Contained Infinity - continuing

At the same time as the exhibition of the series 'if I could understand you, I could love you' was opening in West Berlin, a show containing another series of mine was opening in East Berlin entitled 'contained infinity'. At first glance nothing more than the timing seems to connect these two projects. The series 'contained infinity' depicts containers, boxes, call them what you will, located within urban and rural landscapes. Man is seen only through the traces of actions, but not in the frame itself. Instead we are left only with a box, a form which we understand and see but which the form itself hides from us its contents. It was this contradiction that I found interesting, the infinite possibilities contained within a structure we can see and understand, sitting within our everyday existence. I wished to draw the actual photographic print into the very process and proceeded to use each finished print as the scultural material constructing a cube / box in which a solution related to the photos motive was poured within. These 'photographic print boxes' then sat containing their individual solutions for a period of time. The solution was eventually emptied and the prints unfolded and framed.

The exhibition, entitled 'Fremdungen' at the Galerie Weisser Elefant, Berlin Mitte, contained 5 finished works and a 6th as a photographic print box with contained solution. The series is ongoing.

What links boths series is my interest in employing methods within the creative process which can not be easily controlled, processes which by their very nature are mistakes. I want to involve the energy of chance and danger, there's an accent to the visual language that has a resonance which seems so often missing in this time of digital perfection and control.

Exhibition view: 'Fremdungen'. Galerie Weisser Elefant, Berlin Mitte. 2012

Exhibition view: 'Fremdungen'. Galerie Weisser Elefant, Berlin Mitte. 2012

details from the Exhibition: 'Fremdungen'. Galerie Weisser Elefant, Berlin Mitte. 2012

Exhibition view: 'Fremdungen'. Galerie Weisser Elefant, Berlin Mitte. 2012

Photographic print box with solution

Berliners - the series 'if I could understand you, I could love you'

I have not learnt to embrace, as perhaps one is supposed to do in this time, my parallel digital world, finding it of little interest. This is probably very foolish but reflects also my love of the real, the world where physicality obstructs and forms the patterns of my work and the world I live in. Over a year ago I began a series of portraits of Berliners. Having spent a lot of my youth moving from one corner of England to another I was often struck by mine and others categorisation of the type of people who live or came from one place or another. We have all heard it said " hey, they are hard but once you get to know them they're your friend of life", or something in the vain of. Berliners have a reputation, but to define this is to follow a foolish path which illustrates more ones own failings and preconceptions.

The series 'if I could understand you, I could love you' is intended to fail. That is the point, to understand the uselessness of trying to determine a person by exterior factors. The approach to the portraits was to purposely understand that reality would undermine the mechanism employed, exposing more through it's failings than could possibly be achieved by mark of success.

For each portrait, the sitter had to be photographed 40 times onto the same sheet of film. Proceeding each exposure a line was drawn with thread marking the position at that moment of an element or feature of the sitters face. I was constructing a measured plan of a Berliners face. But this is real life and thankfully we move, we do not stay still and any mark is only that of a reference to a moment in time.

The series is ongoing, but a selection were shown as part of the European Month of Photography festival last year in the Kommunale Galerie Berlin. The group exhibition entitled '12 Antworten auf Berlin' was curated by Hansgert Lambers and Axel Sommer.

                 exhibition view. Kommunale Galerie Berlin. 2012 - European Month of Photography

                                 exhibition view. Kommunale Galerie Berlin. 2012 - European Month of Photography

Never ending story, repeat, Never ending story, repeat

We all have our routines and one of mine is coffee first thing early of a morning. I turn away from the window as I get out of bed and had no cause to judge the weather and it's consequences. Aware more of the cold touch to the floor boards through my hesitant feet, I procured the coffee pot from it's place of rest and lifted my gaze out of the kitchen window. A never ending story. From when I finished writing the previous post the night before, Berlin has seen the air thick with frozen particles. I would be out about this very moment, photographing, but other commitments allow me not to re-live the Yorkshire Dales of last Easter.

Never ending story

                                                        Yorkshire Dales, UK. andy rumball 2012

It seems this winter has no intention or need to step aside and allow the cycle of life to turn it's wheels on it's infinit trail. I glance this March night through the windows, shielding me from the frantic flow of the fine snow particles on the cold wind currents. I think of this as a long winter yet a year ago on a visit to England and the Yorkshire Dales over Easter and the new green hills of my home land were not to be seen. In the matter of a few hours the land before my eyes was reduced to a delicate pencil sketch. The brutal beauty, monocrome and cold teased me as I fought with wet lens and wind to capture just something of that truly original Easter weather. Maybe, just maybe I will have a second chance this Easter, here in Berlin.

      Yorkshire Dales, UK. andy rumball 2012

      Yorkshire Dales, UK. andy rumball 2012

Exhibitions, marking the passage of time

Just as this blog notes each action in time, so the last year has been marked out with the my actions, aims and mistakes. It has been a full year, too full to summerize here and now in one extended post. Instead I shall litter the present with the markers of the past.

Two exhibitions at the end of last year (November 2012) would be a good point to begin, but in my searching for the images to illustrate my words I discovered the above proposal for an installation. It was to be installed in the gallery space in Atelierhof Kreuzberg, Berlin and was the second stage of a project called 'New Work', first exhibited in Basel. The physical elements of the work still exist and are able to be re-incorporated, morphed into a new aspect of the project which wishes not to be defined but constantly developed. I'd very much like to find an opportunity to bring the work out of it's secure surroundings and weave it into the fabric of everyday life in some way, expose it to the elements. Something for me, for tomorrow, from the past.

Betting on a three legged horse

Only a fool or God would bet on the weather and perhaps an englishman. Three times I traveled across Berlin and waited in vain for the snow that had been promised to materialise. It did in parts but nothing to the extent I was looking for so left each time empty handed with no shot. Then yesterday comes my dream snow from nowhere and I am nowhere to be seen near my snowing picture location. I think I'm better at guessing the colour of the next car that comes round the corner than the next 2 days weather. We haven't had so much of the white stuff this year and I sense a part of me looking forward to those first marks of spring. But the snow brings with it a new twist to the view one has and even as it melts and fades, it's dirty ridges and layers make an ever changing architecture.


heavens shadow nr. I+II.  2012 (rooftops of Berlin)

Frozen Feet, Frozen Moments

The winds carried winters fist this last couple of weeks to Berlin and let us know in no uncurtain terms that these months are for gloves not garden parties. But there are those who 'fly in the face' of such barriers and fight to have their moment of freedom. 

tomorrow you will be different. type c. IV, V  (kiteflyers. 2012)

After Hours

They say if you can't beat them, then join them, so I guess you can sort of say that with the below image and my day, last friday. So you find your location, you monitor the weather and you wait for the most promising day. This day was ment to be friday, as I awaited the air to be thick with snow for a new picture for my series on Bee Hives. It did so in the very early, dark hours of dawn but then only presented a picture postcard of blue skies and white over all. They promised more to fall, I went, I waited, I waited and I waited. I did take some shots but they were not what I was after and as dusk draw in I had to admit defeat on this occasion. But the evening light and the dark shadows of night offer something special and an insight to man's alienation and dominance over his environment and with it a subject in it's self.




after hours Nr. 1B. berlin 2011.

With mud and imagination

There stood a fooball pitch in north Oxford, not very far from the inner ring road and Summertown where if you were to go back some 30 odd years you would find a lone young boy. The goal posts played no part and the mud and misrable weather were no obstacle to that boys sense of freedom and escape from the binds of this world. For many an hour he embraced and in the same moment denied the elements of our world and let nature conjure the infinite in the finite. On many a wet weekend you would find that boy flying his kite. I have never forgotten that feeling.




tomorrow you will be different. type c nr.2 and 3 / first phase

New Years, Old times

There is no such thing as a New Year, can I say that? Better is perhaps to define the new year as 'the Next Year'. The term new suggests a break, a seperate being, something which stands distictly divided from other beings or in this case years. But the blood cells which drive the life around my body the morning of the 1st January are those made in the days leading up to a change in numbers from 11 to 12. Projects which  formed in the months of 2011 straddle the numerical divide and in doing so carry with them reflections of the time involved. Each are coloured is some way by yesterday, today and the idea of tomorrow.


The images below are pictures of an ongoing project which in one way directly references these influences. They are but simple moments in time, a reference point. The value of this point is of little worth but the additional interest placed on it with the elapse of time and my purposeful presentation of this moment can perhaps change the mundane into the significant.


ForgetMeNot nr.01 2011/ progress ref.image. Photographic print, household dust (standing time 6months)

ForgetMeNot nr.02 2011/ progress ref.image. Photographic print, household dust (standing time 6months)

ForgetMeNot nr.03 2011/ progress ref.image. Photographic print, household dust (standing time 6months)

ForgetMeNot nr.04 2011/ progress ref.image. Photographic print, household dust (standing time 6months)

tired and tempted

A life is coming to an end. The trials and pains have sculptured something beautiful, a briliant moment, from which to fade. Grit and grime portray each line and our understanding of force will explain the apparent. Life is a beautifully dirty thing.

Open case

Slowly this project which started with a small hut I found in a Danish habour (post- 'contained infinity') grows and reflects the dependence we have on the 'box'. These 8 corners help and torment and captivate the possible.


Brandenburg 2011. contained infinity. Nr.3 (phase.1)

the after before

It could be said that an english man knows not the art of queue jumping but then again anybody who has lived in london over a couple of years, or for that matter a couple of weeks during the grey, wet months of the year learns quick the art of getting that last place on the bus! So in the same tradition I post the following image. A series I had begun in the last 3 months from which I intended to use one of the images for the -wald- exhibition, I now post pre-thursday's opening. The series has the working title of – can't see the marks for the method –  a small jibe at what seems so often a world full to choking with images that are nothing more than what they are, only images papering over the cracks in the very wall they hang off. Is that so bad, maybe not, but for me this is too sweet and too much sugared coating leaves you feeling sick. It seems we are fasinated in the methods and machines by which we create things to the exclusion of considering why we made them.


Can't see the marks for the method. Nr.3.  2011. andy rumball

detail – Can't see the marks for the method. Nr.3

Picking up shadows

It's funny how sometimes what lies in the shadow of what is most forefront in your mind provides the answers you seek. So it was when asked if I had anything which might fit the theme -Wald. I had in mind, or rather I have at the forefront of my mind a series entitled 'can't see the marks for the method', but this proved not to be, for various reasons the answer needed. But this project has cast a long shadow and in its wake was the below piece from a few years back which proved to suit the vision of others.


daybyday. 2001. (silver gelatin baryta print 50,5x60,5cm)

Crowded house

It's not often that I would check the weather forecast for when there is an exhibition opening that is indoors, in a gallery. But a week thursday, at 19:00Uhr, 24th November is such an opening. I think it's fair to say I am but one of many contributing work to a group show at the galerie Pavlov's Dog, Bergstr. 19, Berlin under the theme -WALD-. For those who manage to get through the door that evening it should be a truly image filled experience and worth risking colder temperatures or god forbid rain.

Giving Notice

I had visitors today, they came to write a small article about my home with it's personal touches, furniture which has suffered my hand in their making and glance over the general chaos. They came, they went and inbetween they photographed and wrote notes. Afterwards, as I settled down to tackle the tasks of the day and glanced around, I wondered what people would read into the lines and colours, piles and paraphernalia which litter my life. Could you read between the lines, make associations and hear the voice of me in the silent voids. I can't answer that, but to see a void is to have a broader view, above and beyond the void itself. In a way to see this is to see the core principle beyond style or taste, it is to see the humanity in the evidence of the actions. Sometimes you don't need the details, sometimes it's just enough to see the trails and not the very action itself to embrace the energy, life and consequences.

I think this is partly why I loved the lamp-posts I found in Montreal with only the staples remaining from the many many notices detailing the passions of a city.

Anything but blue

If I was not tied, this morning, to this desk I would have run outside first thing and soaked up the myth and moisture of the fog that has dissolved the world around me. It's monocrome rendering both cruel and kind, brings a welcomed relief from the precise nature of modern life. I embrace the 'smudge' and the encased sense of dirt held in these micro droplets, still and dense. The joy of what is beyond our control.


The Kite flyers #1(phase.1) 2011.

Beyond blue, grey.

I have lived for nearly all my life in Europe, with a few years early on in Canada so know nothing different but have a sense of relief when the first signs of the yearly calender change and brings something new with the coming season. The new air bites my wind pipe and reminds me that I am as much my surroundings, the observed as I am the observer.

Good Night, Good Morning, Good Night

It is the wee hours of a night and as I walk backwards into the new day I reflect on the act of catching my reflection and wonder if I ever see myself as now or only in the past.

Who's afraid of the dark

Whilst on this trip to Montréal the evenings offered the usual mix of character free hotel rooms, the prospect of drinking alone and TV programming not worthy of the technology that brings it to our homes and hotel rooms. Instead I wondered the streets and soon found myself drawn to pools of blackness topped with a blinding single lamp or two. These were the many empty parking lots that pepper the city of Montréal as I think they do most north American cities. Visually they initially attracted me, with their open space punctunated by these small isolated make shift huts. But it was only when I began photographing them that I was captivated by my fear of the process within the space. My sense of being exposed, seemed fascinating and reflective of a place which it's sole purpose is to act as a place of refuge and safety. But the pools of light from the crudely assembled lamps servered more to high light the ever present dark corners.


Montréal Parking Lot. Nr.3.  2011.