In my recent book, ‘Days Out In England’, I questioned the power of the State over its people. How much manipulation and influence surreptitiously filters into our lives and controls them. I commented on whether or not British Gas or the Church was ‘institution’ as we huddle into affordable housing and asked if email, texting, twitter or Facebook was the new ‘Newspeak’ about which Orwell wrote in his classic novel.
Strangely, further research in the £-multimillion companies and corporations such as Sony, Microsoft and Coca-Cola lead me down a religious path, culminating with distinct parallels being drawn between WWW. And 666; the number of the beast.
How fascinating! Are these huge global corporations the new Devils of this world?
This notion of ultimate evil sparked the thought process to create some images of Evil juxtaposed with ‘the Innocent’; in this instant, the human element and I thought I would once more draw upon the ladybird books as metaphor; those we read and scribbled in as children and whose imagery remains with us, I believe, as we stumble into adulthood.
I decided to make this book as a companion to a recent ‘work in progress’ entitled, ‘A Life in Pictures of a British Movie Icon’, where I have taken another image of evil, a Dalek and juxtaposed it with the most mundane scenarios that one can imagine of British everyday life and culture; shopping in Poundland, waiting at the bus stop, collecting a prescription from Boots, stuck on a crowded tube on a Friday evening, washing clothes at the local launderette, placing a bet at BetFred, drunk outside the pub, undertaking a job interview and having to meet with a financial adviser. It is this contrast of subject matter with ephemeral manifestation which produces the ‘sickly sweet, almost embarrassing intelligent-ridiculous humour’ that exists in my work.
Why not use this image set against the romantic and ‘time-spent unicorn landscapes of dreamland; of our lost childhood found in those Well-Loved Tales?
However, not all is doom and gloom. The imagery is poignant yes, but always taken to the point of absurdity. Our Hero is Nemisis and Omen of Disaster, but also our Clown and our Caliban. The Dalek stands below the apple tree having caught the third little pig, waits anxiously at the food of the tower for Rapunzel to throw down her golden locks, head butts the troll off the bridge, but at the same time aids the old man and woman in pulling up the enormous turnip, is commanded by the King to turn a room of straw into gold, meets his lover by moonlight in a secret location and is swept along with everyone else in ta town filled with porridge.
As I grow older as visual recorder and picture maker, I am still fascinated by the response of those I question about those Well-Loved Tales. It is as though for one brief moment that sharp fragment in the mind makes contact, as if a dream was suddenly remembered in its finest detail. Our lives are built up of moments and I think we should nurture each and every one, even those from a distant youth to justify, make whole and rejoice in the existence of our humanity.