Download pdf - Catalogue Issue 01

For most of my life Iʼve been a closet artist, too afraid to show my work to other people. Where I grew up, I was not exposed (much) to art other than through the TV and books. I chose to do sciences at school and so did not end up mixing with “arty” people. Consequently, as an adult I felt very isolated, and spending the

80s and 90s living in Rotherham didnʼt help. Most of the people I mixed with were indifferent and some downright hostile towards art. So I kept my guilty secret to myself, and as a result I accumulated a lot of material that has never been seen.Years passed [citation needed] and I ended up working for

Lovebytes Digital Arts Festival in Sheffieldʼs Cultural Industries Quarter. Suddenly I was working and mixing with artists and creative types who did not consider being artistic a fault to be ridiculed.A major influence from the 1980s was seeing “EP Sculptor” (198x) on TV, a documentary about

Eduardo Paolozzi. I videotaped the program and watched it over and over again. Other influential documentaries I saw at that time included the famous “The Mystery of Picasso” (1956) and a 1987 BBC Arena documentary about Joseph Beuys [reference.Years passed [citation needed] and in 2004 The Dean Gallery in

Edinburgh hosted a major retrospective of Paolozziʼs work, entitled “Paolozzi at 80”. I went to Edinburgh especially to see it.

It was a comprehensive look at Paolozziʼs whole creative life, including a reconstruction of the artistʼs famous studio. Upstairs was a gallery of “early work” including some juvenilia as well as a drawing of himself aged 11. The drawing is listed in the catalogue as “Self-portrait c.1935, Pencil and blue crayon on paper.” Paolozzi has signed it but the title has been added by a curator at some time later once he had become an established artist. I couldʼt help feeling this was slightly ridiculous, itʼs just a childʼs drawing, but it led me to reassess my own work as the output of a

whole life rather than

Catalogue Issue 01 - richardbolamat50.wordpress.com

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Issue 01.1 - 16 Pages

Love, sex death & prizes!

RetrospectiveRichard Bolam at 50

Love, sex death & prizes!

Take That and Shove It (2000)Four track audio CDR with inkjet printed paper sleeveHard Shoulder is a musical identity that I created sometime in the late 90s, and it came out of a combination of ideas. The word “hard” reflects the industrial influence in the music, but a hard shoulder is where you end up when you break down, so it was an intentionally self-deprecating, and hopefully enigmatic name.The title is a paraphrase on Take Thatʼs debut album “Take That & Party” (1992). Although the second Hard Shoulder “release”, chronologically speaking, the music was created earlier but not finished.The real problem track was “Cathedral” which was still not finished as recorded, but I decided to draw a line under it in order to move on. This was part of my New Order period where Hard Shoulder was unnamed and unexplained.These four tracks were created almost entirely with a Yamaha DJX keyboard and an Apple PowerMac 4400 on which I could record up to record eight stereo tracks with a program called [reference missing]. “Teach Yourself” also includes some samples from movies. This is directly influenced by Cabaret Voltaire, a prominent part of my formative years. A memorable example of theirs is “Yashar” (1983) “The 70 billion people of Earth - Where are they hiding?”, although “Seconds Too Late” (1980) is about as perfect a blending of audio styles as I can think of.Having spent most of the 1990ʼs running a business, I completely missed out on the rave scene and

only got into commercial dance music when it was all over. I used to buy up cut-price multi-CD collections from Woolworthʼs in Rotherham, and this easily explains my need to make some dance music.The two-track Hard Shoulder CD “Chaos” (2000) was released earlier but is music that was created later than this CD, and itʼs apparent. You can clearly hear my move away from straight dance music in “Chaos” although I am still using some very familiar motifs. “Take That and Shove It” is

much more mainstream dance influenced.The Yamaha DJX was one of the first “instant music” keyboards and I still have mine. Along with the Korg Electribes, I still think it is one of the best pieces of music hardware I have ever owned.

Track two “Downtime” still sounds good to me, although the recording of all of them is pretty mediocre. Itʼs kind of slow-tempo dance-minimalism.Track three “Cathedral” is one of those tracks where you know youʼve got something promising but no idea how to round it of into a finished piece of music. Eventually I decided to just record the two sequences that I had composed and leave it hanging in a manner reminiscent of Michael Nymanʼs movie scores, although it was not that cleverly informed.

Maybe Iʼll develop it more one day.

Track four “Take

That” is, to my

ears, by far

the best and still

sounds good, although Iʼd like to re-

record it and do something about those weedy drums. This was kind of a cross-over track where I started to get into the lengthy development of minimalism. Whilst I cannot claim to be from the same stable as Philip Glass, Michael Nyman and Steve Reich, I was certainly

influenced by them, and the restrained development marks Hard Shoulderʼs movement from dance music to industrial minimalism.Thematically, it was heavily influenced by the fact that, at the time, I was taking Prozac as medication for stress-related depression, hence the graphic, and having seen the self- obsessed and autobiographical work of people like Tracey Emin, I thought I needed to do something personal. Itʼs enlightening to acknowledge the direct influence of such work and it definitely added something to my repertoire, although I donʼt really do that kind of work.

Prozac didnʼt really work for me but Effexor (aka Venlafaxine) did, and I felt better the first day I took them, although it made me nauseous every morning. I took Effexor for 13 months and came off it with no side-effects.According to Wikipedia (sic).“A study conducted in Finland followed more than 15,000 patients for 3.4 years. Venlafaxine [effexor] increased suicide risk 1.6-fold (statistically significant), as compared to no treatment. At the same time,fluoxetine (Prozac) halved the suicide risk.”I think I got off lightly.The title “Teach Yourself” is a contraction of “Teach Yourself Depression”, a mock on the Teach Yourself books. “Downtime” is also a play on the depression theme. However, whilst I never thought that this was was in any way a therapy, I did find the process of identifying a work around a theme to be very productive.I consider later Hard Shoulder music to be much more artistically successful, although probably less accessible.The original audio recordings are available online.http://soundcloud.com/hardshoulder/sets/take-that-and-shove-it-2000


http://soundcloud.com/hardshoulder/sets/take-that-and-shove-it-2000






14 StationsOne of my all time favourite software programs is Silicon Beach SuperPaint for MacOS System 4.x through 9.x. I remember being introduced to it on a monochrome Macintosh, sometime back in the 1990s, and the first thing I did was to create symmetrical images. I have often referred to mirroring images as being a cheap trick, but I really like it, and I often use mirroring and visual repetition.During the review of my work, I came across this set of 14 images created with SuperPaint. The only connection with the fourteen stations of the cross in Roman Catholic cathedrals is numerical, but I have always been fascinated by religious iconography, particularly Christian.Unlike many atheists, I am not a militant anti-theist, and I like to respect other peoplesʼ beliefs. The remix I made of the images into the “14 Stations” Retrospective flyer was to fulfill a long-standing desire to use these images for something coupled with my fascination with the tradition of commemorating the final journey of Jesus of Nazareth.The Retrospective flyer is online at Issuu.http://issuu.com/richardbolam/I like the implied contemplation and the combination of the explicit description of each station with an entirely non-representational image.This reminds me of a radio interview I heard with member of Cabaret Voltaire around the time of the release of their album “Red Mecca” (1981) about how the name came about by combining two concepts that were not necessarily related, but implied a new meaning when combined.I also remember hearing David Bowie interviewed and alluding to the same process when related to his use of cut-ups to write lyrics. Referring to the song “Heroes”, the example he gave was to write about the Berlin Wall from two different points-of-view, cut them up together, and possibly produce a third inferred perspective as a result.

Jesus is condemned to death.

Jesus carries His cross.

Jesus falls for the first time.

Jesus meets His mother.

Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry the cross.

Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.

Jesus falls for the second time.

Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem.

Jesus falls for the third time.

Jesus is stripped of his garments.

Jesus is nailed to the cross.

Jesus dies on the cross.

Jesus is taken down from the cross.

Jesus is laid in the tomb


SuperMandalas

http://issuu.com/richardbolam/

http://issuu.com/richardbolam/

Manipulated digital photographs, 2007 & 2012, variable dimensions

This photograph on the opposite page is a detail from an outside wall at KR Autos, London Road, Sheffield, UK. It is a view of a small portion of a brick wall which had been repainted several times and distressed by weather and time.

For several years, I used to walk past this wall at least twice a day on my way to work and became fascinated by the number of layers that had been added and how each had eroded and distressed in different ways and at different speeds. I knew it was only a matter of time before it was repainted and lost forever. I began to see it as fundamentally beautiful and embodying multiple features of visual composition.

In 2007 I was invited to be part of Host 7: Beauty, a project by the Sheffield-based Host Artists Group (HAG). The project included the work of 16 artists, collated into a book / DVD package. We were asked to respond to the idea of “beauty”.

This was included as part of the Sheffield Pavilion representation at The 2007 Venice Biennale, curated by Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum (SCAF).

http://www.hostoffice.org.uk/index.html

http://artsheffield.org/

SCAF also showed the work at Documenta XII.

This is the accompanying text I wrote at the time:

Symmetry, asymmetry, repetition, variation, composition, dissolution, synchronization, interference, intention, accident, contrast and complement, Beauty everywhere, always.

The original had a white border to prompt association with the slick Athena posters of the 1990s. The 2012 version is differently composed and has text formatted in such a way as to emphasize the reference.

This work recalls observations that, for me, started during the 1980s, of accidental urban compositions and distressed surfaces. At the time, I had no access to good quality cameras,


The Definition of Beauty







and I didnʼt know what I was doing either, but 20 years later digital photography has enabled me to capture anything very quickly and easily. Also, universally available computer technology allowed me to edit and format the image in any number of different ways.

There is an interesting contrast between the immediacy of the digitally captured and published image, and the time it took to accumulate its surface. And suddenly, itʼs gone.

Sure enough, the wall was repainted a shocking pink and the reference is to the now infamous restoration of a portrait of Our Lord Jesus Christ in a Spanish church.


T h e D e f i n i t i o n o f B e a u t y

2 0 1 2

r i c h a r d b o l a m a t 5 0 . w o r d p r e s s . c o m

( S p a n i s h R e s t o r a t i o n )

Hard Shoulder Two track audio CD (2000).Although “Chaos” was the first Hard Shoulder music to be “released” it was not the first created. The music on “Take That And Shove It” (2000) pre-dates it, but was unfinished at the time of this release. The CD was a homemade CDR package of the tracks “Satori” (6ʼ13ʼʼ) and “The Great Wave” (6ʼ37ʼʼ).You can clearly hear the influences of New Order and Nine Inch Nails, as well as familiar dance music motifs.The cover was a home-made, inkjet printed gatefold sleeve, with graphics created in Aldus Intellidraw 2.0 and laid out with ClarisWorks 5, probably on an Apple PowerMac 4400, and printed on a Apple Color StyleWriter 2500. The CD also had an inkjet-printed label.Originally, only about 10 numbered CDs were made and distributed to friends and family.The music was created using an “instant music” application called “Music 2000” on a Sony Playstation. All sounds were derived from the included library and the noise elements created by using various modulation effects.The audio tracks are available online on SoundCloud.http://soundcloud.com/hardshoulder/sets/chaos-2000

The titles are acknowledgements of other influences. I was introduced to the Japanese word “Satori” meaning enlightenment, sometime in the 1980s when I read “Satori in Paris” (1966, Jack Kerouac). The word also popped up on my radar in Bauhausʼ (the band) song “Kick in the Eye” (1981). That title is a

commonly repeated slang term for satori.“The Great Wave” is a reference to the famous print by Japanese print maker Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), from his masterwork “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji”.Whilst I have never really pursued a figurative imagery in the style of Japanese woodblock prints, the graphic style has been a constant influence. The title of the CD, along with the cover image and titles reference the influence of Japanese culture married with the random methods of my creativity. I am a great believer in full

immersion creativity where you throw yourself into something and completely absorb yourself in it and allow the happy accidents to happen.I donated use of the track to the “Tasukete (HELP) Japan Tsunami Relief” benefit album that was sold to raise money for the Red Cross after the tsunami in 2011. I was requested to change the track name so as not to cause offence. I was happy to comply although earthquakes and tsunami are a fact of life for the Japanese, and I doubt anyone would be offended. Anyway, for the fundraiser album I changed the name to “Fuji Love”.


CHAOS

“Under the great wave”, Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), from “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji”

http://soundcloud.com/hardshoulder/sets/chaos-2000




HyperScape is an ongoing series of works that were both inspired by, and implemented with the Apple Macintosh desktop computer hardware that I spent a great deal of my working life throughout the 1990s.So far, there have been four HyperScape works, but I hope to complete a series of eight.HyperScape V is a location-specific installation, created for Access Space, Sheffield, UK in 2006 (images overleaf).Itʼs an algorithmically created work of 184 inkjet prints, mounted on foamboard, and shown as a continuous sequence with a small gap between each A4 print. The work was shown once in 2006.The software was written with Apple HyperCard, and uses very simple arithmetic and logic to calculate the proportions of the images. For each image, the end

points of each line are transferred to the start points of the next image so that there is an implied continuity.The title refers to the suggestion of landscape / cityscape in the images, and the fact that is was produced using HyperCard.The focal point of the work is in the fault lines, a series of positions across each image where the horizontal lines can change height. Not all the lines will change height,

but they are only allowed to at certain positions across the landscape. This detail creates the cityscapey-ness of the images by implying a structural coherence at those points.I really think I should have made more of this at the time. In fact, I

should have pushed the HyperScape series a lot more. There are four in the series so far: HyperScapes 1, 2, 4 and 5. HyperScape 3 was never finished due to a technical bug that could not be solved. I would like to make another four, as a set of eight would have a nice digital symmetry to it.So, why HyperCard? Well, the HyperScape series started with HyperScape I (pictured here) which was designed to run on old

compact Macs. Some of these machines were Mac Classics which would only take 4 Mb of RAM (not a mis-print). Having resurrected these computers, well into their dotage, there were not many choices of software that could be used to program them. I never got my hands sufficiently dirty with C++ or any of that stuff, so had to find something reasonably high-level that would run on such limited hardware.

Whatʼs more, the computer science of it is not particularly important. I am more interested in the aesthetic elements and the audience engagement rather than the elegance of the coding.HyperScape I was designed as an installation, originally running on

eight networked compact Macs. One machine acts as a master controller and tells the other machines what to do. The slave machines have a one-in-twenty chance of ignoring each instruction. This results in the images on each screen diverging in detail but remaining largely similar. On first glance, all the machines seem to be the same, but very quickly it becomes apparent that they are all different.I was particularly interested in the

same-but-different effect where when you place similar objects in an array, your brain looks for differences, but when you place different objects in a similar array, your brain looks for similarities. In-between there are an infinite number of variations.I made a lot of algorithmic works at that time, sometimes called generative art, and that idea of things being the-same-but-different is what makes it work.


HyperScape

“Minimalism, and lots of it.”

HyperScape I at The Workstation, Sheffield, UK, 200X.

Above - simultaneous images created by multiple machines from HyperScape I.

HyperScape I was also shown in sweden three times by the digital arts organisation Electrohype. The original compact Macs were provided by James Wallbank of The Redundant Technology Initiative / Access Space in Sheffield UK. James found out that I was the only person in the area, that he knew of, that was working with Macs and offered me a selection of obsolete compact Macs that he had collected over the years. This included one SE, an SE/30, a few Classics, Classic IIs, and Colour Classics. I took them away on indefinite loan and came back a few months later with HyperScape 1.Electrohype became aware of my totally unfunded project via the Access Space website and asked to show it as part of their Classic II exhibition in 2003/4.http://www.electrohype.org/rom/classic2/I just emailed them the software and they installed a 3-machine version on their own obsolete Macs.Later that year, Electrohype asked me to be part of their biennial and the work was shown again in Malmö Konsthall, running on six computers. I was invited over to supervise the installation and attend the opening. It was fantastic, and for a moment I felt like a proper international artist.http://www.electrohype.org/eng.htmlThey also selected the work to be part of a sub-set of the 2004 biennial (Electrohype Utsnitt) to be shown at the Goteborg Konstmuseum in 2005.HyperScape II is a sound installation, and relies on random redundancy in a different way. Rather than letting the slave machines decide whether or not to do as they are told, the installation


Above - composite image from HyperScape I

http://www.electrohype.org/rom/classic2/




http://www.electrohype.org/eng.html




relies on the fact that the ultra-slow LocalTalk networking protocol meant that the machines could not be synchronised in any meaningful way. They can be networked quite easily, but there is a significant time lag in response.For this work, the master machine creates a sequence of musical notes and then passes the data onto the other machines. They all play the sequence as soon as they receive it, but the unavoidable delay creates an overlapping texture of unsynchronised tones. I used the chromatic scale of C Major in an attempt to reduce for the unavoidable discords that would occur.It has been shown once in the Workstation, Sheffield, UK in 2004. I fundamentally misjudged the space as it is a busy and noisy public entrance to a managed workspace building. The installation works best in a quiet environment, preferably a dark space, only lit by the computer screens.Itʼs a bit like an uninformed Steve Reich and it works very well, although I did have to programme in a few minutesʼ pause every so often to give the Workstation reception staff a break.HyperScape III was an attempt to create a colour version of HyperScape I. However, it was written with Aldus SuperCard 3.6 and contains a bug that I could never solve. They say a bad workman blames his tools, but I believe it to be some sort of memory bug in the programming environment rather than my own error, and I could never get it to run reliably over a long period.I hope to implement HyperScape III with a different programming tool at some point.


Top & bottom - images from HyperScape V - SpaceScape

HyperScape IV - Landscape /Portrait was shown at Access Space in 2006.HyperScape IV comprises two networked compact Macs, and this time the slave machine reproduces exactly what the master machine creates. However, one machine stands upright and the other adopts a more somnolent posture. That is, on its side.The intention of the work is to stand on the boundary of anthropomorphism and architectural suggestion. The work creates an algorithmically informed, symmetrical image that is shown in landscape and portrait orientations to provoke a recognition of those two orientations into an inferred person or face, and simultaneously a vista or floor-plan.

Apple HyperCardHyperCard was very influential on me, and this series of works was fundamentally informed by my experience working in an office environment in the 1990s.Much of my work has been influenced by the aesthetics of the

mundane and the office environment.HypeCard was a revelation when I first saw it, and Apple have always been good at selling tech as a lifestyle choice. HyperCard actually had a very sophisticated feature set and you could write useful applications with it. Whatʼs more, it came with a set of beautifully designed example stacks as opposed to the plug-ugly example programs that you usually get with a programming environment. And this is the crux of its appeal. Apple were famous for wanting the Macintosh to be as familiar an appliance as a toaster. Along with that, their aspirational appeal is what made HyperCard so radically different from the usual preserve of bedroom-bound nerds. It was aspirational programming for yuppies.Cynicism aside, the very astute move to include high quality, professionally designed graphics avoided the immediate block of its monochrome graphics.They paid some very talented people to show off just how creative you can be with one-bit colour at 512 x 342 pixels.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard


HyperScape II at The Workstation, Sheffield, UK, 200X.

HyperScape IV at Access Space, Sheffield, UK, 200X.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard




Back in 2000 / 2001 I was involved with an arts collective called Mongrel Monitor. It was a very casual affair with the agenda of putting on a number of events of music, art and performance.One such night we organised was called “Jurassic Punk”.My own contribution was a eleven-and-a-half minute Hard Shoulder track called “The Chase”. In keeping with the theme, it was created entirely with samples from “Jurassic Parkʼ (1997, Steven Spielberg) and “Godzilla (1998, Roland Emmerich).My visual accompaniment was a slideshow of images sourced from a huge collection of clip art. I donʼt do that sort of visual show these days.In the footsteps of Mussorgsky, Prokofiev and Elgar, it is a non-literal, expressive description of a journey from scientific discovery, through ambition, warning, and ultimately doom.Rather like the story of Jurassic Park itself, it describes a dramatic arc of of enthusiasm that leads to folly and destruction.I renamed this track “Dance of Death” later on.In 2000 I bought a Korg Electribe ES-1 “rhythm production sampler” and a EA-1 “analog modeling synthesizer”, and these instruments fundamentally informed the sound of Hard Shoulder from then on. The first version of “The Chase / Dance of Death” used only the ES-1 sampler and was quite minimal, relying on repeating and varying rhythmic themes.There is an audio recording online here.[link]Like the Music 2000 software I had been using on the Sony Playstation, the Korg Electribes might be described as “instant music” hardware. There was a plethora of such hardware around in the late 90s and 2000s. I am a fan of such things although I am also aware of their limitations and it is very easy to produce music that is largely indistinguishable from other peopleʼs.The controls in the Electribes make for a very immediate experience and they are designed to be live instruments. My own strategy to avoid sounding like anyone else was to source all my own samples and not use any of the included sounds.

The sounds in “The Chase / Dance of Death” are all non-musical sounds sampled from movies and heavily mangled to force some music out of them.Whilst I liked the sequencing of Music 2000, the Sony Playstation does not make much of a live instrument. At the time, computers were becoming viable musical tools but nowhere near reliable enough for my taste, so I went for hardcore music hardware, deigned for live use.In 2007 Jamie Wyld (of Video Club fame) curated an exhibition “Flat Black” at The Workstation, Sheffield, UK.http://www.videoclub.org.uk/The curatorial brief was concerned with sub-culture and I submitted a substantially re-worked version of the track entitled “Dance of Death (Smooch Mix) Radio Edit” with an accompanying video as a fantasy around what goes on in the head of a bedroom musician.http://www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire/content/articles/2007/02/05/flat_black_sheffield_underground_art.shtmlThere is a Pecha Kucha style explanation of all the references in the video in the “Dance of Death” Retrospective flyer, online here.http://issuu.com/richardbolamThe re-worked track is slower than the original with a much more sleazy feel to it, hence the title, and it is online here:https://vimeo.com/8888893Whilst I do not consider myself to be excessively morbid, I like the aesthetics and themes of the medieval Dance of Death imagery. Also, the potential dangers of unchecked technological development has informed a great deal of my work.


Dance of Death

http://www.videoclub.org.uk/

http://www.videoclub.org.uk/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire/content/articles/2007/02/05/flat_black_sheffield_underground_art.shtml










http://issuu.com/richardbolam


https://vimeo.com/8888893

https://vimeo.com/8888893

In 2002, artist and impresario Richard Bartle moved Bloc Studios in Sheffield, UK, across the road to another building. I took a studio at this time and, once the gallery space was ready, and as a kind of celebratory act, Richard organized the 2002 group show for all the studio-holders. This involved being issued with a piece of chipboard 200mm square, and that was our canvas / inspiration.Some people did what they would normally do, but 200 x 200 mm, and some people did some much more inventive things.I remember obsessing about the piece of board itself and worrying about spoiling it in the process of making something with it. I didnʼt really have any ideas and I was going to mount something I had already made onto the board and use it as a frame. However, this seemed like a very unsatisfying compromise.And then suddenly, it occurred to me that I could reproduce the board, not spoil it, and this could be an acknowledgement of my own problem with preciousness. So, I scanned all the surfaces and inkjet printed them actual-size. I then constructed a body out of foam-board and glued the prints to it, anatomically-correct.“I donʼt do this kind of work” I tell myself. What I mean by “this kind of work” is the punchline artwork, the one-liner. As James Wallbank put it, “got it” art, or as Will Self coined it, “sight-gag art”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jun/01/ybas-versus-old-mastersIt never occurred to me that anyone would be fooled by the mock-up, but without close inspection it was very convincing and a number of people thought I had just mounted the piece of board. I still have the original piece of chipboard, unspoiled.Some years before, I made a conscious decision not to make precious objects, and only make ephemeral or reproducible things that had no intrinsic value. This was partly to cure my own paralysis when making things, always worrying about spoiling the materials.I really like group shows, especially if they have a theme or task. You normally see half the artists do what you would expect but the other half go mad.I spent most of my working life in the 80s and 90s in offices, and I liked parodying the commercial packaging.As I said “I donʼt do this kind of work” because one part of me finds it trivial, but I really enjoyed making it, and looking at it 10 years on, it made me laugh again. In addition to the mock chipboard, I made a mock leaflet offering other raw materials, and also a cut-out and build cardboard model.One of the most enjoyable bits was writing the promotional blurbs

for the “Raw Materials” leaflet. I should be a copywriter, and to be fair on myself, itʼs not just one joke. I also like “Corny Pastiche Productions Ltd.” I should design a pie-shaped logo for it.I made a lot of parodies, mocks and pastiches in the past but Iʼve

always felt a little ashamed of them, as if somehow theyʼre not serious enough and I really should be doing “proper” art. More recently, however, I have come to realise that satire is a fundamental part of my, and it is also a lot of fun.As part of the work, I started to write a satirical artistʼs statement, poking fun at the kind of artspeak that is usually produced around

art shows, but I decided this was a step too far and that I had already exhausted the joke.And anyway, artspeak is its own parody.http://blocprojects.co.uk/programme/exhibitions/2002/2002/


Chipboard™

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jun/01/ybas-versus-old-masters






http://blocprojects.co.uk/programme/exhibitions/2002/2002/







I saw the documentary “E. P. Sculptor” (Murray Grigor, 1987), probably in 1988(?) when it was broadcast on TV. It was a life-changing moment, and I struggled

for years to make work that I felt had fallen far enough from that tree.The “Wargames” series is from my Paolozzi period and was definitely breakthrough work, although it took another 10 years for it to come out. These collages are made from spoiled prints of other minimalist work. As they were a already spoilt, it freed me from the anxiety of preciousness, although it was a product of that anal retentiveness that made me keep all the spoiled prints I made 18 of them in 1999 and I think I might make some more.I had a substantial period of minimalism in the 1990s and used to inkjet print hundreds of images. I soon learned how to refill ink cartridges with bottled inks and this made it slow and laborious, but affordable.Whereas Paolozzi used available popular images, I set myself the rule of only using my own work and not “appropriatingʼ anything. I have very mixed feelings about appropriation art, although some of the work I have found most influential has been made with found or “stolen” images.The advent of creative commons has confused the issue, rather than

clarifying it. I prefer to use other peopleʼs images legally if possible, but I will use them without permission in some circumstances. This set of rules could not exactly

be called a code, theyʼre more guidelines, but I am normally quite clear in my own head if it is ok to appropriate.Rather like Paolozzi buying war-damaged books in the 1940ʼs, much of my art education was through buying secondhand books, often those withdrawn from the local library. However, the fundamental difference is that where people of Paolozziʼs era were image-starved, as an adult I

am definitely over-stimulated with information overload.Whilst this book was not a radical influence, it represents a significantly receptive time in my life when I was soaking up influences, and one spread in particular made me think about my own work.I immediately found Peter

Schmidtʼs work appealing because of the cartoonish nature, but what really struck me was the torn paper collages. I recognised a way to let go of the preciousness of the object. By this time I owned and computer, scanner and inkjet printer and could reproduce and re-use images in the way I had seen Paolozzi do with colour photocopiers. Whilst I can also acknowledge the influence of Robert Rauschenberg, he was not nearly as significant to me.

Advancing Towards The Last City

Mass Graves

Ambush At The Radio Beacon

Plague In The City


Wargames

“Art Without Boundaries 1950 - 70”, 1972 Thames & Hudson, Gerald Woods, Philip Thompson, John Williams,

Incendiary Bombers

Firestorm

War Criminals

Parade

Camouflage Training

Nuclear Strike

The Sinking of the Mercy

Signals

The Ghost Messages

Execution

Infantry

Deathcamp

Spies

The Hive

Wargames is a non-linear war story where each image is an episode in an unnamed conflict, without perceptible sides or beginning and nor end. An every-war. An omni-war.


suppressing the early doodles, the naive cul-de-sacs and the embarrassing failures, and only concentrating on the more successful and mature “serious” stuff.As a result, I have decided to catalogue and publish my entire lifeʼs output (so far), warts and all. Well, not absolutely everything, but a representative catalogue from childhood through to maturity.I have been very productive (on and off) although most of my work has never been seen. I will be 50 in 2014 and there is a lot to do, so I am starting now (August 2012).According to my notebooks, I first had the idea in October 2004 and also came up with an “ironic and post-modern” take on it, proposing to make only the branded memorabilia with the show being nothing but a gift shot. However, I tired of that one-liner idea and decided “I donʼt do that kind of art”.Well, I do and I donʼt. I still like the idea but the one joke artwork seems a bit puerile. There will be branded memorabilia, and this is part of the work, but the cataloguing is real. It is a joke, but itʼs not a piss-take, and whatʼs more, itʼs serious too [citation needed].Above is the earliest reference to the idea from my notebooks. I

took to dating all my entries after having seen photos of the Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigelandʼs (1869 - 1943) sketches whilst on a family holiday to Norway in 1980. I havenʼt done it continuously, but I have done it pretty religiously for a number of years and itʼs very useful to be able to review ideas and see how they develop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Vigelandhttp://www.vigeland.museum.no/This project is a platform to show unseen work and will also act as an impetus to finish the many partially complete works that I have begun. The project will happen primarily online and in print, but there may be a gallery show, some screenings and other events (and parties) over the

period 24th April 2014 to 23rd April 2015.I am making a series of promotional flyers which will be available as PDFs and printed too. The PDFs are online along with the ongoing catalogue entries.http://issuu.com/richardbolamI am am also making an example of every item on the list above.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Vigeland




http://www.vigeland.museum.no/

http://www.vigeland.museum.no/

