Last Frame

– Last Frame, 2015 –

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From now now TFIPM is going to be smaller, but more perfectly formed. There will be posts on Thursdays and Sundays only (with occasional special extra posts on other days). Ithangyow!

The title of this post is taken from a track by Van der Graaf Generator from their 1977 album, The Quiet Zone/The Pleasure Dome. You can listen to it here.

See you Sunday.

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Ashley Lily Scarlett and I are engaged in a conversation in pictures and it’s called Between Scarlett and Guest. Check it out!

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Hey, SY, Where Did Those Landscapes Go?

– I Dreamed, I Dream, 2015 –

– Small Flowers Crack Concrete, 2015 –

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 Ashley Lily Scarlett and I have started a new blog together. It’s a conversation in pictures and it’s called Between Scarlett and Guest.

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Self Portrait with Work

– Work #1, 2014 –

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– Self Portrait, 2014 –

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 If you are interested in self-portraits, I recommend you visit Strata of the Self. It’s beautiful.

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Allotment Portrait #1

– Allotment Portrait (for and of Nikki), 2014 –

Sunday and the sun was shining. This was taken in a hide at the Dorset Road Allotments, Beckenham. I spotted Nikki at Madame Tussaud’s, Baker Street, London, UK in 1994 – we were both working there as exhibition guides. I asked her if she would like to go out for lunch, and she said yes! Anyway, thanks very much for letting me take your portrait, Nikki! Hope you like your picture.

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If you are interested in self-portraits, I recommend you visit Strata of the Self. It’s ace!

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Street Portrait #162

– Street Portrait (for and of Alex), 2014 –

Last weekend, on my way to the Beckenham library, I spotted Alex. He seemed to be connecting with an earlier era in Beckenham’s history – the late 70s (when Siouxsie and the Bromley Contingent frequented the Hong Kong Garden takeaway) – whilst looking completely of the moment. Anyway, he very kindly agreed to a couple of shots. This is the first and my favourite. Thanks for stopping, Alex! Hope you like your picture.

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If you are at all interested in self-portraits, I strongly recommend you visit Strata of the Self.

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Even in the dead of winter

– In The Heat of the Morning, 2014 –

Turpentine (sometimes known colloquially as turps), is a volatile liquid distilled from resin obtained from live conifers (especially pine trees). It is used as a solvent, as paint thinner and also medicinally (for cuts, abrasions, and the treatment of lice). It’s a very useful substance. As with everything, there are downsides: it can irritate the skin and eyes, damage the lungs and central nervous system when inhaled, and cause renal failure when ingested. It’s also combustible. Along with the promise of sex and drugs, it is also the reason I went to art college – I love the smell. It reminds me of the wonder I experienced on realising it was possible to spend the whole day making art.

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Map of part of my journey to art college

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In The Heat of the Morning is the opening track on David Bowie’s album, Bowie At The Beeb (2000). This version wipes the floor with all others – less mannered, freer, more yearning. Unfortunately, I can’t find an online version of it. But I did find a rather fine cover version by Last Shadow Puppets. You can listen to it here.

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It is a basic art-world orthodoxy, echoed just about everywhere, that contemporary art is ungraspably complex and diverse. The variety of contemporary forms, techniques, and subject-matter in art is indeed bewildering. The conventional media of painting, sculpture and print-making have been overlaid with installation and ‘new media’, which can encompass anything from online art to computer-controlled sound environments. Artists cultivate for themselves images that range from traditional guru or shaman roles to beady-eyed, tongue-in-cheek chancer and careerist, and personas that include starstruck adolescent girls and engorged, axe-wielding psychotics. Art’s concerns are also various, touching upon feminism, identity politics, mass culture, shopping and trauma. Perhaps art’s fundamental condition is to be unknowable (that concepts embodied in visual form can encompass contradiction), or perhaps those that hold to this view are helping to conceal a different uniformity.

(excerpt from Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction (2006) by Julian Stallabrass)

Memories Can’t Wait

Memories Can’t Wait, 2013