Think Tank Sessions, Process, Around Town, Identity

[Originally Posted on Weblearn by  ADAM WALLACE  at Sunday, 16 February 2014 14:19:31 o'clock GMT]

1. Recently our studio have been holding morning seminar sessions on a range of subjects related to the practice of various individuals in the group. The first session was on Process, and interesting presentations were given by Christiana, Max, and James on the relevance and centrality of process to a number of artists' practice. Melanie very kindly kept a visual log of the discussions, and produced a useful mind-map after the sessions, which is an interesting way of viewing the nodal nature of process based art, and the connections between various practioners of the type of practice.

The following week the seminar's subject was About Town, and given the nature of my practice as a figurative artist, and the city as an agglomeration of millions of human beings -bodies- living out their lives and interacting with one another, it was natural that this would be the session at which I would make a presentation. In preparation I created a Powerpoint, which I have attached here, as well as inserting screenshots of each slide, with a written summary of my presentation relating to each one.


William Hogarth [1697-1764] is regarded as the originator of Western sequential art. His depictions of urban life in the 18th century in works like The Rake's Progress & Industry & Idleness depict were intended as morality lessons, albeit with much humour included. Above is his well known work, Beer Street & Gin Lane, which was a commentary on the degardation caused by spirit alcohol. On the left, Beer Street, the people are happy and prosperous, while on the right, gin drinking has brought the people to ruin.



Joel Peter Witkin's work is often gruesome & disturbing. Here he photographed cadavers in a Mexican morgue. I chose to include this image for two reasons. Firstly because death is an aspect of urban life that we cannot avoid. Every second within this city, London, somewhere a human being is reaching the end of their mortal existence, and passing across the frontier to the unknowable beyond. We have a real taboo about death in our society, and it is kept hidden and secret, almost as if we are ashamed of our fear of dying. At the same time the decay and eventual death of the human body is a metaphor for the processes we see continually around us in the urban environment, where buildings, roads, and open spaces constantly go through a process of creation, maturity, decay, demolition and rebirth. Its important to realise that our environment is contantly in flux, never static and become part of the process of change, by involvement in our local areas and communities, so that we can try to help shape the city around us.

I believe this photograph by Sophie Ristelheuber of lead water pipes was taken underneath buildings in Marseille. I love the organic, fleshy nature of the piping, the way it appears to be alive, almost as if it is an alien creature which has taken root beneath the city, spreading its tentacles through the spaces between our human habitations, burrowing ever upward seeking out the fleshy morsels above to devour them! When I saw it it instantly reminded me of Berlinde de Bruyckere's piece, Kreupelhout – Cripplewood, exhibited in the Belgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2013. Displayed in a darkened room, the limbs of trees had been bound together with rags, and had wax poured over their surfaces. The result was striking, producing a similar organic feel to the pipework in Sophie Ristelheuber's image above. The feel was of a living being, constrained by human forces, bound together in sometimes willing, sometimes unwilling associations, which of course is very similar to the processes which we experience as citizens of a huge urban metropolis today.


I wanted to include the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) as a quintessential contemporary urban artist. His works are very much a product of the environment he lived in, [New York City].

Basquiat was responsible for the SAMO© graffitti which appeared across Manhattan in the late 1970's. SAMO© was a collaborative effort between Basquiat and Al Diaz, and usually contained a political message about the environment they lived in






Although BAsquiat died tragically from a heroin overdose, SAMO is still being used by contemporary grafitti artists whose work can be seen in any modern urban environment, as a reminder of the creative potential of those who reject the current economic system, and want to express themselves in their own communities. Grafitti is a contentious issue, as it challenges the control of public space, and the expression of opinions to a wider audience. We are used to seeing billboards advertising goods for consumption, but many feel threatened by the appearance of anarchic messages which subvert this paradigm, and create a new reality of self-expression.

Unfortunately, much grafitti is mindless tagging, often reflective of gang culture, which is in itself a symptom of economic decline and lack of education and opportunity which is the reality for the poor in today's cities.

Alphabet City in New York was an area which was run down and derelict during the 1970's and 80's. As with much poor urban areas, it has now been redeveloped and is now high value real estate. The communities which lived there previously have been displaced to other areas, and many have become victims of the United States war on drugs, which disproportionately affects black and Latino communities, with imprisonment rates as high as 1 in 10 for black males. It is accurate to describe America's drug policies as The New Jim Crow, or Slavery 2.0.