We were in Bristol over the recent bank holiday weekend, and as we had reason to be down on the waterfront I thought it would be a good opportunity to drop into the Arnolfini Gallery to see Garry Fabian Miller's exhibition Adore.
In my early post-student days in the late 1970s and early 1980s I was living in Bristol, and back then the Arnolfini housed an "art" cinema, which was where I encountered the films of Werner Herzog, Andrei Tarkovsky, Peter Greenaway, Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, et al., all then in their inventive prime. It was an amazing time for cinema, and it seemed as if there was something new and exciting to see every week. "Exciting", of course, in the intellectual sense; exchanges of gunfire, car chases and crazy special effects were completely absent, and the cinematic mood was mainly one of an alienated languor. The ability not to scream with boredom when the camera lingered too often and rather longer than necessary on a face or scene or telling detail or on nothing in particular was the price of the ticket of entry. The cinema would gradually empty during a showing of, say, Mirror until, when the lights finally went up, you knew you had found your tribe.
That mood was very characteristic of the 1970s – perhaps less so of the more frenetic "post punk" and Thatcher-defined 1980s – or at least of that decade as experienced by a certain, mainly university-educated, art-oriented demographic. But, more important, those were the last years of a post-war world that was already passing into history, a time before personal computers, mobile phones, and the internet had begun to accelerate the pace of everything, and an extended, open-minded length of attention could still be presumed upon by artists of all kinds, from "prog" rock musicians to experimental film-makers.
An album like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon or Wim Wenders' film Kings of the Road probably best encapsulate that end-of-an-era feeling for me. It was as if artists sensed we were poised at the top of the long slow climb up some societal fairground ride, and were urging us to relish the height, the view, and the stillness in the last moments before the imminent rush of descent. It is very hard, now, to recall or even describe a world in which, for example, "snail mail" or word of mouth were the only viable methods of communication between geographically-separated friends; the frequent changes of address of one's youthful years would break what had seemed strong links and result in mutual obliviousness ever after. The fact is that I have lost touch with more people I once regarded as friends than I can remember – even their names have started to vanish – although I'm pleased to say I have kept (and in a few cases regained) the very best of them.
I can't now remember whether I saw Garry Fabian Miller's first exhibition at the Arnolfini in 1979, although I'm sure I must have done. What is certain is that I was very impressed by his show The Gatherer at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton in 1991, and – in my usual completist fashion that has filled our house with unnecessary but beautiful books – decided to buy anything he might publish. That earliest work – a sequence of 40 views across the Severn Estuary made from the roof of his house in Clevedon on the Bristol Channel – was first exhibited at the Arnolfini, but it was shown again in 1997 at the Hue-Williams Gallery, this time accompanied by a large and beautifully-produced catalogue on heavy paper with the images printed separately and tipped-in, with the title The Sea Horizon. But, despite every effort over many years, I could never find a copy for sale, which was strange. So, in the end, I actually wrote to Fabian Miller to ask whether he might still have any copies. It turned out that he did: just a very few. But his reply included this information:
750 copies were printed in 1997 of which probably 150 were sold. Of the remaining 600, most were destroyed in the MOMART warehouse fire. I have a very small number that remain. People occasionally tell me that copies sell for in excess of £2000 on rare book dealers websites. I last sold a copy in November for £1000.Ouch! But patience is often rewarded, and the thing about very scarce books is that, because they do not figure on sites like AbeBooks, most run-of-the-mill booksellers have no idea quite how scarce they are or how to value them, and therefore pick what seems like a suitable price out of the air. So, eventually, and after a very long wait, this worked to my advantage and, incredibly, I now have two copies of The Sea Horizon – like buses, you wait for ages, etc. – both bought for very modest prices, and now probably the most valuable books I own by some margin.
If Garry Fabian Miller is a new name to you and I have piqued your interest, you could do worse than buy a copy of the Adore exhibition catalogue, which is small (14.5 x 16.5 cm), chunky (256 pages), nicely cloth-bound (in a choice of three colours), packed with illustrations and text, and reasonably priced. It's an attractive little volume giving a very full summary of his career to date. His central fascination has been with the properties of light, and camera-less darkroom photography, but, in essence, I'd say his work has been an ongoing exploration of that very 1970s idea that repetition, patterned regularity (including the dreaded grid), and the use of simple natural and geometric forms have an intrinsic but unspecific "spirituality", one of those ill-defined hippyish terms which raised the hackles of the urban nihilists of the "punk" generation.
I am ambivalent myself about certain aspects of such art, in particular the privileged lifestyle and off-the-peg philosophy that too often seem to underpin much self-declared "spiritual" art. The retreat into spacious artisanal rural seclusion is not an option for most of us, and a certain pang of envy shading into scorn is unavoidable. I confess I am all too easily reminded of my own encounters in the 1970s and since with those folk sometimes referred to as "trustafarians", the well-heeled, financially-secure experimenters with alternative lifestyles, who nonetheless always seemed to me merely to be redefining the customs and shibboleths of aestheticised upper-middle-class life, passed down from Bloomsbury via Hampstead. Such people are simply not my tribe, and I have never felt more like a barbarian outsider than in their tastefully exclusive company.
Talking of exhibitions, I also dropped by the Royal West of England Academy to admire the red dot stuck beside my picture on show there. Which means, yes, it has sold, which is very gratifying. As I have often said, the sincerest form of flattery is not imitation, but cash purchase. The picture in question is "Pickaxe Cross, 23rd December 2021", taken with my iPhone on a solitary walk along a lane leading towards Golden Cap on the Dorset coast. It was an afternoon shortly before Christmas that was so unpromisingly dull and wet I didn't even bother to take a camera with me; but when the clouds suddenly lifted the late afternoon sunlight streamed through, illuminating the veil of mist over Golden Cap in an unforgettable moment.
It is the framed version that has sold: unframed prints were on offer for £175 in an edition of 50 – that price took into account the gallery commission, intended to leave me with about £100 – but there were no takers. So if anyone reading this would like a print, I'll happily sell you one for £75 plus P&P: email me (my address is in the "profile" at top right).
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