largely from the Arts Council Collection, this exhibition explores how landscape and nature came to be key concerns of Conceptual art in Britain in the 1960s and 70s. Many of our most significant British artists used landscape and nature in radical new ways and reconfigured one of the oldest subjects of art into one of the most dynamic and vital forms of art today."

 

I have just returned from my second visit to the above exhibition at the National Museum of Wales, Park Place, Cardiff. It is meant to be a relaxing and meditative experience and it was until the spell was broken by children and their parents. Now I am fast turning into a middle aged melancholic! What happens to those jobless, worthless pieces of shite not propping up city centre bars? Well they go to Art Galleries and Museums hoping for a bit of meditation and inspiration. I should have known better with it being half term. With this exhibit below I think they were asking for trouble.

Anyroad up, the exhibition encapsulates the years perfectly when I was a child 1966-1979: those years... whilst there was still a little bit of magic and mischief to be had in life. Wood, Plastic, Branches, video installation encapsulates the decade very well. It made me realise that art and culture and 'wot not' was going on whilst the three day week and the winter of discontent were in full throw. As a layperson I tend to think about music and politics being synonymous with the decades of our lives but not art and in this case conceptual art.  

 

This may sound grandiose on my part but I needed a private viewing. Myself and the general public just don't get on, they never have done. "Bbbbut you are a member of the general public"...a politically correct defender of the great unwashed might stammer. No I would reply, "I stopped becoming a member of the General Public at the age of 13, in the year that this collection came to an end. My unconsciousness ended in that year and I was propelled in amongst them kicking and screaming against my will. It is hell and has always been hell in amongst other human beings".

 

As I left and disappeared into Bute Park, like a wounded fox, I realised that there is a lot of uncommon ground between me and other people.  

 



Adult Exploration

I know what you were hoping for in this Blog Post: Adult Exploration, in other words.....but I am going to take this opportunity to show some snaps I took recently as I was exploring as an adult. As children we took our torches and went up the Dingle where at the top there was a Bridge. We could hear a small waterfall further into the darkness so off we went with no concern for potential danger and before Weil's disease was even a blip on the radar. As adults we can lose our urge to explore. I am taking the opportunity to explore an unfamiliar part of Britain but one which has always held a fascination for me: The North West. As a self proclaimed arty farty sort I am surprisingly taken by the relics of the Industrial Revolution perhaps because somewhere deep down I feel that discovering our collective history might assist in changing our collective future.

Next year is the 100 year commemoration of the First World War. In my adult exploration last week I chanced upon the Gallipoli Gardens in Bury, Greater Manchester. It was situated near the Fusiliers Museum. I didn't want to go in there because I didn't want to engage in the history of the military. I stopped here to take a photograph because I had two great uncles who fought on the beaches of Gallipoli, one on the British side and one on the Australian or Anzac side. Uncle Dafydd and Uncle Tommy were both brothers of my Grandmother on my Father's side from an area near Cerrigydrudion in North East Wales.  Tommy had left Wales to seek his fortune in the new country and within months of arriving, the war to end all wars started and he was shipped out to the Dardanelles. They both fought on the same beaches, against the same perceived enemy and neither knew the other one was there.  I would maybe one day like to write a play about their experiences. Both survived the carnage and brutality and Tommy became a Soldier Settler in Queensland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_settlement_(Australia)
 

I have learnt that in my Father's part of North Wales in the 1920's every Armistice Day children were marched to the cenotaphs from their schools where there would be large numbers of women dressed in black. It decimated the male population of many areas especially Lancashire.

 I finished the afternoon in Bury thinking about Poetry and Plays and for many people this is the only way they can express their feelings about important subjects like War. Our impotence in the face of such global grief can perhaps only be expressed in words.



http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/their-families-have-been-informed.html

Before going into my lectures I gazed across at the Imperial War Museum North. I have been around a couple of times and have noted how the exhibition is more like a Multi-Media Performance. There is something detached and removed about the exhibits. I suppose that the further away we get from War and the effects of War then the harder it is for people to interpret what it was like. Next time I go round I'm going to ask where the exhibition to honour conscientious objectors is. What did surprise me was that there was mangled metal in there, huge mangled iron girders that had been shipped across from Ground Zero & The Twin Towers next to a burned out armoured car that had been shipped over from Iraq. This gave the exhibition an element of the ghoulish and indeed there were persons having their photographs taken next to the mangled metal although photography was prohibited. A trophy photo perhaps. I thought 9/11 was an act of terrorism, therefore what were its remains doing in a War Museum.  There were young territorial soldiers in the Museum shop and I couldn't look at them. I couldn't hold their gaze. They wanted confirmation that they were heroes. I couldn't give them that. I felt ashamed that I was a member of a species that has invested and profited through war and conflict.

http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/on-futility-of-war-and-sickness-of.html

My Liverpool Lou!

 You will have to forgive me now as I attempt to wax lyrical. Out of all the placements on my M.A in Playwriting at the University of Salford, this was the one I was looking forward to the most. The Everyman Playhouse on Williamson Square on John Lennon's Birthday. I saw a brilliant performance of Dostoyevsky's Crime & Punishment. A Tour de Force that had the guy from Rita, Sue and Bob too, in it (George Costigan). After the workshop in the morning, I had an afternoon to kill before the Matinee at 5.30 so I took a trip down to Liverpool's Main Road, the Mersey, to look at the immortalised Ferry.

A Panoramic shot then of the Isle of Man Ferry which I had the honour to sail on in the 1970's three years on the trot. Family Holidays to Port St Mary and then Port Erin twice. What I really liked about the Isle of Man was that it had its own money. I think Liverpool should have its own money. There would be no shortage of Icons to go on the different currency and denomination of coin. The Peoples' Republic of Liverpool with Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, King Kenny Dalglish, Ken Dodd, Alan Bleasdale, Willie Russell and then Yosser Hughes on the £50.00 note. I like to think that the name Yosser derives from the Welsh name Iorwerth. After all it was many of the Welsh Builders and Craftsmen who built parts of Liverpool and went to work as Lorry Drivers and Office Workers for Morris & Jones as did two of my Great Uncles. Now some fellow Welsh persons would chastise me for eulogising Liverpool so much. After all, it was they that drowned Cwm Tryweryn for their water. Well it was the Institution of the Liverpool Corporation not the proud people of Liverpool and it appears that we the Welsh could have done a lot more about defending it than we did.

I took photographs of the Liver Building in Black & White and Sepia to try and emphasise its Eastern European feel and its historical feel. I was surprised to see a statue of Queen Victoria in Liverpool and one in Manchester of the Victoria that we remember from the back of the coins, grieving and overweight with a white veil. Then back into the City Centre I went to Liverpool 1 where you are never very far from the football heritage.

As a kid in North Wales I aligned myself with the underdog immediately and took to the Kop at Wrexham FC, but I was soon to understand that there was a secret railroad or rather buses that took hordes of 'Gogs' across to Everton's Goodison Park and Liverpool's Anfield. Some even went on the Bus to Old Trafford but this was before they became famous. As one Salfordian said to me recently "Manchester United Supporters? They all live in London".

I have put the Everton Club Shop above the Liverpool one because Everton was the original football club but if you ask someone from Birkenhead, they will tell you that Tranmere Rovers was the original football club. Well I've tried to, and they've both come out side by side on the blog! And they both now have a Welsh Connection as both managers, Roberto Martinez of Everton and Brendan Rogers of Liverpool have both managed Swansea City in the past. Swans on the Mersey

It was great to be back in Liverpool and I felt I had to give something  to the local economy so I purchased a copy of Alexei Sayle's Autobiography 'Stalin ate my homework' from the News from Nowhere bookshop on Bold Street.  The lady behind the counter knew Alexei and his mother Molly to whom the book is dedicated. I remember visiting Liverpool in the early 1980s when he was just starting out as an alternative comedian and I thought then as I think now that he is the funniest man I ever saw apart from Ken Dodd of course. Liverpool is a family whose members are scattered across the globe. I am a Plastic Scouser but there is even room for them here.

http://www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk/