Sick Britain

In case you weren’t aware we’ve got a thriving Flickr Group where fellow explorers post their wares, we’re over 3,500 items now so I thought I’d make a few quick picks of the Creative Commons submissions from the group.  If you’ve not heard of Creative Commons it’s a way of licensing your work to allow certain usage, in my case my photos are all available for non-commercial use as long as you credit me.

So, onto the picks – I’ve selected one photo each from five Sick Britain members…

1. Howzey….

2. Compound Eye…

3. Urban Spaceman…

4. AltoExyl…

5. Alistair Hobbs…

Popularity: 7% [?]

Following up on my Top 10 Abandoned Asylums post I decided to start looking at other ‘genres’ of urban exploration, in this week’s post it’s going to be industrial sites.  When I started researching the list I had a few obvious sites in mind but for the rest it was really tough to build a good solid list, industrial urbex seems to be much more diverse and localised than asylums.  It seems that explorers will travel great distances to visit an abandoned asylum but there are seem to be enough derelict warehouses, mills, factories, etc. on a local basis so people tend to visit places close to their homes.

As before, I have selected a top ten list based on the number of Flickr photos I found for each site in a single search, doubtlessly I will have missed important sites and got the ranking wrong but please feel free to point them out by leaving a comment. All of the photos used below were taken by other photographers and are used under a Creative Commons license (click through to Flickr for attribution), if you think you’ve got a better photo and it’s not CC – get your licensing sorted!

Annesley, Clipstone, Pleasley

Popularity: 57% [?]

All over the UK dotted throughout countryside and city alike lie abandoned asylums, relics of a bygone era of mental health where the aim was to isolate patients in a secure facility rather than integrating them with the community. Here I have selected a top ten list based on the number of Flickr photos I found for each asylum in a single search, doubtlessly I will have missed important sites and got the ranking wrong but please feel free to point them out by leaving a comment. All of the photos used below were taken by other photographers and are used under a Creative Commons license (click through to Flickr for attribution), if you think you’ve got a better photo and it’s not CC – get your licensing sorted!

1. Hellingly

2. Cane Hill

3. West Park

4. Whittingham

5. Severalls

6. Denbigh

7. Deva

8. St Mary’s

9. Talgarth

10. St John’s

Popularity: 100% [?]

After a run of mainly forum or photography sites I’ve found something a little different, a blog. Talk|URBEX is just starting out but aims to “share amazing locations, hints, tips and provide articles on camera equipment, post processing workflow and help on getting that perfect angle to provide the best record of the urbex site”, given that it’s aims are very allied to ours here at Sick Britain I intend to watch this one with interest!

www.talkurbex.com

Popularity: 6% [?]

It’s one of the many Marmite “Love it or Hate It” areas of the art world and a controvertial subject in the general public’s eye but I really do love graffiti, or to use it’s euphemistic moniker, street art. In the world of music I tend to like high-energy music (e.g. drum’n'bass, heavy metal) or songs where the lyrics really have something to say (e.g. rap, hip-hop) and the same can be said of the graffit world – I like a high visual impact or I like the graffiti to speak to me, to carry a message.

I’ve put together a few examples of graffiti that I found whilst grazing the pastures of Flickr, I guess you can’t start any post like this without really mentioning l’artiste du jour: Banksy. Not only is this piece very pretty it also carries with it a heavy social commentary as does much of his work, whist it’s instantly funny I feel a wave of sadness when I look at it – that feeling of our history being washed away…

That’s not to say that you have to be particularly arty to create work with humour and social commentary, there’s something about this piece that I really like even though there’s not a great deal to it…

Whilst it doesn’t carry any appreciable meaning I love aethetics of something like this…

The same goes for this more elaborate and colourful piece, I love it…

I’m not really convinced that this next one counts as Street Art since it was an installation in the Tate Modern but I think it shows what impact a piece of art can have when rendered on a large scale (something graffiti plays to significantly)…

Please don’t get any of my praise confused with tagging (i.e. single line drawn names – neither colourful or artful), the pointless scrawling of a name across a building or railway bridge does nothing for anyone. I’ve heard arguments that graffiti started out as tagging so we should think it’s OK but I don’t buy it, tagging is for wankers – pure and simple. The above examples all take thought and skill, that’s what makes it art to me and that’s what makes it awesome.

I heart street art.

Popularity: 13% [?]