Bonjour amigos!

For those of you that aren’t aware, today 9th October is National Book Shop Day. Huzzah! I wasn’t aware until The Modernist put it on their Instagram this morning. As lovely as it would be to join in the festivities proper, I can only watch from the sidelines as my book is no longer for sale. However, as sheer luck would have it, I am super excited to tell you all that I’m giving away a free version of my book anyway! How very wonderful. I haven’t decided how long I’ll do it for, but it won’t be forever. So for now just click here for a link to the shop page.

Coventry - Modernist Mooch

Everyone hates Coventry. Literally everyone. They laugh at it, it’s the butt of every single joke in post-war Britain’s rebuilding failures. It has 1000 years of history, was destroyed by Germans at the knowledge of the British who couldn’t give away they’d broken the Enigma code. Coventry burned so that others may survive. Not their choice obviously. It was rebuilt as a modernist wet dream. Then that dream was spoilt by lack of investment and 90’s modernity. Lucky that trend has been stifled and the long journey back has begun. It was redesigned to feel like Venice. Small ally ways open into huge piazzas with life teeming all around. I fully expected Coventry to be shit. Really shit. Sad, forlorn and just an empty carcass. But it was nothing of the sort. Yes, the buildings are run down in places but plenty of it has been renovated to how it was meant to look and there were people everywhere. Pubs full, shops full. I felt a little embarrassed by my compulsive judgement. The Moderist Society have been arranging ‘mooches’ with Stephen Marland. When I saw the Coventry Mooch advertised I slapped that ten quid down faster than Big Daddy in the chip shop. I’ve become interested in the sculpture of William Mitchel since I started my Frederick Gibberd project last year. Mitchel’s brilliant work is all over the country and in my opinion extremely undervalued. Coventry is rammed with his pieces. It’s everywhere. One building in the Bullyard even has 54 panels of his refliefs covering the whole thing. The Bullyard is also host to the late ‘Three Tons’ pub. Another gorgeous example of a relief built as public art that become a victim of the time. The pub has fallen foul of modern shopping and is now a closed down chicken shop. I should add there’s a pub two doors down that was rammo. The tour took us all over the city centre. Starting at the indoor market, which has a mural that was kindly donated by the children of Dresden, two cities united in grief that has formed a bond to promote world peace. Next was the central piazza and its clock which depicts Lady Godiva naked on horseback on the hour every hour. Then we marched in unison to the simply magnificent Cathedral. The story of this building is far too much for this humble email but there is an amazing documentary on BBC at the moment with the complete story of how this Modernist gem was built from the rubble of it’s burned-out medieval counterpart.

We finished at ‘The Elephant’. I must confess I hadn’t previously heard of this building. It’s a leisure centre for indoor sports that was built to compliment the already existing leisure centre next door, Elephant is not a nickname, it’s actually built to look like an elephant. Elephants are a symbol of Coventry and this was built directly to reflect that. They were not shy. This building is a monster. It looks like the kind of building you might expect in a science fiction movie that is used to transport prisoners from one planet to another. The legs look like rocket boosters, the repeating triangles are used all over it like hieroglyphics from peoples unknown. The fact it’s been used to house indoor bowls as recently as 2020 is staggering. Its leisure buddy next doot is also vacant but has the advantage of being a listed structure. The Elephant, however, is not. If these powers at be don’t turn this into the most magnificent public space in Western Europe they need to take a long hard look at themselves. Think ‘The Broad’ in LA or even the Guggenheim in Bilbao. This should be spoken of in the same breath.

That's enough talking, I’ll let the photos do the work.

P.S. The train station is incredible.

Birmingham - Not Alabama.

Last month I finally got to attend the 2020 Photography Show. It was supposed to be in March 2020 but for reasons unknown, it was put back until two weeks ago at the NEC in Birmingham. I won’t lie, my zest to attend had wained but I felt I owed the organisers and myself. Oh, boy am I glad I went. Firstly, the NEC shares its train station with the airport. This thing is an 80’s dream that smells of aviation fuel, It looks exactly like how I’d imagine Salt Lake City airport looks. It’s a shopping mall lost in time. I checked Wiki and it gets 6.5 million visitors a year. That is remarkable for a building of this age to be in such good condition, that carpet must be made of steel. The NEC isn’t much better but that aside, the journey was worth it just to meet Steven from Metro Printing. Stay tuned…

As I was already near Birmingham I thought I’d go and see the Curzon St station. This station is remarkable for a few reasons. One, it’s the first purpose-built passenger railway terminus on earth, and two, it’s been empty and in a car park since 1966. Its isolation is striking as a redundant structure from the pinnacle of the industrial revolution. The reason I was so keen to see it though is that it won’t be isolated for long. It is the new terminus for the HS2 high-speed railway from London to Birmingham. Levelling up innit. I wish I’d seen it sooner, now it’s a building site reminiscent of the Olympics, as a visual clue to the sheer size of this railway project. Much like the other recent railway project in Birmingham, the New Street Station refurb which if you know the previous station, is nothing short of a miracle. I’ve always wanted to see more than the Bullring on visits here, so I ventured down to the canal. Now, I’d prefer to not be unkind here, but the fact I was a ten-minute walk from the centre of the UK’s second-largest city, the state of the buildings came as a shock. It is a relic of industrial Britain, warehouses derelict, canal a ruin. All I could see was potential. But that’s another story.

One more building on this trip. Birmingham New Street Signal Box. My my. A concertina in concrete. With a car park next door to give me ample vantage points.

Enjoy.

NEW PRINTS NEW PRINTS NEW PRINTS

OK BABY LETS DO THIS! Stnad by for further details. In the mean time, here’s some images I’m going to be releasing soon.

ONCE AGAIN THANK YOU FOR LISTENING.

ANY QUESTIONS? GOOD.