John Harris on Bristol and Plymouth

The Guardian last week ran a series of articles by John Harris on the future of cities – urban despatches from within the UK. As well as Bradford and Manchester, his articles covered the two cities of the South West region, Bristol and Plymouth. Knowing both fairly well, I thought his accounts of the situations they face were excellent and should be read by anyone with the least interest in either place or in the south west.

He didn’t say so specifically, but Plymouth in the past lacked a significant middle class, as is revealed by this description of its housing stock:

Part of Plymouth’s problem is that until recently, we only had 56 houses in Band H council tax – 90% of Plymothians live in either C, B or A. So our council tax base is low.

So it possibly has more in common with Liverpool than Bristol. Harris starts his Bristol piece:

“Bristol is perhaps the one southern city which really feels independent of London,” writes Owen Hatherley in his brilliant architectural travelogue A New Kind Of Bleak.

An endorsement which I’m not sure I support. To me Bristol seems to have an inferiority complex with regard to London which leads it to overcompensate. This may worsen when rail electrification reduces the travel time by 20 minutes - as a Mexican president said, “so far from God and so close to the United States”*. It could also be an alternative explanation to Harris’s when he observes:

Bristol was the only English city to vote for an elected mayor in the referendums that took place in 2012, something put down to the apparent chaos of its politics (between 2001 and 2011, the old city council was led by seven different people) and the city’s ancient fondness for doing its own thing.

At which point a key difference between Plymouth and Bristol should be made clear. The latter actually is a meaningful conurbation surrounded by rural Devon, whereas the city of Bristol is merely the core of a built-up area which extends seamlessly into South Gloucestershire and North East Somerset. It’s not just because of the topography that Bristol’s public transport is incoherent and inadequate for its size. North East Somerset includes Bath which, although much smaller than Bristol, doesn’t do anything to mitigate the latter’s inferiority complex. From 1974 to 1996, these areas were part of the county of Avon, abolished by John Major’s Conservative government and, if meaningful devolution is to take place in future, probably needs to be re-established.

An article earlier this year, Bristol, the European capital of green nannying and bureaucracy, by Anthony Whitehead, gives a resident’s view of current life in the city. I posted here last year about the Royal William Yard redevelopment in Plymouth to which Harris refers.



*If Bristol is too close to London, Plymouth is probably too far from the capital for its own good. The M5 stops at Exeter, Plymouth airport is mothballed – Newquay or Exeter are the nearest at present - and GWR electrification gets no closer than Bristol, although other more marginal improvements to the rail service are programmed. [Added 10 November].

An Arty Day in Bristol

Bristol is the largest conurbation in South West England. The extent of its built-up area is not well-defined but its population is of the order of 500,000 - about 10% of the region’s. Bristol is not a city I enjoy going to but it is well-known for its art scene – Banksy is a Bristolian – and some current shows seemed worth a visit.

The Arnolfini arts centre moved to the run-down docks area of central Bristol 40 years ago and regards itself as having set a precedent for Tate Liverpool, the BALTIC and even the Guggenheim Bilbao as a force for regeneration. Looking at this building, just round the corner from the Arnolfini, it’s clear that there is still more to be done.

The current exhibition at the Arnolfini is Richard Long TIME AND SPACE. Long ,like Banksy, is a Bristol artist with a global reputation – for example, CAPC in Bordeaux owns nine of his works including two stone lines (Slate Line Cornwall 1981 left) – but has had shows at the Arnolfini since 1972. Long’s work can be described as conceptualist and minimalist but it also conveys the artist’s personal response to his environment. There seem to be three main areas of activity. He is probably best-known for his sculptures – assemblies of stones in the landscape or indoors, like Time and Space  (2015, below) created for this exhibition:

and sculptural images like Bristol 1967/2015, recreated for it:

There are also some of his textworks:

and drawings using mud – on driftwood:

and on a larger scale directly onto the gallery walls in the form of Muddy Water Falls, 2015 made with mud from the banks of the Avon:

Long has also created Boyhood Line, 170 metres of white limestone on The Downs at Clifton in Bristol as part of the Arnolfini show.

Boyhood Line and Richard Long TIME AND SPACE continue until mid-November.

At the RWA (Royal West of England Academy) in Clifton are two exhibitions which will soon be ending. The first is Peter Randall-Page and Kate MccGwire. At first sight, one of Randall-Page’s sculptures, Wing (2009 below), has something in common with Long’s arrangements of stones, but the terra cotta tile arrangement was inspired by a microscopic study of a grasshopper wing:

The bronzes in the foreground, Inside Out (2014, above), like much of his work, are inspired by biological shapes and forms. Kate MccGwire draws from nature even more directly making complex abstract geometries with feather surfaces. Skirmish (2015, below) is made with pheasant feathers and shown in an antique dome: 

while Gyre (2012, below) was made over four years with crow feathers:

Peter Randall-Page and Kate MccGwire ends on 10 September.

The other RWA show is Into the Fields: The Newlyn School and Other Artists which was at Penlee House Penzance earlier as Sons and Daughters of the Soil. I’ve posted about art in Cornwall several times and the Newlyn artists as recently as 2013. On this occasion the net has been spread wider than Penlee’s excellent collection to fetch in other painters en plein air under the influence of the Barbizon School with works like George Clausen’s In the Orchard (1871, below left) and Henry La Thangue’s Landscape Study (c1889, below right), neither set in Cornwall:

There are, as to be expected, quite a few works by Harold Harvey, for example, Blackberrying (1917, below left) and The Clay Pit (1923, below right):

And, of course, Samuel John ‘Lamorna’ Birch, for example his Morning Fills the Bowl (1926, below top) and Laura Knight’s impressive if busy Spring (1916-20, below lower):

The model in this picture is Ella Naper, better-known in the same artist’s famous Artist and Model.

Into the Fields: The Newlyn School and Other Artists ends on 6 September.


ADDENDUM 11 September 

If my reservations about Bristol seem unwarranted to those who like the city, they should read Bristol, the European capital of green nannying and bureaucracy, in the Spectator on 5 September by a Bristolian, Anthony Whitehead – and the comments.