CONCEPT Urban Surface Commission Artist Nottingham

CHRIS PICKUP || ARTIST DESIGNER SCULPTOR

original artwork

Link to my Axis site

Portraiture

Concept

About the artist

Chris Pickup was born near London in 1963. He graduated from Loughborough College of Art with a First Class Honors degree in Fine Art in 1985. He has exhibited his work in one man and group shows in London, The North East and The Midlands. Chris now lives in Nottingham and divides his time between freelance artwork, commissions and teaching.

New Urban Surface Work

2009

Click Image above to view Urban Surface gallery.

The surfaces of the urban environment are the interface where the constructions of man meet the elements. With effort humanity can hold its ground, keeping the elements at bay but this effort is not always sustained. There is a constant ebb and flow of development, obsolescence and refurbishment; roads are repaired, pavements patched and garage doors repainted. However, as a surface begins to ebb the elements start an indefatigable excavation down through the surface, revealing an ‘archaeology’ for that surface’s history.

These Urban Surface works record that ‘archaeology’. Superficially they appear abstract, however in reality they are highly observed. Each work is developed from photographs of specific surfaces in specific places, hence the titling. This process may seem rather mechanical but it does raise some interesting questions about how we experience the urban environment in which many of us live.

As we walk through that urban environment, the visual wealth of the surfaces around us is immense. In order to maintain our focus, maybe even our sanity, this constant image-rich filmstrip has to remain ignored. It is not that we don’t see those colours, patterns and textures; they go unnoticed because we see them constantly.

The work seeks to expose and reveal the depth and complexity behind a few moments of urban visual experience; to ask the eye to linger on and look harder at, that which has to be habitually ignored. It leaves one to ponder on the infinitesimal complexities which lie within the most mundane of every day objects and activities. The effect is to ‘press the pause button’, stop the world scrolling by and look at what is presented in front of you. In many ways this work fulfils the traditional artist’s prerogative to look longer and harder at the world on behalf of society.

Chris Pickup

September 2009

Site Responsive Work

Conceptual Statement October 2007

Over the past few years my work has become increasingly site responsive. Initially this response was to the physical and visual presence of the site. This culminated in my collaboration, Urban Journeys, with Mike Bowdidge at the Red Gallery in Hull. In this work three study sites were chosen arbitrarily, merely sampling the streets of Hull. Mike produced assemblage from what he found at the site and I photographed surfaces and collected discarded items. My aim was to create a ‘museum exhibition’ of my findings by reproducing surfaces as large wall mounted works, displaying finds in lit cases and speculating as to the provenance of the found objects and where appropriate suggesting narratives that linked them. The final stage was to photograph the finds and present those images in an attempt to evoke an iconic status for them.

My next project, INMATES, was an Arts Council England funded installation at the Northern General Hospital, Sheffield. This hospital was originally a workhouse and my brief was to explore the history of the site. I came expecting to use the protocols that I had established in Hull yet found the site historically bare from a visual perspective. This led me into creating the work from historical research and archival material, even involving an act of archaeology and contacting surviving relatives of workhouse inmates. Through the funding for INMATES I secured the mentorship of John Newling. He helped me understand that the key to site responsive work is to have protocols of investigation so as to hear the ‘voice’ of a site rather than coming to it with a ‘what I do is’ attitude. He has clarified for me how I can adopt an anthropological approach with the artist operating as participant/observer. Within this there is the need to ‘map’ a project. One needs to understand a site’s context both nationally and locally and understand the effect this will have on how an audience perceives that site. There is often an interesting tension between the tacit understanding a viewer may have of a site and the reality revealed by research. My task as a site responsive artist is to fuse anecdotal research into a visual statement. I have always admired a museum display’s ability to do this and would wish to develop the use of text and images, and where appropriate publication, to communicate results of the research on a site as well as to explain the conceptual and visual statements I would make about that site.

The historical theme continues with my most recent project Imagine a City… commissioned by Mantle Arts. Here I investigated Leicester market as being the core of the city in more ways than a geographical one. Through a display case of collected materials the work explores the commerce that triggered the city’s creation and now demonstrates the pan global nature of that commerce in the 21st century. More indirectly the work alludes to how the nature of modern commerce both creates and services our ethnically rich cities

The continuity between these two projects is the ‘museum ethic’. I feel that using a museum format to present information about a site, and to articulate the conceptual content of the artistic statements which accompany it, allow the work to read more easily. This has the potential to widen the audience for such projects. My integration of fact, interpretation and explanation is the unusual approach that I bring to the debate on the nature of site responsive work.

Click here to view Imagine a City...

Click here to view the INMATES exhibition.

Click here to view Urban Journeys.

Chris Pickup

October 2007

Urban Surface

Conceptual Statement March 2006

Urban Surface is a line of investigation based on the visual experience of living in a city. It seeks to record the pattern, colour and texture which are created as humanity constructs, repairs and abandons the surfaces of a city. It will respond to how the steel of the modern age will abut with the crumbling stonework of the city’s past or the juxtaposition of conscious architectural or sculptural statements against a random back drop of jumbled buildings. Urban Surface can chart the passage of time and respond to the urban experience of the modern city, from direct observation, with a combination of painting and digital photography. Digital photographs are enhanced, edited and reassembled to produce finished imagery in its own right or as the starting point for painting and mixed media work.

A bas relief and heavily textured surface is prepared to which colour is applied by masking and spraying a combination of oil and water based paint. This creates a surface of great complexity. Then traditional painting techniques are used to enhance and develop the surface and add any imagery that is required. In some cases found objects are incorporated into the final piece or even displayed in display boxes, in their own right. The final result is work which is textured, complex and colour rich yet reflects its very humble starting point.

Urban Surface as Site Specific Work

Urban Surface has enormous potential as a site specific piece. The visual material for the exhibition could be gathered photographically from the building itself, within a few hundred square metres of the front door, or from the wider environment. It would require the work to be focused on paving, road and wall surfaces and roof tops. Visitors to the exhibition would enter unaware of the source material until encountering the commission piece. They would continue with their day, their senses awakened to the complexity of the surfaces around them as they move through the building and step out on to the street.

To see examples of Urban Surface work and explore it's Site Specific quality click the images below.

Urban Journeys Red Galley Hull Geldards LLP Urban Surface Commission

Chronological Marks

The patterns which appear in The Chronological Marks series are drawn from various sources: ethnic, scientific, technological, and it is the consistency in this pattern that is of interest. The appearance of road schemes begin to echo the computer motherboard which in turn echoes ancient Bronze Age rock carving; the earliest decorative marks and the beginnings of writing are part of a continuum, which reaches today with bar-codes and the patterns created by circuitry. Some of the later work juxtaposes iconic human forms and text with these patterns. This work responds to the relationship between the conscious visual statements we make as our civilization develops and the subconscious patterns created as a by-product.

2007

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