The Verve

"All That Jazz" - original version in situ 2006

This was my first attempt at a 3-D relief. In January 2009 I changed the layout and some of the details, and you can find the modified version under the menu item "3-Dimensional Reliefs".

The original was commissioned by The Verve café-bar and music venue in Byram Street, Huddersfield in the north of England. I was given pretty much free rein to do what I liked, as long as it had sufficient impact, and was in keeping with the feel of the venue.

I went to Stockholm and managed to get permission to photograph whatever I liked in Stampen - a jazz club said to be the oldest (or maybe one of the oldest) jazz clubs in Europe while a 1940s-style jazz band were setting up, using period instruments. Over the years people have left behind all kinds of "lost property" - a double bass, suzaphone, BBC megaphone, a wooden leg, a wooden wheelchair - and they hang it all from the ceiling. I also photographed in music shops and the private guitar collection of the guitarist from a one-time big band in Stockholm.

The result was a very high-resolution digital photomontage, 3.6 x 1.6 metres incorporating 78 box canvases on stretchers of three different depths.