This was the first piece of work undertaken by AMA after returning to producing art after a sixteen year gap. ‘Number ‘5′ surrounded by his Associates’ retains intense personal significance and takes the form of a wooden relief made from two hundred year-old, 9mm thick mahogany cut from discarded shelving used in a mid-nineteenth century safe. It depicts the figures 1 – 9 separately positioned in three rows and three columns. The textural richness of the wood grain is enhanced through the use of oil varnishes whilst the composition is held together by the background painting of the central figure ‘5′.

The figure Five has significance for two reasons. Within the decimal system, ‘5’occurs naturally midway between the counting numbers ‘1′ and ‘9′and represents half the number ‘10′, the identifier of that system. Besides this numeric nicety, early on in AMA’s modestly successful business career, the figure ‘5′ became a symbol of success. For whatever reason, every set of figures involved in this business reduced to ‘5′– Telephone Number, Street Number, Bank Account No, VAT No., even the surface area of the shop floor reduced to precisely five square feet . . . Spooky or what! The Number ‘5′ seemed as good a starting point as any. It may only be a numeral, but attach it to a piece of wood and it’s started to become something else.

Wood grain and wood surface, varnish and surface quality – the protective surface through which one looks to see into and through the wood, the very material of the work. The shallow depth of the relief surface is significant, what lies within it? The numeric signifiers, appear in an order one does not immediately rationalise; are they the subject? Each number is and has its own formal character, quite different from its neighbour, just like its spectator. We recognise them and they have substance; Number ‘5′ has taken material form at last.

Wooden relief : Honduras Mahogany, English Ash with with oil paint and spirit varnishes.

73.3 x 73.8 x 7.5 cm

Pulped paper documents, the figures 1 to 9, and a number of squared off noughts form the substance of this work.

This time, the documents reconstituted into the nine tablets of handmade paper originally did contain numbers – literally tens of thousands of them. These paper records were the product of nearly fifteen years of laborious book-keeping, most of them by AMA.

Imagining retirement from a long and fulfilling career in art education, AMA thought running a music shop would be an enjoyable pastime, such was his fondness of musical instruments. Little did he think that, at the age of thirty one, he would be doing just this, playing what he thought to be his ‘last card’ in an attempt to earn a living. The idea then became to earn enough money and independence to eventually retire and return to world of art. However, in the spring of 1993, this all came to an end – his life’s work had lasted not quite fifteen years.

A lot of hope, a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of care had gone into creating his music retail business and when the end came, there was not really that much to show for his efforts. Those fifteen years had been fun but there wasn’t much left from the business at 30 College Green, Bristol that didn’t find new owners. Just as with the correspondence created by his divorce, the years in the retail trade had produced a plethora of paper documents, none of them of any value now that the business was formally closed.

Implicit in all this unwanted paper were years of emotion recording the successes and failures of this modest business. The whole exercise had been the ‘big one’, its records had to have some future. Now he had left Bristol, and once again in an art environment, he had the chance to use boxes of raw material and a paper pulping machine. There were a lot of numbers to reduce!

A work was created in1995 from certain remnants of 30 College Green and duly exhibited. The piece may have meant a lot to the artist but, no doubt, left many spectators cold. Ten years later, AMA thought a little coloured light would jolly up the introspection of these compacted memories. The austerity of the original object is now something rather more gay.

The original work with just white panels, 1995

With the addition of neon tubes, but still not quite there, 2005

The final version with spectral colours added to the nine panels, 2009.

Collage : Handmade paper, oak wood, velvet on board and polycarbonate sheet. All materials originate from premises at 30 College Green, Bristol. Neon tube and acrylic paint added ten years later.

93.6 x 93.6 x 10 cms

The large, paper photographic negatives used to transfer the images of the nine numerals making up “Number 5 Surrounded by his Associates’ to the photo screenprint series, ‘0/762451938′, are themselves interesting as objects, in that the reverse images of the numbers were reasonably visible within these black rectangles, showing an enigmatic Sienna brown colour.

However, over the fifteen years, these recalcitrant images have faded to leave but the merest ghost of what once they depicted. In this way, one could say, this process helps emphasise the nothingness of ‘Noughts’; that digit being the next character in the decimal counting system that contains the preceding nine parts.

Originally these nine paper negatives were mounted onto individual stretched canvas backgrounds with surrounds which contained that numeral by identity appearing from under the canvas itself; a most unusual collage / painting technique in itself. These nine rectangles where then intended to be exhibited as a series of nine relating objects.

It wasn’t until 2009 that the idea of showing them within a single framework occurred to AMA. This decision has lead to producing a largish image in which there is no sense of single focus, rather a field of low key visual information, which if looked at for a period of time with an open mind appear as an object for (sublime) contemplation. It seems to carry religious overtones without reverting to the particular iconography or symbols of established world religions, a sort of crucifix for Humanists.

Mixed Media: Photographic Negatives, charcoal pencil, acrylic paint, various varnishes and mirror glass on canvas plus images printed on paper placed beneath said canvas on nine individual panels within an ashwood frame.

126 x 119 x 5.5 cms.

oo

This is one of three pieces of work conceived in 1997 based on the central image of a very well appointed young lady. AMA first came across the lady in question during his first year away at secondary school. There she was, probably no more than a couple of inches tall, posturing towards the back of a pocket size magazine printed solely in black and white belonging to one of AMA’s schoolboy pals. Well, when one is a thirteen year old boy with fast developing hormones, images like this had quite an effect, certainly that was the case in 1960. So much so, the magazine found its way into AMA’s hands and the appealing photograph cut out.

Stationery items were much less variable in those days, so to protect this discovered ‘icon’, AMA attached this find onto a thin piece of card with slender bands of sticky-back plastic. The resulting treasure was then keep for safety in his wallet. Over the ensuing years the wallet was lost to the sands of time and completely forgotten, even too Madamoiselle in her french camiknickers and arresting pose. However, when moving house about a third of a century later, AMA found the wallet with this once precious forgotten item in it.

The passing years had had their effect, not so much on AMA’s hormones but on this little paper image. The glue of the sticky-back plastic had permeated the paper printed on both sides and drawn the reverse side image through to be partly visible from the front. An unusual visual phenomena was happening here, all be it accidentally, and it related to other pieces of work in which AMA was exploring how the quality of an image worked in relationship to the visual depth of the work’s surface.

In striving to be an artist, any form of inspiration is welcome and this chance rediscovery was no exception.

Thermal image printed on paper with denim fabric and brass rod in wrought iron frame.

50.5 x 41.5cms

The format and apparent content relate to AMA’s appreciation of the work of the celebrated New York painters working in the mid 20th century : Barnet Newman, Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns.

The dimensions of this painting are those of the floor plan of the luggage space available in a Saab 900 hatchback (1987 model) when the rear seats are laid down.

Worked into the substance of the top ultramarine lozenge are some of the finely ground ashes of his personal and business bank statements dating back to 1982. AMA has no further use for these records, yet between 1978 and 1993, these figures contained within largely conditioned his life.

Numerals, an acquired measurement of life, take material form in this painting and are liberated to float within the surface of the painting. AMA. has no interest in figures as such, save the symbol “0”.

Oil and variously suspended pigments and ash on canvas.

110 x 181 cms.

*

In 1960, AMA’s father started to look for a location in the south of France where he might be able to buy a un petit pied à terre. Irreducibly positioned on the point that combines the Mediterranean coast with the Italian border, Menton Garavan was the chosen spot.

As part of his research, AMA’s father had retained in his wallet a black and white photograph, taken a year earlier, of the premises in which a first floor flat was to become the holiday home for his family. From Easter 1963, when AMA first left the British shores to voyage abroad, until his mother’s death in 1982, time spent in this location was to become, perhaps the most rewarding, the most influential in his life.

The simplified and intentionally limited range of colour used in this print was a conscious attempt to express the idea that the exquisitely happy life spent at this address could never last and only ever remain a memory. This, of course, became the case.

The property still exists under another identity, but at that time it was known as 63 Quai Laurenti, (06) Menton.

63 Quai Laurenti

Silkscreen print on paper, edition of 25

50 x 76 cms. unframed

z

In the Autumn of 1972, Frank Zappa and the ‘Hot Rats’ orchestra gigged in Europe. AMA developed this screenprint from a photograph of a collage of deteriorating publicity posters, he took a little later in Amsterdam.

Frank’s ‘Zapata’ moustache and facial hair were central to his image and thus is the hook upon which this composition hangs. Meanwhile the surrounding visual informtaion has mutated into a decorative Post-Pop miasma, providing the the context of our memories.

The original screen print from an edition of just 15

One of two prints on aluminium sheet, mounted onto wood.

5

This image of the central panel in AMA’s work entitled, ‘Number 5 Surrounded by his Associates’ is a simple screen print produced fom a high contrast photograph of the character, Number 5.

The enhanced texture of the wood, the same in both the figure and the background, is the real character in this picture.

The light and dark areas of the image are contrasted by warm, high and cool, dark, low chroma colours.

Number 5

Screen print on paper, edition of five.

20 x 20cms

o

The screen printed image is taken from a postcard found in Menton, south of France. Its charm, even then, was the dated nature of the picture. This is the first time when AMA worked with repeating or very similar images.

Triple Beachball Girl

A hinged diptych containing some crude elements of language is opened up as a book, a child’s book containing simple, basic examples of language. Eight four-letter words of Anglo Saxon origin, similar in form in that they each contain one vowel and three consonants, have been paired into anagrams so as to obscure their identity. Each letter is handcut and formed from 10 mm thick timber.

The vowels, depicted in bright, air caressing candy colours, contrast imperiously with the sombre and subsumed, often repeated, consonants chosen for their fricative and explosive values.

This work came about by AMA living in both France and England and travelling frequently between the two countries. It aims to express contrasting qualities between the spoken English and French languages.

Wood relief with various paint mediums

84 x 169.5 x 26 cms