MFA in Fine Art: a reflection

“We think place is about space, but in fact it is really about time.”[1]

Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby.

In developing my body of work “Seven Stations” ( “Saith Gorsaf”) over the last year or more, my initial line of enquiry was first informed by Tim Ingold’s anthropological eye for the interrelationship of the human and natural worlds. He inspired me to think about the way art can function as not just a process of making, but also of thinking. He encouraged me to experience, to experiment and to explore, a mantra I took with me to Anglesey. Later, I was also much influenced by Robert Smithson’s mysterious and enigmatic approach to the exploration of landscapes and by his site/non-site duality. I was excited to contrast the disused railway line (site) with a contemporary art exhibition (non-site).

Of course, this was all disrupted by the Covid-19 lockdown. For me, the “site” was suddenly both conceptually and physically closed off to me. (I was not able to return to Anglesey until mid-July, an interval of over four months).

Without access to site/subject, workshops, space and even some materials, I found myself reflecting in my small Oxford studio on what appeared to be a significant impediment. I no longer felt that I could authentically engage in the way that I had planned with the land, the railway line, and the people I had met. (e.g. Lein Amlwch, the volunteer group seeking to restore the line to use - they too had suspended all work on the line.) But, in time, this just became an opportunity to encounter the railway line in a different way. The cultivation of flexibility and resilience is time well spent for any artist, so, I turned to my own memories, records and research. Thus, the very themes of memory, remembering, and the often vanishingly thin line between remembering and forgetting (and restoration and loss) became more prevalent themes.

Memory became another key component of my conceptual approach, alongside place and time as described by Solnit:  my own memories, too, as well the social, historical and industrial memory I found on Anglesey; of which the railway line is such a potent emblem.

And also …. making and unmaking: several of my works seek to explore and occupy that liminal and ambivalent point. I have found many such juxtapositions arising out of my exploration of an industrial artefact that is, to a very great extent, dead or moribund, and yet I was fascinated to experience the way it became something more complex, nuanced and still, yet, very vital. It has suited that part of my practice in which I gather a selection of themes, ideas components and “clusters” of work and experiment with their combination, dissolution and recombination (e.g. Much Is Forgotten. (But Not All.)”)

I have come to understand the railway line as a sort of “drawing upon the landscape”. It engaged my fascination with drawing (in multiple forms, including writing) but also inspired me to go beyond it. So, a line became a shape (especially through the drawn pieces); and in turn it became a form, an experience, a sound, or a reflection, through wider applications.  In the end, I find my destination in this body of work has grown from the interplay between these different elements.

My work has been described as operating “between the systematic and the poetic”, a phrase I have found revelatory. Systematic or diagrammatic qualities associated with the construction and operation of railway lines, and the associated (and often marginal or arcane) information that comes with them, can be highly attractive for “railway enthusiasts” and historians of all stripes, and for those, like me, who are interested in the narrow delineation between remembering and forgetting of marginal things. But they also carry a wonderful potential to transform into something altogether more poetic, connected with time and memory, and with our industrial and social heritage; all of which is richly apparent in the landscape of Anglesey.

My work has also become a combination of something linear and finite (relating to a line - a journey delineated by a beginning and an end, just like a railway) with something cyclical and repetitive (implying a cycle of creation, decay and renewal, with the potential to repeat and return - an implication of return or repeated journeys). This is a more uncertain, and I think more poetic, space to occupy, and this ambivalence made my journey much richer and more interesting.

My subject has, in this way, taught me to place these and so many other dualities alongside each other and to facilitate dialogue between the two. There is value in presenting/revealing without the need to be authorial, or to force an interpretation or solution. This is particularly important learning where a subject has political and social overtones. (Railways, I have learnt, are very political things, having to do with economics, land and who gets to connect with whom.) The last thing the people of Anglesey need or want is to be told by an artist from Oxfordshire what to do or think about the railway line and its different potential futures. We see landscape and history through our own eyes, and make our own meaning from it, but must always be conscious that what we see is only our one view. There is always more, and so much is unseen yet hiding in plain sight.

On Anglesey, I found my practice and the path to explore it further beyond my MFA. I have found myself following not a journey to the death of a railway but, in fact, a journey to a transformation; perhaps even to a rebirth, linking back to my choice of title. This transformation also applies to me and my art practice, something I am overjoyed to discover in myself at a relatively late stage in my life. So much in life is about exploration and discovery and I am very much looking forward to continuing this journey.

[1] Solnit R, (2014), The Faraway Nearby. London, Granta.

Rhoddion stone. July 2020. Copyright: Mark Clay

"Rhoddion". On Generosity - Part Three

In July 2020, I was finally able to return to the island of Anglesey and the Amlwch railway line to complete “Rhoddion”, a project that has lain dormant during the long months of the coronavirus lockdown. It was the culmination of my reflection on the idea of generosity, as well as forming a part of my final body of work for my Masters in Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University.

As always, it was wonderful to be back on the island and to find the line once again. Though apparently little changed from the first time I had explored it in Autumn 2019, these visits have always emphasised to me the slow, relentless and largely invisible process of decay that is affecting much of the 17 miles of the route. It’s a process that never ceases, despite the valiant efforts of those seeking to restore it.

My job on this visit was to replace seven track ballast stones that I have gilded with copper leaf and kept with me at home all through the coronavirus lockdown. My plan was to replace them in locations along the whole length of the line, and to leave them to their fate - unmarked, unnamed and unexplained. Everything else apart from the simple act of returning the stones to the line - a simple, silent act of generosity, I hope - seemed unnecessary.

From this process, which took me approximately a day and a half to achieve, I generated a series of seven photographs as a documentary record, designed with my MFA final show in mind. They, along with some of my recorded thoughts, can be seen below:

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Recording 1: Prelude (4mins 20s):

In which I introduce my project from a lonely overbridge not far from Gaerwen, and make something of false start.

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Recording 2: Stone One (2mins 40s)

In which I find my way onto the railway line and place the first of my seven Rhoddion stones in the company of some indifferent sheep

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“Rhoddion” - Stone no.1 - Mark Clay (2020)

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Recording 3: The Rain and The Road (3mins 10s)

Once again, my attempt to place a stone comes to nothing, leaving me to contemplate the rain and the noise of roads.

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Recording 4: Stone Two (2mins 50s)

The second “Rhoddion” Stone is put in place, despite water and warnings.

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“Rhoddion” - Stone no.2 - Mark Clay (2020)

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Recording 5: Stone Three (2mins 38s)

A silent and thought-provoking location for Stone Three, where I ponder ideas of access and trespass.

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“Rhoddion” - Stone no.3 - Mark Clay (2020)

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Recording 6: Stone Four (3mins 5s)

Resuming my series of little pilgrimages on the morning of day two, finding the path appears as difficult as finding the railway.

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“Rhoddion” - Stone no.4 - Mark Clay (2020)

Recording 7: Stone Five (2mins 5s)

Gathering a few fragments of broken railway sleeper leads to a reflection on relics and their significance.

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“Rhoddion” - Stone no.5 - Mark Clay (2020)

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Recording 8: Stone Six (2mins)

Reflecting on how the railway, the roads and the paths of Anglesey dance around each other.

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Recording 9: Stone Seven (2mins 45 s)

The end of the line, in every sense. At the end, there is nothing but the wind.

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Going with the 'Flow" - Modern Art Oxford

Being involved in the online exhibition and collaboration ‘Flow’ at Modern Art Oxford has been both a joy and a revelation to me, particularly at a time when I had more or less written off 2020 as an exhibiting year.

It has been wonderful, too, to have a space in which to connect with other artists, even if this is still severely limited. There is so much to learn and enjoy from being able to talk about art with other artists and I do thank the team at Modern Art Oxford and all the participating curators and artists for bringing us all together and being generous and interested. I feel sure that this is a good source of reflection, development and future ideas for all of us.

The exhibition continues at Modern Art Oxford until 11 October but will continue on their website beyond that date. This blog entry is to pull together all the different strands of my contribution and all the activity around the exhibition as a whole:

You can visit “Flow” at Modern Art Oxford here: https://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/event/flow-online/

Laura Cumming’s review in The Observer (20 Sept 2020) can be read at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/sep/20/danh-vo-chicxulub-white-cube-bermondsey-review-flow-modern-art-oxford

Video extracts of my interview with Flow Co-Curator Jack Carrera:

"Different Tracks" - A Found Poem

This is a “found poem”, if such a thing exists. It is derived from sketchbook working notes made on September 12, 2020, as I reflected and recorded the filmed material (both video and sound) that I have compiled for a work in progress, also to be called “Different Tracks”. I have re-ordered and recomposed the fragments, much as I have done with the original material, and from this I reach something that might be considered a poem.

The images and screengrabs come from my original material.

“Different Tracks”

Oxford to Didcot: a train in urgent flight southwards.

The engine smooths out a hurrying time. Looking down

towards the trackbed, colours, forms and structures become a blur.

Some seem to hang in the vision, in swooping flight.

But most are lost.

On foot, I walk along abandoned sidings: there was once a factory in Amlwch.

There are no trains now. The rails are broken. And rusted.

There is a profusion of nature and decay.

Between the twin tracks, buddleia abound.

The wind grabs at me.

Near Didcot, slower now, the blur coalesces and

breaks down, an infinite series of momentary landscapes.

Nothing changes and everything changes.

Didcot, aboard a departing steam train:

a genial amble of sound and motion.

Track ballast falls behind contentedly.

The running board comes with me on this tiny voyage.

Gentler music. Accelerando and rallentando.

Ugly locomotive in a siding. Its diesel engine ticks as it cools:

a clock marking out the seconds of its stopping;

a railway platform clock awaiting an arrival of another train.

Nothing without time.

 A train passing at speed.

In the midst of silence, its coming and going, like a long, sung note.

Crescendo and decrescendo.

Respectful silence of the concert hall, before and after, .

The remembering of old steam trains.

Percussive beats and long breaths of steam.

Songs from the past, not quite yet forgotten.

I walk along old lines. Wind and walking in duet.

Sleepers pass by underfoot, measuring my pace.

Time to think and absorb.

The interjections of others, on their own journeys.

Behind the silence roars the passing world.

Yet around the line, voices remain to be heard:

our voices; and of wheels, engines, brakes and birds.

An enduring stopping and starting.

 Didcot to Oxford. Huge northbound skies glowering

over dashing woodlands.

We are back to the speed of blurred moments barely seen.

There must be a return journey.

An Uncertain Journey

As my MFA in Fine Art approaches its conclusion, I am emerging from a period of enthusiastic investigation of the possibilities and potential of typeface and typewriters. And I have been asking myself how can I push this yet further.

It has seemed to me that, in the context of my current project, a typewriter has given me a tool to access and investigate the following:

• Mechanical, repetitive process (and sound)

• A parallel and complimentary form of “old” technology that was once cutting edge but now carries a sense of nostalgia and, perhaps, eccentricity; the same can be said of railways, too, I think – especially disused or lost ones. (And yet, as my projects seek to argue, there is also richness and value and potential in them nonetheless!)

• A limited set of options (compared to modern word processing, computing and digital printing technology) – something stripped back to basics, simple and rather “retro” – that quality of older technology again.

• Something decidedly analogue and physical (compared to the digital and the electronic) that again chimes nicely with railways and, critically, their construction, preservation and restoring. It’s all done by hand (manual labour)  in both cases (typewriting, working to clear the Amlwch line).

These are all valuable things to investigate, as I believe I have done. So, how can I now take this further? How can I start to mix these “typewriter” qualities with other strands of my work. How can I think it deeper and further?

A wander around some of the old railway sites of Oxford took me recently to Grandpont Bridge (above), on the Thames. It used to carry railway lines to a long-gone gasworks and other industrial sites. No trains have passed over it for many a year. It may even date back to the days of Brunel’s broad gauge.  It is now a rather over-engineered pedestrian bridge, but still very grand and imposing.

Again, I was struck by ideas of the mechanical and the repetitive, this time as I pondered the thousands of rivets inserted in the great Victoria girders. I was also struck by the rust and patina. It struck me as the very slowest form of decay and dissolution that I felt I could imagine in a human time frame.

How could I apply this sense of dissolution in the context of typewritten work? I wanted to think about whether I could simultaneously point to decay in thinking about typewriting. It seemed right to try to balance the two, since my work seems so full of these dichotomies (I am tempted to say parallel tracks).

These thoughts percolated through to beginning to think about dots: tiny fragments of line, if you will, that also point to dust, smoke, sand and particles – things falling to bits/dissolving, or perhaps things falling together/coming back into focus. It seemed fitting that it all seemed so loose, ill-defined and hard to grasp.

As is so often the case, I needed to think this through with a drawing.

Choosing a piece of tracing paper, for no other reason than that it has been a common feature in my work and also adds to the idea of “tracing” a disappearing thing (and a surface with its own contingency, fragility, translucency) I sat down to draw with no real sense of where I was going. Just a basic idea of turning type to dust.

First steps: tracing the seven railway stations of the Amlwch line. A route to follow, or to search for. I used fibre tip marker pens of varying sizes between 0.05cm and 0.8cm.

I thought I might use pencil or charcoal but I felt it was too messy and imprecise, even though they are really “dust” (soot, carbon). I didn’t want to lose control to that extent. I drew on, tracing on the typed letters imperfectly (to suggest imperfect processes and gradual dissolution) and then worked to build a “cloud” of dots around the frail and failing text to make it even more contingent and on the point of dissolution. I laid down more and more dots to reinforce this, eventually going much further with this than I originally imagined, in order to make the legibility of the typeface even more uncertain.

That really was my only impulse other than to see how the drawing turned out.  I was still not sure where I was going with this, or whether I even liked what was emerging. I felt like I should just surrender to the process and allow the drawing to be what it would be.

However, there came a point where I finally understood what I was doing, as if the dots were coalescing into an independent idea beyond my own agency. This is the final, completed piece:

“Uncertain Journey”

Completed 10 July 2020. Pen on tracing paper. H263 mm x W410mm

So what is this then?

As I drew, around a dozen potential titles for this piece came to me as it began to resolve itself in the making, and I jotted them down for consideration at the end. It was a way of indexing my thinking and my reactions to what I was doing, I believe. Other titles, each resonating with some aspect of my continuing research and emerging body of work, were:

• “Every journey is made of a million tiny steps”

• Make/Unmake/Remake

• Coming Apart/Coming Together

• A Million Small Acts

• A Miliion Tiny Acts of Remembrance

• Don’t Forget to Remember

• Uncertain Destinations

I finally chose “Uncertain Journey” , a title that reflects both the outcome and the journey of this piece.

The process of laying down the dots (once the lettering was done) was instinctual and implied a real sense of surrender to the mechanical, rhythmic and repetitive process of the dotmaking. It felt, again, like the process of riveting in its obsessive repetition; albeit on a quieter and less industrial scale. And it felt as though the shapes and textures were finding their own form, independent of me. This was a highly mindful and thought-provoking piece to do. Isn’t the act of drawing so often like that?

There is, in the final drawing, a pleasing ambivalence about its nature, which I enjoy and value. Speaking to others for their reaction on what it is (always stipulating there I felt there was no single right answer), I was struck by the following principal reactions:

• wind on sand at low tide

• tides of the water

• steam, smoke or dust

• tree roots, trunk, branches and leave

• the murmurations of starlings

I particularly like that these are all natural phenomena and that they are perceived beyond or above the lettering which seems no longer the central premise of the work – a nice visual metaphor for forgetting, and for the gradual reclamation of the line by nature, perhaps.

I feel sure that this piece is, not for the first time, about being on the fine line between forgetting and remembering; and that something as concrete and humanly regulated as a journey down a railway line becomes something as complex, uncertain as these phenomena beyond human regulation (but nonetheless regulated according to the rigorous system of physics).

That all fits quite nicely with my overall approach to this project as I consider it in July 2020, nearly four months after the coronavirus made this project, too, into another kind of uncertain journey.

Thoughts On Binding

The following is a documentation of some of the thinking and reflection that occurred during a new phase of making, as I continue to build a body of work on the theme of the (disused) Amlwch railway line, on Anglesey. It centres on my use of copper thread as a binding material.

What is binding about?

I think of acts of care, preservation (e.g. Egyptian mummification), of recording and remembrance. A way to “re-member”, as in to put something back together again. At the same time, I think of natural binding: of bindweed and ivy that slowly entwines the Amlwch railway line in a slow, relentless act of reclamation and transformation.

So there is tension here, between:

1. The binding of care and preservation, the human intention to create, to preserve and to restore, to bring dead things back to life, and;

2. The binding of capture, control, the natural intention to change, replace, evolve.  New life growing out of the death of the old.

Is it even possible to reconcile the two in a piece of work, to place them alongside each other as I think is happening on the railway? As Tim Ingold might say, perhaps the making will show me how, might show me how to think by making….

So I take a piece of old sleeper slice and turn it in my hands, The cut edges are ostensibly smooth but I can feel the lines in the surface, both radial and circumferential. There are cracks in the body and at the edges of the wood, some from the time of the growing, and some from the time of the dying (rotting). I continue to turn the wood block over and over and a way of making comes to me from this.

Taking up fine copper thread, I combine it with the process of turning over and over. I follow the edges and contours of the piece of wood until I have bound it, but not obscured it. It seems to me, as I work, that the act of binding expresses a desire to protect and to support this old wood. To stop it coming apart. To “re-member” it:

The process flows on and so my ideas flow on with it. I keep going, taking this further and do something similar for all the remaining fragments from this “end of the sleeper” slice. The copper thread seems also to imply a spirit of reconnection, or restoration, of the wood, to the point before time, decay, and my intervention split it apart.

This end piece of wood brings me in mind of my idea of a piece called “Terminus”. The end. I had previously imagined doing it with a much larger piece of old rotted sleeper, but the coronavirus lockdown prevents me searching for one on the Amlwch railway line itself.

I am not done with this. This idea keeps me, and perhaps by extension this decaying railway, in the present tense. I take up another sleeper slice. What if I worked more closely with the grain and the lines of the wood? Is this a way, even, to bind those two halves of my thoughts on binding together. (Pun absolutely intended.)

It changes the way I do the binding. Not a relatively random reflex as in the previous pieces, but a more considered, exploratory, mindful approach. I too am progressively bound up by the idea and the process. The thread encloses the wood and it encloses me. too, in this repetitive act of making and thinking.

One hour later:

It feels like a mapping (back to my starting point – the OS map of Anglesey), an exploration, a re-discovery even, of the nature of these materials. Not an exact one, but a halting, partial, cautious and even risky one (the thread breaks several times as it catches and stretches). As I wind around the edges, notches and grooves the tightened thread makes tiny, metallic “plink” sounds like the plucking of a harp string at the top of its range.  (I must record these.)

There. There it is. The idea of the “sounding of the line.”

I am so aware, by now, of the reflective and thoughtful nature of what I am now doing. It is slower, and more careful, too.  Perhaps even ritualistic: as in Ancient Egypt, with the mummification of dead pharaohs and their belongings, the act of binding (mummification) is an act of remembering and preserving things that are precious.

I think this railway is precious. And my acts of binding have enabled me to make that tangible.

Adjusting my Practice

So much has happened since I last blogged that I hardly know where to begin. What extraordinary times these are. I write almost one week since the UK government imposed significant restrictions on activity and travel in order to “flatten the curve” of Covid-19; albeit that those restrictions are less draconian than many other countries, for the moment at least.

I count myself fortunate to be an artist at this time and to have something that can deeply absorb and engage me in these times of quarantine. I’m doubly lucky that I have studio space of my own at home and that I am able to carry on at a time when my MFA course is essentially closed down and we are awaiting news about the fate of our planned Summer degree show, due to open in June.

But of course, despite being one of the lucky ones, I am still having to come to terms with limitations in travel, resources and materials. My plans to return to Anglesey to complete some of the site-specific work and to take photographs build my documentation etc. are postponed until October at the earliest. But it is what it is, and I must think about how I can adjust my practice to this strange new reality.

Sometimes in art, as with so many other things in life, when one door closes another door opens. In this case, digital editing can take me to places that I simply cannot physically go, coronavirus or no. I have begun to explore this new avenue as a means of further developing a set of drawings on sheets of suspended acetate that I am presently making.

The first of them has the working title “Network” (See right). It places the Amlwch railway line within a wider network of journeys, real or imagined, which I have scratched into the surface of the acetate with a rusty nail, as if I were preparing to make a drypoint print. I like the insubstantiality of the transparent acetate, and the way that it interacts strongly with light.

This scratched, reflective surface is my starting point. I often use Pixlr, a simple and free editing tool, as a means of improvising and exploring ideas, particularly in my illustration work, if I want to access abstraction, or if I just want to play around with images. (I strongly recommend it.) Using Pixlr here has, as always, given me some unexpected but very valuable results.

The first one (below) enables me to reference a sense of the deeper geology of the island of Anglesey, buried and unseen below the surface, and the journeys of people across it. In particular, it reminds me of a beautiful 1920s British Geological Survey map, a copy of which I own, which shows the complex geology of the island of Anglesey using a rich variety of colours. I’ve been struggling to formulate ways in which to interestingly reference this aspect of the island, until now.

The second image (below) gives a clearer sense of the scratched “journeys” that I have created on the surface of the acetate. I made these as a way of imagining different journeys: I think of a lady travelling from Llanerchymedd by train to visit her sister in Amlwch. I am thinking of my friend Walter Glyn Davies walking from his Amlwch home to the railway station to catch a train to Llangefni to have a piano lesson. I am thinking of a boy catching the train from Rhosgoch to Llangefni to go to school:

Here, I have also found a way to access the recurring idea of copper, which is becoming a key motif of my work around the Amlwch line. By photographing the acetate sheet outside where it reflects the beautiful blue skies we have been enjoying recently, I achieved the copper colour by making a negative image of the original, which pleases me greatly. The opposite of sky is “underground”, the source of copper and a reference to the copper mining history of Anglesey. It seems very fitting to me.

It may be that these images will find their way into my show. In any event, they represent a striking infusion of bold colour in a body of work that has largely been about line, so far for obvious reasons. I like the extra dimension that this work is bringing to the overall project, as well as enabling me to maintain a sense of exploration in my thinking whilst I remain physically stuck in one place. There are, after all, so many ways to travel in the imagination.

On Generosity - Part Two

My thinking about generosity has developed some way since my previous post on the subject. From generosity I have moved to include the idea of a gift; or, more appropriately since my context is a railway line in North Wales, the Welsh language equivalent of gift: “rhodd”, or the even lovelier plural “rhoddion” - “gifts”).

To make these ideas tangible, I have been spending considerable time recently applying copper leaf gilding to some pieces of track ballast stone, borrowed from the Amlwch railway line and which I will return shortly. I have found the process of gilding to be both a thoughtful, quiet and delicate process, and also challenging. This is my first attempt at any sort of gilding, and these small palm-sized stones have not been the easiest surface to work with. All these qualities and experiences make the creation of these little “gifts” all the more fitting for me.

Why copper? It speaks to me of several things: the industrial heritage of Anglesey (especially the extraction of copper, principally from the nearby Parys Mountain copper mine); of memory of the past; and of the process of making protecting and preserving (copper bottoms of ships, or copper sheet roofing, for example).

In what way can these little copper jewels act as gifts? I have turned to poetry to enable me to think further about this. Poetry is an excellent way to distill, crystallise or concentrate your thinking. Having written several pages on the subject of late, and how it can relate to aspects of a disused railway line, I’ve now reached this working draft of my thoughts in poetry form.

I am planning to return the stones (anonymously) to the line as “gifts” to be discovered in the future, perhaps by those working on the line as they clear it. Or perhaps they will disappear and never be seen again. Since entropy, decay and loss is an ultimate and inevitable consequence, even in the context of restoration, that will be OK too. The documentation of the gifts through photographs, and perhaps through this writing too, will be the artwork; at least as far as my MFA show is concerned. This blog post will form a part of it too, perhaps.

I’ve already tested the idea during my recent visit to Anglesey, placing one stone back on the line (temporarily) to test the visual impact of the stones and their resilience to the elements. They have the right kind of scale for my purposes, being variously invisible and visible. The next step will be to clarify my thoughts on the locations for the stones, and documentation of the work. There are seven stones in all, corresponding with the seven stations of the line, but this is just one idea I continue to work on.