Our annual festival of local creativity, The E17 Art Trail,
has started. I have studied the guide to this ever expanding field of artistic
bestowal and I am wondering how I can, as a visitor, do the collective
emanation justice. The trail has grown to such an extent there is probably no
way of taking it all in. Indeed any attempt to do so might be considered
superficial and a discourtesy to the gifts of the organisers and contributors. There
is the risk of becoming a Mr Nasty, he of ‘Pythonesque’ gluttony, who kept on
demanding more and exploded before he could even contemplate expending some of
the energy of those gifts heaped upon him. If every listing is an offer of a
gift then the prospective visitor has to decline many of the offers and hope
that no offence is given and/or taken by doing so. I know from having been a
contributor to each trail (from 2008 to 2011) that I wanted my offerings to be
accepted, taken and relished in a variety of ways, each involving the
investment of various energies on the part of giver and taker – and in such
acts of artful bestowal giving and taking are not necessarily fixed roles.
This year I am not contributing to the trail as an
individual listed artist and I have also not collaborated with artists groups
as I/we have done in previous years. There
are numerous reasons for my lack of participation however I doubt they are of much interest to this year’s E17 artists
and audience – a potential outing that looks anything but diminished by my lack
of presence. I had entertained the idea of Martin Creed like sprints through
art trail venues. Despite the appeal of the alternating togetherness and
loneliness of long distance artiness, that antic risks doing some considerable
and unwelcome damage literally, metaphorically and symbolically. Obviously a
lack of some original thought can explain my contributing absence although I
was still to be found late on the night of 31st August, E17 Art
Trail Eve, busily preparing an art trail itinerary, my participating presence –
ho ho ho. Last year I vainly published a list of potential visits but this year
my visits are supposed to be surprises. How did our first day unfold?
Walthamstow Awaits - the EDL and anti EDLs are coming.
Forest Road
Day 1 was a challenging day to set out on the trail given
the presence of the EDL march and the counter demonstrations. In the morning I
had doubts about being out and about in Walthamstow for fear of the potential
confusion, hysteria and violence that can be generated by extreme racial and
political prejudice and intolerance. It was not only the belligerence of the
English Defence League I feared but also that of opposing factions intent on
similarly violent confrontation. I ventured into the town centre to do a few
errands and to test the local water so to speak. Walthamstow Market, High
Street expresses how multi racial and multi ethnic this town is, and how
peaceful the interaction of the diversity is most of the time; something to
admire. I was encouraged by the art trail hub at the library and decided to set out on the trail in the afternoon.
My planned route and itinerary was thus – 2 to 38 to
100 & 101 to 123 to 23. 
A gift of the allotment - August 2012
2 – The Bank of Walthamstow
One of the reasons/excuses for my non participation as a
listed artist is lack of funds. I thought I would start off my trail with a
visit to a truly local bank manager to seek a bit of quantitatively easing E17
dosh to finance some artful visitations. Anticipating a demand for some collateral
I rustled together a bag of surplus fruit and vegetables harvested from the
allotment. Of course I was not going to tell the manager it was surplus. I
hoped my hunger (for art) would be considered valuable enough for the loan of some
notes for which I would also promise to visit at least all those venues and
artists listed above. I also hoped the visited artists might exchange items for
those notes and so stimulate the currency of the Bank of Walthamstow. I
imagined myself as an E17, J S G Boggs like character as brought to me by the
1992 documentary, Money Man, directed by Philip Haas. Unforgivably, as an E17
field student, I failed to read the small print of the listing properly and
when I arrived at the Bank of Walthamstow I discovered the bank was not yet
open to the public. The prospect of a career in E17 merchant banking did not
look good. I promised to return and left quickly in case the warm weather might
cause my vegetable commodities (by which I also mean my reserve of brain cells)
to depreciate further.
100 – Still Life in Sugar – by Sarah Hardy / Comics from
East London by Paul Francis / Peep Show Curiosities
Field Study’s Man in E17 is very good at getting lost in E17
due to an increasingly accomplished ineptitude in map reading. Are there no
limits to his – ok – my incompetence? Instead of 38, it was 100, the Arts and
Crusts Cafe, where I found myself next, lured no doubt by the finely honed
skills of art cafe proprietor, curator and barista, Andrew.
Another reason for my non participation this year is lack of
honey. Our honey bee colonies have barely made sufficient stores to feed
themselves over the autumn and winter months let alone supply the sweet teeth
of us weird white and smokey things called beekeepers. In each of the art
trails from 2008 to 2011 I have used honey as a sort of art material to express
a variety of ideas about place and belonging. The lack of a honey harvest this
year leads to an analogy of a painter being asked to paint without any paint.
Andrew and I exchanged the bag of fruit and veg’ for a cup
of roasted Arabica(?) and with that essential stimulation I set about consuming
Sarah Hardy’s wonderful cake come icing sugar sculpture. I paused to savour the
promise of the bit of the stag beetle I would bite off and gobble first. The
beetle was having none of this bitter sweet vanitas and scuttled off out of
sight leaving me with the caterpillars, snails and assorted fruity momento
mori. In my mind the beetle found its way into the glazed peep show arenas of
Original Army where spectral circus performers concealed curious crepuscular
goings on. I was wary of exposing my eyeballs up close to the diabolus within
and shifted my attention to comic capers of a different sort.
I found myself in the more bucolic company and territory of
Joseph Tredgold as remembered by comic artist, Paul Francis, in 'A Pupil of Nature'. Paul’s sparing
monochrome pen and ink style rendered the possibly fictional but definitely
comic Joseph Tredgold as a Walthamstow based experimental field student of
looking and drawing. Where do you have to go and how do you have to position
yourself to represent the truth /the Truth, of nature? Mindful of Paul’s cautionary graphic tale I
decided to leave the procumbent Tredgold in the cafe and locate myself standing
upright in front of a homely, harmonious and orderly composition as provided by
the delicately tonal scrutiny of Sarah Hardy, and the kindness of her hosts,
Andrew and Carol.
101- The Hand Drawn Wallpaper – Sarah Hardy
Across the road from Arts and Crusts in Andrew and Carol’s
house there was suspended above and on the wall space of the front room fireplace
a host of finely drawn insects, insect bits and other miniature beasts. The
fragility of the creatures was recreated in pencil on a fine white paper used
as wallpaper, their variously broken and otherwise decayed and depleted bodies
explored through different points of view. The gentle fall of the ghosts, the
traces of insect shades, had a slightly disconcerting presence in the homely setting
of that private and personal room adorned with more colourful and robust
memories. It had a resonance with the vanitas work displayed in the cafe. I did not want to outstay my welcome nor stray from the Sarah Hardy
trail of arthropod body parts and so left a busy Arts and Crusts to find the
source of the insect fright.
38 – Broken Bees, Bugs and Birds. Drawings by Sarah Hardy.
This venue was Sarah’s garden studio space where she
practices her crafts. It seemed to be a quiet place but for the intrusive drone
of the police helicopters overhead tracking the march and demonstrations
nearby. There was some talk of how people, particularly families with younger
children, might have been put off doing the art trail in the area because of
the risk of trouble by the march. There was an array of studies, closely
observed and absorbing still lives to see, each reproduced in various graphic
media from original pencil drawings to limited edition litho-prints. There were
also Sarah’s collections of insects and her tools to examine them. Looking in
what might have been a cigar box full of insects dried of life, my thoughts were
cast back to earlier in the day when I had visited one of those small booths on
the high street market to try and get my watch strap repaired. There seemed to
be a poetic comparison to be made between the watch-smith patiently picking
through a tub of tiny watch parts with tweezers and that assortment of insects
bereft of their parts. I gave Sarah the hornet I retrieved from a bee hive
earlier in the year, as a gesture of appreciation for her contribution to ‘my art
trail’ and then made my bumbling way to Vestry House Museum to see ‘Florophilia’.
from, Florophilia. Curated by Lili Spain and Sarah Grainger Jones at Vestry House Museum.
Coming up next:
Day 1 dreamed on into Day 2.
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