TONY BAKER  :  artist  +

Homage to Homage to Catalonia is a book of digital prints, photographs and typographic poems that contrasts Orwell's country of eighty years ago (where he wrote about his personal experiences of the Spanish Civil War), with that of present day Catalonia. As an exhibition, the book becomes a series of limited edition prints that juxtaposes its different visual strands, both visceral and kitsch, through the artists exploration of the culture and fabric of a country that has democracy flowing through its veins - and where tradition appears to sit happily, side by side with the seemingly irreverent and contradictory presence of the modern world. 

 

When Orwell arrived in Barcelona on Boxing Day in 1936, he was greeted by a city of revolution and radical social change - a city that, to the eyes of the idealistic thirty-something reporter, had realised his socialist dream. Heralded by the election of the Popular Front earlier that year, he discovered the streets of the Catalan capital to be alive with a political fervour that had attracted foreign partisans, such as himself, to join in the fight against the fascist presence that was sweeping across Europe. Shortly after his arrival, he joined the militia of the POUM, and went to fight at the front, incurring a bullet to the neck that nearly killed him, where he started to write what was to become Homage to Catalonia - his personal account of a country divided by two extremes, and of a war that pitched a ragged army of poorly trained and ill-equipped idealists against the Fascist might of Franco and Mola.

 

Largely focussed on the fabric and detail of the country, the images of Bakers work create a jigsaw of statement & observation that combine together to suggest a definition of its cultural landscape. Acting as a commentary on personal experiences of the country and its people, as well as the lingering presence of English tourists on stag weekends, the photographs and digital prints (that wear their traditional printmaking sensibilities on their sleeve), sit side by side with the four-line typographic poems. 

 

Appearing like the residue of slogans found daubed on the walls and street furniture of both the past and present day Catalonia, these poems, in turn, respond directly to Orwell's writing following both its narrative and chronology.