John Clark thought that all this might provide the basis for a photography project and a couple of years ago asked me if I was interested in contributing to and curating an exhibition. With the blessing of Simon and Peter Sansom of The Poetry Business, we invited a group of photographers to respond to Simon’s eleven word title: The Motorway Service Station as a Destination in its Own Right. Some chose to work using the title alone as a starting point, navigating maps of their own design, while others explored connections they’d made with Simon’s original poems…

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Si Barber, David Barnes, Andy Brown, Simon Carruthers, Richard Chivers, Alex Currie, Jessa Fairbrother, Sam Mellish, Andrew Robinson, and Tribble and Mancenido are those taking part. My own contribution, The Drive, features a soundtrack by Simon Armitage and Ian Baxter.

The Motorway Service Station as a Destination in its Own Right opens at Bank Street Arts on Tuesday 14th May for three weeks, partly coinciding with Sheffield Poetry Festival, which runs from 1st- 8th June. There’ll be an event to mark the show between 17-1930 on Saturday 1st June.

It was while visiting Brighton Photo Festival that I first saw Glasgow Effect, the photographic collaboration of Alex Currie, Chris Leslie and Richard Chivers.  I had once lived in proximity to Glasgow and remembered how depressing the journey was to the city centre. Gangs of youths patrolling streets with barred windows, boarded up houses; a community that was run down, derelict and dirty. Even to a passer by it would stir such feelings of desperation, loneliness and isolation, little wonder that its residents have the highest suicide rate in the whole of the UK.

The project title, the “Glasgow Effect”, has been used in academic and medical texts to describe the poor health, deprivation and higher mortality that Glasgow experiences in excess of its socio-economic circumstances. Despite the fact that Liverpool and Manchester are similar post industrial cities with an almost identical profile of deprivation, Glasgow has a 30 % higher premature death rate. The evidence is vast and depressing. A report from The Department of Work and Pensions confirmed that 85% of people of a working age in Bridgeton, a deprived area of Glasgow, were claiming benefits. The average of benefits per person in Glasgow is £1843, compared to £363 in North East Hampshire. Such statistics have earned Glasgow the media nickname “the benefits capital of Britain”.

There are those who agree with this view of “benefit scroungers”, an image of lazy, dependant people who are supported by the taxes of the working, achieving a similar lifestyle without the hard graft. It creates an illusion that this is a chosen life rather than the depressing “catch 22” cycle that they are often born into. What the Glasgow Effect shows is a life outside of society, whose inhabitants have little hope, little expectation for change. In fact, Glasgow Effect, by its own definition, goes beyond the expected portrayal of deprivation. It is searching for that which explains this social phenomenon, that which cannot be explained purely by socio-economic factors. What it suggests is “ a society in which previous norms no longer apply and thus no longer control the behaviour of individuals”. This loss of control has led to an increase in crime, self destructive behaviour and suicide. The images in Glasgow Effect capture these feelings of a community on the brink of collapse, without control or any hope of change. It conveys powerful emotions of desperation and isolation, providing an insight into a life of poverty that you do not expect to find in a developed country. These images leave the viewers with a sense of what it is to live a life without a future. 

In my next blog I will be presenting images from my own project, a series inspired by the Glasgow Effect; an example of which can be seen in my header image. Until then..  

“But is it art? Of course it is, when it’s not being something else legitimate: Commercial design, advertising, promotion, magazine or calendar illustrations, or whatever. Though this stuff usually is being something else, it’s still interesting, as an array of the definitive design style that’s emerged to greet (and sell things to) the alienated, rich kids of the 1980s.”

But it wasn’t always like that.

Cover by Carel Moiseiwitsch

Casual Casual comics, by Casual Casual Enterprise, was created by Peter Dako in Toronto in 1983. The first issues were released in black and white, much like most zines, and all 8 of its pages feature the work of Dako himself. This carried on, as Dako published the zine twice monthly throughout October of that year to December, and slowly, Dako increased his content and page count. By December 1983, the zine had 12 pages and in March 1984, issue number 9 contained contributions from Sean Leaning and Dai Skuse.

It wasn’t until the 10th issue that the “graphzine” really began to take shape. The issue went from 12 pages to 16 pages and featured the work of 6 other artists including some of Chester Brown’s earliest work.

After this, Casual Casual exploded. The price, advertising costs, pages and artist content all increased. Within a year Casual Casual is distributed in over six countries including France, the US, the UK and Japan, with artists from those countries. A regular crew of writers and artists joined the lineup, covering a broad range of subject including social commentary, interviews and, I guess, just general humour. It was around this time that the graphzine changed its title to Casual Casual Graphix Magazine.

Cover By Cathy Millet.

The series finished with the Casual Casual Cultural Exchange at the Artculture Resource Centre in April of 1987. This exchange travelled to the above countries on a tour and the resulting tome was a special edition, containing issues 19 and 20. The book covered the event, some of the work of the attending artists and writers and the more regular crew like Carel Moiseiwitsch and Barbara Klunder.

If you’re interested in more of Peter Dako’s work, or would just like to read more about this series, you can visit his website here. Also, there is a full list of Casual Casual Cultural Exchange artists and contributors at the bottom of this post. And finally, much of Chester Brown’s work that appeared in Casual Casual can be found in his book The Little Man: Short Strips, 1980-1995. The final issue definitely represents a global generation of comic book artists and styles from comic “hotspots”. Worth checking out if you have the chance.

Issue #10

• Why, Big Boy? Letters:
• Mr. D, the Comic: Sean Leaning
• Snappy Jack Jones: Ed Hore
• Grim Fairytales: Rumplezitskin: Barbara Klunder
• Big Boy: Peter Dako
• About Brad’s Enlightenment: Chester Brown
• Tales from the Igloo: Peter Dako
• The End Bar and Grill: Kat Cruickshank
• Mickey Mouse Ad: John Pagani (Rendezvous)

• Editorial
• Why, Big Boy? Letters:
• The End of the Nuclear Family: Carel Moiseiwitsch
• Grim Fairy Tales: Handsome and Gruesome: Barbara Klunder
• Little Orphan P.T.: Peter Dako
• In Around Town: Renata Janizewski
• Young Lizzie Biscuit: Julie Voyce
• The Modern Hippie: Myra Hancock
• End Bar and Grill: Kat Cruickshank
• North BayGold: Lorne J. Wagman
• Day in Day out: John Colapinto
• Art Bar: Update: Peter Dako
• Family Story: Placid
• Bedtime Story: PT Boy (Who I think is Peter Dako)
• Zulu Days: Sean Leaning and P Boy (Also Peter Dako)
• I Have Seen the Wind: Michael Will
• My Old Neighbourhood: Chester Brown
• Big Boy: Peter Dako
• I’m Down Man: Alex Currie
• Happy Birthday Mr. D: Sean Leaning
• Ehore: Ed Hore
• About Our Artists:
• Cover: Long Wok

• Editorial
• Why, Big Boy? Letters:
• Hands Off, He’s Mine: Myra Hancock
• Big Boy: Peter Dako
• In and Around the Town: Renata Janizewski
• The Art of Tragedy: Carel Moiseiwitsch
• Big Al: Alex Currie
• The Bird and the Pumpkin go to Mars: Chester Brown
• Love Story: Placid
• Average Average: John E.
• Reading Room:
• TurkeyTime: Peter Dako and Sean Leaning
• Grim Fairy Tales: Rapunzel: Barbara Klunder
• Security Shaman: Dai Skuse
• Life as a Small Particle: Julie Voyce
• A Tale from Gimbley: Phil Elliot
• The Potato Boy on the Road to Recovery: Peter Dako
• Cover: Placid

• Editorial
• Why, Big Boy? Letters:
• In a Doubtful Fight: Placid
• I See But I do Not, I See But I See the Animal: Chester Brown
• Police May have Erred in Slaying: Carel Moiseiwitsch
• Books in Review
• Big Boy in Free Education: Peter Dako
• Macdoodle Street: Peter Dako and Stamaty
• Grim Fairy Tales #8: Barbara Klunder
• The Realistic Rachel Random: Rae Johnson
• Security Shaman: Dai Skuse
• Seven Sins In Eight Pages: Mark Newgarden
• I Have Seen the Wind: Michael Will
• Jacob’s Hat; Casual Casual Exclusive: Phil Elliot
• Artists in this Issue
• Cover: Carel Moiseiwitsch

• Sing-a-long Casual Song
• Editorial
• Why, Big Boy? Letters:
• A Tale from Gimbley: Phil Elliot
• Complex Complex: Bob X
• Dogo and Bog Danone: Jocelin
• I Have Seen the Wind: Michael Will
• Douglas: Phil Elliot
• The C.I.A. War Manual for Rebels: Carel Moiseiwitsch
• Our Story So Far: Whatta Wally
• From Big Boy With Love: Peter Dako
• Reading Room: Chester Brown
• The Realistic Rachel Random: Rae Johnson
• Fish-Head: James Stubbs
• Rei De Surf (Surf King!): Peter Dako
• Un Amor Di Flora: Brian Shein
• Why Don’t They Just Die: Alex Currie
• The Return of Mr. D: Sean Leaning
• Casual Casual Artists:

• Editorial:
• Why, Big Boy? Letters:
• Drunking Skull: y5p5
• Mojo: Mary Fleener
• Washington DC GO*GO: T. Yumura
• Identified Objects: Brian Shein
• Mr. Steel: Alain Pilon
• Oh Canada Our Home and Native Land: Carel Moiseiwitsch
• My Fight is Yours! Let’s Exterminate the White Race: Interview with cover artist Romain Slocombe
• Shock Treatment: Text by Max Fournier Art by Romain Slocombe
• Learn to Read: Bruno Richard
• I Have Seen the Wind: Michael Will
• Allo Mina!: Placid from Zoulou reprint
• Man of Mystery Exposed: Placid Interview
• Big Boy Meets Jim Bones: Y5P5, Peter Dako
• Big Boy and Rita Meet Mr. Howl: Peter Dako
• About the Artists:

• Why, Big Boy? Letters:
• Sexmalice Sucesoir: Placid/Toffe
• A Tale From Gimbley: Phil Elliot
• Crazy Tommy Finds Money: Martha Hamilton
• It Does Happen Here!: Peter Dako
• With Love and Affection: Henriette Valium
• The Jim Bones Games #1 and 2: Y5P5
• The Patience Party for Diet People: Akiko Miura
• The Party at P.’s Home: Bruno Richard
• Zoo Phobie: Phillipe Lagautriere
• Garcon: Hideki Nakazawa
• Corpsemeat Comix 11/2: Savage Pencil
• Mr. Big Boy He’s Dead: Peter Dako
• Ou Donc Daddy Fait Dodo?: Marc Caro
• I Have Seen the Wind: Michael Will
• Angels: Omuzi Suenaga
• Love is Where You Find it: Carel Moiseiwitsch
• Excerpt from “Femmes Pratiques”: Willem
• Web of Horror: Peter Dako, Placid
• Godzilla: Mary Fleener
• Death Bar: Peter Dako
• Sav X. How Big is Your Sex? (Interview): Peter Dako
• Carel Moiseiwitsch Talks Too…(Interview): Brian Shein
• Reviews:

while the beast is asleep, we all are juggling with other ongoing projects or commitments and it was about time to tell you more about this.

me, me, me, me:

I am presently visiting curator (since mid-November) at Foto Colectania Foundation in Barcelona (Spain) thanks to the support of the European Commission. this year again, I’ve managed to escape most of the winter.

check out their fantastic collection of Spanish and Portuguese contemporary photography, it is the finest in Europe!

I collaborated with Brazilian collective Galeria Experiência who were the Christmas editors of PARATY EM FOCO blog (major Brazilian Photo Festival). They invited me to curate online… one-year worth of their ‘mobile bin’ (random photographs they’ve takien with their mobile phone). I did brilliantly in ‘wild Portuguese’ (I am well-known on the blog for this) and had so much fun I ended up with the most obscure quote by Hegel, so nobody ever said I did a crab job!

I am thrilled to be one of the judges of the International Street Photography Award organised by the London Street Photography Festival (other judges: Brett Jefferson Stott, David Gibson, Ed Robinson, James Dodd, Mike Seaborne, Nick Turpin, Sophie Howarth, Tiffany Jones).

deadline to enter: 31st March 2011.

I will review portfolios Saturday 5th March at Format11 Photo Festival Portfolio Reviews next to my friends I am so looking forward to catching up with and others I can’t wait to meet!

spaces are quickly filling up and you have until Monday 14th February to book your 5 reviewers.

them, them, them, them:

members from the collectives participating in the Collectives Encounter seem very shy or embarrassed (?) to post about their ongoing activities.

I had to grab information from twitter and spying them on facebook (I know where they are and when they come back home!) to update you on their social life.

being a collective is also a good platform to promote several photographers at the same time: so many hands to twit, facebook and blog!

you can follow them here: Human Endeavour, Vea Collective, Wideyed, ASA collective

Newsha Tavakolian, member of Rawiya collectives had a her first solo show in Tehran at Aaran Art Gallery over Christmas and the New Year. She was showing  ‘Listen‘ and part of this new body of work will be exhibited in ‘The Flâneur‘ exhibition.

Dalia Khamissy, member of Rawiya collective, collaborated with Benjamin Chesterton (duckrabitt) on a radio program for the BBC World Service. ‘Open Eyes: Missing Lebanon’ attempts to uncover what happened to the thousands of people who were kidnapped during the Lebanese civil war.

Alex Currie, member of Human Endeavour collective, has 2 of his photographs from the ongoing collective project ‘Degeneration‘ selected for the Salon Photo Prize exhibition at Matt Roberts Arts Project Space. the collective exhibition will take place from 4 February – 26 February 2011.

the 2 photographs will then travel to Derby to be exhibited as part of ‘The Flâneur‘ exhibition.

ASA collective members organise every two month evening projections at Cafe B in London. On 18th January, they’ve collaborated with the City of London & Cripplegate Photographic Society and organised a special screening made of a selection of some of the best works shown over the last 5 months. they’ve already invited great people such as Anna Steven and Anne Bourgeois-Vignon to curate the projection night.

next evening projection and guest curator to be announced soon.

busy bees!

yasmina reggad

As an example of this I am showing some of our research here of the Red Road Flats in Glasgow.

The comprehensive development of central Glasgow areas was the largest of any city in the UK and thousands of tenements were demolished, principally in the 1950’5. In 1947, city councillors visited Marseille to inspect new tower-blocks devised by Le Corbusier. By 1979 Glasgow had more than 300 multi-storey tower blocks.

The Red Road Flats were designed in 1962 by architect Sam Bunton for Glasgow Corporation and constructed between 1964 and 1969. The Red Road flats were heralded as the solution to the housing crisis at that time in Glasgow.  Councillor Edward Clark, convenor of Glasgow Corporation’s housing committee commented that the 1,350 houses with shops, play areas, car spaces, lock-ups and extensive landscaping would provide “many of our citizens in the Springburn area and other districts who look forward to living in decent surroundings with all the modern amenities that they have so long desired.” (The Glasgow Herald , October 31st 1966)

Salford made famous for its chimney topped roofs used at the start of English soap Coronation Street, has seen some regeneration over the last 5 years. Salford looked set to lose many of its red brick terraced housing through the pathfinder scheme, however a number were saved and regenerated by Urban Splash, Owen Hatherley from the Guardian writes: “Here, a small area of terraces was supposedly saved from destruction, drastically renovated by property developers Urban Splash, and turned into a proletarian theme park for media professionals – “own your own Coronation Street home!” says the publicity, in a spectacular case of coals-to-Newcastle.”

While all this is great for the middle classes who can afford the new homes that are going for £150000 what about the working class people that were moved out of the area and cannot afford to move back.

Langworthy Salford 2010. Alex Currie

Langworthy Salford 2010. Alex Currie

Langworthy Salford 2010. Alex Currie

As a collective Human Endeavour have had 3 exhibitions to date, the first two exhibitions were curated around a central theme incorporating existing bodies of work, the third exhibition however showed work from our new project called Degeneration. This on-going project is a collaboration, produced and curated from its inception as a whole body of work. Degeneration looks at Social Housing Estates around Britain that have fallen into decline, incorporating the metropolitan conurbations of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Salford, Sheffield, Birmingham, Cardiff, London and Portsmouth.

For more information visit, http://www.humanendeavour.co.uk, or http://www.humanendeavourphoto.wordpress.com

Pasha and Bayadere, Roger Fenton, 1858, courtesy of the National Media Museum

It’s a blustery Monday in November and today’s post is a hotchpotch of photo news: The National Media Museum, with the help of the Art Fund (the national fundraising charity for works of art), has added a rare 19th century photograph by British photographer Roger Fenton to its National Collection of Photography; the winner and full shortlist of names for the Danny Wilson Memorial Award, and you have five more days left to enter the Association of Photographers (AOP) Kodachrome competition.

To enter, you can click on the form here, or submit your entries by email to: gallery@aophoto.co.uk. NOTE: Initial Submissions: If you decide to submit your image(s) by email, they should be no bigger than 5mb. A maximum of five images may be submitted per person.

NATIONAL MEDIA MUSEUM ACQUIRES RARE FENTON PHOTO
The photograph, taken by Roger Fenton in 1858, “captures the contemporary fascination with the Orient and is part of a series of photographs Fenton took after an expedition during the Crimean War. Despite appearances, this is not a documentary image taken by Fenton during his travels but a carefully staged tableau photographed in Fenton’s north London studio using costumes, props and a hired model”.

“Pasha and Bayadère is widely regarded as one of Fenton’s finest works. The photograph is one of only two examples of this image, the other being in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The Getty’s version is uncropped and believed to be a proof, making this version, cropped for exhibition, unique.

“The artefact was prevented from export in February this year after the National Media Museum intervened.” The Art Fund contributed £49,00 to a fundraising target of £108,506 with the remainder being provided by the National Media Museum with support from its governing body, NMSI.

DANNY WILSON MEMORIAL AWARD 2010
Stephen King, has won the Danny Wilson Memorial Award 2010 for his work, Lewis’s Fifth Floor: A Department Story, held as part of the Fringe Focus exhibition during the recent photo festival. Georgie Turner–Noble receives a Special mention for her work, The Wasted Youth.

The £1,000 prize and a glass trophy “is presented to the best emerging or early career photographer exhibiting as part of the Brighton Photo Fringe festival”.

“At the Award Ceremony, Lisa Barnard (winner in 2008) gave a presentation about the impact of the Award on her practice and, on behalf of the judges, internationally acclaimed artist Adam Broomberg (of Broomberg & Chanarin) presented the Award to Stephen King via live telephone link.” Press release

JUDGES
Adam Broomberg (Artist, Broomberg & Chanarin); John Gill (Brighton Photo Biennial Chair); Grace Lau (Photographer); and Anne Williams (Programme Director for Photography, LCC)

SHORTLIST
Alex Currie, Degeneration
Amelia Shepherd, Peacehaven in III Parts
Francois-Xavier Gbré, Uprooting the Gaze: foreign places familiar patterns
Georgie Turner–Noble, The Wasted Youth
Hannah Laycock, Matters of Importance
Melanie Clark, Abreast of Stress
Mocksim, Contra-Invention
Oliver Perrott, Degeneration
Peter Gates, Small Things
Rachel Cunningham, Otter Gallery: Photo Open Winner
Richard Chivers, Degeneration
Richard Rowland, The ArtsFORUM Presents
Shaun Hines, Between the Ideal and the Actual
Simon Carruthers, Degeneration
Stephen King, Lewis’s Fifth Floor: A Department Story
Tanya Clarke, Small Things
Wendy Pye, In Site: Luminance in Flux

“The Danny Wilson Memorial Award was established to commemorate the life and work of Danny Wilson, Director of Brighton Photo Fringe 2006 – 2008. Danny passed away suddenly in April 2008 after establishing Brighton Photo Fringe as the largest and most successful photography event of its kind in the UK.”