A Rough Guide

The Aim: To Produce a collaborative visual guide to London concentrating on five main areas.

My Aim: To further understand my designated area; Notting Hill, through visual exploration and documenting, however delving beyond the surface. What lies in the corners of Notting Hill we are not told to explore?

The colourful streets of Notting Hill

An illustration of a typical Notting Hill street

I began to document the area; the colours, the image Notting Hill wants to portray.

Images taken of an antique shop on Portobello Road

Illustration, ink on paper

After exploring the various 'junk' and 'antique' shops, I began to think, what is it that makes this type of unwanted 'junk' desirable above other things? We are told to find beauty in these unwanted and rusty items. But isn't beauty in the eye of the beholder? How can one question someone finding beauty in something dull like a slab of concrete? Perhaps the beauty is in the mundane. 

With this in mind, I began to explore the area in a very different manner, searching for surfaces and textures 'off the beaten track' in the less visited corners of Notting Hill.

Rubbish down a back street alleyway

Found surfaces and textures

Illustration charcoal on found crinkled paper

Rubbing pastel on paper

Street art on a crumbling wall, a bit sinister

Study of plant, conte on found paper

When the group collaborated, it was interesting to see different interpretations of the designated areas.

For my page I focused on an image of peeling paint taken down a backstreet of Notting Hill. Although highly minimal, I feel the image expresses a sense of history not only of the building itself, but of the area. One can see bright paintwork previously existed on this building, now however it has been painted cream, perhaps a reduction in status? or an attempt to blend into the background expressing unimportance - this building is not of interest.

Cracked peeling paint down a back street

Representation of peeling paint, burning and ripped paper

 

The Rough Guide is a highly diverse magazine, each page is individual. This I feel reflects the diversity of London and perhaps the diverse creativity of the group.

The Rough Guide, lovely.

My page in the Rough Guide

Psycho-geography 

“the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals”    Guy Debord

Psychogeography is a fairly new concept defined in 1955, it is the notion that cities impact our emotions and reactions to them and often attempt to regulate our behaviour. Although a fairly recent idea, this concept has been examined in various literary texts throughout history, often the character being separate from the crowd, observing, experiencing the city in his own way and breaking from the regulations we are urged to follow.

Whilst gathering information for my rough guide I became more and more aware of the way in which we are manipulated, signposts 'must see's' , and i began to break from these rules and went my own way, going nowhere in particular and taking in my surroundings. The result: I saw parts of the area most would not see and gathered highly interesting information from the area.

On the psychogeographical treasure hunt my group endeavoured to ignore street signs and merely focus on the items on the list we were directed to find. This quite quickly meant we got lost, however perhaps made it easier for us to take in our surroundings and identify for example a menagerie which was a rather abstract result (a group of people dressed as rabbits sat outside a pub). 

  

An exercise in getting lost and Flanerie 

For this exercise I decided to print off a map of Venice and use it as my guide to the city I traced the outline of a 20p coin and used this as my route. Working out approximate ratios from my map helped me to decide how long I would walk or travel on a bus in each direction...often the bus did not follow my route exactly however I felt this was a more interesting outcome as I had even less control of my destination. Although at first I wasn't too sure about the point of this exercise I soon realised that I had ended up in areas of London which I would never think to visit. It made me realise that it is true that I never stop to look at where I am, I take my route to uni and back past the London eye and House of Parliament and never notice them, I take bus routes which I know and have already travelled on, I go to places of 'interest'. But what about the rest of it, the unseen parts of London, aren't they of interest too? Whilst doing my Rough Guide I soon realised that these unmarked of no interest places were the most rich in interest, they portrayed the area for what it really is, not pretty chocolate box houses, but an ordinary place with boring architecture and blocks of flats. This to me was much more interesting. This exercise has also given me a new approach to the way I research, perhaps in the future I will pick a map draw a route and follow it as it has proved much more successful than my usual method of planning bus routes times and directions.

I also found it interesting that my chosen map was of a very popular tourist attraction whereas when translated onto the streets of London I ended up on back streets and run down estates.