Re:Development

Re:Development

►03 FITZROVIA NOIR ROSSOTYPE

—Front cover— The LosT Language of Push anD PuLL— 5x4 inch film boxes, Polaroid tests— 32 Rathbone Place, Fitzrovia, London W1

—This page— fiRe DamageD— 35mm transparency film frame, projection mount, live band, building fire— Brixton, London SW2

— Right— fahRenheiT 150— Late 20th Century film processing temperature gauge— 70-71 Wells Street, Fitzrovia, London W1

Re:Development A Hanmi Gallery interim exhibition

Garry Hunter with Chewing Gum Man

Curated by Graham Carrick at Fitzrovia Noir with pinhole imagery by Peter Mackertich

Wednesday 20 July - Friday 5 August 2011

The hanmi gallery 30 maple street, fitzrovia London W1T 8ha

Publication designed by Ewan Buck. Hand finished in a limited edition of 75. Published by Fitzrovia Noir CIC

Special thanks to Heashin Kwak, Julia Elmore and Lucietta Williams © photographs by Garry Hunter. © gum art by Ben Wilson. © pinhole image by Peter Mackertich

Misprinted quote from Fahrenheit 451 used with kind permission of the Ray Bradbury Foundation

The moral rights of the artists have been asserted

Printed by Teknik, UK

ISBN 978-0-9544296-2-1

hanmigallery.co.ukfitzrovianoir.com

HANMIGALLERY

►05►04 FITZROVIA NOIR ROSSOTYPEFITZROVIA NOIR ROSSOTYPE

—foReWoRDGallerist Heashin Kwak is now establishing the Hanmi Gallery to complement her project space in Seoul, facilitating site responsive installations by alternating duos of Korean and British artists until the space is refurbished and opens in early 2012.

A telling sign of the increasing influence of Korean culture in London is demonstrated by Hyundai taking over a prominent slice of Piccadilly Circus, replacing the last neon sign by Sanyo with a state-of-the-art display, an analogy for the fading dominance of Japanese manufacturing and for the focus moving from analogue to digital capture – and output.

This hand-finished publication accompanying the installation is a homage to the collaged magazine mock-up, the manually gathered spray-mounted mood-board, the specific concept of the marker pen ‘visual’. By slicing and mounting images in the tradition of fine art books, procedures are re-evaluated, even fetishised. This celebrates the lost ‘push and pull’ language of film processing and is designed around the concept of a darkroom.

Photographer Garry Hunter has lived and worked in Fitzrovia since 1992, occupying studios on Little Portland Street, Rathbone Place and Wells Street, now all locations that include recently opened galleries. His experimental processes of abstract photography were commissioned by major ad agencies for the fifteen years that he concentrated on commissioned practice, using large format cameras and transparency film that was pushed to its absolute technical limits.

With the advent of digital, he transferred this immersive craft and conceptual thinking firstly to art directing biomedical imaging specialists for pan-European health awareness campaigns and producing image-led strategy documents for NESTA. This progressed onto advocacy missions with the UN, leading into fine art investigations and curatorial research working with leading universities, local organisations and international foundations. This transfer of knowledge parallels the migration of film-based production techniques from advertising corrals to fine art arenas, where chemical permanence is justifiably celebrated. The burgeoning technological trend for immediacy has left a gap in the thought processes of image production, encouraging a dormant ‘laboratory of the mind’ that no longer complements innovative acts. This is deconstructed here by distributing ‘found items from analogue days’ around the site and reflecting the separate departments of an advertising agency on each floor, some of which are depleted, almost forgotten or changed beyond recognition.

‘Artwork’ now has little need for packs of magic markers. ‘Traffic’ once involved huge printed portfolios and mountains of mail being sent around a building, today it is virtually all electronic. ‘Planning’ is represented here in cabinets by the modus operandi of photographer Garry Hunter and his interventionist partner Chewing Gum Man, who is producing a series of miniaturist works, some easy to see on 1980s carpet squares, others well hidden within the structure of the building. He patiently builds up layers of enamel and laquer on discarded gum, his distressed trousers and paint ‘muffin’ living palettes of bright colours. As Gum Man comes in from his pavement habitat to explore an interior, he develops new avenues, completing

his first gum triptych on the way. Both artists have used fire, Gum Man with his blowtorch on the gum and Hunter looking at the temperature that film starts to melt (see images of film melted at 65C / 150F and Gum Man’s gear) This accompanies the inclusion of a typo from a digital rendering of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, with a letterpress version by graphic designer Ewan Buck. ‘Montag(e) slid down the pole like a man in a dream’ was not spotted in Spellcheck, that illusory comforter that cares not for syntax nor context, does not proof-read - but does offer up a series of ‘typo’ graphs. The traditional creative duo of art director and copywriter has merged into one role at some agencies, raising the question of whether the picture still worth a thousand words, demonstrated in this exhibition by framed texts that describe photographs that have never been taken, describing real scenes in odd locations.

Elements of eminent Fitzrovians are celebrated by montages created with slide projections, to celebrate the sadly missed Prince Monolulu public house that was next door to Hanmi for manyyears and to commemorate the important work of radical female health pioneer Marie Stopes.

The construction of a large pinhole camera on one floor of the gallery, bathed in red light references the brothels that inhabitated 19th Century Fitzrovia, a colour-coded cipher for those in the know. The ‘camera obscura’ was a compositional tool of painters including Vermeer, offering a scientifically accurate perspective, here used to capture that iconic beacon to lost Fitzrovians, famously demolished by Twinkle the giant kitten in a 1970s episode of The Goodies. As a champion of the silver process, Peter Mackertich has been instrumental in firstly producing the negative capture on-site and then a positive ‘contact’, armed with industrial drainage tubes for bathing the paper to fixation. These tests under controlled conditions demonstrate a known truth, examine the validity of a hypothesis and determine the efficacy of something previously untried in these circumstances.

Lightboxes were the staple viewing medium for photographic portfolios until the early 21stCentury, now consigned as sunlight substitutes for the cure of Seasonally Adjusted Deficiency, as we burn out our eyeballs on computer screens and plug into the constant twitch of Smartphone addiction, with social networking encouraging us to recommend or like, not to love. Images choke in their virtual confines, pining for the clean air of the free-range contact sheet, from where ideas grew alchemically, often into something better than envisioned.

Harry Urgent, Fitzrovia, July 2011

—Left—inTeRnaTionaL PRaCTiCe —Lost & Found exhibition—Original prints flush mounted on aluminium—Cork, Leipzig, Dallas

— This page—sTuDio PRaCTiCe—Commissioned series for NESTA Journeys —Video stills, camera case, found item—32 Rathbone Place, Fitzrovia, London W1



—QuaLiTY ConTRoL—C-Type process test—Negs, Broadwick Street, Soho, London W1

—DigiTaL maPPing—Intervention art trail—Fitzrovia, London W1


—PinhoLe imaging—Post Office Tower—Camera Obscura at Hanmi Gallery, 30 Maple Street, Fitzrovia, London W1


—aDVeRTising agenCY—Department locations Floor 3 Floor 2 Floor 1 Ground Basement

—hanmi gaLLeRY

—founD iTems—Family photograph and wallpaper—Furnival Mansions, Wells Street, Fitzrovia, London W1


—noRTh & souTh CaReeR—Allotment/Invigorate Arts Council England knowledge exchange —St Annes College, University of Oxford

—aDVoCaCY mission—Trip confirmation for UNFPA Niger

—TRaffiC—Random nautical location, Jiffy bag


—LegaCY—Ephemera from Middlesex Hospital, Fitzrovia, London W1

Driven to document the rapid transformation of Fitzrovia triggered by the demolition of the Middlsex Hospital, Garry Hunter founded arts initiative Fitzrovia Noir in 2008, with community arts manager Lucietta Williams. This group has now produced 25 international site-responsive exhibitions to date, showcasing emerging artists in non-gallery venues including: a Tyneside pithead, an Edinburgh chapel, a crumbling French chateau, a former cold war shelter in Cambridgeshire and a series of buildings in Fitzrovia for the Intervention art trail in Spring 2011, that introduced Chewing Gum Man to universal praise for his work in the area.

►18

—Previous page— feLix Dennis— Projection— X-Ray Department, Middlesex Hospital, Fitzrovia, London W1

—This page— maRie sToPes— Projection— Maternity Ward, Middlesex Hospital, Fitzrovia, London W1

— Right— PRinCe monoLuLu— Projection— Behind Coutts Bank cashpoint, Middlesex Hospital, Fitzrovia, London W1

Re:Development

Documents

fitzrovia london w1t

london w1re

wells street

language of film processing

gum art

transparency film frame

maple street

london w1this page