greg lucas connects

High Heel Sundial

2012-02-10T08:50:00.004Z

Contact With Lard

2012-02-07T08:25:00.000Z

They're Happy Because They Eat People

2012-02-04T09:11:00.002Z

Issued By The Lard Information Council

2012-02-01T08:40:00.003Z

His Lard Piled Up...

2012-01-29T08:55:00.003Z

And there hung Greg, his lard piled up.

His Goods Piled Up...

2012-01-26T10:34:00.001Z

Dropped His Equipment And Tugged Manfully

2012-01-23T08:21:00.005Z

Allowed His Equipment To Drop...

2012-01-20T08:58:00.000Z

Tugged Manfully...

2012-01-18T09:32:00.003Z

The Girl Protested...

2012-01-16T08:37:00.003Z

Bill Stuck Out With The Desperation Of Despair

2012-01-12T08:35:00.002Z

Bill Stuck Out With The Desperation Of Despair

The Signifier and the Signifired

2012-01-08T08:48:00.004Z

Saussure stressed that the signifier and the signified were as inseparable as the two sides of a piece of paper. They were ‘intimately linked’ in the mind ‘by an associative link’ – ‘each triggers the other’.

So it’s interesting to consider the slippage between the signified and the signifier, the moment a gun is fired in this drawing, a sketch predating the often-used comedy-sketch-line: ‘Is that a canoe in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?’

Semiotics Of Slippage

2012-01-05T08:21:00.011Z

A certain slippage has taken place in both the form and content of this drawing, the shooting of a child, on a sea-cliff. The canoe has slipped out of the excited young boy’s shorts. The ejaculation of smoke (puff?) clearly signifies the canoe’s deflation and expulsion from the said boy’s shorts – the ‘real’ gunfire (for gun read, enemy penis): penis enemy - colonialist impotence in the face native firepower. The gun – instrument of penetration - his held in a rock-steady hand. The boy holds on to the rock with a steady hand. The sea-canoe – carrier of seamen - is impotent; the boy is about to be holed. But this is only half of a bigger picture.

To be continued...

He Pressed The Trigger

2012-01-03T08:36:00.001Z

Liberally Ornamented With Grinning Skulls

2012-01-01T08:26:00.007Z

It Was Held In A Rock-Steady Hand

2011-12-30T08:07:00.001Z

The Rifle In His Hands Was As Steady As A Rock

2011-12-28T09:02:00.003Z

Steady As A Rock His Rifle Rose

2011-12-26T09:39:00.002Z

Impotent Gunslinger

2011-12-22T08:02:00.008Z

Impotent gunslinger ordering an impotent photographer to face the wrong way round, on one of those old fashioned buttock exercise machines (with a vibrating elastic belt), at penis-point.

Shooting Shots

2011-12-19T10:55:00.001Z

You’re looking through your camera, you see an image you’ve seen before (an image from the past): shoot. Beudelaire was right: “Photographers, you will never become artists. All you are is mere copiers”

Copiers, I’m thinking of erasers. The Erasers (1951) was Alain Robbe-Grillet’s debut novel - a detective story with a postmodern twist. As Ted Gioia states: “In the convoluted world of Robbe-Grillet, the same crime might even take place twice, in the identical location and with even the same victim. To reinforce this sense of doubleness, the author will sometimes repeat specific passages of dialogue or description.”

The book is nothing more than an account of the twenty-four hours that ensue between the pistol shot and the death, the time the bullet takes to travel three or four yards – twenty four hours.

Twenty-six years separate my ‘shooting shots’.

Sleeping in a Meating

2011-12-16T10:46:00.000Z

Big in Bulgaria (Alongside Jo Spence)

2011-12-12T08:01:00.004Z

The Return of The Dulux Dog!

2011-12-09T11:07:00.002Z

"Sitting on the twisted tail of the ‘Donkey’, he wakes up with a dog…"

The Dogfather of all advertising the Dulux dog is back on our screens (and pillows, it seems)!

The Dulux dog is 50… but there’s actually been 15 dogs in all, including the latest edition.

The Dulux icon, its Old English sheepdog, has been a constant and highly effective feature of advertising since the 1960s. The dog is so solidly entrenched as a branding device that many people refer to the breed as ‘Dulux dogs’. Many different dogs have been used for television commercials, print advertisements, promotional appearances and even a ‘have your photo taken with the Dulux Dog’ promotion. One reason they all look alike is that they are mostly closely related, closely related to pillows.

Twisted Tails of the 'Donkey'

2011-12-05T08:57:00.000Z

Glances at Nurses (Pillow Talk)

2011-12-02T08:04:00.004Z

Krab Cushion: Straight Gate, Bent Gate, Screwgate, Master Screwgate

2011-11-29T08:51:00.004Z

Fox Dreams

2011-11-26T09:40:00.001Z

And look what the fox did to the cushion... dreamed it was a chicken.

Foxed

2011-11-22T16:40:00.000Z

The Blog Papers November 18th - December 16th, Cube 3 Gallery

2011-11-18T18:21:00.000Z

Pulling Oars

2011-11-15T08:02:00.006Z

The Dangler

2011-11-12T10:00:00.000Z

Joe Brown (the climber not the singer) on the lip of The Dangler, with a cigarette between his lips.

Smoking Like A Chimney

2011-11-09T08:33:00.009Z

Chimneys are deep, wide fractures, usually in a vertical wall, into which you can get your whole body. To negotiate them the smoker needs to smoke inside, ‘smoke like a chimney’, using the appropriate chimney technique, that is, pushing as if he intended to thrust the two walls of rock apart.

Seaside Whiffs

2011-11-07T08:17:00.000Z

And Puffed

2011-11-04T08:52:00.002Z

And Smoked

2011-11-01T09:10:00.003Z

He Smoked

2011-10-29T08:20:00.002+01:00

Short hair, long cigar

Long hair, short cigar

Smoking In Bed

2011-10-26T08:54:00.003+01:00

Auntie T Contemplating Pregnancy

2011-10-23T09:32:00.000+01:00

Outpost 22.10.211

2011-10-21T10:17:00.002+01:00

In The 70s And In Their 70s

2011-10-16T08:24:00.004+01:00

Unfocused Parents

2011-10-13T17:58:00.000+01:00

Callus Parents

2011-10-10T16:38:00.000+01:00

My Daddy's A Handy Daddy

2011-10-07T08:38:00.000+01:00

Making Light Work of Quality Street

2011-10-04T09:39:00.002+01:00

Dizzy Howard making light work of Quality Street

The Art of Cooking

2011-10-01T08:53:00.004+01:00

The Art of Cooking

(Serves one)

Ingredients:

1 family sized tin of Quality Street sweets

1 courgette

1 green pepper

1 yellow pepper

1 tbs olive oil

Season with salt and pepper

Method:

Eat as many of the Quality Street as you can – preferably the entire tin - until you are physically sick. To prepare the sweet wrappers, separate the foil from the coloured film (each individual sweet wrapper). Discard the foil and carefully flatten the coloured wrappers out, individually.

Be sick, then lick, quickly lick each wrapper, before sticking them to the inside of the kitchen window (time is of the essence) making what is effectively a very pretty stain-glass window. Tip: try and be decorative with the pattern – coordinate the colours. Stand back and allow early morning sunlight to filter through sweet wrappers. Admire the sickly effect on the kitchen floor.

Cut the peppers and courgettes into bite-sized chunks; arrange them on a chopping board. At this point the chopping board effectively becomes an artist’s palette. Now comes the difficult bit: arrange the vegetables on the pallet in such a way that they colour and number correspond to the sickly sweet pattern on the floor. When you are satisfied that you have achieved this effect, pop the vegetables in the oven, and go and change into a suitable blouse for breakfast.

A Fishing Trip

2011-09-27T12:28:00.001+01:00

I told everybody my tee shirt was ‘scratch and sniff’. It wasn’t. Good job nobody wanted to scratch me. But before long I started scratching myself: the photographic transfer was rough and stiff… gave me a nipple rash. Had to make a sort of bra out of duct tape.

Anyway, I wasn’t happy with the picture, I thought I could have ‘caught him’ better. Assuming this was his local fishing pond, assuming he sniffed around here often, I returned a few days later armed with a dead fish. And it was a boiling hot day.

Dressed in the tee shirt, nipples braed with duct tape, I walked slowly along the row of parked bikes, rubbing the dead fish along the top of every seat. The smell of the fish, I figured, would hold his attention - produce a look of surprise (happiness?) on his face – long enough for me to get a ‘good’ photograph. But never mind his face, you should have seen the look on the fish’s face after I’d rubbed him into the seventh bike seat! Then, Leica poised, I waited… and waited… and waited.

My sniffer, he never turned up. But as the cyclists began to return to their bikes I started to feel self conscious in my tee shirt. And anyhow, the best vantage point to take pictures now, it would have been from the air – a balloon – above the city; images of a Tour de France like peloton, snaking its way towards the sexual health clinic.

ICA Performance

2011-09-24T08:40:00.003+01:00

Some photographs are so ahead of their time (or in this case, a nose of their seat), that you have to wait until you have grown into to them in order the savour them fully; wait until the future catches up with the past.

To be continued...

Fishy

2011-09-21T08:39:00.004+01:00

Walking in East Sussex, I come across ‘something fishy’ on a gate: once again, it looks like I’ve stumbled upon ‘another artist’s’ project.

The fishy looking bag reminded my of an artist called Evergon. A few years ago I knew a woman who knew Evergon (he goes by just the one name), and through her I invited him to give a talk to our MA students. It was an unforgettable talk, but we weren’t prepared for his ‘live’, practical, follow-up session’. One of the ways Evergon spends his time is by collecting various items of soiled underwear - usually mans’ pants - he finds abandoned at roadside laybys and truck stops (in the USA). And then, with forensic precision, our poet of scenes of gay trucker passion, bags (clear plastic, zip-up freezer-bags) and meticulously labels (with the date and location) – each item of soiled underwear, before adding it to his ever-growing collection.

When Evergon came to give his talk, he also came equipped with several pairs of the said, ‘found’, semen-stained underpants; and it was under the intense heat of the photographic lights of his ‘live’ practical follow-up session, which entailed Evergon conducting a photographic Masterclass in, ‘the best light in which to portray soiled pants’, that things really started to hot up.

The heat generated by of the photographic lighting had a greenhouse effect on semen-stained pants, sealed in their plastic bags. The bags began to melt and the smell – vintage, dried semen -, it was indescribable; bleach vapor inhaled off a red-hot shovel is the nearest thing to it I can imagine. The terrible aroma lingered in the photographic studio long after Evergon had gone.

As to my fishy find: I squeezed it dry before carrying on by.

Fishing For A Sleeping Bag Coffin

2011-09-18T11:48:00.001+01:00

I’m by the sea, unpacking my things; I come across some fish I stitched at infant’s school. In the same box (a cedar wood cigar box) I also fish-out bit of driftwood; a sleeping bag coffin; I found it whilst beachcombing in West Wales last summer.

The accidental combination of these strange bedfellows only goes to confirm what I already know: that there’s something fishy about women (sealed) in sleeping bags, something mermaid-like: don’t mermaids drag fishermen down to their deaths in the depths of the ocean, with their beautiful serenading?

Mermaids come in all colours of sleeping bag. Mermaids in red sleeping bags smell of happiness, but if condensation - tears - saturate the sleeping bag, their tails turn purple, and smell like sadness. Fishermen long to catch mermaids in order to sniff their red or purple sleeping bags.

Something Fishy

2011-09-14T18:06:00.002+01:00

Whilst baking with my doctor we got to discussing Bench Cuisine (see blogs, July 16^th to August 28^th). In her opinion (not a medical one) I had stumbled upon someone else’s project –another artist’s project. Could it be Sian Bonnell, I wondered? No, I know her. Anyhow, I had to face the possibility that I was secondary photographing another artist’s work: an interesting if somewhat disconcerting idea. Up to this point I’d simply documented the Bench Cuisine as I found it – resisting any temptation to improve its form to suit my own taste. Resisting any temptation to eat any of it.

Then, a few weeks ago, whilst on the way to the bench, I come across this shattered pipe – some kind of plastic tubing – lying in the road. I was on my bike, and at a glance I thought it was a fish, a dead fish in the middle of the road. I picked up the pieces (something I very rarely do) and continued on to see what Bench Cuisine was in store for me that day. But when I arrived I found a nothing but an empty soft-drink bottle and several limes, sucked limes at that. Now, I don’t know whether limes go with fish, but I arranged my tubing, recreated my-dead fish-dish at the foot of the bench. Then I climbed up high into the branches of the tree, directly behind the bench, and waited… and waited. And waited. What I was doing could best be described as, a reverse form of fishing whereby the fake fish was the bait, and all I had to do was wait. Did I hook my artist? No. Did I leave my fish-dish? No. Now, the dead fish, it lives under my bed. And I live in Brighton. Goodbye London, thanks for all the fish. I’m sick of Bench Cuisine, I'm working on a new dish.

Have No Truck With Plum Kuchen

2011-09-11T15:12:00.001+01:00

Sleeping Bag Tutorial

2011-09-07T08:50:00.007+01:00

It’s almost the start of a new term and, one-to-one tutorials, like job interviews, would be better conducted in sleeping bags where, dress-sense, ugly hands, eccentric body language, weight of applicant/student etc, are out of sight – not an issue. Sleeping bag tutorials make for the fairest - the most unbiased - head-to-heads.

The subject of this sleeping bag tutorial, this most academic of egg-to-eggs, was to discuss Luray Caverns, Virginia where, in 1878, they discovered ‘Fried Eggs’. The drawing (itself, a plan for a cave painting) depicts both student and lecturer (bagged up, condom-like, fetus-like, egg-like; fried egg-like, even) deep in discussion, about the best way to cook eggs. The heat generated by the conversation was so intense, the weighing machine started to fry like an egg.

During the tutorial, the student was set a task: to draw scrambled eggs from memory. And not only from memory, because the student’s arms were sealed inside the bag, this scrambled egg drawing, it was drawn in the dark: a scrambled memory, blind drawn.

A final observation: the drawing pad was positioned on the student’s lap, inside the sleeping bag. To the casual observer it might have appeared as though the student was beating an egg, rather than pulling one from his memory bank.

Chelsea Buns

2011-09-04T19:03:00.000+01:00

In The Wake Of A Cake

2011-09-01T07:45:00.004+01:00

We baked a Madera cake, the Doc and me, I’ve never been to Madera, neither had she: and the chilli? I’ve never been to Chile. I’ve got to change my eating habits so that if I eat a place-name-cake, I have to visit its namesake. From now on I aim to travel in the wake of my cake.

Why? Because I’ve eaten Dundee cake, but never visited Dundee. Chorley cake. Never seen the place. Eccles cakes, I’ve eaten hundreds – have even been blindfolded by Eccles cakes – but I’ve never set foot in Eccles. I’ve eaten poppy-seed cake Heidelburg and the most wonderful Quark cake in Freiburg (from a market stall, beneath the Munster). And at one time (in 1980s) you couldn’t get me out of Battenburg cake coloured tights (wore them for climbing). If you eat a cake you should travel in its wake.

Coda: concerning the Joycean quark cake (a couple of blogs back). James Joyce coined the word quark, in Finnegan’s Wake: “ Three quarks for Muster Mark/ Sure he has not got much of a bark/And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark”.

Lime Green, Eggshell - Bench Cuisine 14/7/2011

2011-08-28T14:48:00.000+01:00

Under The Doctor

2011-08-25T08:14:00.009+01:00

In between all the Bench Cuisine, I found myself under - and quite often on top of - a doctor. This is true, we're not caking fakes; the pair of us – doctor and savant - we're on the bake. This was our first effort, a German, yet, very Joycean, quark cake.

Bench Cuisine 4/7/2011

2011-08-22T08:11:00.002+01:00

Shell Seat 22/6/2011

2011-08-19T10:08:00.000+01:00

Over Cooked Bench Cuisine 20/6/2011

2011-08-16T08:49:00.006+01:00

Bench Cigarettes 25/5/2011

2011-08-13T08:53:00.004+01:00

Bench Lettuce 23/5/2011

2011-08-10T08:22:00.030+01:00

Shortly after this was taken I was accosted by a young girl, outside the gents toilets. She gave me three pound coins and asked me if I'd buy her a pack of condoms. Not only was I able to oblige, I was able to say: 'Condoms, in my day they used to be called bench lettuce.'

Bench Dressing 19/5/2011

2011-08-07T09:43:00.000+01:00

Bench Onions 7/5/2011

2011-08-04T08:36:00.002+01:00

Bench Cuisine 18/4/2011

2011-08-01T08:29:00.003+01:00

Bench Cuisine 31/3/2011

2011-07-30T18:34:00.000+01:00

Bench Cuisine 25/3/2011

2011-07-28T08:08:00.006+01:00

The same banana skin four days later (see last blog), accompanied by beer, eggs and a potato.

Bench Cuisine 21/3/2011

2011-07-25T07:20:00.002+01:00

Bench Cuisine 14/3/2011

2011-07-22T09:03:00.002+01:00

Bench Cuisine 5/3/2011

2011-07-19T11:13:00.001+01:00

I didn't find any food for the whole of February. But in the first week of March: six cherry tomatoes and the shells of half a dozen eggs - washed down with a can of beer.

Bench Cuisine

2011-07-16T08:09:00.016+01:00

Known this bench for 22 years, and in all that time I’ve never seen anyone eating on the bench or, the bench eating anything sitting on it. Yet now, just as I’m about to leave London to go and live in Brighton, I keep coming across ‘bench cuisine’.

It started off quite innocently - like all good bench meals – with bread. But the foods soon turned much darker (and I don’t mean toast). It was as if the bench knew I was leaving and had decided to try and keep me in London, and as every park bench knows: the way to a man’s heart is through his seat.

In his book, Teach Us To Sit Still (2011), Tim Parks - no relation to the bench – does some research on the Aneros anal massage and sex toy: ‘God knows why the male G spot was put up the arse but there we go, if its done correctly along with stimulation of the penis the orgasm is out of this world! Try it!’

Sandwiched between the two bread images (in bread with?) - the first made in January, the latest yesterday - was a bench cuisine menu so bizarre that, I just had to keep going back for more.

To be continued…

Spied But Untried (No.4)

2011-07-13T08:34:00.002+01:00

Rocks And Trees

2011-07-10T08:43:00.007+01:00

Nowhere near the un-rocking rock chair, in a wood closer to the sea, I find a rock, like an apple, under a tree.

I’m thinking of the time I was in the country, in the company of the photographer Thomas Joshua Cooper - and we weren’t playing a round of golf. We were passing through a forest festooned with boulders when Cooper said, ‘Have you heard that Buddhist saying: to the man with no knowledge, trees are just trees and rocks are just rocks. Yet to the man with a little knowledge, trees are much more than just trees, and rocks are never just rocks - both are invested with a spiritual significance. But to the man with complete knowledge, trees are just trees and rocks are just rocks?’ Funny thing for him to have said: Tom Cooper’s spent the best part of the last 40 years photographing nothing but trees and rocks.

Rocking Chair

2011-07-07T08:44:00.031+01:00

Self-timer - at the start of the affair

Self-timer - at the end of the affair - two years later

Same boulder.

In between times (we were miles apart), I lay on this rock more than I lay on her.

Next to the rock stands rock chair.

I'm thinking of The Flintstones, I'm thinking of Buster Keaton in a rocking chair, in Beckett’s only movie, Film (1964). As Keaton rocks opposite a denuded wall, he examines seven photographs, all of him: 1. 6 months old - in his mother’s arms 2. 4 years old – kneeling in an attitude of prayer 3. 15 years old - in his school blazer teaching a dog to beg 4. 20 years old – in his graduation gown receiving a scroll 5. 21 years old – arm around his fiancé 6. 26 years old – a newly enlisted man with a little girl in his arms 7. 30 years old – looking 40 with a patch over one eye and looking grim. He spends twice as long looking at 5 and 6 before ripping up the lot.

Hearing From An Ex

2011-07-04T08:36:00.005+01:00

The X-Factor

2011-07-01T08:15:00.003+01:00

Surprise is the greatest factor in art and the X in the sea is the x-factor in this picture. Remember it was a couple of Xs that got me here in the first place: the Lydstep sign and its x-rated pinnacle, the text Extreme Golf (too with an x-rated pinnacle). I wanted a marriage of Xs, a marriage on the rocks. But I never bargained on the x-factor of the outboard motor.

Factors are numbers you multiply together to get another number: 4x4=12. But what a surprise: the correspondence between the number of golf balls and shoe size.

Headland

2011-06-28T09:30:00.008+01:00

The absent-minded randomer, he cut my head off. Imagine the headlines (in the local paper): ‘Randomer Beheads Cinderella’. But his mistake gives me an idea. I’m going to make a massive golf-ball-head out of paper cups and wear it to climb Lydstep Pinnacle. I’m going to hire a professional golfer to drive balls (shoot) at me off the headland as I climb the pinnacle. I’m going to catch the balls in my head-cups (a sort of variation on the egg cup) Perfectly reasonable – golfers often practice in the sitting room with a paper cup (on its side) doubling as the hole. Look at this carnival picture. I’m going to look like this. Head-hole: I'm going to have holes in my head.

Snapped By A Randomer

2011-06-25T08:48:00.002+01:00

I asked a passerby – he was carrying a camera. A photographer? A randomer? – if he’d snap me - a caveman golfer. He’d forgotten where he’d parked his car, was a bit disoriented. Photograph me and I’ll help you find your car; he’d left his wife in it whilst he’d gone off to photograph Lydstep Point.

‘I’ll just slip into this size eight slipper. Snap when I swing’, I said. But as the randomer snapped, so did my golf club. Look! And afterwards, we looked for his car (for more than an hour). Never did find that car (or his wife).

Join The Club

2011-06-22T08:03:00.005+01:00

I find a driftwood clubfoot. The plan was afoot, so I joined the club.

To be continued...

Headspace?

2011-06-19T08:59:00.019+01:00

It was whilst beachcombing for shoes that I came across a headless woman, washed up on the sand. Contemplating her I thought of the blonde I’d met earlier (never did manage to persuade her to change her surname to Hammer). She works with patients who’ve suffered a brain injury.'You mean she's a head specialist?' 'No.'
Texted her – informed her that shoe-space and golf-ball space are inextricably linked. Texted her again: ‘what’s your shoe size (in English size not continental)? No reply, so I text her again saying, ‘fill your shoe with golf balls and you’ll see that the number balls you can fit into the shoe will be equal to the shoe size’. Eighteen months later she texts me saying, she needs some ‘headspace’; I’m hanging off a boulder when it comes through… loosing the arms race.

I continue along the seashore, trying to recall all the blondes I know from memory: Jimmy Saville, Andy Warhol, Boris Johnson, Ulrika Johnson, Klaus Kinski, Mira Hindley, Dick – ‘you are awful, but I like you’ – Emery, Martin Kippenberger, Kurt Cobain, Vitus Gerulaitis, Marlon Brando, Jill Dando.

Reading back over the list now, my blondes from memory, they were all nutters, with the exception of newsreader Jill Dando, who was shot in the head by a nutter.

I trip over toddler’s shoe - size two. Remove my hat and insert two golf balls into the shoe, and with the shoe being size 2 there was of (golf) course only room for two.

To be continued...

Size Fate

2011-06-16T08:34:00.010+01:00

After the blonde had gone (back to her husband) I find a shoe, floating in a rock pool. I slip my foot into the water, then into the shoe: it fits – size 8. I swap my foot for 8 golf balls: they fit – 8 golf balls fill a size 8 shoe. So can it be true: the number of golf balls that fill a shoe, corresponds exactly to the size of shoe? I have a hole in my trouser pocket so I put the golf balls in my hat and head off along the beach, in search of more shoes of different sizes - more lost soles, whose size can be measured with golf balls. Oh yes, the blonde, she was size 8 too - as thin as a golf tee, fifteen years younger than me.

To be continued…

Exes

2011-06-13T08:24:00.008+01:00

I’m not up to much at the moment, so let’s go back a couple of summers. The point of being at the caravan site at Lydstep Point, West Wales, that blue afternoon, was to compare the x-rated pinnacle, on the cover of Extreme Golf, with the x-rated pinnacle that is Lydstep Point. And look, yes, they were very similar, I’m glad I arranged the marriage.

But another meeting took place on The Point that afternoon. There was another point to me being at the point: the real point? I bumped into a blonde, on the cliff-top, where we quickly got talking about my x's. Now, two years later, I'm her exe. I've spent much of the last twenty four months trying to persuade her to change her surname to Hammer (it has a similar ring about it to her first name). A chance encounter with a Hammer - X marks the spot. Ours is the more amazing tale, but I hate confessional blogs, so I’ll talk about my x-rated project – the wrong reason for being in the right place.

To be continued…

Untitled (censored)

2011-06-10T08:14:00.015+01:00

Unzipped And Loaded

2011-06-07T08:11:00.013+01:00

The shoot could have taken place in any one of two possible locations, both, real functioning golf courses. One, a golf course shaped like pistol, the other a golf course in the shape of an unzipped penis. Luckily a train-track zips its way across the golf-course-penis, look, in just the right place. The latter was chosen. And much has been written about the phallic symbolism of guns, but we don’t have the space to dwell on it here.

However it’s important not to loose sight of the relationship between the inside-out pocket (in the last blog) and the phallic golf course, as this formed the bridge between drawing and shoot (and you have first to draw a gun in order to shoot). The pistol-shaped golf course gave me the idea of using a water pistol on golf course - a course that when viewed from the air, resembles an unzipped, albeit flaccid, penis.
To be continued…

Inside Out: How A Work Came About

2011-06-04T09:11:00.007+01:00

How do certain 'works' come about? Sometimes it starts with a drawing. Consider the two sketches - the same picture twice, one on top of the other – of a golfer, on green, with his trouser pocket turned inside out. Something obscene on a golf-green; it gave me the idea for a ‘shoot’ (a photograph).

To be continued…

Golf Holes Sleeping

2011-06-01T08:28:00.004+01:00

Absent Friends

2011-05-29T22:49:00.000+01:00

Aging Tongue-Wagging

2011-05-28T08:17:00.007+01:00

On Licking Golf Balls (To Green Tongue?)

2011-05-25T08:51:00.010+01:00

I had a distant relation, Brian Mayo (he married my mother’s cousin), who used to lick golf balls, for good luck. But he was unknowingly licking fertilizer - strong stuff - used on golf greens. Luck, lick, muck, whenever I see the diagram of a dog-shit bag, on the lid of those green bins – and they are always green in Switzerland – I think of Mayo’s tongue, licking fertilizer of his balls.

The State Of The Greens

2011-05-22T08:54:00.007+01:00

Look at the state of the greens! Dog-shit bins, and most golf courses have a hole in the form of a dog’s leg. A dogleg hole is one that bends, changing direction (dog-legging) at some point along its length. Dog walkers on golf courses are a common sight – as a great many golf courses are on common land; there’s a golf course near me, on Wimbledon common were dog walkers carry their dog’s shit in a plastic bag (often a see-through bag). I’ve never seen it happen but it must have: a dog cocking its leg on a golf flag marking a dogleg hole. And I’ve never bothered to weigh the average dog shit, but I imagine it weighs about the same as a golf ball.

Dog-Eared

2011-05-19T08:59:00.013+01:00

Compare the strange and inexplicable collage, this dog-train ticket, to the 'Dog Flea Ban' advertisement below. Can you spot the face of a puppy in the dog’s ear? Dog-eared or what? The face of dachshund puppy even!

Idiom: Flea in one’s ear,

a. A disconcerting rebuke or rebuff: The next time he shows his face around here (ear?) he’ll get a flea in his ear.

b. a board hint

On Training Dogs

2011-05-16T09:06:00.004+01:00

About this time last year I spotted two dogs, on a train ticket, left on a fence on the platform of Uckfield station, East Sussex. Dog training? Train spotting? Dogging spot? Train tickets can be dog-eared, but this one was dog faced.

Spot The Dog

2011-05-14T07:57:00.002+01:00

Interview With A Dog-Water Reporter (part three)

2011-05-10T08:29:00.009+01:00

Q. “Have you any new ‘dog projects’ in the pipeline?”

A. “I’ve recently been advertising for Spots – lots of dogs, all named Spot.”

Q. “Why? What do you intend to do with all these Spots?”

A. “Drive each Spot to a different dogging-spot.”

Q. “And then…?”

A. “Photograph Spot the dog, in the dogging spot, of course.”

Q. “Dogscape? Or portrait?”

A. “None of those. Spot will be very small in the frame, heavily camouflaged -under a bush or beneath a car for example - requiring the viewer/voyeur to spot the dog. I hope to catch ‘doggers in action’, as well.

Q. “What, in the same picture as Spot the dog?”

A. “Yes, that’s the thing, all these dogging spots, they are often cited in woodland carparks so, not only will you not be able to see the trees for wood, you’ll really struggle to spot Spot the dog for doggers.”

Q. “Like those ‘spot the ball’ competition photographs you used to see in the newspapers?”

A. “No, like this ‘spot the ball’ photograph.”

Q. “I didn’t know you played golf. Is it a self-portrait?”

A. “Spot the ball”

Q. “I find golf-porn very awwwousing... I can’t see my knees for wood. Could I have a sip of water?”

A. “It’s only a picture of some rocks, on a golf course”.

Q. “Oh yes a golf course… of course, I can see the limp flag - a mere white speck poking out of the bracken - in the background. Have you ever by any chance drank from a golf hole?”

No answer to that.

Interview With A Dog-Water Reporter (part two)

2011-05-07T08:15:00.015+01:00

Q. “During the course of your research you must have encountered a good many unmarked - un-dogged - dog water bowls. Do you carry a marker pen? Have you ever been tempted to ‘DOG’ tag them?”

A. “No, I’m a documentary photographer. My job is to detect not direct; I report on not write on. I’ve never attempted to play God with the word dog.”

Q. “A dogumentary photographer even?”

A. “Sometimes I have to stop myself labelling puddles. For this reason I never go dog-water reporting with chalk on my person.

Q. How do you spend your time when you’re not out detecting dog’s water?”

A. “Rock-climbing on the chalk cliffs of the South East Coast of England – Beachy Head, Dover – where I always carry chalk even though I we use ice axes and crampons: I treat the chalk as if it were ice.”

Q. “Frozen water?”

A. “Yes, I’ve seen many a dog’s drinking bowl frozen over, but I never break the ice. Frozen dog water bowls make excellent skating rinks for lice. ‘Dog lice On Ice’ - someone should do TV documentary, no, give it more of a 'soap' treatment. I’m thinking more along the lines of 'high art' - of photographing lice skating - with a macro lens - on a large format camera - and selling the images to the Lowry Museum, in Salford”

To be continued...

Interview With A Dog-Water Reporter

2011-05-03T09:48:00.003+01:00

Q. “How did it all start?”
A. "It was inspired by guilt, over a real-life incident I should have acted to prevent. Happened twenty years ago, but I still can’t talk about it. I was waiting for a bus, if the bus had been on time I would never have become a dog-water reporter. Here's a poem, describing what happened, (in the style of William McGonagall, the great tragedian of Dundee). But don't ask me to talk about it further.

It’s all Yours' – Don’t Fall

I made it easy for the kid

When I unscrewed the lid

Off a jam-jar of piss,

Abandoned on a wall.

He was running towards it –

I thought, it’s all yours – don’t fall.

Running ahead of his mother,

Pushing a pram containing his little brother.

He stopped and looked at me.

I looked at the jar -
Gave him the green light.

(His mother’s view blocked by a reversing car.)

He just couldn’t resist its golden glow.

The mother saw him pick it up - screamed, no,

Then looked to me to intervene,

But he took a massive swig of amber, as the traffic lights turned green.
He threw up, just as my bus turned up.

Q. “Have you ever seen a human drinking from a dog’s bowl?”

A. “Only once, in a porn film, never on the street.”

Q. “Do you see what you do as part of, for want of a better phrase, ‘the dog in art’ tradition? I’m thinking of Thurber’s dogs, Wegman’s portraits of Man Ray, or Elliot Erwitt even?”

A. “No, there are no dogs in my photographs.”

Q. “Good point, why not?”

A. “I don’t own a dog. I’m not interested in dogs. Did you know that Steiglitz had a three-legged dog called Tripod?”

Q. “No, but can I return to William Wegman for a moment? Are you familiar with his self-portrait with dog and newspaper? It’s a domestic scene - Wegman and his dog are at home sitting in front of the fire, Wegman’s reading the paper whilst the dog chews on a ball of newspaper: dog and owner both digesting the same news”

A. “No.”

Q. “That’s a shame because your water reporting of the word DOG, written on water bowls, could be read as, 'a thirst for knowledge', a comment on dog-literacy?”

A/Q. “I’ve heard that Wegman dresses his dogs in ball gowns and the like. Horrid stuff. But your idea of ‘a thirst for knowledge’ is closer to what I do. The biochemist Rupert Sheldrake interests me. Have you read his book, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming home (1999)?”

A (by the questioner). “No.”
"Before we continue this conversation any further, can I insist that you go and read it?"

To be continued…

Dogs Not Fags

2011-05-01T08:07:00.004+01:00

Dog, Dogless, Candyfloss

2011-04-29T07:25:00.006+01:00

Hangdog

2011-04-26T08:25:00.005+01:00

An OAP (one-arm pull-up) armed with a puppy; dog-weight - a dead weight, an OAP (old-aged puppy?). Whenever I see a dog in an old photograph (say twenty years old), I know, know for certain, that the dog is now dead.

Reflections On A Sausage

2011-04-23T08:04:00.004+01:00

Dog Brightness

2011-04-20T08:11:00.006+01:00