I have recently moved into my stu­dent house for a second year. For my third uni­ver­sity scho­las­tic period I shall be gra­ced with the sma­llest yet plushiest of rooms in the old 3 sto­rey vic­to­rian resi­dence. There’s limi­ted wall space in this beige-magnolia wall and floo­red room and rather than cover the walls in a few tacky well known matrix and kill bill pos­ters I thought I would find some inte­res­ting art, pho­to­graphy or vin­tage film pos­ters. I have a cou­ple of large fra­mes already so today I deci­ded to spend some time in town trying to find something worthy to fill them. I have found plenty of art online that I enjoy; Michael Sowa, Tho­mas Bar­bey, Bran­don Bird, Ron English, Fran­cine Van Hove and assor­ted others. I often find pic­tu­res on the net and think “I would LOVE to have that on my wall”. There’s a good selec­tion of shops that sell art prints and pos­ters in town (Lea­ming­ton Spa / Coventry), Athena being one of them. 

I spent a good 5 hours at the shops today, mainly loo­king for some term-time work. But in my tra­vels I visi­ted and peru­sed every art shop I could find. I star­ted at Athena. There was the usual Vetriano collec­tion, black and white citys­cape pho­to­graphy, some quirky ani­mal pos­ters, blue washed beach sce­nes of John Miller, the odd Dali image and whor­des of black and white photo prints. These prints sho­wed Marilyn Mon­roe, Elvis, Muham­med Ali and John Tra­volta doing their ste­reoty­pi­cal thing. Four ins­pi­ra­tions for the current gene­ra­tion, one has Par­kin­sons, one is a Scien­to­lo­gist, one was over­weight and died from it and the other did nothing but look pretty until she also died. Great. Do I seem bit­ter about this? Yes I am. In every sin­gle shop I went into I was gree­ted with the exact same art prints, pho­tos and four icons. Some­ti­mes there was the odd Beat­les or Al Pacino addi­tion. But in all SEVEN shops I visi­ted there were the same prints and ima­ges. Nothing at all remo­tely inte­res­ting, inte­llec­tual, bri­lliant, beau­ti­ful or ins­pi­ring to me. Seven dif­fe­rent shops run by seven dif­fe­rent com­pa­nies stoc­king exactly the same shit obviously con­trac­ted from the same bulk pro­vi­der. There was not ONE ori­gi­nal image in any of these out­lets. It’s no won­der peo­ple are tur­ning to the Inter­net to purchase all their goods, the high street sells all the same tacky-kitsch stuff con­for­ming to the lowest com­mon deno­mi­na­tor for the unre­fi­ned mas­ses to deco­rate their ste­reoty­pi­cal lounge or bedrooms with.