Still Airborne, now with Spitfires.

A Spitfire was modled in clay, based on plans found on a website, from this a plaster mould was made and four planes produced in a porcelain body called Pairan. It’s beautiful, translucent, bone-coloured and develops a low sheen in the firing.

Spitfires await firing. The propellors were made separatly to glue on afterwards.

The Spitfires with the earlier, earthenware one (in camouflage). They hung around on the bench for a while and I really wasnt sure I liked them, and couldnt think of a good job for them. They just lurked…

But clearly a plane should fly; so they were hung up.

In a nice straight line they looked much more like business. Comments included ‘cakey’, they look like icing, and such; then the ‘ting’ they give on being tapped comes as a surprise.

With studio lighting they cast shadows…

A Spitfire is such an evocative thing for many – ‘Oh the smell of the glue; the roar of the little engines…’ A lot of people seem to have spent time as lads making Spitfires from kits in their bedrooms, then being at a loss as to how to deal with all the time and trouble represented by the model, decide that hanging it from the ceiling is a suitably respectful end.

They are jets for the moment as the propellors have not been attached.

This plane seems to embody so much that we think of as ‘British’, small, plucky, idiosyncratic, flown by the seat of the pants, etc. Nostalgia, not ours but for a past which is now at least two generations ago; from the memories of grandparents or parents.

So now my friend (Gorillaman) who used to sing The Doors ‘…this is the end…’ whenever he saw me, now starts singing Laurie Anderson’s ‘Oh Superman’.

We went for a walk: a search for Art in Hanley

Recently we were paired up and asked to produce a joint or linked works. My partner was a very lyrical photographer (she still is in fact). She had a cutting from the free paper about photographs in the orifices of condemned houses. We went in search of them, had a good conversation and both produced responses to where we found ourselves and what we saw.

She suggested a long stripe as the style for mounting our respective photos. Mine just seemed to fall in line, and besides I can never resist a good narrative, so here is the story of that walk on the chilly, damp 29th of February.

Helicopters and the Sublime

A section of the helicopter scroll; they fly above a sublime horizon. To display them in a suitably meditative mode, a viewing box was constructed; cardboard box and pin-wheels. Put an eye to the peep-hole, turn the handle and the scroll is wound slowly from right to left. A light illuminates the screen as they pass before your eye.

(The wines clearly had been ‘quality’, they came from the Sunday Times Wine Club. The elastic connecting the wheels should have been knicker pink, but Bath Market did not strech to such).

One engages with these things in the expectation that something will happen. There are no surprises here, the helicopters simply keep passing. To get from one end of the scroll to the other will take a very long time.
This could be about default. What do we do or allow to happen in our name by default? In winding the scroll one is seeing what will happen, but also setting the helicopters on their warpath.

Well to me this had a pleasing quality of boringness. If this is moving pictures how is it possible to get excited about them.