Where am I now, what am I doing, and what happens next.

A vote of confidence in the virtual world of design and arts.

Firstly I’d like to thank Noel from Designer’s Depot who has given my burgeoning collection a fantastic write-up. I appreciate every single piece of publicity I receive, for without the lifeblood of publicity I doubt that any of my work would ever get the attention it deserves. The art game is a fickle one, there’s plenty of back-biting and backslapping in the industry, and I very much doubt there are many of great influence in the industry that take the time to research new artists and collections out there, and so I was very pleased to see a positive review at Designer’s Depot – Controversial Art by Paul Baines.

Tagging in the ‘real world’ involves making your mark on a wall (or any public surface), in order to encourage others to do the same, be it positive or negative, a defacement or an enhancement, publicity is publicity.

I see the net and in particular bloggers as the graffiti movement’s counterparts, held captive in a virtual space where code is the bricks and mortar, blogs are the graffiti, and artists and writers the taggers.

I appreciate the feedback at Designer’s Depot, an excellent showcase for artists and designers across the world, Noel provides a vital service to the arts underground, and a vital resource for witnessing the live stats of new and burgeoning art scenes across the world, as well as a great deal of technical advice for those aiming to improve their work.

Reigning Men by Paul Baines

I am currently working on my 5th piece in a series of 10 images as part of my series of limited edition prints. There will be a total of 1000 prints available (100 of each) after which, as I have mentioned before, I will be moving on to paint and canvas. I dare say that the works will still offer the now familiar graffiti style offered in the prints, although shifting from the medium of digital painting to Acrylic will inevitably engender a particularly different shade of emotions, the fluidity of the brush over the digital pen, the texture of the canvas as opposed to the pixelation of colour and surface of computer generated imagery.

‘Reigning Men‘ is currently at the drawing board and most certainly a work in progress. RM tentatively approaches the subject of our current and collective crisis in the world financial system. As the numbers roll up and down the boards in every stock exchange of the world, and every other day is described as a meltdown, I find myself falling back on a childhood conclusion that the banking system is no different than the world of gambling.

My grandmother on my mother’s side used to bet on the horses, my grandfather strongly disapproved and in keeping with the time forbade her from ‘going to the gee gees’ as it was recounted to me at the time. She continued to bet in secret, and eventually won so much money that it was impossible to hide her tainted gains from her husband. She was reduced to going to bingo, and although the risks were far lower, so were the financial rewards. Besides which horse racing punters must study form, a blend of past successes and failures, the physical condition of the horse in question, and obviously its jockey. Bingo is simply a numbers game, as opposed to a game of numbers. The digits are meaningless, arranged in random grids each ticket is sold as part of a book, a book lasts the whole session for the evening’s game. The only way to buck the trend is to buy more books, the physical limitations of the human brain meant that even the most seasoned of players could hardly manage more than a handful of these at one time.

I have always believed (from a very early age) that the majority of brokers do not study form, but in fact tend to play bingo with the worlds’ economy. Spreading a share portfolio is no different than buying more bingo books. I’d compare the current crisis to a burning bingo hall, people are still playing but the roof is on fire. The structure of the building is collapsing all around the players, yet the players still play on, all around them their comrades and competitors are struck down by the forces of nature, to meet their respective mortality on earth. Death is a natural sacrifice for any system, be it the ecology, society or the financial markets. However there is a point where the balance tips towards total collapse, we, the human race may indeed die out, as may much of our environment, but the earth will live on, the game will continue to play without us.

As last Monday’s Dow Jones stumbled, 7% down in one day, the media leapt into their archives and streamed a cornucopia of images from The Wall Street Crash of 1929 where the market plummeted an enormous 50%, the crash itself was not the cause of The Great Depression but rather public opinion, business reaction, and government policy. Many American families at the time still struggled to make a living wage from farming, as it is to this day, however many had taken a gamble on the stock market, hoping to bump up their income with profits from share dealing.

1929 Wall Street Crash Facts:-

The clips continued to stream by, my eyes subconsciously taking stock of every frame, when suddenly I saw the initial moment of a piece of footage I had witnessed once before. As a child I remember seeing a documentary about The Wall Street Crash of 1929, and in it, without warning the documentary showed footage of a mass suicide. It seems so unbelievable now, that I as a child could have witnessed such a scene that I am tempted to believe it is simply the collective consciousness at work, that I am simply recounting a series of different experiences, films, cartoons, books, and perhaps even The Falling Man of the 9/11 Attack. I began to imagine the current crisis ever deepening inspiring the same reaction in today’s bankers and brokers, but in all honesty I cannot believe our current culture of selfish avarice could truly inspire the same extreme fatalism, the world of economics has no room for emotion, there is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

Besides since the architect Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe changed the face of corporate structure and design replacing brick and stone with vast walls of glass. I very much doubt many are able to jump these days, since the modern skyscrapers of steel girders and glass walls, for the main part, don’t incorporate windows, or at least not ones you can open. Air con makes prisoners of us all.

This strange and rather eerie convulsion of emotion inspired me to begin work on ‘Reigning Men’, in the meantime I am delaying progress on the next work of the series ‘War Holes’.

A Change Of Scenery

I’m exiting the cocoon that is my home and studio and venturing outside, I have never had a great affinity with reality, of the reality of British life, the ragged remains of a ‘buckle down and muck in’ together attitude that I spent many years learning to appreciate in my student days. I’d work in various factories during the long vacations and even into term time when the student grant petered out on beer, cigarettes and artist materials.

I created a mask of myself, something simpler and less disaffected so that my co-workers wouldn’t feel uncomfortable in my presence, those who did attempt to pierce my defensive armour were ill prepared for the chaotic personality within. I had deliberately chosen this sterile working environment in order to ground myself in what I saw as working-class, an arena without pretence or subtlety, a place to shed the illusions and aspirations of the middle-class.

For a while I worked at Tip Top’s Bakery near Orpington. There were over a 1000 workers there, and occasionally I’d overhear grisly stories of past accidents on the shop-floor. One tale in particular has stuck with me to this day. It involved an incredibly overweight line manager with a slight Napoleonic complex, he was dictatorial to say the least, and whence his downfall came, little had sympathy for the man.

Every day he’d turn up an hour before his shift, (we all worked 12 hour shifts, sometimes 7 days a week), and as regular as clockwork this beer barrel of a man would visit the subsidised canteen, painted a gaudy yellow in a vain attempt to cover the nicotine stains of a thousand chain-smoking bakers.On this occasion nothing seemed out of the ordinary and his routine continued as usual, he proceeded to consume several Full English Breakfasts, a gallon of strong brown tea and a handful of cigarettes, barked orders to his shift line. A motley crew of old and young unskilled workers, who’d immediately pack their rolling tobacco away, sip the dregs of their tea and rise simultaneously to form a queue behind him.

He had a habit of climbing the empty crates stacked haphazardly around the factory floor so he could purchase a greater overview of his unwilling underlings, shouting and pointing on occasion, however the machinery was deafening and few could ever understand what his intentions were, beyond the obvious ‘get on with your work’, or ‘pick that up’, or ‘put that out’.

Then something out of the ordinary happened, it was to be expected, but not at this exact point in time, not in this place, not now. He had a heart attack, with sweets in his mouth and his hand clutching his chest he fell 20 feet or more and smashed into the concrete floor below. The workers stopped. The line stopped. The machines, the ovens, the mixers, everything stopped.

A higher grade of manager, rarely seen by the blue boiler suited operators, leaned out of his office, he pointed to two workers to find a pump truck, lay a pallet on it and cart the dead man away. Then screamed through a crackling tannoy to the factory floor, ‘GET ON WITH YOUR WORK!". They promptly did, the bread line continued on as if nothing had happened, it didn’t stop for the police, or the paramedics, it didn’t stop when the sergeant began questioning the management in white trilby hats, one of which had broken the law by ordering the removal of the body. Not even when the body was cleared away, or when the cleaners were finally allowed to mop up the blood.

It was a health and safety issue, which as it turns out, seems to have taken legal precedent in a food-related production area. The police shook their heads and walked away, and all that lived on of the dead line manager was the grim tale of his death.

Life is too short, you have to take time out now and again, if you don’t it might take you.

I will be wandering the streets of Marrakesh for a few days with my partner Christina, we have no objective except the pursuit of difference, a change of scenery, a taste of reality, if only for a brief while.

I will continue work on my 5th piece ‘Reigning Men’ on my return.

This post is tagged art, artist, death, depression, design, designer, economy, graffiti, review, Wall Street, Warhol