Favourite Things

Originally posted 22nd September 2011

On my 60th birthday,
When the dog bites,
when the bee stings,
when I'm feeling sad - - - -


I went to a kind of talk at Icon the other week hosted by Ruben and Karyn. They gave out eight favourite things and why. It was informative and entertaining.
(not in one go) I will endeavour to list mine:

Painting

The Lake by Kandinsky.

I first discovered Kandinsky when I was initially learning to paint properly at 21, after my foundation course had finished .
I particularly liked his early-ish paintings that had very strong connections to Russian folk law. Wide open spaces, all very romantic, steeped in a past that was changing, but at the same time containing a very "cosmic" energy.
His own comment was " explaining the mysterious by means of the mysterious".



He spelt out the vastness of the heavens and the largeness of the land. He certainly does this in "the Lake" in a kind of almost naive simplistic kind of way.
The boat men are just passing through life's journey.

I love the way he dissects the sky and the beautiful colours that he uses. This makes me realize that I haven't seen this painting for a long time and that maybe I ought to be thinking of making a painting "after it" myself.

Music:

The Rites of Spring, by Stravinsky.
A good piece to achieve a parallel universe on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF1OQkHybEQ

Song:

Understanding, by the Small Faces.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUyCss-KeXY
 

Must be the "B" side single of the sixties that got away.
I believe that this was the first time that a whistle was blown on a record before disco got hold of them. - the first time I ever heard one anyway!
It must have always been overshadowed by "All or Nothing" on the other side.

Starting with the bottom keys on a piano it sets the framework for many "metal" songs 6-10 years later.
The main thing that gets me about this track is that most of the band must have been teenagers when they wrote it - and to talk about love being an understanding thing at that age is pretty impressive!
Anyway, I'm pretty sure it was the first record to really knock my socks off!

Poem:

O by the by, by e e cummings.

o by the by

has anybody seen

little you-i

who stood on a green

hill and threw

his wish at blue

with a swoop and a dart

out flew his wish

(it dived like a fish

but it climbed like a dream)

throbbing like a heart

singing like a flame

blue took it my

far beyond far

and high beyond high

bluer took it your

but bluest took it our

away beyond where

what a wonderful thing

is the end of a string

(murmers little you-i

as the hill becomes nil)

and will somebody tell

me why people let go

 

To me, the father of contemporary poetry, pop songs et all.

Basically I love it because it is so uplifting (and true).

Story:

Kim, By Rudyard Kipling.

I see Kipling as one of the great story tellers.
I believe he was quoted as saying that there are only twenty five stories that can possibly be told. - or something similar.
I reckon he covered a few of them in the "Just So" stories.

But for me, his monumental one was "Kim".
-who tries to discover himself, warts an' all.
I find it a cheerful read, despite all the things that can and do go wrong.
I love the way that Kim deals with things with his simplified thought processes, weaving through and around all kinds of complexities.

I enjoy the book having various off shoots, profound announcements, like "you don't become a man until you've killed a man"
-taken out of context, but coming from and explaining someone else's life story.

Possibly a good book for teenagers to cover in school.

And lastly - the taste that lingers is that it is an upbeat assessment of life's trials and tribulations.
"Think positive" is a slogan that could very comfortably fit with it.

Place:

Chamba, H.P. India.
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/LocationPhotos-g1156021-Chamba_Himachal_Pradesh.html#32121524

Person:

Ken Kesey (and the Merry Pranksters)

This lot, or episode sums up for me, the raw thought that lay underneath the psychedelic thing in the sixties.
Covering the happenings, spontaneous free flowing expression and artistic jumbling up of various forms of statement.
Ive read Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool Aid Acid Test", Ken Kasey's Demon Box and also his picture book produced at the time, coverage of events that stemmed from his farm and the bus. And of course also "Sometimes a Great Notion" and "One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest".

I would have liked to have been there, but wonder if I'd have survived.
It struck me that the Pranksters endeavour was not based on "love and peace" but on discovery. (Although there is nothing wrong with the former!)
He had already gone "fuck it" to Vietnam and the great American dream, he was onto the next stage without particular political axes to grind.

Jumping back to the love and peace thing, was the best way for the community to survive - -  Good Vibrations.
Anything heavy and you could screw somebody up for life.
People (at times ) try to gage when post modernism began - sure, one could say "Da Da" but there was a lot of it here, in breaking down barriers and definitions.
Much present-day performance stuff seems to be a glorification of that scene.

Film:

Pinocchio, by Walt Disney.

 

More to do with what I related to as I was primarily growing up. I remember going to see the film by myself one Christmas eve when I was about nine. I think the barrage of colour and composition had a lot to do with it.

During my first interview for a foundation course in 69, they asked me which artists inspired me - to which I replied Disney.

They weren't overly impressed!

 

 



Architecture:

The Watts Towers.

 

Magnificent man made conglomerate.

The ultimate in "folk art"

Return of the Mighty Quin

I had a dream the other night, about the starting up of a new venture, that was similar to other things that I have been involved in before, but seemed to underline what I really like to do, where I want to be in a team and how I would like to cooperate with other people.

The Mighty Quin Returned
We found a new site out in the near Black Country.
It was a large ex-scrap yard more than half of it was outside.
There were many brick walls that needed a certain amount of attention, and lots of old paint.
There was loads of space for murals, much of it higher than you could reach standing on a chair.

I put out a call on "turning point" asking for creative bods to come out and play.

I constructed a kind of storeroom / come office in a sunny place, built out of bric-a-brac, from around and about. It had a small brick chimney to house a small wood burning stove. We had a foraging team - there was a useful pile of stuff available for making things.
I built an adjoining seating area outside, it had its own slight roof, so it was in fact possible to sit outside in light rain around a bonfire.
The scrap building was called the Turret, it could be slept in with its stove and butane gas fired Baby Belling cooker, but with no electricity. At a push, it could seat four or five people and was used to meet up in to plan the bare bones of schemes and ideas.

There were a lot of people involved in the project, with quite a few things going on here and there. In fact, there was always something going on.
Helping to coordinate things could be a bit painful at times, but it was a perennial thing, the body amount of activity ebbed and flowed with the weather.

We had the odd residency, the odd show and event. At the start of September there was an open week with a makeshift bar and various happenings occurring around about - - - jugglers, sound event areas, light shows, even a puppet theatre.

It was basically an L shaped affair, with the old breaking yard forming a long arm of the letter - a kind of small drive and entrance. When empty, a bit like a small runway with of course an arch at the entrance.


pen and ink picture to follow.

Knife and Fork

An image in banners.

I see this as a very strong image for printing and best seen from a distance. The simplest way to produce it would be to print it onto a synthetic banner, stretch it over a billboard , It is already in a format that is close to being capable of being blown up to a large size.

I see banners as a viable contemporary art form / statement.
They address the question: How can painting exist in a contemporary world of digital expression? It’s a way of blending the old with the new. Making the initial heart felt comment then presenting it in a modern day to day context. After all, banners are everywhere. Their constructed material makes them durable, colourfast and reusable. They are current, readable and universally acceptable. They can be erected and left up as long as useful, then, simply and easily taken down and safely stored for possible later use.
I suppose you could look at that as some kind of cultural phenomena!

I wonder what percentage of British people have gone out for a Chinese meal and decided to try chopsticks. Been given them in a paper packet with instructions on the side about how to hold and use them. One my first outing, it almost made me feel like I was in a foreign land, an honoured guest, that type of thing.

This idea is a kind of duality. A similar example I can think of is the “Balti” dish which originated in the Midlands, basically because it fitted that area, suited the local population – it just evolved. Nowadays you can buy a Balti dish in India itself, we’ve exported the curry back to the place where we invented the term “curry” in the first instance.

In some ways I would be quite happy if people saw this as a billboard and held doubts as to whether or not it was in fact an advertisement.

The flag of Baltistan, an imaginary country to explain where the Balti dish came from. 2008.

The card for a web site I was commissioned to produce by “Unltd” in 2008. Its specifically explored cultural issues, misconceptions, stereotypes and the like. It was meant to be funny albeit in a challenging way.

Map of Britain as we were in the process of invading Iraq – How would we feel if it was our country that was being invaded?

Another anomaly, quite a nice pint actually.

Flight Table from my show “inside” at St Martin in the Bullring 2002, connecting all the people of the world to one table containing the times that flights took to get to the various places. I didn’t put, or light the candle on the top, which actually made the statement.

Constructional costs.

The cost of the printing and possibly the price of a pot of red paint for the frame.

Personal Costs:

I find the costs issue quite tricky as firstly there aren’t huge fees available anyway. Secondly I’m after the billboards because I want to do them rather than get paid to do them.
If materials get covered my only basic interest is that it doesn’t cost me to carry out the project – in fact that the mechanics of production are lubricated.

Documentation

I feel that documentation is a very important part of any artists practice.
I have documentation from the past of work that has long since disappeared. It is also valuable evidence of the process involved, a history of the making of the thing. It helps to explain what it is all about, gives its reasons and can also provide glimpses of ideas and images that get rejected on the way.
It would be very important to me to document this as a project.

I add this as an extra really – it’s done and dusted, the files need strengthening and it’s ready to roll.
I see it as quite a strong but simple image that would fit comfortably in the middle of the whole project
It is however something that I view as simply being useable, my interest in this project is to actually build things for it, spend time on it and perfect ideas I have about it. These ideas are part of my practise anyway, I feel that 48 sheet is an ideal opportunity to take themes of work forward.

Urban Chalets

A brief respite
Aimed as a lift for tiredness, not exactly “man sheds” but somewhere where you could imagine yourself away from it all – take your pick of which lodging you would like to be in! They each will be different with various implied restful activities going on. The idea originates from Yoko Ono’s show in London where she met John Lennon. There was a large presence of white half furniture, stuck to a white wall, complete incompleteness. A universe in 2D relief.

Structurally and practically speaking I would build this piece of work with a nod toward Gaudi. With added flourishes and knobbles, various bits of colour and decoration built with bits of discarded furniture and the like. In fact the whole thing would be based on found and broken bits of furniture, bits of buildings and the like. It’s a wall of relief chalet type huts (not more than a couple of feet deep), all quite serene in their own way, almost like "man sheds" (another cultural phenomena!)

Think in terms of the matchstick tree house only bigger and a lot flatter.

Siteing

Would be best in a really grubby, industrialised, polluted part of town.
It being a comment about having a rest from it all, I feel that the chalets would stand out better and look more comfortable if surrounded by something that you needed to have a break from.

The roughs for this side of the project can be quite finished, because as I move along the gathering process, I will be dictated to by what is lying about or what I have been given. This board, even though 90% reconstructed, will have the ability to change, in-situ, right up to the last minute and maybe even after it has gone up and been declared open.

If I was put in the position where I had to choose one of these billboard designs, it would be this one.
- I can paint any day, anywhere but I need this kind of opportunity to explore and expose this important side of my practice. The side that is the vessel rather than the story, allowing its audience to make up their own narrative to the one home I have constructed to do just that.

Constructional notes:

I see this as a kind of “flat pack” effort.
I would build and assemble all the various parts in my studio, exactly the same size as the billboard.
I would then de-construct it; every component would be of a size that I could lift. They would be fixed onto the billboard surface with brackets.

Constructional Costs:

I do see this particular project as coming out of skips, which as an activity is a bit of an urban sub-culture in itself. I would find most of the bulky materials. Indeed I collect materials to build structures and have quite a hoard, ready to go.

Leaving:
Screws and fixings, £25,
Jigsaw £100,
Electric Screwdriver £100.

Personal Costs:

I find the costs issue quite tricky as firstly there aren’t huge fees available anyway. Secondly I’m after the billboards because I want to do them rather than get paid to do them.
If materials get covered my only basic interest is that it doesn’t cost me to carry out the project – in fact that the mechanics of production are lubricated.

Hut built at “The Edge”, Friction Arts, 2008

I was born in Shepherds Bush, London in 1951, when the area was a bit more deprived than it is now. We used to make most of our own toys. I was – of course a member of a gang and a thing we used to do a lot of was build gang huts. We used to exist from them, emerging into the light after the odd packet of fags.
We would go down to the Thames at Hammersmith and collect scrap wood that had been washed up by the tide. These huts took on many forms: underground, on stilts, multilayered, necessity is the mother of invention and we were presented with many varying challenges. These huts were a place to retreat to, a safe place, maybe it was a particularly “baby boomer” thing to do. Many of the boys I grew up with still do have their hut at the bottom of the garden where they indulge their particular passion, whether it be racing cars or racing pigeons.

The Vessel,
The thing that allows the observer to construct their own “happening”, make up personal imaginings, within a home to hold them.

Documentation

I feel that documentation is a very important part of any artists practice.
I have documentation from the past of work that has long since disappeared. It is also valuable evidence of the process involved, a history of the making of the thing. It helps to explain what it is all about, gives its reasons and can also provide glimpses of ideas and images that get rejected on the way.
It would be very important to me to document this as a project.

Potted C.V.

Born : 22-09-51, Brought up in Shepherds Bush, London.
Dip.A.D. Epsom 1974, Shows in Wales until 1980. Time in India, S.E. Asia and Turkey.
1993, moved to Birmingham, 2001 M.A. Margaret Street, since involved in various projects and shows.
I’ve painted and made things all my life, I never stop.
I have also involved myself in events and movements: musical groups, shows, projects.
I like to fit, into what everybody else is doing from time to time, concentrate on the team effort, feel comfort in the teams company, lend a hand, get stuck in.

The Balti Chariot.
From the “Green Street Show” 2007

The School Run

Cheering people up,
The thing that appeals to me about this project is that it is actually in the public domain. It is also “of our time”
-everyone is used to seeing billboards, it would appeal to me to have the opportunity to jog or a little loosely shake people from what they happily conceive as the norm. In a city, I also can’t think of a much bigger passing audience save for the T.V. one.
Another positive for me is that this project is non-profit based and also non-gallery. There are not the normal artistic dictates, although there is going to be a greater emphasis on health and safety.
I see my function in this project as being one of cheering people up, brightening their passing for a few moments.

The School Run is a phenomenon,
It happens in many countries in many ways.
Here I am portraying a typically English setting. An idyllic representation of families coming together on their way in and out to school – all sharing similar goals and aspirations, engaged in the same topics of conversation.
Walking through a park is a lovely way to get there, it happened to me as a child, it happened to my son as a child and I see it through my window in the park outside our house today.
Maybe it is a city thing, often in the countryside I see loads of cars pulling up at primary schools as the roads are too dangerous to walk down nowadays

Production of this mural,
I am quite open minded about how this particular mural is produced, (as long as I can achieve it in the time allocated). I would be happy with producing it painted on panels or blowing it up digitally. Both methods would serve the image objectives.
 I would be quite comfortable fitting in with what else is happening on the project. For instance maybe every body else is producing their stuff digitally and it would be nice to employ a different means of production, or there could be other work that is hand painted and similar to my own which would work together. I am quite willing to produce them in the form most suited to the layout of the project, I see myself as being part of a general whole as oppose to a grand master strutting in and showing off his wares in the best possible venue.

My studio flat area  (in a single complete stretch)  is bigger than an actual billboard and so can be built over a few months thereby dealing with constructional problems -and compositional issues related to that scale of presentation.
The emphasis on this banner would be the “blown up” quality, the change in scale; one could see the details seemingly blown up from a concentrated ink and line paper sketch, one would know that it had been deliberately blown up. In a kind of “Lichtenstein” fashion. Only in a more painterly kind of way.
There would be an emphasis on the way the paint had worked on the surface and the various idiosyncrasies that the lines had produced.

The initial roughs for this particular banner will probably not look exactly like it will do when finished and presented. I see it as a  journey starting with one image and slowly growing and transforming until it becomes a presentable format.
It will probably end up having more of a “toy-town” feel. Albeit a bit subtler, but it will be bright and to a certain extent cheery.

Construction note:

If painted on 8ft x 4ft panels the panels could be arranged in a jigsaw type pattern so that no edge actually went all the way from top to bottom or side to side.
In my view there are three different possible layouts:

Documentation,
I feel that documentation is a very important part of any artists practice.
I have documentation from the past of work that has long since disappeared. It is also valuable evidence of the process involved, a history of the making of the thing. It helps to explain what it is all about, gives its reasons and can also provide glimpses of ideas and images that get rejected on the way.
It would be very important to me to document this as a project.

At the end of the project,
I would like to give this billboard away.
Carving the overall image up into many smaller views, making sizable chunks that could comfortably fit into a living room or maybe a shop or communal area, like a play group or church hall.
Then placing this image on the internet with lines traced out on it and the various rectangles numbered. People could then reserve pieces of it to be sawn up and collected at the projects end.

Constructional Costs,

Sheets of Ply, £90
£50 for paint and brushes,
Large pot of varnish £25

Personal Costs,

I find the costs issue quite tricky as firstly there aren’t huge fees available anyway. Secondly I’m after the billboards because I want to do them rather than get paid to do them.
If materials get covered my only basic interest is that it doesn’t cost me to carry out the project – in fact that the mechanics of production are lubricated.

The Argonauts painted in 2009
filling the downstairs window of Birmingham Central Library.

Potted C.V.Born : 22-09-51, Brought up in Shepherds Bush, London.
Dip.A.D. Epsom 1974, Shows in Wales until 1980. Time in India, S.E. Asia and Turkey.
1993, moved to Birmingham, 2001 M.A. Margaret Street, since involved in various projects and shows.
I’ve painted and made things all my life, I never stop.
I have also involved myself in events and movements: musical groups, shows, projects.
I like to fit, into what everybody else is doing from time to time, concentrate on the group effort, feel comfort in the teams company, lend a hand, get stuck in.

The Rhondda Mural Team 86

Falling Out with People

Martin,

I don't have your number to contact to you. I have be informed that you had painted over the sign message that I placed on the back door to my studio. That message is there because on several occasion that door has been left open. Please stay out of my space and I really don't know why your in my space? Please respect my privicy and not go in there. And is pissed off with people just wondering in there! I understand from Ted that the door is only to be used for an fire exit!if. Itks really you, I'm not
happy about you being in there and tampering with something that I've put up!

Martin Humphries
I havent painted over your door or sign and I dont go into your space and I dont tamper with anything in there. I would like to speak to whoever it was that told you that I did that, it is a flat and outright lie.
There has been coming and going up and down those stairs recently but none of it has been to do with me.
I actually havent been into the studio much over the past couple of months
I think Dene has finished his business now and also Chris has moved downstairs. So who ever has been going through your space oughtto have finished by now.
As far as I am concerned I do respect your privacy and I wouldnt dream

It's got cut off here

I really don’t like falling out with people, but - - -

What kind of set-up do you expect from a cheap studio situation?
Of course you are going to have to deal with other people, you are not on a first class ticket on a train, you are with the rest of us commuters.

You are acting like a school bully:
you can say what you like to people, but I’m sure you wouldn’t take anything back, even on learning that you had got it wrong and even up to the point where it started involving other people.

You could have asked me first, whether or not I had been “tampering” in your working area. Before accusing me, basically of vandalism.
What kind of trust has been built up between us over the past few years?  Obviously not the kind that I believed we were operating from.

Are you going to lock me out like you did with Dave from downstairs when you got paranoid and started to feel he was trying to get at you, or something similar?

That note you sent on”facebook” is unhinged; it actually makes me feel apprehensive about being your neighbour in the future – what is likely to happen next?
Its a bit like “everybody share my bad mood!”

Of course, somebody having left the backdoor open affects me as wellas everybody else.
If you feel like putting a notice on it saying “keep it shut”, I am not going to paint over it.

I don’t “tamper” with your studio, I never have.
But how much privacy do you expect in a place we pay very little for?

I am fed up with having one person acting as monitor for all of the studios, having the last word on what happens there.
There seems to be a bit like two sides to this:
You and the rest of the place.

I am fed up with these self centred notes that assume guilt and don’t take other peoples feelings into account.
What’s happened to  “live and let live”?

I would have had to have been very drunk to have sent your note and then I would have been mortified in the morning

Recently and seemingly the start of all this nonsense, I came into the studios to find that all my stuff had disappeared from the area in the middle. I was worried and a little upset, you were more concerned about the fact that the toilets were untidy.
Storming about in a bad mood, something you seemed to have laid on people since.
You seem to have blamed me for the confusion and ineptitude associated with the clear-out.

Sent to Coventry.
In my books, this is not a grown up way to deal with life.

You seem to have stayed on the same theme, I feel I have done nothing to deserve it and I’m fed up of having to continually asses my plans to fit around how things may upset you.