This post is a discussion of my first responses to a brief to create my cultural map of Bradford. Except for a few long ago trips to the Alhambra and the Museum of Science and Media, I know little of Bradford except as a student at the School of Art. However, I have some starting ideas, one of which I am exploring here.
I live 50 miles from Bradford in a very monocultural part of the UK and one of the things I think I know about Bradford is its ethnic diversity. So I began with a map of the cultural demography of Bradford from the Guardian article 'One city, two cultures' where bright yellow reflects mostly Asian citizens, bright blue reflects largely white citizens and shades between indicate more or less variation.
I selected this because it was both interesting in terms of expressing something of the cultural/ ethnic makeup of the city but also many interesting shapes were embedded. I started by picking out the areas with high densities of Asian heritage citizens, not for any reason beyond a starting point in terms of 'playing' with the map.
I used the resulting stencil to create a number of monoprints using watercolour on a range of different papers:
The result was an interesting shape and I liked the texture of some of the prints but I don't feel they communicate anything of the complexity of the cultural life of the city. So I experimented with the smaller subsections of the demographic map, cutting and rearranging both the remains of the map and the pieces I had cut out.
My feeling is that the results are visually interesting but not sufficiently expressive of my cultural experience of Bradford. I need to look elsewhere or develop these ideas in some way.
So I briefly explored artists that use cultural maps and I discovered the work of the American artist, Mark Bradford. He uses maps to explore the 'psychogeography' of Los Angeles where he lives. His paintings draw on mapping and, like the one below, overlap other features to express aspects of the area; emotional and political as well as actual. For example, his Scorched Earth exhibition (Hammer Museum 2021) features works generated in response to the 1992 uprisings in Los Angeles.
Whilst I found Bradford's work really stimulating in terms of ideas for working with cultural mapping, there is a darkness to it which does not fit with this project where I am seeking to celebrate cultures rather than ruminate on injustices and other negative forces.
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Mark Bradford, Falling Horse (2014)
However, some of his work introduces a 3D element where buildings are figured as well as ground plans. The painting below is an example of this. I saw some potential in this for exploring my cultural map - combining a ground route map of my cultural experience of the City of Bradford with some visual representation of what I observe as I move through the landscape.. |
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Mark Bradford, Scorched Earth (2006)
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So that will be my next move!
References
Hammer Museum (2021) Mark Bradford: Scorched Earth Los Angeles: Hammer Museum [online]. Available from: https://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2015/mark-bradford-scorched-earth. accessed 21st January 2021.
Pidd, H. & Halliday, A. (2015) One city, two cultures: Bradford's communities lead parallel lives, Guardian, available from https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/19/bradford-one-city-two-cultures-communities-lead-parallel-lives19th June, accessed 19th January 2021
Some interesting ideas, Sue!
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