Port glasgow mark neville iss19

Port Glasgow

By Mark Neville The Port Glasgow Book Project was a public artwork that sought to challenge notions of ownership, appropriation, dissemination, and political and social division. In particular, it looked at how class and social divide is reinforced through images. Port Glasgow itself faces social and economic problems brought on by a decline in local industry; only 50 years ago it was the world centre for shipbuilding, now only one yard remains, Fergusons.

The Port Glasgow Book contains photographs I took over the course of a year. Every household in the Port (there are approximately 8,000) received a free copy of the book, delivered by the local Boys’ Football Club. It is not available anywhere else, commercially or otherwise.

The concept was to produce and distribute a hardback book of ‘social documentary’ images, with high-production values, that subverted conventional ways in which such books are disseminated as ‘art’, or ‘coffee-table’, and questioned the way in which social documentary photography sometimes depends on an inherent framework of exploitation. In this way, rather than have a public artwork imposed upon them, the local community received a gift which, once delivered, they had ownership of, and could choose to cherish as a social document, discard, or even attempt to sell on ‘e-bay’.

Much of my work deals with the way in which society disseminates and filters images, often according to class, income, or in response to political or ‘artistic’ frameworks.

Having said that, my impulse was primarily one of investigation in a contemporary art sense.

I think that it is very likely, therefore, that the project was totally irrelevant to many people in the Port, despite my aspirations. This is a highly contradictory thing, but that does seem to be in the nature of art production somehow, and I think it is partly the purpose of my work to throw up these kinds of issues.

Response to the book by Portonians was indeed extreme. I received copious amounts of e-mails (having given an e-mail address in the back of the book), people sent letters in to the local council, or wrote in to the local newspaper The Greenock Telegraph. Many thought the book was beautiful, an honest reflection of aspects of life in the area, whilst a few believed it showed the community in a negative light, as many of the images were taken in public houses and clubs, and depicted drinking, or revelry.

One response to the project revealed a Sectarian aspect of life in the Port. Protestant residents from one street in the Port, one area in most need of regeneration, collectively took their copies of the book, dumped them at the back of a local Catholic Club, and set fire to them. This expressed a feeling that there was an imbalance, with too many images that depicted or referenced either ‘Celtic Football Club’ or Catholic clubs and pubs, and not enough depicting Protestant clubs or imagery associated with ‘Rangers Football Club’. In my opinion, (speaking as an atheist), the balance is even.

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I also know, however, that many people absolutely loved the book, and saw the enormous amount of affection and care that I put in to making it. In my eyes it was a positive portrayal of the town and the people, and indeed I really felt part of the community by the time the project was done.

The reaction from most Portonians, upon actually being presented with a book at their front door, was one of amazement, delight, but also apprehension. For me this was one of the most magical parts of the project. To see these swarms of boys chapping on the doors of the housing schemes, and seeing people’s faces when they realised they were getting something for nothing. Many, quite naturally, were then a bit suspicious, expecting to get stung with a bill at some point.

The project was funded by the Scottish Arts Council, and a European Regeneration Fund called ‘Urban 2’. However, those funds were administered by and through Inverclyde Council, who had little experience working with an artist, let alone on a project as ambitious as this. It was also my first experience implementing an artwork whereby I had to report to a local council authority. So, the whole experience was a steep learning curve for both them and myself.

For example, originally I had drawn up my proposal budgeting for the delivery of books to be implemented by Royal Mail.

Their quote was over £10,000. However, after three months into the project it became clear to me that this money would be much better going back into the community somehow, so I set about trying to find a group within the Port who could handle the delivery of 8,000 hardback books. (The books were initially to be delivered on a huge lorry to Port Glasgow Town Hall, all the way from the printers in Gent, Belgium.)

The boys’ football team has over 100 members, from 13 to 18-years-old, meaning a physical delivery of only 80 books per person, so they seemed the perfect choice. Also, as they and their families all lived in the Port, they all knew the streets intimately. Indeed, this seemed much ‘safer’ than approaching outside delivery companies, and also conceptually it seemed to fit smoothly into the ethos of feeding both images and funds back into the town, in a kind of reflective way. However, it took an enormous amount of persuasion on my part to convince the council that this was a good idea. I think they were worried about insurance issues.

In the end, the local MP, whose offices are in the Port, wrote a letter endorsing my idea to employ the boys’ football club, and it went ahead. Amazingly, the boys delivered all 8,000 books in under a week and without any real problems. The money the club earned is still paying for both football kit and trips abroad.

I completed the project in December 2004. I must say, I am amazed about how open the whole community was (and still is) to me – both in allowing me access to venues and events to photograph, and in generally accepting me. Nevertheless, I did ‘stick out’. I don’t believe I met one English person the

whole time I was there. So perhaps the fact that I made a huge effort to integrate myself into the community and contribute to it, despite my background, was in the end endearing rather than annoying.

I really agonised as to whether I should show the work outside of the Port in any form at all. Initially I thought it might ‘damage’ the meaning of the work to do so. It seemed both a moral as well as a conceptual question. However, I talked this through with a few critics, thinkers, artists and writers whose opinions I respect, and the over-riding opinion was that it would be fascinating to do a show that presented the community response to the project, including letters, e-mails and newspaper articles, as well as the original photos used in the book. Some even said I had an obligation to exhibit this community response material in a museum show.

So, I ultimately decided this was an essential part of the artwork and the project as a whole, and it will be exhibited in venues in Scotland (the Dick Institute) and England (Modern Art Oxford) later this year.

The Port Glasgow Book Project was a definite event, which took place in a certain place and time. The important questions seem to me to be: ‘Where is the “art” exactly, which audience is it meant to speak to, and who “owns” it?’

Is the art in the quality of the photographs which featured in the book, is it in the book itself as an object, or is it in the contextualisation of the book solely within the Port? (In which case, it is the delivery of the 8,000 books by the local boys’ football team which, as an event, was the ‘art’.)

I was always fascinated by the way in which the kind of hardback ‘coffee-table’ book of images I produced for this project always ended up on the coffee tables of English middle class people, and not in the homes of those depicted in them. Realising this project has allowed me to bring up these questions, and others to do with ‘the audience’, and the ‘context’ in which social documentary photographs are normally positioned.

Here is one of the first responses I received to the book, from a Portonian, by e-mail: ‘Hi Mark Just to say thanks for brightening up my day when i received a free copy of your book titled Port Glasgow. it arrived on a Sunday morning by a young boy who i was about to chase away for walking on my garden, when he said “it’s a free book big man, aboot tha port”. i looked at him thinking “where’s his wee mates probably eyeing up the back garden to see if there’s anything worth stealing” but as it turns out there was no hidden catch, nothing went missing from the garden and i spent about an hour looking through your book. touching stuff as many of the photos i can relate to obviously coming from the area, and i suppose they mean something to us. a very nice gesture by yourself to ourselves. not sure what you’re trying to gain from this or what the reason behind it is but i wish you luck in achieving it. thanks again Rudi’

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