Back Axle Casing

Back Axle Casing

wes foster

BACK_AXLE_CASING_ Wes_Foster_2018

wesfoster.co.uk

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Rough mortar glints in the sunlight from time to time, not that anyone notices. The tower blocks that overlook are such a staple of the Northern skyline that they attract no attention.

Their oblong shape stands tall and proud, holding on, even if slightly malnourished and aging now.

Among them are cast a handful of similar, but smaller, housing complexes. Peeling pastel colours garner the fencing and the wood cladding, while rust spots creep through clinging to the railings. Inclines on every angle make for vistas across – on the opposite side of the valley, Armley, whilst the city sits further down river. A wash of steel and glass marks the skyline, interceded directly by the rail lines.

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Construction is a constant – wiry builders fences lead to more permanent plywood hoardings bearing attractive people and catchy but unbelievable slogans. Beyond the Abbey a constant regeneration is being undergone. No longer are there yards and furnaces and sheds, instead just the open desolate beige grey rubble with four or five workers slowly picking their way across it. One building stands, shiny, but short, in the middle of the wasteland.

Car parks surround it, but there are no amenities, no shops, no vices. This is not a destination – this is simply a link in the chain of the want to be metropolitan commute. Where once stood rows of steel now stands portakabins and a car park. A haven for the commuter, the industrial hub is now a wine bar with some offices above, and the shunting of freighters and trailers in the railyard replaced with the shunting of the commuter on their daily trip to the city centre. This is the urge of a budding metropolitan city, the need to always be modernising.

Ever present is the Abbey – its skeletal form poking up through the canopy of trees around it. Standing resolute, though frail, it mirrors the flats above and casts a similar shadow. In winter the lands are the preserve of the dog walker and the lonely and the bored. As soon as the summer breaks the open grass brings a full field of people – topless men with the same pot bellies as their toddler; underage drinkers excitedly open cheap lager; small groups of men in t-shirts and cargo shorts light up barbeques; young professionals bring Frisbees whilst everyone else has a football.

Woodland and the canal run alongside one another, garnering that feeling of being without the city without actually having to be absent from the city space. The water trickles through, and it’s calmness is infectious slowing down the entire pace of life even when punctuated by the regularly passing train tens of metres away. Dust edged by trees opens up to panoramas back towards the Abbey always cutting an unmistakable silhouette in the sunlight, but framed by rugby posts and suburbia. Beige yellow pathways lead to beige yellow bricks in the outlet, made from the same stone but not stained with the hardship of industrial smog – as strange reminder as capital bites capital; the industrial drive for progress of the canal in direct contact with the modern pinnacle of consumerism. What was once an ecclesiastic wine production centre beget a modern industrial hub beget commuter paradise.

And the cycle continues.

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