MASS OBSERVATION DIARY

MASS OBSERVATION DIARY

12 May 2025

Introduction

I am a 65 year old Male, retired, and I live in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. I’m married and have siblings who live in Lancashire, close to my Mother and Germany. I worked in Further and Higher Education ending my career after a succession of jobs ass Head of Department. Since retirement I have continued to make Art because that is what I do and I have the luxury and privilege to do so.

I donate my 12th May diary to the Mass Observation Archive . I consent to it being made publicly available as part of the Archive and assign my copyright in the diary to the Mass Observation Archive Trustees so that it can be reproduced in full or in part on websites, in publications and in broadcasts as approved by the Mass Observation Trustees. I agree to the Mass Observation Archive assuming the role of Data Controller and the Archive will be responsible for the collection and processing of personal data and ensuring that such data complies with the DPA.

Mass Observation Morning

This morning I woke later than usual, at 7:45 am. This might be the single greatest benefit of retirement after twenty odd years of 6:00 am starts. I have my routine so I feed the cat whilst my wife wakes up and then shower and dress. I had toast and the last of the marmalade along with my cup of tea. I read the Guardian on my iPad and listen to 6 music on the radio. At 8:40 am, as I was late, I went into the garden to feed the birds and open the greenhouse for the day. I’m growing a lot of tomatoes this year which are still mostly seedlings and encouraging the native wildflowers in the garden alongside judiciously placed perennials. I returned to the kitchen for a second cup of tea and to do my daily drawing.

A drawing of a chopping board behind a tap made in coloured pens for the mass observation blog post

12th May Drawing ‘Chopping Board’

I have drawn sitting at the kitchen table at around 8:30 to 9:00 am since 6th May 2020, a lockdown activity that has become a ritual. The drawing is always something I can see from my seat, the sink, the dishes, the windowsill or the whole kitchen and occasionally an ornament bought to the table and placed next to me. I take between 20 and 40 minutes depending on the drawing, today’s was the short end of twenty minutes.

When I finished the drawing I left the house and walked the two and a half miles to my studio in the centre of Doncaster. I rent a unit in the former Art School that stands next to St. George’s Minster. The first I did when I arrived at 10:30 am was put the kettle on.

A model of a white horse with a truncated torus on its back for the mass observation post

Circus Horse after Seurat

Through the morning I set to work repairing a maquette for a sculpture I’m developing. One of my many freedoms now is the ability to do what I want when I want which is as much a curse as a blessing. The lack of a need to make things for exhibitions or to sell can put you in a place where where your natural dilettantism comes to the fore and you end up producing little that challenges. The solution is to try to enjoy the process of making for its own sake, well, it is for me. I stopped for lunch at 12:45 and eat a salad I bought on the way into the studio, I should really make it at home but I’m far too lazy. I usually take 30 to 45 minutes for lunch and read the paper on line while I eat. The news today centred on Kier Starmer’s determination to appeal to the lowest common denominator with an appalling assault on immigration, and therefore immigrants, with an ill thought through policy with so many holes you can only despair of the intellect of his spads and his own venality. It does not help my digestion. I have found that the only way to maintain your own equilibrium in the face of our collective exceptionalism and ignorance is to ignore. I have always voted but the last couple of times I’ve been very tempted not to. The salad, though probably unhealthy, was very nice.

Mass Observation Afternoon

In the afternoon I continued to work on a larger model of the horse. The piece combines strands of work I’ve been pursuing over the last couple of years and is impossible to articulate except through this media. The image shows the revised version sitting on a balustrade I painted for a photographer, Richard, who has the space next to mine. At a quarter to four I bumped into him while I was washing my hands, I don’t have running water in the studio and gave him the balustrade and had a chat about his studio equipment and the state of photography education. I’ve reached an age where I try not to lament but I find it hard to look backwards without rose tinted spectacles.

A model of the white horse of uffington made from polystyrene for the mass observation post

(Uffington) White Horse

As usual I left the studio at four thirty with the intention of walking home, but today it was 24 degrees C so I caught the bus. 12th of May 2025 it costs £2.50 to travel two and a half miles and you don’t even need cash, just swipe the card.

I arrived home at five to five and fed the cat before checking my greenhouse and pond and making sure things were watered after such a hot day. The soil where I live is clay so water is retained very well, too well in the winter, so only plants in pots need watering very regularly.

Mass Observation evening

My wife and I had tea at six thirty, a seasonally appropriate chicken casserole, and I read the paper while I ate and we discussed the news in a piecemeal way. These days it’s difficult to get into big discussions without getting upset with the way things are so we tend to avoid big discussions about current affairs unless we find a point of difference or one of us needs to unload.

At seven thirty I washed the dishes and we settled down to watch TV. Monday is quiz night so we watched Only Connect on BBC2 followed by University Challenge and then turned to Netflix to watch an episode of ‘The Four Seasons’ after which we retired to bed and read for a half hour or forty minutes before going to sleep. An that is my day, fairly typical and infinitely varied.

Centre Apple Tree

Centre Apple Tree

Another New Studio

I just completed the Contemporary Art Academy PG1 course with a session where the participants delivered an ‘elevator pitch’ summing up our practice using the insight gained from the course. This is obviously really difficult because it is hard to articulate in the first place and remains hard in the final analysis.

I said something like “My name is Ian Latham and I build mixed reality installations. These involve physical sculptures alongside virtual environments (worlds). I use found and reclaimed materials, branches, scaffold planks, insulation foam etc., to build objects and structures based on my suburban garden. The virtual worlds that work alongside these explore the process of creation using LiDAR scans of the sculptures at various stages of their creation. The juxtaposition of these objects with representations of the garden IRL suggest the process of growth that I’m exploring.”

There were lots of hhms and aahs along the way, a few digressions and an element of self deprecation that was described to me as apologetic. All in all it was a great experience, it’s good to meet a group of peers and discuss the work rather than the life of being an artist.

I made this video for the presentation but in the end didn’t use it as we were trying to present ourselves as if we encountered someone while networking.

 

Centre Apple Tree

Red Garden Six

Since the last post I finished Red Garden Six with the addition of the red tree in the foreground.

Centre Apple Tree

Red Garden Seven 07 06 2024

Red Garden Seven 10 06 2024

I also took Red Garden Seven through two more stages. I’m not entirely convinced by either of them but I am persuaded there is nothing more I can do with either.

Two Red Trees – Pear and Apple 17 06 2024

I continued to work on the “Three Trees version Two” but it morphed into the “Two Red Trees – Pear and Apple” that will sit at the entrance to the virtual exhibition, and the physical one come to that.

Centre Apple Tree

Two Red Trees – Pear and Apple

The exhibition will have “Two Red Trees – Pear and Apple” at or just past the entrance, a new piece “Centre Apple Tree” in the centre of the quincunx and the first version of “Three Red Trees” at the top left and the “Dancing Partners” at top right. The various drawings may be displayed alongside although part of me thinks they’ll be separate.

Two Red Trees – Pear and Apple – Detail

Centre Apple Tree

Centre Apple Tree

Centre Apple Tree

I spent the back end of the month building the new “Centre Apple Tree”

And drawing it.

We had an unusual spell of good weather, for June, as well so I did some drawing in the garden.

Climbing rose 21 06 2024

Garden 26 06 2024

Hydrangea 26 06 2024

 

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The June drawings can be seen here

and the May images here

There is a link to the previous month’s Gallery on each page.

The drawings are posted to Threads and Instagram each day.

Directionless Direction

Directionless Direction

Another New Studio

 

A trip around the studio on Friday 17th November 2023. This shows the “redfilm” [link] video in its new projection, then moves out of the booth navigating the “three red trees” sculpture and briefly views the three red garden drawings that had been framed at this date before showing the different lighting settings for the NHS lemniscate. The video looks at the comfrey torus and ends on the trees.

Directionless Direction

I took delivery of the frames for the new work on the 17th November and started to frame the existing work. Red Garden One is above, Red Garden Two and Red Garden Three below.

Directionless Direction

On the 18th I decided that the new iteration of the Redfilm should have statistics about the climate crisis, centred around global warming. I spent the day making the slides and inserting them into the film. The facts were gleaned from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report March 2023

Via World Resources Institute . The new film was entirely unconvincing and makes the whole concept somewhat patronising, so I dropped it.

On the 19th I found a review of Jewel Spears Brooker, T. S. Eliot’s Dialectical Imagination. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. 240 pages. ISBN 1421426528. [LINK]

In which the reviewer, Michelle A Taylor of Harvard University, comments that

“the “deception of the thrush” is that the “world of speculation” can be made real, that the objects of the mind could overcome physical objects, the reality of the body: so Eliot returns to idealism—…—and sees it for what it is. Like interpretation, speculation posits its own world, immaterial, with only some relationship to fact.”

I’ve ordered the book to more fully study this but the meat of it is what I’m exploring the edges of in this current set of work. The idea that the fact of making things as an artist removes from them the possibility of representation because they lack the contingency of design. I suspect that as I reach out for the chance to articulate this the art world itself has fully embraced the contingency of design as a necessary precursor to the creative act. When I was much younger and became a teacher I spent the first ten years of my career teaching design precisely because there are methods and, whilst you can make up the rules you follow, there have to be rules. In art, which I consider absolute, you can’t teach it you just have to do it. This is what I mean by Directionless Direction.

Directionless Direction

On the 20th I made some collages exploring the forms in the big red sculpture and the source for it, two of which are reproduced here. The one above was used as the basis of the bigger drawing discussed further on.

The next two photographs show the drawing “bigred” begun on the 22nd of November and made with inks and pastel.

Also on the 22nd I started Red Garden Four.

At the end of the 22nd it looked like this with the addition of the chainlink and the panel.

Directionless Direction

On the 24th November I added the fence posts and the bushes but decided the piece needed more definition. I added a wash of Indian ink and then painted the sky out with Titanium White oil paint.

I also continued to work on the “bigred” drawing.

Taking it through the stages illustrated above, becoming more like the collage as it progresses.

By the end of the 27th November the drawing looked like this, and the studio was beginning to be ready for the Open Weekend at the beginning of December.

Additionally on the 27th I published the first release of the “doncplatonic” app.

On the 29th I worked more on the “bigred” drawing and started another drawing based on a photograph by a local photographer  Jamie Bubb, with permission, that was posted to threads a day or two before.

I’ll post more of the open day in a separate post and also a more detailed accounting of the reason for it all.

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The November drawings can be seen here

and the October images here

There is a link to the previous month’s Gallery on each page.

The drawings are posted to Threads and Instagram each day.