Collage challenge

I went to the London Art Fair last night, managing to get there and back in a weather window gap in Norfolk's  week of snow and ice. The presentations from the newer and fresher galleries usually provide more stimulus and visual excitement - although they probably don't make as much money from sales. 

The visit strengthened my resolve to try and push my collage work further in terms of materials, format and colour and taking them more into the sculptural. I've been teetering on this edge for a couple of years now at least and blaming lack of time for not being braver in the work.

At a slight tangent, a delivery of A1 (not A0 this time) flyposter Iran stamp collage images was waiting for me on my return from London. They were not scanned on a black background this time, so the perforated pattern edging the stamp blends in to the background - not sure whether I like that.

Irandar

Tomorrow I start my 5 day residency at The Queen of Hungary Project Space - www.queenofhungary.co.uk . 

Excitingly I 'd ordered some posters with that rough fly poster quality and they arrived in double quick time on Friday. I've blown-up one of my stamp collages, "Irandar", to A0 size, so the radar image is more obvious. I much prefer them original size, original collage, with the cuts and blemishes in glorious 3D visibility, but the flattening in the print is interesting and the image remains bold with lovely graphic qualities 100 times bigger and 100 times more pronounced. I've also done a negative version which has a harsh grey green, almost with a fluorescent attitude.  I like that as it reminds me of Cold War posters and reference to alien invasions and UFOs.
Over the next  5 days I willbe able to consider in detail where to put the two versions of "Irandar".  I like the idea of pasting them onto some corrugated iron (part of a demolished Nissen Hut) that is stacked behind the Project Space, but it is only borrowed and would be a pain to try and get off afterwards (as I remember from the huge fly posters we pasted up on King's Street, Norwich next to Dragon Hall).

Reconstructing A Garden for Cyrus

I spent today in the freezing studio bringing a lush garden back to the parched ground surrounding the card image of Cyrus The Great's tomb. Perhaps not the original chahar bagh, but there are trees for shade, a few flowers and even a pool for reflection (albeit reflecting a garden pavilion from elsewhere).  I feel inspired to make Cyrus some more gardens, but the rule is that I must only use postcards and that was my one Cyrus tomb image.

Neon pattern postcard excess

I started by thinking about absence, demolition of buildings, disappeared architecture, which is one of the main impulses behind the Chahar bagh collages. In these images here , in real life,the structures are still standing of course (Damavand, Persepolis, different beautiful mosques) but there's an imagining of landscape with their loss.I've been playing with postcards and pattern and colour. A bit excessive, but I tend to try pushing pattern to the maximum and then pull back a little. Perhaps there is further still to go? 

I've finally got hold of a postcard of the fabulous tomb of Cyrus the Great, once set within what may be considered the first four-quartered garden or chahar bagh. I've sneaked some streaks of neon yellow onto the image, for a direct comparison with my sculpture, "The House is Black" from a couple of years ago.  The form of this was, of course, based on Cyrus' tomb.
the tomb is at Pasargadae.


A brief mention of the plan to build the Sivand Dam somewhere between Pasargadae and Persepolis - a somewhat controversial proposal due to the unreliability of the flood plain level and also the increased humidity levels that experts believe will accelerate the destruction of Pasargadae - a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Fluorescent-ness and collage - a start

I've amassed a new pile of postcards for collage purposes and have just started to play around with their possibilities. I'm still interested in the immediacy of scissors/scalpel and glue and the almost crass butting together or butting against of the monumental architectural structures. However, the research I was doing  with Nicola Naismith last month into East Anglian UFO sightings has awakened an alarming 1980's fascination in all that is fluorescent.  (It all started in Rendlesham Forest, with the fluorescent spraypaint markings on the trees.) This perhaps should have been unsurprising to me given my long interest in neon light (and the inability to afford to use it much), but the fluorescent thing has taken me by surprise.  I suppose my being drawn to 'nasty' yellow hues over the last couple of years should have been a clue??
Anyway, I will be experimenting with the nasty yellows and nasty greens and nasty pinks for a while, predictably, about ten years or so after everyone else 're-discovered' them. These images show the first, modest appearance of fluorescent green in the postcard collages.
The images are top to bottom: 'Double Bridge' and 'Poet's Garden'.

Tomb- House-Bunker-Tomb

Because of constructing the Bunker-House-Bunker, thinking about house shapes and the The House is Black form taken from Cyrus' tomb.  This image is from an engraving from Flandin  and Coste's Voyages en Perse 1840-1842. 

And so it goes full-circle, to the tomb-like bunker of Paul Virillio's Standardised Valhalla and the camouflaged bunkers that had a dual potential of home and tomb.

Cancelled the trip to the Forough and the garden lecture next week, due to a funeral. Here is a snippet of Forough to inspire.

Persepolis & the industrial structure

I'm having trouble thinking of a bland and ambiguous title for this set of stamp collages. Dams and bridges seem somehow more iconic or appealing than the tower-block image, but they do appear to be rising phoenix-like from the Persepolis ruins.  
However, I now have a collection of cut-out iconic portraits of the Shah, edited from the stamps......

Chahar Bagh 4

Back in the studio photographing shadows on the glass chahar bagh and wanting the sun to stay behind a cloud.

Another dam, not sure if it is the reservoir I boated on (in a rowing sense), trailing my hand in the water to try to cool down .

Pre and post Iranian Revolution

An interesting contrast, the top one colliding circa 1945 with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the lower one using as the base image a stamp that is presumably just post revolution? Also, again joining together historic architecture and signs of modern progress.

A predominance of bridges and dams amongst the stamps I'm  selecting from and using, and so the practical and symbolic importance of water in Iran and of demonstrating progress.

Quincunx Carpet

I like this picture of a wall painting of Shah Abbas for the lattice -pattern or quincunx patterned carpet he kneels on. And the line of dancing girls at the front.

One version with extra watermark, one without.  I seem to have quite a number of poppy stamps (1998) from my cousin .The office is still half packed in boxes, half strewn in piles of paper, files and photos and making use of a hi-fi box as a table.

mock-ups -  encroaching bindweed / morning glory, nature on symbols of modernity, themselves now arguably outdated and all that...