Monday Morning You Look So Fine: Fokofpolisiekar.

Anyone who knows my work had to know this was coming; no way was I going to regularly post lyrics and not include something by this band, more particularly the words of a writer I greatly admire, Hunter Kennedy. The image springs to mind of late as I have been regularly talking about it, and revealing personal meaning and details of it to an audience at the Rooke Gallery, where I conducted "artist's walk-throughs" this Wednesday and Saturday last. It is certainly my favourite (and most cryptic) photograph from my current exhibition Open To Misinterpretation. Its one thing to tell you what it means to me, and another to write it... I'll leave it to the lyrics, from the song Vir Altyd 07 November, off the Swanesang album. They have significance, as the photograph was made on that very day, the 7th of November. Hunter and I were in London, the band was on tour, and I had no idea of the date or the significance... the photograph has grown in meaning in retrospect, thanks to digital details and a late morning conversation in February of this year with singer Francois Van Coke (revealing to me the greater personal significance the words have to Hunter). Hunter and I wanted to get away that day (or just see the Tate Modern?) and we hit the tube and headed for St. Paul's Cathedral, where we met up with with Wilhelm (to Hunter's right in the photo) and crossed the Millennium Bridge... click:

'Als van jou wat in my gis
Gee my hoendervleis
As dit November is.
Dis al wat ek wil se,
Dis al wat ek kan se.' - Fokofpolisiekar

I will say no more to describe it... I have perhaps been reading too much lately, and have become fascinated with the words of Luc Delahaye: "The more you explain yourself, the less you are understood." Let the viewer convey his own meaning, perhaps? One description I am happy to leave it with is a brief online crit by Mike MacGarry of All Theory No Practice... just because I love that he saw what I love about it, without me having to "sell" it. I admire Mike's mind and views and have since the time of a drunken conversation at some god-awful hour of the morning, in a Wimpy off Empire Road, when he tore documentary photography a new arsehole. Respect. Seeing as his comment was made on a colour version of the image, I have included that here also.:

'I really enjoy the off-kilter symmetry in this composition, as well as the obstruction of my expectations on what view I might or could be looking at if only the photo were taken a bit earlier and concrete were out of the way. Luckily it isn't and like the figure on the right I'm straining to look over the grey band one last time at St. Paul's in the distance before heading off somewhere else and the city closes up again. The words 'iconic' just creeping into frame like the cartoon figure of Killjoy efficiently sum up the experience. A great image.' - Mike MacGarry.

Remember further blog updates can be found at the bottom of this post... they still continue.

Later.