APPROPRIATION OF SPACE

‘Space invader’

Space. The final frontier. Whether it’s micro or macrocosm, space is the ultimate adventure. Space is where we are; it’s where we go. No space - no location, no direction. Everyone has to be somewhere; and that somewhere must have a spacial context. It’s how we move through time. Perceptual continuity allows us to make sense of the world around us. There’s comfort in knowing that, when I walk down the high street, the shops are in the same order in which I Iast saw them. Visual permanence; remembered spatial narrative; it’s a boon. If architectural planners moved things around overnight, well that, frankly, would be inconsiderate; and disconcerting. So, what we don’t want is things getting shuffled around when we’re asleep. That’s a nightmare. Tom Leighton is a space invader. He’s a scene stealer. Things just don’t stay where you last saw them.

‘Neither God nor Darwin’

There presides, in the minds of highly creative people, worlds that exist only where they are created. Neither God nor Darwin is responsible, they are the compulsive musings of restless minds. These are usually cleverly constructed environments which depend upon recognition and contrast. We know what the creator’s on about, the ‘world’ they’ve invented but something will be STRANGE, or DANGEROUS, or UNEXPECTED. There’s an aberration in the matrix. So it is with the work of Tom Leighton. It is cities, and piazzas, concrete and glass avenues of buildings; but something isn’t right. So you are forced to compare and contrast. The penny soon drops. But even when you see how the expertise has manipulated a visual perspective, there is yet wonder at the ‘how’ of it.

'Master Printer on peyote'

Leighton’s work is that of a master printer on peyote. That black, doom-laden sky with strips of pure fire hovering over a menacingly claustrophobic metropolis might be a scene from Blade Runner, or Inception; a scene that has an interior sensation but an outdoor exposure glows with the power of neon. The comforting perspectives of a cityscape where planners are forced to jam so much into a shopping area you sense can only exist where population density is in crisis. Or the unnerving symmetry of a boulevard where you have the feeling that something’s just not right.

Buildings 1

'Someone's cheating'

Digital manipulation has not had a good press. We see things that are not really there. Someone’s cheating. Newspapers and magazines alter facial complexions or body tone to suit their print requirements, or their audience. Advertisers of cars or alcohol or hairspray entertain with implausible predictions of performance; ‘because we’re worth it’. You are more than human if you have their ‘X factor’. But it’s lies, all lies. A Peter Stuyvesant cigarette never did get you on a balcony overlooking a ski resort full of beautiful people; it just gave you lung cancer. Nor did the wonders of Absolut vodka pull the chicks or make you one-up on the rest of the rule-observing masses. It dulled the wits, enhanced your powers of self-deception and enabled you to make an inebriated jerk of yourself. Persuasive imagery begs you to believe the ridiculous is not only possible, but desirable.

'The delight of creation'

Leighton’s manipulation plays with the same jigsaw, but what he portrays is worlds manufactured for the delight of creation itself and the satisfaction of using his artistic tools to an awesome level of expertise that tickles the psycho-neurology of an open mind.

Photography has long been a medium suspected of deception. Robert Capa ‘captured the moment’ a soldier in the Spanish civil war was hit by a sniper’s bullet and fell backwards, dead. No, he didn’t. Historical research now indicates that was probably a lie. And the shot was likely staged, anyway. There was ‘the moment’ American troops raised the star- spangled banner after the capture of Iwo Jima. No it wasn’t. It was a later re-enactment. What you see is not always what you get. So, existentially, if you can’t trust what you see, try Leighton’s version of apparently ‘real’ places where all your senses, especially memory, are persuaded that, for a moment, the recreated scene is part of your personal history. It’s as solid as you are. But cracks in the illusion soon appear, and you are left feeling a tad gullible. Photography cannot be trusted to show you what’s real; but it can reel you in to a fragment of another possible existence. A momentary particle in the quantum wave texture.

'Quizzical awakening'

When the initial cognitive dissonance of a Leighton reconstruction gives way to furrowed brows of quizzical awakening which segues into a knowing smile, and then on into eye- darting exploration, verification and pattern seeking, therein lies the artistic tension: you know something’s up, and it’s a fascinating uncertainty, but it takes a few seconds to get your bearings. Like walking into your home where Maurits Escher and Sons have redecorated. There’s an obvious deception afoot. It’s ironic. Leighton sometimes gives the lie to his own wink-wink world with a blatant incongruity; like the gargoyle gloating in judgement from a distant era as it overlooks a world turned on its head. But you only see the hissing architectural feature after your eye has swirled right-to-left across the improbable photoscape. Memory of cold granite collides with a shimmer of artistic wizardry. The gargoyle is thinking stonily upon the appropriation of its space.

Tom Leighton travels the world and returns with a knapsack of visual booty and knits a new world from a collage of locations. You may have visited a fragment of the Venice, or Berlin or Beijing featured, but the space invader will have stitched you up; digitally, that is.

‘Shadows of strangeness’

The works in the ‘Appropriation of Space’ exhibit are a visual feast. Leighton’s work is exciting, stimulating and casts shadows of strangeness across any preoccupied psyche. They are masterworks of imagination. Leighton’s desire is for the works to stand the test of time. They will certainly live long in my mind. I hope my exposure to his strange places remains in my subconscious and recurs in sleep states where I can explore them in a more ephemeral body better equipped to explore these fantastical visions. I have been changed by the experience of exposure to these extraordinary images. The more I look, the more I see. Leighton is a bold explorer of unknown worlds. It is unlike any other work I can recall, and so much more than a visual experience. My assemblage points for reality have been irrevocably shifted, and the real world seems a little duller. Put me on ice and preserve me for 3,000 years when human architecture may have caught up.

Joe Robinson

Shibuya Umbrellas 1

Times Aerial

The Stage

 Potsdamer Platz 1

 Potsdamer Platz 2