Postcards from beyond the edge

This work was partially inspired by an article I read about sending postcards from space. Soon after I got the brief for the next ReOrsa artists project, dealing with notions around boundaries and the breaking of them. The two seemed to coalesce instantly into the beginnings of this work.

Boundaries and Beyond flyer

Thinking about the nature of boundaries and what boundaries mean from a tourist or postcard perspective, I decided that not only did I want to send postcards from space, I also wanted it to seem perfectly normal. I had also recently re-watched a episode of Horizon called The Core which talked about the interior of the Earth and how it may be the last place we ever explore due to its phenomenally inhospitable conditions.

This sounded like a challenge to me so I decided to create a series of postcards that infer that the current limits of human exploration and some of the most inhospitable and remote areas of the world are perfectly normal holidaying destinations. Creating, photographing and using free to access images I have produced 60 postcards with images from all around the globe and beyond. Jungles, Deserts, Arctic regions, Space and under the earth are all represented as well a a few other areas.

Original test postcard

Additionally many of the images are not of the places they say they are. I wanted to take to the extreme the postcard tradition of showing places in the best possible light, often to the point that they no longer look like the place they depict. I won't spoil here which ones are fake, I will leave that for you to work out.

I've always been interested with perception and the power of suggestion to produce views and ideas that are not true. This is one of the reasons that postcards interest me so. The idea that one or a few perfect images of perfect places can represent a place really fascinates me. 

 

Intital mocked up postmark

To accentuate this power of suggestion, I took all 60 postcards and created a universe where these cards were sent from one person to another, arranged them into series of cards from individual holidays and gave them an entire timeline and false history. The cards were written in order according to my timeline and frequently contain references to previous holidays or past unknown events much as a 11 year association via postcards would do. I created a false publishing company and a QR code, that when scanned should take you to my website. Finally I created fake stamps that referenced the general locations of the cards and 60 individual postmarks.

Final work

From my 6 years working with postcards I seem to be mainly producing works that cannot be touched and are quite traditional from a fine art aspect; paintings, drawings and prints. For a medium that is first visual but also quite tactile this can be odd. I have recently started archiving my collection so I have had a lot more tactile relationship with them in recent months which may be impacting in the scope of my work.

I liked the idea of creating actual postcards and of forming this entire new world where a weekend in space is as normal as a weekend in the south of France. The idea of looking into a future where the infrastructure to allow postcards to be sent exists everywhere seems both utopian and disturbing. Being able to go anywhere that easily seems amazing but also the idea of every wild and natural place becoming as false and uniform as most other highly touristy place goes against everything I believe.

Example of one of the finished cards (text side)

At the end of the day there are not (quite yet) shuttles to hotels on the Moon, but I am interested to what level visitors believe what they are given. And I like that they have to rifle through the postcards. I'd want to see how many people feel the need to read from start to finish and how many pick up the first one they see. I had a great time making up this character writing the postcards, who is effectively me, but me writing from a position I could only imagine rather than experience.

As to the addressee, which I really agonised over, I decided that I would have to take inspiration from a fictional explorer. Hopefully before I said that most of you didn't work out which one immediately.

Example of a finished card (image side)

Often the ReOrsa space is only accessible by looking in through the windows. I was highly aware of this when I was planning the work so I wanted my work to be at least partially readable through the windows. So far every time I have gone past the Gallery@49 windows I have seen at least one person trying to read my work. Additionally it seems every time I have gone past more and more of the postcards have escaped from their box. As well as a few originally scattered on the plinth they have seemed to explode exponentially with masses on the plinth and many now sitting on the nearby window ledge. It seems the postcards themselves want to take their own journey.

Boundaries and Beyond is on from 15^th - 31^st March at Gallery@49 in Bracknell Town Centre. It will be open 12 – 4 on the 31^st March and I will be there from 2 – 4 pm. 

 Check out the news: http://www.bracknellnews.co.uk/news/bracknell/articles/2012/03/19/58017-taking-art-to-the-town/ 

Installed work at ReOrsa Gallery@49

Links:

Horizon: The Core - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0148vph

Postcards from space - http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/usa/china/2011-12/02/content_14199778.htm

Underwater post box - http://rainbowstampclub.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/underwater-post-office-at-bahamas.html

ReOrsa and Gallery@49 - http://www.reorsa.org/Activities/activity6.html

From Eyjafjallajokull with love and ashey kisses

It has come to my attention that as an artist that habitually paints postcard scenes with potentially apocalyptic and occasionally natural disaster type skies in them that I should have at least some thoughts about Eyjafjallajokull the volcano that is spewing hot ash into the sky and disrupting tourism. Why it took me 5 days to realise this I don't know, I can only put it down being desensitized to the concept since I am spending much of my time painting the big canvas for the upcoming installation with it's purple and blue lightning clouds.

On that note there is little to say (a dangerous statement), It is going well, I got a lot done while my parents were away and very much enjoyed painting the sea. Without any royalty free images of Eyjafjallajokull the photos in this post are indeed of this painting, although I have included a link at the bottom of some really amazing images of it. I also have a prototype giant paper clip and a new Hat (yes it does require the capitalisation, as anyone who has experience version 1.0 of the Hat will testify) courtesy of Andalusia and my parents. Not that the Hat is in anyway connected to this post, I just really like it.

So what do I have to say on the matter of that volcano. Hmm well I doubt I'm going to come up with anything profound and certainly not anything that has not been already written about it, and boy there has been some really quite interesting things. Alain De Botton always a favourite of mine, his 'The Art of Travel' was an instrumental read for my practice and a huge part of my University days. I follow him on Twitter and while 50% of the time what he says has a tendency to make me quite depressed he also comes out with some absolute gems. His piece on the volcano was a wonderful bit of postulation on a world without air travel and I agreed with much of it. Certainly I don't think we travel so much any more, we just depart and arrive. Travelling implies a journey and I can't say stuck in the middle row of a transatlantic flight really feels like a journey, just a pause with a view of a screen and a lot of napping.

Undertaking so much more walking and exploring in the last 6 months has really taught me to look more and to appreciate the pace I want to go at. While I still very much enjoy car journeys, I don't feel the need all the time to go fast, fast, fast. Once I got used to the cruising pace of the narrowboat in December last year I really enjoyed that pace. I felt I was getting somewhere but I have the added luxury of not only seeing places along the way but actually experiencing them.

It's somewhat scary how much we seemingly rely on air travel. I know a lot of people that have been affected by the volcano. Friends of mine are stuck on holiday, others are struggling because workmates are unavailable and others have important events coming up that may prove they aren't going to get to. The country is seemingly going into meltdown with warnings of food shortages and demands for the government (busy with the upcoming election) to fix the situation. Now I certainly think that things should be done to sort out this traffic jam of people and I more than sympathise for everyone who has had their plans ruined by an inability to travel. I am not stuck (unless I get a burning desire to go overseas) and I guess I have the enviable ability to look on this current crisis with a little amusement and a little awe that a mountain thousands of miles away can cause such disruption on such a massive scale so easily.

In fact visually and aesthetically I am really enjoying the eruption, it is a thing of beauty and power. Great ash clouds, dotted with lightning because of the sheer forces unleashed by that much hot air billow into the sky. Covering the ground with this pale fine dust and filtering out the sunlight so it casts eerie shadows and smoky light across what would usually be a clear icy landscape. Like my paintings, scenes of people and places familiar to some or all are lit with bright sunlight (the ash not yet disrupting the sun) while as a backdrop great dark clouds leer towards them and down to the horizon. Itself a mere smudge, more guessed at than seen.

I've been really enjoying the news reports on the eruptions although now they are looking a little stale, really only giving us the same information again and again. I'm certainly not interested in hearing people whine and rage about the injustice of it all. I'm more interested in the people who are weathering it with grace and determination and most importantly those who are making the whole situation into a positive. Because there is one thing I wrote earlier that should come back to you..... STUCK ON HOLIDAY. When is that ever going to be a bad thing? As I understand it many holidaymakers (although not all) who are stuck because of the closure of the airspace are able to remain where they are basically having extra days of holiday on the buck of the companies they booked though or the travel insurance they have. Now for those where this isn't the case I sympathise greatly but for those who are, you lucky buggers!

Oh but it doesn't end there. There are also (and I find these the most exciting) those who are taking the opportunity to try to get home any way they can and having an adventure in the process.

I'd like to think if I was trapped in France or Spain and had to get back to blighty tout suite I'd go for this route. Screw waiting for planes, I'm going to rent or buy a cheap car and drive home. In the process seeing a hell of lot more of this country I've just spent 2 weeks in by the pool. A road trip, an adventure, an epic tale to tell the children/grandkids/drinking buddies. I'm actually hoping that some enterprising person has whipped out their video camera, swapped out the memory card containing 'the adventures of the sunbather in the costa del sol' and fired up a fresh blank one to film 'the time when air travel died and I did the crazy thing and drove the 1000 miles from Malaga to England'.

Both Bill Bailey and Jeremy Clarkson went for this option. Clarkson apparently unable to get a super car got a old decrepit VW and somehow managed to make it back. Bill Bailey (from his occasional tweets and photos) grabbed a train from Spain to France then bought a old Citreon DS (a surprisingly nice looking car) and is currently heading north. Frankly I kinda wish he was filming the adventure, not only would it be an amusing and informative piece of television but it would make a welcome change from the inevitable Channel 4 documentary about when a volcano halted half a world.

Oh well it helps that I would love to do that anyway before any of this volcano madness, all my friends know about my desire for a VW camper van and the time to explore the UK with it. Going onto the continent has always been a possibility in fact a likely next step with that plan. I will admit though that the stereotype of the holidaymaker that routinely goes to the anglicised Spanish resorts would not fit into the holidaymaker that actively craves an adventure. So I can hardly blame them when they react badly to things not going as planned.

However not all are stuck on the continent, many are stuck in further flung places whose ONLY feasible option is to fly back. I certainly wouldn't want to be in their shoes, especially if threatened with nowhere to stay and a lack of money let alone with rioting as is happening in Bangkok. And I certainly wouldn't be considering attempting other forms of transport to get home. I'd probably be curled in a corner of the airport rocking gently to and fro.

But whatever they are doing while unable to fly and whatever happens in the future while Eyjafjallajokull continues to disrupt air travel You can be sure that they will have a right royal tale to tell.

Beautiful, scary and fascinating images of the volcano and it's effects:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/04/more_from_eyjafjallajokull.html