Review

Claire Potter at ‘Portrayal & Perpetration’, Wolstenholme Projects, Liverpool, April 2009

After being intrigued by CP’s exhibition at Greenland Street last year, I juggled a hectic schedule and scrambled into Liverpool at the last possible opportunity to see her latest offering. The group show on the two upper floors was varied and thought-provoking, but my main focus lay below ground! I descended through the yawning trap door and down the anomalously pristine stairs into what appeared to be the black mouth of an unlit, crumbling-walled, spidery Hell, navigating with two flash-lights lent by the most helpful Sue and finally finding the Table & Chair with some relief! Even more relief to discover that it had its own standard lamp! Click! I sat with my back to the gloomy void, put on the earphones, opened the battered, much-thumbed A-Z of Leeds and Bradford. Baedeker-like, CP, who lived in that region as a student, takes the listener through a trip from the Saltaire area into Leeds, partly on foot and partly by public transport. I myself know some but not all of the locations, providing a variety of experience (‘Ah yes, I recall ... Oh, that sounds really interesting!’). The account fluctuates between instructions as to the route (which one follows on a series of pages in the post-it-noted & marked-up A-Z), plain description of the scenes, CP’s own thoughts and impressions, personal reminiscences of events, and (strikingly) interludes involving the apparently unedited texts of emails sent and received at the time of CP’s West Yorkshire sojourn. Inevitably the selections too are personal (we all focus on different aspects of a place). They range from historic buildings such as Titus Salt’s ornate church, via the obviously fascinating bookshop nearby, to the homes of friends where the human dramas of student life were played out. But it is all sculpted into a varied but coherent whole, and it finishes, if anything, too quickly, one’s appetite whetted but perhaps by design not satisfied. By the time the tape faded into silence I had forgotten the darkness and the spiders. The genre is somewhat unusual, and not everyone could bring off such an exercise, especially given the mundane and personal nature of the material. But it is part of CP’s life – and by way of exemplification the lives of the many others who have traversed this urban Yorkshire landscape, and of all of us as we traverse the landscapes of our own life journeys. I look forward eagerly to whatever CP has up her sleeve for the future!



Mark Newbrook

Collaboration, Town's Syndrome

Album can be downloaded freely from the Town's Syndrome website.

(Intro) As Slow As Shadows
You must know how grateful I was to receive your letter dated December twenty-ninth. To learn of my little nephew's first adventures in life brought me as much courage as it did joy. Children are so fearless and as they cannot help but be guided by nature, they seem to side-step doubt. As you know, with my darling Anna away attempting to state her curiosity for the unknown, I live moment to moment in wait of contact or some news that she will return. But as ever, realisation creeps as slow as shadows and the thought occurs to me that she will continue her days without so much as a backwards glance. But as your son serves to remind me, the young are beginners at everything and with only twenty-three years to my name, I cannot know love yet. I must resolve to endure my doubts and continue in my learning.

(Outro) Shadows Of The Past
Dearest Esme, I have bore witness to some strange wonders since leaving you my love, and I have known men as never before. I cannot begin to relate the experiences that now lay behind me as they still reach far beyond my comprehension, though I can tell you that I remain forever uninspired by the intentions of men. But though my heart grieves for an innocence now lost, I find some solace in the wisdom that time and fate have allowed. Esme, from this distance I am able to think of you with the warmest appreciation. I recall stolen moments sweet with your breath and hazed by faithful whispers of resilient love. These moments are strengthened and gilded by the passing of days, and your refined image follows my troubled steps as I continue on this path. You are as rare a bird on this earth as the black swan and just as water rolls from your feathers, you remind me that to be in this world without becoming attached to it is a far great achievement. And so I will continue.