‘If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.’ ~ William Blake
dub: a copy of.
spectrum: the entire range.
Return to the Fields
A bit about my journey…
I grew up in a council house in the village of Christow, east Dartmoor, overlooking a beautiful valley we simply referred to as the fields where we would spend many an hour building tree houses, attempting ninja moves, swimming in rivers and exploring the terrain free as birds. The fields seemed a world apart from the village (which I didn’t much care for) and in many ways to us harboured mysteries akin to ancient myths and folklore. I was creative as a child; I particularly enjoyed drawing cartoons and was very good at theatre. My parents also like to remind me about the time I “Jackson Pollocked” their bedroom with Mum’s nail varnish! It was Thatcher’s ’80s so tough times for those in the low-income bracket living in rural areas but, although my parents struggled a lot financially (divorcing when I was quite young), Dartmoor was a truly magical place to have spent a childhood. The wonderful feeling of freedom amid nature experienced by my brother, friends and I remains, I think, the single biggest influence behind my work as a “grown-up” artist and writer.
I was an anxious and rebellious indie-kid coming of age in the ’90s via underachieving at a small-town comprehensive (beaten up and kicked out of home, aged 16, during my GCSEs but that’s another story!) and working various part-time jobs to earn money that was mostly spent on t-shirts, weed and cassettes. Early on it was all things indie and grunge – from Senseless Things, Ride, the Cure, Nirvana and L7 (and outrageous shows like The Word) to the dub and spaced-out electronica of Mad Professor, Dub Warriors and the Orb. I remember discovering the golden era of hip hop from A Tribe Called Quest and the Beastie Boys to Public Enemy and the punkish gangtsa rap from groups like NWA. It was BMX, skateboards, Super Nes and Street Fighter 2 in an era of Strictly Jungle and the Edge mixtapes, late night cruising country back roads of Devon (usually to a free party), high as kites and trippin’ on shrooms, bopping to the D’n’b riddims of Hype, Nicky Blackmarket, Micky Finn, Darren Jay and more! Most of all, I’ll never forget the first time I heard Demon’s Theme on LTJ Bukem’s Logical Progression compilation; it blew my mind and got me into DJing! There was Bristol’s trip hop and D’n’b scene from Massive Attack to Roni Size’s Full Cycle Records. There was the time we got loved-up to see Leftfield’s Paul Daley do a set at Plymouth Warehouse (with Fabio in the back room) and my first crowd surf was at a Prodigy gig on speed. We had music with energy, diversity and spirit that made it genuinely exciting to be young.
An itinerant teen on benefits, via Kingsteignton, Ogwell and Newton Abbot, I moved to Exeter (into various house shares) to attend college where I encountered the barminess of Brit Art while visiting the now infamous Sensation exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery. I recall being particularly drawn to the paintings of Chris Ofili and Fiona Rae. It was around this time that I realised the dream was to be an artist. The creative culture of the ’90s, in all its optimism, eccentricity and romance, spoke to that rebellious teenager inside who, through youthful naivety, believed the 21st century would play host to an even greater spirit of indie!
After college I lived rent-free in a village pub in Doddiscombsleigh while working in the bar and kitchen, deferred a place at uni, saved some money and travelled Australia and New Zealand. I attained a bachelor’s from the Nottingham Trent University and later got my MA at Central Saint Martins, London (also making various trips around Europe whenever I could, visiting numerous galleries and museums). The former I spent most of my time in record shops, spinnin’ a mixture of dub and intelligent drum ’n’ bass on Nottingham’s Fly FM and various bars and clubs, disinterested in my arty-farty contemporaries promulgating postmodernism’s arid worldview. I had lots of fun working part-time in a small bistro run by an old rocker and in my second year I undertook a collaborative project with Nottingham’s Royal Society for the Blind, which got me short-listed for an Ambassadorial Scholarship. At the time I was hoping to study a Master’s in California, but sadly it wasn’t meant to be. Yet still I dreamed and ultimately headed to London where I discovered that an idealistic council house boy from Dartmoor would come to find the art scene, in such a cosmopolitan city that had been so creatively vibrant only a decade earlier, boringly fauxhemian (the result of too much gentrification, maybe). I found it all a bit sterile. In comparison to experiencing other major cities from my travels, London began to seem like little more than a noisy, overpriced, suffocating shithole… I realised I needed the space and quietude of the fields.
The ensuing experimental, melancholic and disenchanted years eventually led to a return to my roots, as it were, i.e., I found myself becoming interested in the mysterious and numinous qualities of landscapes, particularly the areas around Dartmoor not far from where I was living in Exeter, drawing from various Devonian folktales alongside the work of Jung, Eastern philosophy and art of the early modernists. I ran a couple of studios, which I mainly supported through an assortment of jobs including night shifts in a care home for adults with autism and learning disabilities to working for mental health crisis teams and teaching English at a language school. I took part in solo and group exhibitions in both the UK and abroad. However, I found the creative process itself is what intrigues me: gallery shows seemed rather dull, so I eventually ended up leaving work in random places – be it cities from Plymouth, Bristol, London and Paris to rural locations around Devon. During this time, writing was becoming an increasing part of my creative endeavours culminating in my first novel, written in various cafes, followed by a two-month road trip through Morocco, Spain and Portugal. I then wrote my first book of poetry while living on Dartmoor, mountain-biking through its glorious woodland, before moving again.
I became fascinated with the folk tradition and coastal landscapes of Cornwall after moving from Dunsford to Falmouth in 2020 to study to be a Personal Trainer, simultaneously working a mixture of jobs in cafes, pubs, psychiatric wards and a homeless hostel. I completed the course despite fracturing my ankle after taking up surf-skating, which was shortly followed by the death of my grandfather (amid the lockdown insanity). On my fourth attempt, I passed my driving test in Camborne and then headed back east to Devon, relocating to Exmouth, where I attained an Exercise Referral qualification. I also began working on a new novel inspired largely by Homer’s Odyssey and fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. It’s still in the early stages but I may post some extracts in due course as it develops.
All the above, coupled with my love of underground dance music, helped coin the term dub spectrum which is a DIY ethos primarily focusing on writing, painting and lens-based media. Conceptually, I combine photography, haiku and walking in nature to explore its potential as a poetical form (with a particular connection to woodland of Dartmoor’s Teign Valley – an area I grew up). The form orientates from the interconnection between the haiku’s structure and compositional techniques in landscape photography, both equally embodying ways of seeing. Visually, I aim to develop this through painting which considers Robert Rauschenberg’s use of allegory (principally relating to themes of transience, the body and mythology) alongside a similar creative philosophy, exploring art as a transcendental realm, found in the work of ancient Chinese painters (such as Ma Yuan and Guo Xi) and Zen Buddhist painting. I write poetry and fiction under the pseudonym, Percival Alexander: an alter ego who, among other things, finds modern life absurd. A synopsis of my debut novel, Adrift in Amnesia, can be found here; info about my first book of poetry, The Cycle Diaries, can be found here.
An art student in the early noughties, I was initially optimistic about Big Tech’s brave new world connecting us all. For a time, this seemed to have real potential – finally releasing creatives from the shackles of gatekeepers. I collaborated with artists, writers and musicians as far afield as the US, Russia and Thailand, but also connected with people who were simply interested in art and were drawn to my work. However, in the last 10-15 years, something has darkened to the point of being weirdly un-diverse, insular and polarised (curiously coinciding with the rise of iPhones and social media colonising our lives). The nineties feel like a distant memory. Britain no longer feels like a creative country. There is no joy in our disembodied tech malaise. Now is surely one of the most depressing times to be an artist and writer… be it facing the totalitarianism of AI, the abject and perpetual nihilism of the Internet, the Americanisation of everything, or the mind-numbing conformity of a bourgeois arts scene kowtowing to the egocentric demands of entitled, terminally online activists: cultural homogenisation jacked up to the max in a linear society. G.K. Chesterton once wrote that a dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it. I try to remember those words whenever I look at the world and feel my dreams fading to despair. A new journey begins with a return to the fields.
2025
Christopher Sharp
unityofkana(at)gmail.com