A collaborative photographic project documenting the, over-800, libraries that have closed in the UK since 2010 (under this Tory government). I will publish a list of the libraries and their, defunct, addresses, with an invitation for anyone/everyone to photograph the buildings or sites and share them with me as part of the project, as a fully credited collaborator. These images could be a series of zines, a book, a video, an exhibition, or all of them.
books
Etched Zine /
A hand-printed, hand-made, publication based on the aesthetic of Louise Bourgeois’ ‘He Disappeared into Complete Silence’.
A series of short autobiographical stories, typed on a typewriter, on the left hand page, with an etching that illustrates that story on the right hand page.
Include stories such as when my uncle went boat-fishing and caught a 6ft shark, but when he got home my auntie wouldn’t let him in the house with it, so he went to the local park and dumped the dead shark in the kids paddling pool.
Or when my family went on a package holiday to Spain and on an evening excursion my Dad got drunk with a friend he’d made on holiday and then proceeded to break into the coach that had taken us there. In the process, they turned on the windscreen wipers and couldn’t turn them off again, so there was just our two families sat on the coach waiting for everyone else to arrive back at the end of the night, with my Dad and his friend creasing up laughing about the windscreen wipers.
Or the time I was out playing in the ashes of a large bonfire with my brother and some friends and I picked up a breeze block and threw it and it hit my brother in the back of the head, so he ran indoors and told my Mum and Dad I’d thrown a lump of wood at him, and I thought it best not to correct him that it was a breeze block.
Or the time a teacher at school pinned my friend to the wall by his throat and pulled his fist back to punch him, before catching himself on, because my friend belched in class.
Or the time I was on a last train back from Birmingham with my wife and singer called Bob Catley walked past and I said, “Didn;t you used to sing for Magnum?” and he replied, '“Still do!”, so he sat with us until Burton-on-Trent where he was being met by Girlschool’s manager. But then after Burton-on-Trent, he reappeared, as he’d expected the doors on the train to open automatically and they didn’t, so he missed his stop.
Or the time I went to L.A. with my friend and we got drunk at The Rainbow on The Sunset Strip and had to get a taxi all the way back across L.A. to our hotel, Downtown, and whilst I ran up to the room to get the money to pay the taxi, the cab driver pulled a gun on my friend.
Or the time Patrick Smith and Nicholas Smedley had a fight at break-time and Nicholas Smedley spat in Patrick Smith’s hair.