Works of arts my books July 25, 2006

With the books taking shape before me, in my garden, in Cumbria, I realise that the World Cup book, with the African bit waiting to be moulded on its front, as opposed its end, where you might have expected it (to follow on from World Cup German Summer) is by my own reckoning ‘a work of art’. But not an obscure one. One you can really get into. And I know why : it starts with a look at where football has got to and suggests there is a kind of homecoming with the WORLD Cup being staged in (South) Africa, since it was in Africa’s Rift Valley that man got up and walked. The following subsection of the African introduction shows how football clubs are faring south of the African Equator : are they producing the players of the future – players who will get up and walk into clubs all around the World just as the Brazilian are doing . I have called this section Rift Valley Wanderers Rule Ok? (After a project me and some fellow artists thought about but scrapped some 10 years before.)

The Cumbrian book, the first of my People Versus Place portraits, is not far behind. It’s possibly more complex, but living amongst it – being in Cumbria more days than not – I feel it is more organic than anything I could possibly do.

The Festival book is good, if not great, but perhaps suffers from my thinking it can almost write itself. Given the glamorous nature of the pictures : sum-sum sum-sum summertime.

People have asked how my Environmental Nudes series fits into any of this?, I have not yet fully decided. I just know it is the right thing to do.