Kaleidoscopic vacuity

Here from the height of last year's summer is the terminally dull and unoriginal mural that appeared on a gable end on Spring Bank. There are, in the wind, plans to turn this Victorian thoroughfare, a place of many cultures from the Middle East to eastern European, a place that has a vibrancy all of its own, not all together legal, not all together understood by those powers that want to be; in short a place that may not be to everyone's taste but certainly does not need any interfering busybody coming in to "improve" things... to turn this into a pitiful, pastiche of Tobermory or that unique neighbourhood in Bristol with painted houses. Yes, as you might have guessed, there is public money in the form of arts grants washing about and that means people will have the c(lapt)rap, sorry Art, thrust upon them volens nolens by talentless, parasitic oiks who, seemingly, could not get gainful employment other than through the public purse. It is called a community art project, but communities do not make art, communities make sewage and litter and children that need educating and patients in hospitals and so on but never art. Artists make art and on this street artists leave few traces.

I believe this is a spin off of the City of Culture, a so-called 'legacy event' ... a legacy of peeling fading paint and second grade 1960s art school doodles with vacuous, archaic, pseudo-socialist, concepts such as Unity. Unity of what? With what? For what? Pshaw! Unity, that fabled imaginary strength of the multitudinous and disparate working classes, is much like God and religion; what little there was of it died and fell apart a long time ago and is not much missed.

Sad soft fries

More of an update on the old Co-op/BHS mural. In early October the council announced that the whole lot was to be demolished, too much asbestos, too tricky to remove, too expensive, too dangerous, too, too, just too much everything...  You get the picture. Then later in the next month and a bit like the cavalry arriving in the last reel of an old-time movie, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (quite a mouthful that) declared that the mosaic had Grade 2 listed protection as it has "special architectural and historic interest". This does not save the mural by itself. I think what this means is that the council now has to apply for special permission to knock the thing down and many a Grade 2 has been lost over the years. This late intervention, however, puts the game into extra time as they say ...

Finally and on a silly note I came upon a site that writes 'haikus' that depend on your GPS location or where ever you happen to want it to be. They're  actually just three line random bits of junk since a haiku must have 5,7,5 syllables, but still it managed to 'know' about the Co-op mural in some strange way that makes the internet a pleasing nightmare.

A Good Wall Spoiled

There's a craze to paint murals in this donkey's ass of a town. You've got a few square feet of blank  Victorian or Edwardian brickwork doing no harm to anyone and it just can't be left in peace; it has to be coated in some "artwork". We've seen it on Hessle Road and other places and it's creeping all over the place. There's even a plan to paint houses on Spring Bank in gaudy colours just because some layabouts want a grant from the Art Council or the stupid Council and they have nothing to offer the world but vandalism dressed as "community art". The themes in this case we are told were suggested by primary school children because, as is clear to any fool that has ever breathed, uneducated, uninformed 5 to 11 year old youngsters are a positive fountain of inspiration and objectivity. So the four corners of this unfortunate bridge on Chanterlands Avenue have the above garbage (Aim high, never give up, pshaw! How often young children come out with such phrases ...), a sporty theme featuring two unknown sporty people celebrating  sporty events from before many of the children born, a badly drawn collage of Hull images (including Larkin's Toad an image familiar to all Year One intake children at all primary schools) and a long "Eco" thing involving a whale, an octopus, a shark, a large green turtle, some penguins and a polar bear oh and some floating plastic bags to remind us all what sinners we are. (It seems youngsters have a very depressed view of the world and quite possibly think it is all doomed) Quite what all this has to do with Chants Avenue I haven't a clue. It's just plain old fashioned prattery. Worse though; it is condoned vandalism, a good wall spoiled.

This squat little building was once a gents' urinal now closed because of Council cuts ... which leads me to ask  who will pay to maintain this tosh because in a couple of years they'll all fade and date and you can never go back to the nice, cool red Victorian bricks that just did their job and harmed no-one.

And you can imagine the whimpers of condemnation when someone came along and put up their own shitty little "artwork"; without permission (shocking!) not at all in keeping with the theme (The horror, The horror!). I do not recall this bridge ever being 'tagged' like this before they decorated it with their murals ... Well, as ye sow, so ye shall reap

What brought the kindred spider to that height ...

...Then steered the white moth thither in the night?

Ok, it's a green moth or rather Gypsy Moth and the spider is a man in a costume. So here's Amy Johnson and Marvel mixed and matched on a wall near Humber Street; make of it what you will.

Much better murals on a Monday are here. (Yes I know it's Tuesday)

Some Hull stuff

The Prospect Centre is having some work done on the lift and to protect Joe Public boards have been erected and to hide or brighten up these boards these decorative Hull based adornments have been added. So clockwise from the top right: Amy Johnson seeming to leap from England to Australia; a footballing tiger representing the local football club, Hull City aka the Tigers (though this year I'm told they are playing like pussy cats), a fisherman with what appear to be laughing cod (clearly a Mickey take of the Hessle Road mural), and finally a not very convincing and somewhat puzzled Philip Larking (as the Daily Mail recently called him) with a toothy toad. There's another panel that I couldn't photograph (on account of there being a stall in the way) with rugby players on it but I reckon you can have too much of a good thing.

There are more Monday murals here.

"Amazing murals adding colour to Beverley Road ..."

So ran the headline in the local supplier of hyperbole aka the Hull Daily Mail a few months back and as it's Monday I can't be bothered to argue. This one depicts the courageous struggle of a yellow coffee cup with sword and shield against an army of red ones ... like I say it's Monday just go with the flow. There's another equally "amazing" mural up the road.... maybe some other time.

There are more Monday murals here.

King Cod

Right, let's get these monsters out of the way. Hull has recently put up several memorials to trawlermen lost at sea and there's something of fishing heritage thing developing on Hessle Road. As there's no money in fishing any more maybe there's a bob to made out of tourism ... So for whatever reason money from the City of Culture paid for these murals on Hessle Road. Local artists worked with the guys from Northern Ireland who did Big Lil to produce what are monumental images. ("Cor ain't it big" says I, "It's the size of  houses" says Margot, who notices these things.) Being about fishing there's a King Cod motif which is clear on the triptych below but you have to peer at the fisherman's hand to see his tattoo is the self same Cod. I think what they lack in artistic merit they more than make up with imposing size and they are clearly much loved by the folks around here; one of whom was walking along and found his granny was on the wall, must have been a nice surprise.

More murals are planned I suspect this little fellow will reappear.

Mural Monday is here.

Building a legacy

Here is the eastern end of Jameson Street with the canopy of the now empty BHS store that used to shelter those waiting for buses. Where once there was a steady stream of cars, buses and people, the very arterial blood of any city, there is now yet another bland, pedestrianised desert. 

When a shop stops selling stuff and the doors close and the "for sale" signs spring up (redevelopment opportunity, of course) this is when the cover up operation starts. In swoops the council or whoever and City of Culture posters festoon the empty windows and doors. It all looks so professional, they've obviously had a lot of experience in this. So the empty BHS store is no longer a salutary lesson in the failure of modern business but has somehow become a bright blue advertisement for Culture and that is some sort of legacy I suppose.

Now I've gone on about this mosaic thing before and how there was a petition to get it some protection from any future wrecker's ball. Well it seems there yet another petition to get it Grade 2 listed. As you simply cannot have too many petitions I signed that as well; you may like to do so it's here. The mural now has a Twitter identity (@BhsMuralHull)  and I read recently of a young person who had a tatoo based on the mosaic. Now that is truly a lasting legacy.

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

Nice mural, shame about the building

They say if you stare this mural for long enough (in my case over thirty years on and off) you can see 'Hull' spelled out by the masts and rigging of the boats. I wouldn't worry if you don't see it.

This is the now empty BHS store and I've shown it before in better times. I'm showing it now because there's a bit of a storm in a teacup brewing over getting the mural some protection from removal or demolition and so on. The powers that be have said that the 1960's work by Alan Boyson "does not reach the standard for listing compared to other examples". There's another mural inside, which I don't remember ever seeing, and that too was not listed. This decision has not met with universal approval and a petition has been set up to get the Council to do something about it. (You can sign it here should you wish.) It's not difficult to discern the dark arts being employed here. If this does get listed then that building will be damn difficult to demolish without a lot of expense and I think that building really should come down if only to subtract one ugly thing from the planet. So I signed the petition; to lose the mural would be like losing an old friend, but I'll sign one to remove the building as well if anyone were to put one up. Go figure.

Stretching things

There's really nothing new in this picture, the mural you've seen before, the bridge and the flood defence ditto; even the pigeon has probably popped up in a few postings. The site behind the mural which was going to be a twenty storey cigarette box or hotel has been sold to an unknown buyer, that is to say unknown to me. This is a panorama shot stitched together then squeezed in sideways and stretched in height just to give a strange view of a really flat scene. You don't have to like it.

I'm feeling a little wrung out and stretched as well as this household is getting over a wretched weekend of vomiting and diarrhoea caused by some virus, bug or other microbeastie whose vile little existence is either proof of ongoing evolution and adaptation or God's mysterious and divine plan. Sucks either way.

Corner House

Someone with time on their hands and a lot of paint has neatly decorated the Cornerhouse on the corner (geddit?) of Percy Street and Freetown Way. The lower half reminds me of the modern craze for adult colouring in books, I suppose it's harmless fun.  Cornerhouse is a place for youngsters to get (free) advice on sex and relationships and so on. I don't know where the oldies have to go for such things, I suppose we just have to make it up as we go along ...

Big Lil

Lillian "Big Lil" Bilocca

The only memories that I have of Hull from my childhood back in the swinging sixties in the idyllic seaside town of Hartlepool is of dock strikes (seemingly every other week), trawlers being lost at sea and a large woman in a headscarf berating all and sundry up to and including the Prime Minister about safety for trawler men. That woman, whose trademark image of the headscarf and raincoat on the grainy black and white TV of the days was really unforgettable, was Lillian Bilocca, who, along with other equally formidable women from the Hessle Road fishing community, managed to get some modicum of safety on the fishing fleet. Trawlers had to have a radio operator, come to that, trawlers had to have a radio, quite a few didn't. Why did it take a group of women to achieve these things while the men were seemingly invisible? Well that's a story for someone else to tell.

So what's all this mural about then I hear you ask? Well someone's written a book, Headscarf Revolutionaries, about all these goings on and the film rights for the book have been sold so watch out for a Hollywood blockbuster. Then the BBC program, the One Show, got involved and commissioned two fellows from Belfast (where murals like this are two a penny) to come over and paint, well, what you see. It was unveiled, if that's the word, over last weekend. And I have to say I'm impressed and I don't impress easy.

Long Walk to Freedom

It's been a while since I had walked down the lower end of High Street which I have shown before to have an empty plot awaiting the construction of an umpteen storey hotel. The site had a dismal security fence with the usual warnings for those who would misbehave. So it was something of a pleasant surprise to come across this colourful mural to Nelson Mandela which apparently went up last September. Don't know how I've missed this 'til now. 

Finally credit where credit is due. This was commissioned by Full Flava Arts along with Roots and Wings and Freedom Festival Ltd and it's the work of twelve graffiti artists. You can view the creation of the mural and get a much fuller view than I present here by going to this page.

Hull ♡ attack

Someone has clearly entered into the full spirit of the City of Culture thing with a colourful mini-mural on Posterngate. As the whole shebang doesn't start for another year and half this may need a bit of touching up before then.

Humber Street Art

I took these last year but never got round to posting them. These are some of the murals decorating the doors of old green grocers' warehouses on Humber Street. They were painted by schoolchildren as part of a project to raise awareness of marine habitat in the little darlngs (good luck with that!). I'm just posting them for historical record since things down this street are no longer quite so idyllic as I'll show tomorrow.