As I descended into impassable rivers
I no longer felt guided by the ferryman
from Le Bateau ivre by Arthur Rimbaud
My father lived in the same property, 27 Devon Way Bailiff Bridge Brighouse West Yorkshire for forty-five years. He died in this house in October 2008.
Pictures of My Father records His absence from his house whilst I am being and present, the presence as image maker and author. He has left the house but it and I are still witnessing his existence in this imagining. The house is private and domestic, exposed and monumental. The images seem to contain everything and nothing at the same time — they span and contract equally, are personal and universal both open and closed. Closure becomes an opening up to the possibility of moving on, living. This project contains my mourning; the transition between the point where life as you know it ends and now.
All that was left was the up-rippable (carpets, cupboards, sockets and doors), the discarded-in-the-rush items (light, plug, paper) and something else, the ‘graffito’ of life, and quite literally its marks (Pictures of My Father — notes for an exhibition).
These pictures and writings about 27 Devon Way are taken over a one-year period when the house was empty as it waited to be sold. The house stood in mute testament, a static memorial sculpted, decorated and ornately scarred – by our routine, traces and presence — it embodied us. These images are metaphysical images of my father, his (and my) house, in which he appears (is manifest) in these images and stories. They act as a positivist resurrection, being measured, mapped and oblique. The image, perceived as being fixed, permanent of its time, is a nuance of this empty space it shows a trace or recollects a memory, a time, and as such is transient re-imaginable and fleeting.
How many words are there for empty? These dusty and inadequate descriptors are measures, which stop short of becoming unique, relevant and meaningful. Describing is the shorthand for grief and omnipresent nostalgia (remember them happy). These images show the vast ‘just-left nothingness’ of a life, they are images of nothing but space (an empty space) — their power is that which is absent but still being formed and are notes to loss, literal physical loss and emotional loss.
The house is now gone but is still there, then and now in its memory, here in this project and it is becoming remembered. By someone else, as a history and as a story. These ‘waiting-room films’ document each anticipatory space and create an ambient sound-score where in the ‘still-waiting-rooms’ the anticipation of the potential of something still happening becoming manifest, nothing still happens.
Bio:
I am a Senior lecturer in Art and Design at the University of Wolverhampton. I am a Teaching Fellow for the Higher Education Academy, U.K. and an External Examiner for B.A. Art, Design and Media programmes, for curriculum validation and coursework at U.K. Higher Education Institutions.
My artwork analyses the familiar, banal and anonymity in the everyday environment, through walking and serial revisiting. Each impulsive recording is a reflective examination of the ‘knowing’ of a present experience set against its later remembering, and memory (personal, fantastical, misremembered, nostalgia) that defines the interplay between the body, the imagination, and the world around the walker. Recent publications include: Perambulist Somnambulist — (Featured Poet, Blank Media Collective issue 39 Oct 2011; BBC Radio Shropshire Poetry Reading Oct 31 2011); Garden Manifesto: (Featured Artist, Blank Media Collective issue 21 April 2010); In Momentum-Walk to Work: (Galleri Paradis, Bornholm, Denmark; July-August 2005 Bank St Gallery, Kirrimuir, Scotland) and Invisible Boundaries: (May-June 2005 Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton. Devon May-June 2002 the Michael Tippet Centre, Bath Spa University).
Pedagogic research interests include Verbal Feedback and the Art Critique (UOW 09 ILRN funded) and the development of high quality online content for peer-to-peer feedback and critique (ADM-HEA Teaching Fellowship 2009-10).
I have worked on several projects with Wolverhampton NHS and specifically the Penn Hospital using images to create therapeutic artworks with patients with degenerative illnesses.
Peter
Post time: Jun-17-2017