Every Dog Must Have His Day

 
Mad Dog Days & Art in the Midday Sun

Now that everyone and their dog is an artist, I find myself, quite often, liking the dogs work best. There is a certain 'je ne sais quois' that thrills about the bold daubings of a Pyrenean Mountain Dog, known only as Sid, encountered, unexpectedly on a rainy Friday evening, in a city coffee-house, populated sparsely by the temporary flotsam washed in from the Tottenham Court Road in the slow hours, between the departure of daytime crowds on trains to Surrey and the suburbs, and the arrival of the night shift flood tide of human debris that flows into every theater, pub and club and then overflows through every doorway and back out again on to the wet streets, and all this while waiting for a robusta Caffè macchiato served by an unexpected Bedlington Terrier.

Famous example of life imitating art - woof

It is a curious but well documented fact that any dog that has as yet to have had its day exhibiting the fruits of such tentative forays into the world of the arts as 'small water colour of Ball in the Seine' or 'Still Life with Bone - in mixed media', will, almost always, be found, whether in new world New York, that champion of the modern movement, or old world Rome with its penchant for the classics, or Venice with its eyes turned to the renaissance, serving up coffees and calling themselves baristas! Dogs hey, you have to laugh, woof woof.

Dog Playing Cards for dogs playing cards

But, when all is said and done, there is nothing more tiresome than some pushy chihuahua trying to flog a shiny red balloon shape of Jeff Koons as an 'homage to the artist', in some chi chi pop-up boutique/gallery in Shoreditch or the rather drole sight of a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, much the worse for drink, holding forth at the private view of a Miniature Schnauzer, heavily into abstract expressionism, on 'the merits of action painting in a virtual context' to a crowd of over excited Bichon Frisés. What ever next! It will be cats playing pianos and gorillas painting before you can say youtube, youtube, youtube and I wish I was in Kansas, Toto!

Mudlarks

Mudlarks  
Found this article on Mudlarks on a site called Deep Book. 
Tragic stories from the poor of the riverside - heart rending stuff.
Dickens' Country-A guide to 19th century London and Kent
Mudlarks - An extract from “London Labour and the London Poor” by Henry Mayhew, 1851

Fly Posted by Bill Stickers

Printed posters on hoarding, Creekside, Deptford.
A lot of street art appears round the Creek area as it is edge land. Railway arches, yards, wharfs and industrial estates strung along the riverside, twin lines trailing the rivers twisting muddy shore. Artists gravitated here when the buildings were half empty and the rents cheap. There is plenty to see. Visit Cockpit Arts, A.P.T, HUBArts - and more... Trouble is galleries can be a bit unwelcoming. I passed one of these galleries most evenings and only once went in to a 'private' view, I always felt like an outsider. It may be harsh but I wonder how much they engage the local community from the red brick estate across the road. That is what is good about the art that escapes from the studio and onto the street. It may not always be as well executed but that is not the point. It has a vitality. Someone made this while someone else kept watch, sweaty hands and beating heart, I bet they had a laugh as they made they're getaway! Its not all done over yet round here. There are still some bits that have escaped the developers. Not for long though, regeneration (or ruination depending on your view) is busting a gut round here and all the character is getting swept away - it is happening fast... so get down here while you can to the H'apenny Hatch Outdoor Gallery. There is almost always something to see even if it is just the dystopian detritus of a burnt out scooter or the exploded carcass of a deconstructed dyson dead on the side walk. The council guys clean the art off pronto. They are all on 24/7 call out so its a constantly changing scene. Whats there in the morning is often gone by the evening and a new blank canvas awaits thank you very much. Arty appeals to their better nature written on the walls fail to move them from their mission to grey out every last offending mark. They really should give each effort a couple of days before they re-paint the canvas for the next lot!

H'appeny Hatch - (First posted on old website)

Gloomy night looking west over the Creek to the DLR bridge. The flour mill looms in the distance.

The foot bridge at H'appenny Hatch crosses Deptford Creek between the railway bridge with its huge gantry once used for shifting loads up and down from the river and the newer arched concrete spans of the Docklands light railway that snakes along above the tidal 
reach.

 
Scaffolders, skips and waste management yards and a builders merchant line the footpath and area around the bridge. To one side the land under the DLR is as yet undeveloped but has been cleared. I used to see a family of foxes here but not for some time now.
Cross the Creek on the little cantilevered bridge to reach the ornate gates of The Creekside Centre a small plot of wildness
where sometimes the odd rare weirdy beardy can be spotted leading discovery walks through the low tide mud.

The last remnants of the riverside industries that shaped the area are fast disappearing. Many empty factories and old stock yards have been demolished to make way for new riverside developments and the unique character of the area is rapidly changing.
 Hinterlands where fortunes ebb and flow like the tide. 
 Artists made use of the cheap rents and empty buildings and now ride the wave of new development creating, if you stand facing Thames wards and catch the light just right, a mini left bank between the new shiny glass edifices and the old brick business estates. These old buildings are all earmarked to go, most have gone. The freedoms of squatting empty factories and yards and of having a space to be and do outside the requirement of consuming - recall the infamous Tyre Factory Roller Disco - have been stamped out from here by the endless facades of novohells and holidaysinn(other peoples misery) that creep up to the very road edge and river side.

This window is now gone

The window in the side of an old wharf building looks out to sky, the wharehouse space that once lay behind long since demolished. Buddlieia takes root and helps to further the job of leveling the old dock yard walls. Window to the sky.  This window joins the buildings of the APT artists on the Deptford side of the Creek. On the wall further along faded paint spells out Evelyn Wharf.

On The Beach

Temporal beach - time and tide
There is a tidal beach at Vauxhall on the South side of the river with views down to Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament and up to Battersea Reach with its power stations and gas works. To the left Vauxhall Bridge spans the Thames on three sturdy buttresses,the traffic rumbling overhead in an unending stream of rushing metal, lights and humanity that never seems to cease  night and day.

The river is singular in destination but many tributaries join their waters to flow through the Thames Basin and out towards the North Sea through the disappearing marshes and gravel pits of Gravesend and Tilbury, the last home of the Dartford Warbler, a toe hold in the wastes of scrap yards and pylons. The Tyburn runs down from Marble Arch and emerges from a stygian cave just the other side of the Bridge beneath one of the last old buildings surviving on the north embankment. To the South side of Vauxhall bridge at river level is the outflow of the River Effra, one of the lost rivers of south London, long since covered over and channelled into underground culverts. The rivers name appears above the arched portal. Its tunnel mouth looms like an entrance to the underworld, marked by a strange wooden beacon whose purpose I can only guess at. 

Ghost Signs

Sometime last year I took this picture, sadly as a consolation to myself for the terrible loss of a favorite local sight. It had withstood years of rain and weather of all types and although a little faded was still legible in all its fragile hues, the ghost sign of the Music Roll Exchange.