Photographing the printed mirror out on site

Last Sunday, when it was relatively quite in the city centre and there was also a break in the bad weather, I took the mirror to the two locations I had previously researched as sites of early Cadbury factories. My aim was to photograph the mirror in these locations, not only surrounded by businesses that reflect the current economic climate and the lack of progress since Edward Cadbury's time, but also to show reflections of these businesses in the mirror itself.

In the Dale End/Bull Street/High Street location (formally Crooked Lane) there are pawnbrokers, payday loan companies, pound shops and the ubiquitous fast food outlets that offer only minimum wage and operate zero hours contracts. It was very cold and, whilst not as windy as in previous days, it still proved very difficult to hold the mirror steady enough to get a decent reflected image. The relative position of the camera and the angle of the mirror was crucial so as not to show the photographer in the mirror (as the first image shows). Despite these difficulties, I think the images show the potential of the idea. I prefer the photos that I took of my son holding the mirror from behind, rather than those of me holding it, as it is too distracting.

The Bridge Street photos are not as successful, I feel. The surrounding area has an interesting combination of canal architecture that would be little changed since Cadbury's time, run down 60's buildings, including an abandoned hospital, and the enormous modern Hyatt Hotel, but it proved difficult to show these all in one photo. Also the link to the statement on the mirror is not as obvious.

I need to get out and take more photos, as I'm sure I can improve on these given better weather and light conditions.

A Living Wage - recent reports on low pay in the UK

Two reports were published in December 2013 that highlighted the problem of low and falling pay for UK workers. The first was from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the social policy research and development charity which was one of several trusts set up in 1904 by another Quaker chocolatier and philanthropist. The report entitled 'Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2013' revealed that "around 6.7m people, over half of all those in poverty, live in a family with at least one adult who is working – an increase of 500,000 on last year" and "half of working families in poverty have an adult paid below the Living Wage".

The second report was from the New Economics Foundation, a social and ecological public policy think tank. Entitled 'Raising the Benchmark', it raised the issue of low pay amongst public sector workers, stating that "Public services employ one million low wage workers" and "1 in 4 local authority workers are on low pay, a similar figure to those employed in the private sector". Its main recommendation was the ending the public sector pay freeze and adoption of the living wage, arguing that this would have economic benefits for the entire country.

In addition, the New York Times published this article on the increase of the working poor and food banks in the UK.

So what is the Living Wage? According to The Living Wage Foundation, which supports and encourages employers to adopt this policy, in London it is £8.80 per hour and £7.65 in the rest of the UK. This is higher than the statuary Minimum Wage which is currently £6.31.

Screenprinting onto a mirror

The finished letterpress piece needed to be transferred onto a screen in order for me to print it onto the mirrored acrylic. I also needed it to be converted into a negative image. I decided to take it to a print shop so that they could scan the letterpress image and then enlarge it up for me.

I was pleased with the finished photocopy as it retained the imperfections of the original letterpress print. The next stage was to expose the image onto a screen.

This then was fixed onto the print bed ready for printing. The mirrored acrylic was positioned underneath. The ink mixture used had to be thicker than normal, as a too translucent mix would not work on the mirrored surface.

I was very pleased with the finished print. I am hoping it drys well and isn't too delicate to transport.

'The Library of Secrets'

I visited the 'Volume' Art, Book and Print Fair at The Library of Birmingham this weekend. It gave me the opportunity to have a look at some more of the installations in the 'Discovery Trail' - artworks inspired by the library and its contents, designed to lead visitors around the building.

'The Library of Secrets' by Serena Korda is a large free-standing bookcase containing many classic books on its shelves. At each end of the bookcase are 'confessional booths' where visitors can write down their thoughts on paper and then slip them into the pages of the books to be discovered by others sometime in the future.

The interactive element of this installation particularly interested me. I will go back in a few more weeks and see how many people have contributed their thoughts.

Moseley Portable Museum No.1

I have completed my first attempt at creating a portable museum based on my intial work. I have used some of the old drawers that I fold in a local junk shop. They were custom made by an odd-job man to store his screws, nuts and bolts. Many of the tobacco tins built into the drawers still have the impression of these, resembling photograms.

I have set a collection of prints, old photos and maps and found objects into the tin compartments. Some tins have been left empty so the viewer can see the ghostly imprints of their former occupants. I would hope that people will make their own contributions to the museum and the empty tins may help encourage them to do so.

All the found objects come from the locations featured in the photos, maps and prints. I have also included some old tram tickets that I got from a memorabilia fair in Moseley. I hope to have more of these type of things in future. I have displayed the prints cut in half and inserted into two adjacent boxes.

Michael Rothenstein

Having been directed towards Michael Rothenstein's work, I was interested to find that he worked for many years with found materials, using them as both a printing matrix and as boxes and frames for prints. I intend to do further research into his work (I am told BM&AG hold a collection of his prints and sketchbooks) as I feel it could be very relevant to my 'portable museum' idea.

Letterpress

My first attempt at producing a letterpress poster of the Edward Cadbury quote was not completely successful. The first problem was finding a suitable size and style of font that had all the letters that I required. I had to resort to a 'western style' typeface for the 'LIVING WAGE' line which made the poster look more like publicity for a John Wayne film. You will notice I also had to use a number '1' instead of a letter 'I' in the word community.

The other issue was a stray letter 'E' that appeared at the end of 'LIVING'. It seems ridiculous that I did not notice this whilst printing the poster, but I guess you see what you want to see rather than what is actually there! The good thing about this was that I had to redo the poster. This time I spent more time searching for suitable fonts and found that I could fit in a much larger letter by splitting 'LIVING' and 'WAGE' onto two lines. I had to play with the spacing of the individual letters in  'WAGE' so that the 'W' and 'A' did not appear too far apart (known as 'kerning').

I printed the fonts onto newsprint paper, as I wanted to achieve the look of a political bill poster. The press struggled with the light weight paper and it proved hard to get the pressure right. However, I think I managed to produce enough usable prints by the end of the day.

Brighton

Whilst visiting Brighton over the weekend, I saw several interesting exhibitions. The first was at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery and featured Women Artists from the Fine Art Collection. It was an eclectic mix but of main interest was a small display of prints and drawings by Gertrude Hermes. I have seen examples of her work before but never original pieces. Born in Kent in 1901, her father was German and she spent several years studying in Germany and taught herself to wood engrave. I certainly think the influence of German Expressionism is evident.

The second show I saw that impressed me was 'Jan Svankmajer - The Inner Life of Objects' at the University of Brighton Gallery and was part of the Brighton Film Festival. The gallery were showing clips from several of his best known films such as 'Alice', 'Little Otik' and 'Punch and Judy'. Props, sets and puppets from these films were on display. Also there was 'Historia Naturae' - weird and wonderful creatures created from skulls, bones and shells, as well as doll parts.

 Along side these were coloured etchings, which on first glance looked like traditional natural history illustrations until you see that they are complete figments of Svankmajer's imagination.

Shufflebotham's Stores

The new coffee shop that has opened on the corner of Alcester Road and Woodbridge Road, Cafephilia, has a large photographic reproduction along one wall. It shows Shufflebotham's Stores which used to occupy the same premises. It's perhaps one of the best historic photos that I have seen of old Moseley. It shows the grocery and provision store extended well into Woodbridge Road.

Mr Shufflebotham was obviously proud of his fleet of delivery vehicles, which are parked up outside the store to be included in the photo. There are even two grocer's boys on their bikes complete with wicker baskets on the front. There is one curious vehicle which appears to have a model house on the back which must have been used as a mobile advert. I was sad to see that a lovely cupola atop the building had been lost at some point - perhaps during the war? I know that a house only a few yards up the road was destroyed in a bombing raid probably due to it's vicinity to the railway line.

Portable Museums

This is a possible way of curating my work. It would also serve as a way of encouraging feedback and participation from a range of audiences. Moseley Society Local History group is currently running a project called 'What Moseley Means To Me', they are trying to gather reminiscences from local people of all ages. They hope to collect photos and objects with accompanying captions.  A portable museum could be taken to schools, care homes and displayed in shops and pubs. People could add their own memories, stories and even objects.

Images above show work by Ron Pippin, Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp. Below is a project by artist Joanne B Karr and Joanne Howdle, curator of Caithness Horizons Museum. It is inspired by the life and work of 19th century amateur botanist Robert Dick.

Moseley History Archive

The Moseley Society Local History Group holds an archive at The Exchange in Alcester Road. There is a large collection of photos and I have recorded those that were taken within my area of interested - Alcester Road, Chantry Road, Moseley Park, Salisbury Road, St. Mary's Row, Church Road, Oxford Road and Woodbridge Road.

As well as a large collection of maps, the archive also contains material from individual houses which give clues to the more day to day lives of their occupants. During the 1920/30s the Cookes of 110 Oxford Road kept invoices for household items, clothing, building work and even doctors' bills.

Items left behind when people have moved house have been passed on to the archives for safe keeping, such as a set of family photos of a military family from 36 Salisbury Road.