ALAN WILLIAMS @mralanwilliams - Tumblr Blog

Best friend (2016)

Many homeless people sleeping on the streets and in temporary accommodation do so in the company of their dogs, who provide much needed love, companionship, warmth, security and loyalty. ‘Best friend’ presents a series of illustrations of the dogs of the homeless in Liverpool. The work presented is underpinned by his voluntary work with the RealLove homeless street team where he has had the privilege to get to know both owners and dogs, and has witnessed first-hand the importance of the strong bond and relationship between the two. These owners care and love their dogs like any other and put much effort and planning into caring for them, often going without themselves in order to provide. The piece also acknowledges the work done by the street teams of Liverpool and initiatives such as Care for the Paw who provide support, care and provisions in helping homeless dog owners meet their own and pet’s needs. Thank you to all owners and their dogs for their collaboration. The illustrations have been given as a keepsake to all collaborating dog owners.

Collaboration with Amanda Marie Atkinson

Bricks revisited (2016)

In the 1970s the minimalist sculptor Carl Andre’s provocative piece ‘Equivalent VIII’ (AKA ‘A pile of bricks’) displaying 120 bricks found by the artist at a New York city brick works, instigated much controversy and fury following intense media coverage. The piece unleashed public confusion and anger with regards the purpose, meaning and value of the artwork and at the time was felt by some sections of the art world to be representative of high culture that had lost its way. Due to the publicity it attracted it is perhaps one of the best-known works of modern art in the Tate Collection. With a lack of clear and comprehensible meaning or beauty within the traditional definition of ‘refined art’, many questions were raised both outside and within the art world. Such debate may perhaps represent the most valuable element of the artwork itself. Was it art? What did it mean? Should all art be comprehensible and accessible to ‘the masses’? Where was the skill/craftsmanship? Should normal everyday objects (readymade art) be regarded as art? Is it adequate or justifiable for the value of art to be simply judged by the public attention and questioning it may raise? And, should such pieces be funded by public money? Priced by Andre at $12,000 and bought by Tate at a reduced price of £2,297 (labelled at the time the most expensive bricks in the world) the piece caused heated debate as to whether its purchase was the best use of tax payers’ money and whether state funded art that appears to be at odds with the tastes and understanding of the masses, thus working in a way to exclude as opposed to include, are justifiable. At a time of social, economic and political unrest (interestingly when imported the bricks were stranded at Dagenham docks due to union strikes) and when other disciplines were using art to address social injustice, the creation and purchasing of artwork which appeared to lack public understanding and social relevance was questioned. This continues to be an important question for the contemporary art world to this day. With such questions in mind, ‘Bricks revisited’ recreates and re-contextualises Andre’s piece, yet unlike the original, it makes direct social and political commentary. In the same way that the original piece instigated heated public reaction with regards the public role and meaning of art, the recreation aims to draw attention to the current housing crisis (represented through the brick) and to raise anger towards the lack of public money being spent on social housing under the UK Conservative Government’s austerity programme, which is intensifying levels and experiences of homelessness. As with the original piece (before its sale to the Tate), the bricks were returned to the place of purchase, however the proceeds were donated to local voluntary initiatives that help the homeless.

‘Ladies and gents’. Collaboration with Amanda Marie Atkinson (2016)

The segregation of public bathrooms by sex is one of the most basic ways in which the gender binary is upheld as a regulatory regime based on essentialism. Graffiti created within such spaces further acts as a discourse through which femininity and masculinity are expressed, and the gender binary reinforced.

Alternative beer bottle labelling to challenge everyday patriarchal oppression.

[for Amanda Marie Atkinson’s event ‘Gender Dilemmas: negotiating femininity and masculinity in contemporary night life’, 2016]

'More time', 2014

#drawing #illustrations #art #alanwilliams

‘Où est la maison de fromage?’, 2007.

Collaboration with Poet John Cooper Clarke.

Link to video : Alan Williams - John Cooper Clarke - Ou est Le fromage

‘Every cloud has a silver lining’, 2014.

“Real danger is nothing more than just living. Of course, living is merely the chaos of existence, but more than that it's a crazy mixed-up business of dismantling existence instant by instant to the point where the original chaos is restored, and taking strength from the uncertainty and the fear that chaos brings to re-create existence instant by instant. You won't find another job as dangerous as that. There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it.”

‘The Banana Game’, 2014.

“If I had to characterise my work in two words, that is, as is the fashion these days, to label it, I would speak of constructivist structuralism or of structuralist constructivism, taking the word structuralism in a sense very different from the one it has acquired in the Saussurean or Lévi-Straussian tradition. By structuralism or structuralist, I mean that there exist, within the social world itself and not only within symbolic systems (language, myths, etc.), objective structures independent of the consciousness and will of agents, which are capable of guiding and constraining their practices or their representation. By constructivism, I mean that there is a twofold social genesis, on the one hand of the schemes of perception, thought, and action which are constitutive of what I call habitus, and on the other hand of social structures and particularly of what I call fields and of groups, notable those we ordinarily call social classes.”