An update
Greetings, comrades. It’s been a while, partly because I never quite know how I feel about the “need” to be some social media darling in order to be a successful artist, and being a bit wary of putting too many of my images online. I rarely use Tumblr from this account any more (I’m over at http://ultra-pulp-images.tumblr.com/ if you’re interested).
Anyway, now the important stuff. Being at uni I’ve worked on several different types of things, as I have sporadically updated on this blog, but it’s safe to say that architecture just isn’t my main focus any more. It’s not that I’ve gone off it, not at all. Again, there are just many reasons. If you’ve been following me for a while you know that I’ve been interested in modernist buildings for nearly 6 years or so now, and since a couple of years into that period I’ve been hyper-aware of the ethical concerns surrounding it all; coming from a working class background and becoming more informed on housing, class, politics etc. As much as I love learning and informing myself on things I consider important, it ain’t half tricky at times trying to reconcile the ethics with the aesthetics.
There’s a big risk of me potentially going to sound big-headed/arrogant/generally ridiculous here but I’ll say it anyway. When I started out with it all almost 6 years ago, I wasn’t aware of anyone else doing it, or even being interested in modernist architecture. In the environment I grew up in and was currently still living in, people either didn’t seem to care, or loathed the few tower blocks we had in our town. And now, online as in any London art gallery gift shop, it’s become huge. People heart brutalism. Years ago I had people messaging me saying I had helped them see the world in a different way, and it was a nice feeling, because I’d achieved what I essentially set out to do. And perhaps I have inspired people, hence the growing crop of architectural photographers emerging, with more and more pictures of concrete buildings appearing on here each day. But I’d be the first to admit I’m a bit jealous and bitter that these people are seeing more success than I did, and that it’s become popular. I’d rather admit it first than be accused of it.
But beneath it all there’s something a bit sinister going on. As part of my theory module in my studies, I wrote an essay on an issue that’s concerning me more and more. Modernist architecture, especially brutalism, and especially social housing buildings are getting romanticised, fetishised, and, most concerningly, gentrified. It was bloody depressing to write about but I knew it was something I could get my teeth into, and it paid off because I got an A for my theory work overall. If you’d like to read it, I will gladly post it. I decided to write it because I felt it was something no-one else was discussing.
Increasingly I am seeing brutalism framed in the context of something “cute”, reduced to aesthetic motif, and stripped of original context. It’s funny, contemporary architects wouldn’t dare reproduce brutalism - the nearest we get is the soft play “brutalist playground”.
Do we have to reduce every aspect of things to make them socially acceptable? Do we have to abbreviate their proper terms to something cute and quicker to type in order to make them palatable to modern tastes? These are all debates that need to be happening, in the context of continued selling of of council housing, the subsequent housing crisis and London property fuckery, the demonisation of the poor/working class, and just postmodernism in general really.
In my more recent art, as you may have seen, I’ve been focusing on other things but can never really let the architecture go. I suppose I’m working on keeping it in its original context, in terms of technical and aesthetic innovation, but also the context of the post-war housing shortage and the welfare state in general. If I focus on the architecture alone for too long, I can find myself bored of it and wanting to explore other things instead, so I’m continually working on ways to integrate the vast plethora of things I love, while also learning more about 20th century history to find ways to keep the super important context in.
I may post again, I may not, who knows. Either way, I hope you can take something useful from this brain-leak . . . .