‘SE T VP’ Involuntary Painting Birmingham UK

Involuntary painting found during artist Cathy Wade’s Paradise Remix walk through Birmingham city centre.

The walk started inside Vivid Projects. It explores “how the voice/body can articulate itself within digital/physical space. The route chosen considers how urban sites are navigated, their affect on day to day lived experience and the potential they hold for radical transformation.”

Read more about Paradise Remix here: Paradise Remix

Paul Conneally

May 5th 2019

Links:

Cathy Wade profile at BCU

Vivid Projects - Vivid Projects

Involuntary Painting

That Summer - Ray Winstone 1979

‘John’

Twiggy’s Bar

Torquay

April 2019

John is the barman at Twiggy’s Bar in Torquay. Twiggy’s Bar was formerly The Pickwick which was the pub that featured in the 1979 movie That Summer which stars a very young Ray Winstone. Ray plays a young man just released from borstal who goes to Torquay to find a job and enter the long distance round the bay swimming race. He finds a job as bar and pot man in The Pickwick.

It’s a good film in its own way and has a really good soundtrack that is of it’s moment.

John wasn’t aware that he was now the equivalent of the young Ray Winstone as he didn’t realise that the pub had featured in the film. Many of the punters in the pub did know and some even remembered the film being made.

I’ve got into the habit of searching out films made in and around place that I’m visiting. I watch them before the trip. It’s good tracking down the places films were shot once we arrive.

You can watch the film here - not a great copy but watchable.

Here’s The Pickwick as it was:

And below as it is now, Twiggy’s Bar:

GRIT / SALT - Paul Conneally 2017

GRIT / SALT

Paul Conneally

Dronfield Woodhouse

July 2017

"In 1957 Canada's National Defense Research Service carried out an experimental study into boredom, in which subjects were isolated in a hermetically sealed environment (a constantly lit cell with clear walls, furnished only with a comfortable sofa, rigorously devoid of sound, smell or variations in temperature). Extensive behavioral disturbances were noted by researchers. In the absence of external stimuli the brain was incapable of remaining in the state of regular excitement necessary for its normal functioning. They could therefore conclude that boring surroundings have a negative influence human behavior. This would certainly explain the unpredictable accidents that occur in monotonous labor, which would no doubt increase in frequency with the extension of current forms of automation."

Situationist International Issue 1 1958

Fledgling Sparrows

fledgling sparrows

on the last flight of the day

an empty bench

Paul Conneally
Dronfield Woodhouse

June 4th 2017

YOU CAN'T BLAME THE YOUTH

Walking with no aim I come across a green bus shelter with the name of Peter Tosh graffitied on it. I'm immediately hearing The Wailers in my head and carry them with me for the next few hundred yards.

I've no idea if this scrawled 'Peter Tosh' was in homage to the great Peter Tosh or just some local youth inscribing himself into the very white very middle class seventies urban landscape at least until the next council paint over job but it raised the spirit of the the Bush Doctor in me and up the Gosforth Valley Road.

You can't blame the youth

You can't fool the youth

You can't blame the youth of today

You can't fool the youth

Paul Conneally

June 2nd 2017

ANOTHER CITY FOR ANOTHER LIFE

ANOTHER CITY FOR ANOTHER LIFE

"The increasing dissatisfaction that dominates the whole of humanity will arrive at a point at which we will all be forced to execute projects whose means we possess, and which will contribute to the realization of a richer and more fulfilled life."

Internationale Situationniste #3 (December 1959)

Photograph: Pentland Road Dronfield Woodhouse Drift May 2017 Paul Conneally

Petrol and Coffee

"Until the environment is collectively dominated, there will be no individuals — only spectres haunting the objects anarchically presented to them by others. In chance situations we meet separated people moving randomly. Their divergent emotions neutralize each other and maintain their solid environment of boredom. As long as we are unable to make our own history, to freely create situations, striving toward unity will introduce other separations. The quest for a central activity leads to the formation of new specialisations."

Guy Debord

Critique of Separation 1961

Photograph: 'PETROL & COFFEE' - Paul Conneally - Dronfield Woodhouse - May 2017

Memorial Stones

a pile of red bricks

under a horse chestnut tree

memorial stones

At the site of the Califat Mine on the eighth of October 1863 a coming in of water filled the mine workings killing three miners:

Harry Clements 16

Jeremiah Rose 40

Thomas Bird 50

Paul Conneally

Califat Colliery

Swannington, UK

May 2017

Foan Hill to Balm of Rakasiri

Leaving the Robin Hood pub Russ Ralph and I set off not knowing exactly which way to go and choose to go up Foan Hill. I'm not sure of the origin of this word 'foan' it might be an old name for a moor or a bog, well that's what just one reference on the internet told me. I also found a map showing the distribution of the word foan as a surname which seems to be mainly in the south and south west of the UK. Maybe the hill is named after someone. The first thing that crossed my mind was 'fawn' a young deer and the 1911 census tells us that at that time there were in Swannington four houses with a Fone Hill address and one with a Fawn Hill address. The Swannington History Society believes all these houses were on the same road and it is not known when the spelling standardised as Foan Hill. The spellings in the census could just be due to the way the forms were filled in by individual householders.

Walking up the hill we come to the Incline Kennels named after the Swannington Incline, part of Stephenson's Swannington Railway, one of the earliest railways in the Midlands and used to transport coal from the local mines to Leicester.

From behind the fence unseen dogs bark at us.

Russ and I both agree that we are not big fans of dogs but that some are okay and make you think maybe having a dog like that wouldn't be so bad.

Later, still intrigued by the name Foan Hill I search it on Google and it somehow takes me to a page in 'THE DRUGGIST'S RECEIPT BOOK' and to Balm of Rakasiri which was 'Oil of Rosemary dissolved in common gin'. It was made by the Jordan brothers in Canon Street Road, London, who marketed it throughout most of the 1800's as a cure for nervous diseases but actually without saying so openly as a cure for venereal diseases. They were outed as quacks but were still trading through till the 1860s. Oil of Rosemary in gin sounds quite interesting and maybe worth trying not for its 'restorative' properties but for its beverage qualities if it has any.

Any point on a vague walk can lead us to new discoveries, emotions and stories true, half-true and false. Welcome them all.

Paul Conneally

Swannington

Leicestershire

May 2017

Wax and Wane

wisteria

the wax and wane

of my heart

Paul Conneally

May 2017

Morning Rush

Morning Rush

From around 7am market traders arrive in their white vans and transits to start setting up for the Thursday market in Loughbohemia's town centre market place.

There's not quite room for all the vehicles at the same time and so thee are moments of calm amongst all the activity as stall holders wait for their workmates to get in with the produce, be it women's fashion, men's socks, fruit and veg or kettles.

morning rush

an on the move coffee

and a bunch of tulips

Paul Conneally

Loughbohemia

May 11 2017

Selling Hats - Paul Conneally, Cannes, 2014

'Selling Hats'

Paul Conneally

Cannes 2014

TULIPS AND PANSIES

TULIPS AND PANSIES

Queens Park in Loughborough is an ideal place to walk when you're recovering from a heart attack. It's flat and each time you do a circuit you find new things in the old to look at and wonder, to instigate new stories, true and made up.

A man being taken for a stroll by his three Jack Russell dogs nods a greeting and is pulled on by. We pass again by the aviary and nod again.

A group of Italian adults are playing in the children's activity area. They missed the sign that insists that adults unaccompanied by children are not allowed in the playground.

teenagers share
a spliff in the park bandstand
tulips and pansies

Paul Conneally

April 2017

CAGED - The Sound of New Parks - Bertie and Mandy - The Blue Army Craft Group - Live in The Library

Bertie and Mandy of The Blue Army Craft Group live in New Parks Library a session of CAGED - The Sound of New Parks with artist producer Sound scientists I-mitri CounterAction (Dimitris Moraitis) and Little Onion (Paul Conneally). 

The push pad is loaded with found sounds - treated and raw - recorded in and around New Parks Library in Leicester by The Blue Army Craft Group who carry on crocheting as The Sound experimentation improvisation and composition takes place. Each member of the crochet gang coming out in pairs to work with I-mitri as Little Onion chats with them about John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, silence, noise and ghosts.

The work is ongoing and supported by Soft Touch Arts, Leicester City Council and Arts Council England.

The work will extend from the adult community into local schools, pre-schools and other community locations.

The work grows out of Involuntary Painting 1 & 2 New Parks : New York with New York based artist Millree Hughes and Leicester based artist Paul Conneally.

Police Patrol This Area

'Police Patrol This Area'
Paul Conneally
Loughborough Railway Station
November 26 2016

Hartleys Coffee and Sandwich Bar, Nottingham 'from the hip' Paul Conneally 2016

Hartleys Coffee and Sandwich Bar, Hockley, Nottingham

From the ongoing series 'from the hip' - photographs taken 'from the hip'.

Paul Conneally

Nottingham

Oct. 23 2016

INVIGILATOR : MALVERN - Paul Conneally and Nikki Pugh

INVIGILATOR : MALVERN was the 6th splacist intervention in the ongoing INVIGILATOR series by artists Paul Conneally and Nikki Pugh. It was commissioned by MECA in 2009 and has informed and continues to inform the practice of Conneally and Pugh, separately and together.

Both artists continue to explore space place and time via what some call psychogeography but they refer to as 'splacist' methodologies.

INVIGILATOR forms part Conneally's overarching Walk To Work series of interventions, works and exhibitions.

"THE GALLERY OF THE STREET IS OPEN" - Paul Conneally
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

OXFORD CIRCUS STATION

OXFORD CIRCUS STATION

The hustle and bustle of London's Oxford Street just before the rush hour. When it's excitingly busy without hemming your body and mind in too much.

The Evening Standard newspaper, I was going to say vendor but they are handed out for free now, sat half on half off the tube station entrance. Shall I pick one up here or outside the mainline station? I'll wait till later.

a blast of warm air
from the underground station
Marilyn Monroe

Little Onion
September
2016

Photograph: Paul Conneally 2016

Early September - Lost In The Supermarket

early September
she shops for this year's
last barbecue

Little Onion

from the ongoing photo series 'Lost In The Supermarket' by Paul Conneally

Imperfection Is Beauty

Imperfection Is Beauty

For me it started with Claire's Accessories startled to see a young girl sat in the shop window getting her ears pierced. Now every high street seems to have at least one beauty salon that seats its customers in the full gaze of the public as they undergo one treatment or another.

I can't understand why someone would want to receive such treatments in the form of what my mother would call a 'pippy show'. It feels performative, and it is. There is no notion of it being intended as public art but it could easily be mistaken as such. 

Does this set up lead to more sales? Well the salons must think so or they wouldn't do it. 

I want to stop and stand and stare right in and were it actually a 'performance' I would but find I can only glance furtively as I pass on by towards the market place.

here comes the weekend

a slice of cucumber

on each eye

Little Onion

Loughborough

September 2016

Photograph: Paul Conneally