Other interviews

“I’m Exploring Life”: 50 Years of Tom Wood’s Photos of Britain

Kenn Taylor

By Kenn Taylor

Lime Street, Lives Passing By. Photo: Tom Wood

Photie Man: 50 Years of Tom Wood at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery is the most comprehensive exhibition to date of the work of Wood, who is one of Britain’s most important image-makers. “It was something I wanted to do for the city,” Wood says. “The work was made here and I’ve had big shows all over the world; Moscow, France, China even, but not Liverpool.”

Wood’s images have until recently been more embraced by publishers and gallerists internationally. In the UK, he has sometimes been pigeonholed as a “documentarian of working-class Liverpool” rather than as a visual artist who creates striking, moving images that make people stop in their tracks, one of the issues being perhaps a middle-class dominated art sector struggling to grasp that working-class people could make and be the subject of great art without it needing to be social comment.

Boy with Fish, Secombe Docks 1980. Photo: Tom Wood.

“That lack of interest in Britain for a long time, it’s definitely partly a class thing. How I present myself but also the way photography is reviewed in a class way. ‘Not proper art’ and so on,” he says. For Wood, the contest between form and content was something interesting: “I thought a lot of stuff at art school, especially the conceptual stuff, was not real enough. It was like a game,” he says. “When I went out on the streets at the weekend, what I saw was more real and more interesting, but not in a documentary sense. I’m exploring my medium for sure, I’m an artist, but I’m exploring life as well.”

This expansive show features over 500 pictures, surveying his whole career, from images of his native Ireland and Leicester where he studied, to his current home in Wales and found photographs Wood collected as a young man. The largest element though are his photographs of Merseyside, where he lived for over two decades. One of Wood’s aims for the exhibition is to reconnect with some of the people he captured over the years and photograph them again. “That’s half the reason I have done the show,” he says. “To make that connection. You can leave details if you know people in the show.”

Lads at Railing, Scotland Road, 1987. Photo: Tom Wood.

The exhibition’s title comes from the nickname Wood was given in Merseyside as he became so familiar photographing the same communities repeatedly and building a reciprocal relationship with them. “I couldn’t do it otherwise,” he says. This extended even to taking wedding pictures for some of his subjects. Part of the power of his images perhaps comes from this deep familiarity. “Richard Feynman said he would not understand the real physics of a system until he had painstakingly isolated and calculated all the forces,” Wood says. “This is what I would tell myself as I was photographing the same subject year after year – whether it be women at the market, men at the football.”

Image from Photie Man: 50 Years of Tom Wood, Walker Art Gallery. Photo: Robin Clewley

Has looking back on his vast archive for this show changed his views on it? “Yeah, that’s the thing about photography. It’s not fixed, and life is not fixed. Things change, how it’s read changes,” he says. Not least a culture sector that now values photography, and this kind of subject matter, more. In the 90s, Wood managed to get an Arts Council grant after receiving a letter of support from Lee Friedlander. “It said ‘wonderful pictures. As good a set of pictures you see every five or ten years,’” only for Wood to then struggle to find anywhere to show the work. Does he feel vindicated by the growing interest from all quarters? He has three books due out this year alone. “A little bit,” he says. “Having Friedlander on board kept me going for a few years. A lot of people have supported the work over the years, not least the people in the pictures.”

Image from Photie Man: 50 Years of Tom Wood, Walker Art Gallery. Photo: Robin Clewley

“There’s something about the work that people from all over the globe connect to,” Wood says. “It’s very strange. I’m not impressive as a person. I think the work itself, or maybe Liverpool, maybe the people, I don’t know. But it does connect with people.” 

Image from Photie Man: 50 Years of Tom Wood, Walker Art Gallery. Photo: Robin Clewley

This piece was published by AnOther magazine in June 2023.

Liverpool Biennial 2012 – Sally Tallant interview

Kenn Taylor

  

By Kenn Taylor

In September, the seventh Liverpool Biennial, the UK’s largest and most visited visual arts festival, takes place in a city and a global environment very different from its first edition in 1999. With former director Lewis Biggs moving on, the Biennial has just appointed a new Artistic Director and CEO, Sally Tallant, formerly Head of Programmes at London’s Serpentine Gallery.

Despite having arrived a few just months ago, at a festival which began its planning as far back as 2010, Tallant has already made her influence felt: “Many of the artists had already been selected, but nothing was confirmed when I arrived. I’ve mainly been focusing on shaping the curatorial coherence of the Biennial across our programme partners.”

This year’s Biennial theme, ‘hospitality’, which unites all of the disparate artists, works and exhibitions, was already in place when she took over. However Tallant has focused this down further to a title – ‘the unexpected guest.’ “The notion of a guest is interesting,” she says. “We’re guests in the city, the artists are our guests. The art itself is a guest. The notions of hospitality; how long does hospitality last? How long are you willing to offer that? It’s very interesting also with the way in which Liverpool is transforming itself into a tourism and leisure orientated economy.”

When the Biennial began, Liverpool was yet to undergo its vast redevelopment or win its European Capital of Culture title, a status aided in part by the Biennial itself. This is something which has placed both the festival and the city at the centre of debates around arts-led regeneration. Tallant sees this as the Liverpool Biennial’s key point of difference from all the other art festivals in the world: “Liverpool has an amazing history of arts-led regeneration, going back a very long way. I think it’s absolutely crucial to involve artists, writers and philosophers, poets in thinking about how a city reinvents and builds itself. In particular in Liverpool, a post-industrial city, where it’s possible to ask questions around the value of art and its role in urban contexts.”

The Biennial takes over virtually all of Liverpool’s cultural venues, along with numerous public realm interventions and temporary sites across the city. In the past, because of this vastness, the festival has been criticised for lacking coherence. This is something Tallant has been focusing on since her tenure began: “I’ve been working closely with my colleagues to ensure that when people come to Liverpool, they’ll experience something that feels very fluid, integrated and coherent. I’m thinking about the Biennial as a period of time. So it lasts ten weeks, but has eleven weekends. We’ve developed themes programmed with content for each weekend, so each one will be a mini festival in itself.”

Many of the artworks in this year’s festival will be kept under wraps till nearer the event, but one project Tallant can revel continues Liverpool Biennial‘s tradition of interventions into the public realm, literally bringing contemporary art out into the streets: “We’re working with an Israeli artist called Oded Hirsch, who is making a very large-scale intervention into Liverpool 1. It is a sculptural work that will appear to burst through the very fabric of the shopping district and it will be asking a question around ‘what are those places?’ and what is it that lies beneath. I think it will be a very uncanny interruption into the everyday.”

Despite the scale and scope of the Liverpool Biennial, the festival has still often lacked critical attention or recognition and this is also something Tallant wants to address. “If you look at the artists that we’ve had in the Biennial,” she says, “it’s incredible really. Some the most important contemporary artists of our time and there’s been a few hundred of them. What I think is we haven’t always done is communicated that. So I am building on the existing partnerships the Biennial has, but also bringing in stronger, I hope, ones that I have built up by working in London for the last 15 years.”

One of her key aims is to highlight Liverpool as the ‘UK’s Biennial’ and emphases its international role: “By positioning us as the UK’s Biennial, I think we’ll be able to work more productively in terms of collaboration with other partners in the UK, as well as thinking about strong research partnerships internationally. Building on the idea of research with other cities in the world facing similar issues to Liverpool in terms of post-industry and the necessity for rethinking around urbanism and reinvention.”

Liverpool Biennial

15th September – 25th November 2012

This piece appeared in f22 magazine in June 2012.

Kevin Casey in conversation with Kenn Taylor

Kenn Taylor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following was an interview conducted with photographer Kevin Casey about his project Closing Time, for which he photographed the many abandoned pubs across Liverpool. An abridged version of it appeared in the book of Closing Time, alongside an essay on the subject by myself which you can read here.

KT: Tell me, how did this project began and, why pubs?

KC: Basically, it started two years ago on my journeys into town. I live in Waterloo/Crosby, and I take the train to town for my job as a Gallery Assistant in Liverpool. During that journey you stop at Seaforth, Bootle, Bankhall, Sandhills, and at nearly every stop you’d see a pub that was in disarray, or about to close down. I just thought, well, with my background being photography, I decided to photograph them. There’s also a link to my family. We’ve had quite a few pubs over a twenty-five/thirty year period, so I feel like I’ve got a bit of an intrinsic link to them, so maybe that’s why my awareness has been heightened.

KT: How did you go about finding the pubs?

KC: Initially it was ones that I saw on my journeys to work, or going to the football. I also asked my friends, family members who used to run pubs, if they knew of any pubs that had closed. A lot of the time when I was photographing, on the way to the location I’d find two or three pubs I’d never even heard of on the way.

KT: When you were shooting, were you consciously trying to portray anything?

KC: It’s impossible to be impartial when you’re documenting or photographing anything, but I thought when I was taking the images that if I could get them as uniform as possible, then hopefully you can see both the comparisons and the contrasts of each building. Basically my idea was to be as impartial as possible, and to show both the harsh reality, with slight sympathy, but not overly romanticise the images.

KT: When taking these pictures, did you have a desire to preserve something, to capture it before it went?

KC: I think one of the main things photography is used for is capturing the here and now, that is photography’s strength, and I’d like people to appreciate them now. But I also think that they might have greater emphasis in ten, twenty, thirty years time, when we look back on a lot of these buildings, when I think it’s a given that the majority of them will not be standing any more, or at least will not be a pub.

KT: Tell me about your experience of shooting the images. Did it generate a lot of interest amongst passers by?

KC: Yes, there was a lot of interest, and a lot of suspicion as well. Some people are more suspicious if you’re holding a camera than they are if you’re holding a baseball bat. Most people were great though. They’d stop and chat to you and take an interest, and even suggest or point out other places I could go to. A lot of communities, like say Kensington, a few in Bootle, a few of the ones near to town and Anfield, people were quite interested and wanted to get involved and tell you places where to go, and they’d always start talking about their childhood, and the places they used to go out.

KT: What were your own feelings then, whilst shooting the project, having seen all these pubs, going to these communities?

KC: You go through different stages. I think at first you feel, it’s such a sad and alarming thing to see, even before I started to photograph, witnessing and picking up on the fact that these places are closing down. Then you go through the sort of, selfish stage of ‘That’s a good idea for a project. It’s quite unique and it might get me some attention.’ And then you feel a little bit guilty for that, because your project is the fact that these things are in decline. Something draws a lot of photographers to that, there’s a lot of appeal in things that are declining, there’s a beauty, a sort of fallen grace if you like. So you do feel a bit of guilt sometimes that, even though you’re getting a great project out of it and doing good work, you are doing that good work through the misfortune of something else. But I suppose your role as a photographer is to document what you see, whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing happening in front of the camera. But I also had quite a lot of empathy towards it, because my family have been involved in pubs from a long time and I used to spend a lot of time from an early age in pubs that my cousin and my auntie and my nan used to run,. If you can get success out of a project, that’s what you want as an artist or a photographer, but I’m doing it in an honest way I’d say.

KT: Tell me what photographers have influenced you, either in general or for this particular project?

KC: I’m actually a big fan of the modern trend of ‘constructed reality’. Like your Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson, and Hannah Starkey as well, because I come from a bit of a fine art background as well as the photography, it’s almost like creating something in front of the camera. But I also love the documentary people, like you’re Walker Evans, you’re Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï. Then there was people like William Eggleston whose colour work was so raw and new at the time. Landscape wise, I love the Becher school; Edward Burtynsky, Andreas Gursky, the grand landscapes, high statements. There might not be a lot going on in the image but the power and size of the image forces you to look at it. Especially in colour, that’s definitely been an influence on me deciding not to shoot in black and white, because with people like Burtynsky and Gursky I think you can see the fading and deterioration of buildings and landscapes a little bit more than you can do with the Becher’s work in monotone black and white. You can see little details of these buildings, like the brickwork that is starting to erode, or the pub sign which has got faded paint dropping off, that was one of the reasons I decided to shoot in colour. It is the influence of them, but also just to retain the detail for future reference.

KT: Was there a reason you decided to shoot them in portrait format?

KC: I was shooting the images in a portrait format because you’re in a very, very tight space with some them, and I didn’t want to include too much background. If you can pick up a bit of the surrounding background, then that obviously adds to it, but I wanted the focus to be on the pub. I thought that the portrait format is a lot more direct in the way it is cropped. I also think it gives the pub a bit more personality, almost like people in a way. They’re all very similar but they’ve also got their own characters and that, which you can relate to portraiture.

KT: You seem to have purposefully shot the buildings largely in isolation. There are no people in the shots and hardly any cars.

KC: I think it was the South African photographer David Goldblatt who purposely used to include cars and people in some of his landscapes because in ten, twenty years time you can see the difference in fashions, or style of the motor car, in shot. So with me, I’ve been battling whether to include cars or people in the scenery. I’ve chosen not to have any people. In a few of the shots there are cars, but ultimately I didn’t want to detract too much from the actual buildings.

KT: So were you trying to get the buildings to speak for themselves?

KC: Yes…and no. That doesn’t really answer your question but…I wanted them to speak for themselves in the sense that, they didn’t need any extra help from me to show either the decay, or the loss, in some cases, of great architecture. I mean some of them are run down shacks that are not very beautiful at all, and some of them are actually beautiful buildings that have been left to ruin, but still have that element of beauty. So they do speak for themselves in that case, but if I said that phrase I think it would sound a bit cheesy. If someone wanted to describe it in that way though, I’ve got no problem with that.

KT: How do you think this work fits in with other photographic representations of Merseyside?

KC: I suppose the most well-known, well the ones that spring to mind, linked to Merseyside, are Martin Parr’s The Last Resort, and any given Tom Wood book. Bus Odyssey I suppose is the one he’s known for. I can understand that people get frustrated the only thing that seems to be popular linked to Merseyside photographic wise are decline, or a working-class way of life. I think there are a lot of other things that the city offers and a lot of positive things that are happening in Liverpool at the moment, I’m more pro-Scouse than anyone, but I think it would be naive to ignore the things that are going on, and that are in decline just to put a positive spin on things. Of course, pub closures are a national thing, but my experience was Liverpool, I’m from Liverpool, I know Liverpool. I feel that, because I’ve got a connection to the area, and even to some of the pubs, I’m not just showing decline in Merseyside of the sake of it, to add to the stereotype.

KT: What do you think it is about Liverpool that seems to either suit the documentary mode, or appeal to documentary photographers? I’m thinking especially of photographers from outside the city that have come to shoot it, some of the most famous in the world; Henri Cartier-Bresson, Candida Höfer, Phillip Jones-Griffiths, Rineke Dijkstra.

KC: From what I can guess, for people coming from outside of the city, when they come to Liverpool, it’s almost like a separate state, even though it’s reflecting what’s happening in a lot of the rest of the country. I think a lot of Scousers see themselves as slightly different. Whether it’s because England is an island in itself, and on the edge of that island you have Liverpool, so close to Wales, Ireland. It’s such a melting pot of people and it’s gone through so many different changes; from slavery, trade, to the industrial revolution to the decline of industry. Right now we’re going through a period were leisure and tourism is the new industry, and there’s quite a lot of documentation of that. I think it appeals to people because it is such a powerhouse of a city, such a melting pot that’s gone through so many transitions, up and down like a rollercoaster ride. As a photographer, you’d be foolish not to want to document it.

Sifting the Wreckage – Niall Griffiths

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Liverpool, often noted as a city of poets, songwriters and playwrights, has produced surprisingly few novelists. One man too go against the grain of this is Niall Griffiths. His intense and often brutally dark novels, punctuated with an absurdist sense of humour, tell the story of those existing, often forgotten, on the edge of society. They’re written mostly in dialect, and are set against the mixed background of the Welsh landscape and Liverpool cityscape – in all their glory and all their horror. Despite having written five novels, selling thousands of books and having had his work translated into five languages, he has received little recognition in the city he was born – perhaps because of a mixture of the controversial subject matter of his books and the fact that he now calls Aberystwyth his main home. He returns to the city often, however, and imminently is back in Liverpool for a significant period, having been commissioned to write a non-fiction book about the ‘real Liverpool’.

I met Niall in Aberystwth for a chat and a few drinks in the pubs of the seaside town.

Griffiths was born in Liverpool’s Toxteth district, later moving to a new council estate in Netherly on the outskirts of the city. He began writing “basically since I had the motor function to pick up a pen”. He says he was influenced early on by the oral tradition passed down from his Welsh speaking grandparents: “There were not many books in the house but it was full of stories.” In a household lacking literature his early creations were often of a strange fantasy nature involving, amongst other things, giant crabs. “Where it came from I have no idea, it’s just always been there and it needs to come out, if I don’t write for a day I feel like an absolute wretch, it’s almost like kind of having to justify my existence.” An early, and profound, influence was Welsh writer Ron Berry: “I think when I started to read books they gave me a way of dealing with a terribly confusing world. When you read, say, for an hour, you’re away from the world -but you’re also very much here, especially when you are reading very worthwhile literature because it should be telling you about the world outside your window.”

At the age of twelve his family emigrated to Australia, one of the ‘£10 Poms’ that left the UK in their thousands; but due to the homesickness of his mum they returned 3 years later. With little money – having had to pay a full return fare – they were helped to find a house to rent by a relative in West Kirkby, Wirral, where Niall attended the local Grammar School. Often singled out and treated differently by some teachers because of his Liverpool background. He left school at 15 and went through a series of menial jobs – including cleaning muck spreaders. Recalling: “I did a bit of work in any kind of job and all that taught me was I didn’t’t want to do any kind of proper job, that’s one of the reasons I returned to study” He studied for A-Levels in Birkenhead, Later moving back to Liverpool, living in Hope Street in the city centre and various other spots. “I was just bumming around the city till I was twenty-two and left to study, I’ve traveled around Britain ever since, I’ve always come back though and it always feels like home like.”

He finally settled in Aberystwyth, returning to his Welsh roots. He first fell in love with the Wales when as a teenager he was sent to Snowdonia on an outward bound course by a judge after a series of petty crimes. This much maligned policy actually seems to have had the desired effect on Niall: “It showed me how silly I had been and it gave me a creative outlet for my energies.” And it instilled a love in him which remains to this day: “I love climbing – well, walking up. On top of a mountain is such an amazing place to be; it’s almost like being close to God in a way, especially if you are on your own. Incredible. That said it’s fucking brutal as well, nature, birds of prey, full of death. Living in the country isn’t very nice. You leave your house and walk down to the shops and it’s all very pretty looking around but you look down and there is an animal torn apart, I wanted to capture that side of nature in my books too.”

He originally moved to Aberystwyth to study for a Phd. Having to work as a building labourer to support himself, he became annoyed at wealthier students entirely supported by their families – yet less interested than he was – and Griffiths drifted away from his course into a world of week-long parties and binges on drink and drugs. It was then he began to write what would become his first novel, Grits. Published in 2000, it was a book about the flotsam and jetsam of the UK washing up at the end of the railway line in Aberystwyth, trying to escape their problems but only taking them with them. It was well received both critically and commercially: “I got all kinds of people at my readings from people in cravats to people with facial tattoos”.

His next book, the provocatively-titled Sheepshagger, dealt with its disturbed Welsh anti-hero Ianto’s struggle to deal with his identity after his family home is bought by incomers-with murderous consequences. Perhaps his most ‘Welsh’ book, this one was ironically written – for the most part – whilst he stayed in his girlfriend’s flat on the edge of Toxteth. His last three books have either been set in Liverpool or covered characters that, like Niall and many others, have made the journey between the city and Wales. Kelly + Victor is an intense tale of the extremes of love and life in Liverpool at the turn of the millennium, whilst Stump and his latest Wreckage dealt with a wide cast of characters living and dying at the lower end of society’s ladder in both the city and the countryside. .. Griffiths is currently working on two non-fiction books. One of these deals with the ‘£10 Poms’ system of Aussie immigration that he and his family went through, and the other – about ‘the real Liverpool’ – is published by an independent Welsh press for whom he wrote of ‘the real Aberystwyth’. Because of this he is planning to move back to the city for a period of time this year to get to know the city once more and look at the massive changes that are currently taking place. He says: “Writing a book about the real Aberystwyth was one thing – it’s a town of 20,000 people – but with Liverpool where the fuck do you start?”

There are many links between Liverpool and Wales, an issue examined extensively in his novel, Wreckage. “I’ve started to explore those connections. Liverpool has always been called ‘the capital of North Wales’. For a lot of people there Cardiff is a foreign city, it was Liverpool that was their city”. In the light of the Capital Of Culture win, Liverpool bid to host some of the events of the national Eisteddfod, being one of the few places the festival has taken place in outside of Wales in the past. But this was met with fierce opposition by some. “I think that is ignoring the Welsh heritage in the city and also the Welsh influence on the way the city is today. You did have one of what they call the arch druids coming on the local news going ‘No it’s a Saesneg city’ which to me is just fucking bigoted.”

And the Capital of Culture win? “Well, it’s a double-edged sword isn’t it? It will bring money into the city but only if it will make money back for those who invest.” He recalls a conversation with the Glaswegian writer James Kelman about that city’s win of 1990: “He said it brought in a load of money but since then the social problems in the city have only got worse because the so-called scummy people got pushed out to the estates which never got cleaned up.” He continues, “Culture of course is not just art galleries and restaurants, it’s also graffiti and terrace chants and a lot of people forget the grassroots bands, independent publishing presses and everything. They want to focus on culture that is acceptable and saleable, the kind of stuff they talk about on the fucking Late Review”. But he doesn’t think it’s all bad: “I don’t think it will make this kind of hidden culture die down though. It should become stronger to react against it. You just want this sort of stuff to be recognised sometimes you know, but we would be foolish to expect anything more from this sort of scheme.”

Niall has been noted and praised for writing against the perceived wisdom that a pared down, economical writing style is best. He instead mixes the dialogue of different dialects with classical techniques and often highly-charged, poetic prose. “In terms of dialect, and this is something that I have got from the Welsh, is that their politics and identity is all bound up in their voice, in the Welsh language and accent. So I have kinda taken that and looked at all the politics bound up in language and how you speak. In terms of using classical devices I want to cite the stories of local, often poor people, voices that are often not heard. I wanted to give it an epic quality, and one way of doing that is to look back at epic writing.”

I ask if by portraying in his novels life at the lower end of society, he is trying to highlight social problems. “Yeah definitely – both in Liverpool and here as well. For a small town it has a big drink problem, drug problem, homeless problem. It’s often forgotten that these kind of problems don’t just exist in cities. Aberystwyth has all the problems of a city, but also the different the different areas and cultures that make cities interesting places to live.”

His characters often seem to be searching, desiring and fighting for something that they can never quite grasp. Why is that? “I think we live in extreme times, certainly extreme psychological times. People are absolutely aching for things which are not there, for some kind of spiritual fulfilment. If society does not offer any outlet for that, then it will come out in violence, it will come out in any form of extreme experience. So that’s partly it, but I suppose in another more powerful way people are just yearning for some sort of recognition.” I ask him if this is why he, like his characters, has spent so much time travelling: “If you have kind of artistic ideas that is often linked with dissatisfaction and you can think that it is because of where you are that you are dissatisfied and want to move out though that is often misguided. When you reach it it’s never there of course but it’s the journey that counts, that’s how you find yourself.”

In addition to the ‘real Liverpool’ and ‘£10 Poms’ books Niall is working on a series of short stories, a novella and is planning his next novel. A busy man, he must have favorite moments in his work he’s proud of regardless? “Grits is very personal so in some way that’s my favourite; it terms of pure structure, Kelly + Victor. I like Stump too, and Wreckage – that its so barley controlled” He laughs. “That’s all my fuckin’ books isn’t it?” “In terms of favourites I suppose I hope I’m never happy, never write a master piece and keep writing. If I did I think I would probably wither away and die.”

By Kenn Taylor

Daniel Ilabaca

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Daniel Ilabaca

18, Parkour Traceur, Merseyside.

“I’ve been involved in Parkour from an early age, since before I had a name for it. I’ve always been into doing extreme things like jumping about and climbing trees though I thought I was alone in what I did. Then I saw a film which involved the martial art Capoeira, I started doing that and I did really well at it.

Then about five years ago I saw a television programme called Ripley’s Believe It Or Not which had a crew doing what was essentially Parkour and I became aware of it as an actual discipline – essentially a way of passing obstacles in the quickest and most direct manner possible. I began to train myself and it’s become a way of life and kept me from basically hanging around on corner smoking and drinking.

I worked with my brother-in-law as a roof tiler for year and a half, but I always knew I didn’t want a normal job and I spent all my spare time training and making videos of my action and putting them on the web.

The Parkour resource group WorldwideJAM saw my videos and asked me if I wanted to join there team, which is great as they’ve helped me show off my skills to a wider audience and allowed me to help others to become involved in Parkour. Now my job is travelling the world doing my thing. A typical day involves lots of training, getting as much footage done as possible and editing it together.

My first commercial work was appearing in he first ever Parkour TV commercial for the mobile phone company Rogers Wireless in Canada which was directed by Mike Christie who did the ‘Jump London’ film. I’ve since done everything from appear on Top Gear racing a Peugeot 207 to the Liver building in Liverpool, perform at the Bahrain Grand Prix and visit Lisses in France where Parkour originated.

I want to get more involved in film and television. Jackie Chan is a big influence on me and eventually I’d like to make my own films and be an action co-ordinator like he does. I’m currently auditioning to appear as a stunt man in the film Prince of Persia with Angelina Jolie – which is something I’ve wanted to do for years – and I’m hoping to go to Mexico in January to work on a film there. I’ve got a lot more auditions coming up and so I’m moving to London soon as that’s where most of my work is.

The best thing about being a full-time Parkour Traceur is being able to live off doing what I really want to do and the freedom that gives you.

I’d like to encourage anyone who’s interested in taking Parkour up to do it. You just have to start small and build up your mental and physical strength; it’s not something that can be taught.”

Interviewed by Kenn Taylor.

Laurence Wilson

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Laurence Wilson is a new, up-and-coming Liverpool playwright. His first full work – ‘Urban Legend’ – was recently staged at the Everyman as part of its ‘Life Begins’ season of new locally-based talent. I talked to him about his life, work, and Liverpool.

Laurence first put pen to paper at the age of four and began writing short stories, poems and songs. Despite impressing his teachers, it took him a long time to gain enough belief in his writing ability. “I always wanted to be a writer but didn’t feel I’d be able to do it till I was in my forties or fifties”.

Wilson decided that acting was his best route into theatre, believing that “Acting requires only you being cast in a role and learning your lines whereas with writing you have to put a lot more of yourself in to it”. He signed up for a two year YTS acting course, and despite the bad publicity the schemes attracted, Laurence considered it as good as you could get in a university or drama school. He spent the next few years working in theatre and television, most famously as a copper in Brookside.

When the acting work dried-up, he returned to writing, and planned a showcase with his partner. After disagreeing with her choice of play, he offered to write something instead. The play he started to write became the first part of the ‘Surf’s Up’ trilogy of short plays that went on to win a Manchester Evening News award for theatre. One audience member was Jimmy McGovern who declared it the best work he had seen in ten years. Following that endorsement, the Everyman’s Literary Department soon contacted Wilson to join the theatre’s attachment scheme. It was here that he began working on Urban Legend.

Wilson’s gritty, darkly humorous writing is seemingly a world away from his earliest creative influences – horror and fantasy writers such as HG Wells, Stephen King, and Frank Herbert. When he was a child, Wilson would invent dungeons and dragons style fantasy games for him and his friends to play. However, his first love is music, which he says “has been a greater influence in my life than any writer”, hence the Beach Boys soundtrack to Surf’s Up and the Lennon/McCartney one for Urban Legend. Wilson is a songwriter himself and has one of his own songs performed in Urban Legend, which he says “has finally satisfied the frustrated rock star in me”. Nevertheless, he cites the main influence on his writing as his surroundings, like where he grew up in Crosby and Bootle, and the voices of the other people around him. “Once I’ve got the voice of a character in my head the writing just runs away”.

The tragedy that Wilson has experienced in his own life and seen in the life of others cuts through his writing. In particular, the loss of his daughter, brother and sister influenced the way his characters deal with their own grief in Urban Legend. As Laurence freely admits, “I’ve always been drawn to the darker side of life”. In Legend he examined the way people use humour to hide from their inner demons, and the emotional journeys people go on to come to terms with problems. One of the characters in Urban Legend is Wayne, who tries to escape from his grief by losing himself in drugs, something Wilson himself experienced. Far from enhancing his creativity, he believes this held him back, and has since found writing to be a much more positive way of dealing with his problem. “In the play a lot of things from my life, all the characters have elements of me in them”.

Another reason for Wilson’s return to writing was a desire to be part of Liverpool’s current creative resurgence. “Liverpool is now finally breaking with the legacy of the 1960s. There was always the talent here but it was lost, hidden, the theatres went dark and there was no-one putting plays on”.

Comparing the city to New York, Wilson describes his home city as a “mishmash of clashing cultures on the street”, that fosters a “creative energy”. He sees the Capital of Culture prize as a positive thing, which will give “food” for new talent in the city, whether in theatre, writing, music or art. In particular he praises the Everyman’s Gemma Bodintez and Deborah Aydon, the theatre’s Artistic and Executive Directors, for biting the bullet and “taking an incredible risk” in staging the new writing so missed at the Everyman.

Wilson hopes Urban Legend will have a life beyond this run at the Everyman, with talk of it going on tour. He is already working on his next play and looking for TV writing work “to pay the bills”, but he believes that he is a playwright at heart and that he has finally found his creative voice.

By Kenn Taylor

Jamie Reid

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Jamie Reid’s artwork visually defined an era, frightened a government and changed the face of design – 30 years on he is just as influential and controversial.

Few people have ever faced imprisonment in the name of graphic design. Jamie Reid is a notable exception. Creator of all the artwork for the Sex Pistols, Reid’s work with them visually defined an era by trashing sacred cows and reviling in DIY invention. Leaving a legacy on art and design remains today in everything from trainer adverts to TV shows.

But beyond that short period in his creative life, Jamie has produced a varied body of work that has embraced everything from radical newsletters to interior design, though he has not mellowed with age. Reid still produces artwork for protests about everything from legalise Cannabis to No on Clause 28 and his recent participation in a major anti-Iraq war art exhibition in London’s Aquarium gallery shows he is as anti-establishment as ever. But over the years other sides of his work and personality have become more visible.

His latest project is a joint exhibition with his wife Maria of photographs they’ve taken on their travels in the Welsh and Scottish countryside. “This is a beautiful country we live in,” he says to me in the café were the show is to be held, “and we’re doing our best to fuck it up.”

The café in question is the Egg, a vegan establishment on a side street in Liverpool, the city Reid has called home for nearly 25 years, though perhaps not for much longer: “I think I might move out in 2008.” He remarks in relation to the city’s European Capital of Culture celebrations, the forest of cranes building the new city poking out behind him through the window.

Reid was born in Croydon in 1947, the son of a pair of Socialist Druids he was heavily influenced by his family’s beliefs, recalling: “I was dragged along to every protest there was”. His father was the City editor of the Daily Sketch, though he never invested a penny in his life, his mother had a firm belief in fairies and his grandfather was killed gun running during the boxer rebellion in China. His brother meanwhile was part of an Anarchist group which worked towards non-violent resistance to nuclear war. “He was one of six who were tried for treason,” Jamie says of his brother with a wry smile. “Which I found out later, when M15 released the files, is what they were trying to do with us and the Pistols.”

His work has often been seen in the vein of the Situationist International, a small group of artists and intellectuals whose ideas of subverting the ‘spectacle’ of popular culture had a great influence on counter-culture.  He even did the graphics for the cover of the Situationist text Leaving the Twentieth Century by Christopher Grey – the first anthology of writings by the Situationists ever published in English. Jamie says: “Yes that was an influence and pre-dating that, going further back to movements like Dadaism. It was all an influence, as was everything that was happening in the 60s.”

What was his biggest influence then? “William Blake, and that whole period in the 18th and 19th centuries with the likes of Thomas Paine and the French Revolution. It’s part of a pattern of underground movements throughout history, we were part of it in the 70s and you can still see it today”. So does he think art can really change things? “Absolutely, as it always has done, going back to cave paintings. Real art, music too, has a magical and spiritual effect.”

With no clear direction in mind, he signed up to Croydon Art College at the age of 16. It was here that Reid was to first meet Malcolm McLaren and it wasn’t long before both were thrown out of the school for occupying it in a protest. After working a while in demolition he joined the Suburban Press back in Croyden and once more turned his attention to attacking the system rather than buildings.

What began as a community newsletter became a hotbed of subversive artistic statements. Working with a tiny budget, they produced posters to stick up around town with slogans like ‘Save Petrol, Burn Cars’ and ‘Keep Warm This Winter – Make Trouble’. It was here that Reid pioneered the cut and paste ethic that he would later use in his work with the Sex Pistols. They used rough collages, ransom-note lettering and all the lurid colour that the photocopier could produce. Was he trying to celebrate, rather than be ashamed, of their limited resources? “Necessity really was the mother of invention. It was a case of use what was at hand to make things cheap and fast but make them look as good as possible. Use what you’ve got, don’t sit around moaning about what you haven’t.”

Disillusioned with city life, Reid decamped to the Outer Hebrides in 1975. That was till he received a telegram from Malcolm McLaren about this band he was managing. The rest is punk history. From the safety pin through the Queen’s lip to the Never Mind the Bollocks sleeve that landed them all in the dock, Reid was responsible for it all. He was one of the figures who pushed the Pistols in a political direction – even co-writing the lyrics to ‘Anarchy in the UK’.

Beyond the artistic treason there is another side of Jamie’s work that is less well known though just as important to him. Much more earthy and harmonious than the images he is famous for, he paints astrological and magical symbols and serene landscapes. He’s produced a massive series of paintings based around the celebrations of the Eight-Fold Year – the eight druid festivals which divide the ‘Wheel of the Year’. Reid is also heavily involved in producing visuals for the world music outfit Afro-Celt Soundsystem in a similar vein.

As a Druid then, does he believe in the power of magic? “Magic is nothing to be frightened of. It’s there to be used, but for the common good. Very dark people like Bush and that, they use magic too you know, for their own evil purposes.” He continues, “It’s not a matter of going back to the past, it’s about bringing it into the modern world.”

I put it to him that his work seems to have two streams, the spiritual and the political. Is there ever any conflict? “Not for me, there seems to be for other people but I have always done differing work since I began to paint. It’s just that at different times the different sides of me come to the fore.” Does is bother him then, that no matter what else he does in his life he will always be associated with the Sex Pistols? “Well it’s a pain in the arse to be honest and I mean it something that is very English; pigeon-holing you for doing the one thing.”

Of all his work, one of Jamie’s proudest achievements are his interiors in Strongroom – a massive recording studio in London which he is progressively decorating in its entirety. Silk-screened canvasses, marble, etched bronze, and slate carry Reid’s imagery across the 20 room complex. But the project is more than mere pretty interior design: “The sound engineers told me a studio could only be fitted out in one way and we’ve proved them wrong. It’s created a really revolutionary sound.” He goes on: “It’s a 15-20 year project, using esoteric ideas to create an ideal environment for the creation of music. You could easily apply that to say, a hospital. But most 20th century architecture is about enslavement.”

He is also pleased with the effects of his ‘Peace is Tough’ exhibition in Derry: “We really got a dialogue going with people coming in to discuss the work from all sides of the conflict.” The star exhibit of the show was a painting of John Wayne featuring lipstick.

I mention to Jamie that I have always seen a sense of humour in his work, especially his more political art. “I’m glad you said that,” he says. “I’ve always tried to have that in. I think often the best way of attacking things is to take the piss out of them.”

A scan through any magazine shows the style that Jamie pioneered in 1970s can still be seen, endlessly ripped-off for commercial purposes, becoming ‘rebel chic’. Is he bothered? “It’s the way of the world isn’t it, unless you actually overthrow the prevailing system things are always going to be taken from below and exploited. But it’s always alive underneath. You just have to keep on moving forward, generating new stuff.”

Punk had a profound effect on culture and many people’s lives, yet the likes of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood have since largely written it off as nothing more than a way to earn some filthy lucre and moved on to more commercial work once their names were made. Jamie however refuses to denounce them: “I say good luck to them. I think Malcolm also suffers with having the Pistols around his neck. I think he is a great artist in his own right and has done some good work.”

Reid himself was recently accused by some of ‘selling out’ after holding a recent exhibition in Microzine, a high-fashion men’s store in Liverpool. What does he say to that? “It’s funny because that exhibition reminded me of one that I did in Japan which was held in a department store. In Japan you can go into a shop like that and buy artwork like any piece of furniture. I think it’s more honest to do things like that than hanging them up and in a gallery and pretending they’re all precious.” He continues: “I’m glad I did the show in Microzine because it got a lot of kids in to see it that wouldn’t normally go into an art gallery and I don’t blame them.”

Despite this, he remains critical of perhaps the UK’s most successful group of modern artists – the Young British Artists: “It leaves me cold,” he says. “I associate them with Thatcherism. It’s just empty gestures – the nouvelle cuisine of the art world.”

The style he created may now be used to flog what it was intended to attack, but with the likes of prankster graffiti artist Banksy and anti-image mag Adbusters, his legacy of genuine artistic subversion carries on – and we perhaps need it now more than ever. Reid’s own work is today as much influenced by beauty and magic as revolution, but by continuing to supply the visuals to every modern protest movement, is he trying to keep the fires of unrest burning? “Yes, if there is a cause I believe in I will do all I can to support it…I’ll always keep on painting, it keeps me off the streets.”

By Kenn Taylor

Tommy McHugh

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The graceful Georgian exterior of 48 Rodney Street in Liverpool masks the fact that its top-floor flat resembles an explosion in a curiosity shop. Artist Adam Nankervis converted his digs into an independent gallery in 2004 and now every available inch of space, including the toilet, is utilised for display purposes. Its latest exhibition is a selection of works by Birkenhead-born Tommy McHugh.

McHugh spent most of his life working as a builder and had a history of drug abuse and violence. His only previous attempts at art were scratching tattoos into his arms while serving time in prison. Then, in 2001, he suffered a severe stroke. Surgeons saved his life but when he awoke he was severely disabled, common in the aftermath of a stroke. Less common was Tommy’s sudden and unrelenting desire to create art. This is a phenomenon Doctors call ‘sudden artistic output’ and it is extremely rare.

Since the stroke Tommy has created a vast body of work in a great variety of forms, though his main focus has been painting and sculpture. He says, “There is the constant popping of ideas in my head, even if I had two pairs of hands I would still not be able to create all the things that I think of.”

His art seems to focus on the violence that has gone on in his head and in particular the split that it caused in his personality, “I like to explore that” he says. “We all unconsciously portray 100 personas automatically everyday. You act differently in different situations and with different people, in a way we all have a split personality.”

Tommy is greatly concerned with how his experience may aid others, “There is a lot going on in my head besides art, there is information and maybe help for other people who have been labelled disabled or damaged, they may have this hidden in them too.”

His work also helps him on a personal level, to cope with what he has gone through and the massive changes that it has brought in his life. “The art is a lifesaving therapy, without that I could have continued to put my energy into the negativity of the world.” He adds, “I’ve got nothing to lose, every day that coil in my head that keeps me alive is contracting, I have no idea how long I have got and I need to get it all out.”

By Kenn Taylor