Realised in collaboration with UK graphic arts studio Dust, the Pam Flett Press is a series of publications exploring the possibilities of the essay form (in writing, photography, moving image...) The first edition (Call yourself a bloody professional?) opens by considering amateurism as a creative and critical strategy, after which the focus turns to a variety of different contemporary urban objects and situations.

Excerpt from Lord Biro and the writing on the wall

Sometimes I imagine that the names of certain writers allude obliquely to the activity of tagging itself: there’s the recurrence designated by THEME and SERIES; the rationale suggested by BRIEF or MOTIVE; and the condensation of a signature to SAMPLE or IMAGE. BANE, meanwhile, sums up neatly how graffiti is seen by many as blighting our cities, whilst COST must be especially galling to those who budget for his tag’s removal. I have seen VERB inscribed on a train window, and FONT spelt out on a wall and, as if to confirm expressive intent, a Sheffield writer explicitly asserted himself as POET, whilst in Brighton a LYRICIST has recently begun to crop up across town.

Excerpt from Call yourself a bloody professional?

In search of a way through, I saw how McLuhan had looked to the amateur as suggesting an alternative to business as usual professionalism: he proposed that amateurs are able to be ‘anti-environmental’, looking askance at ‘normal’ practice and able to try alternatives because they are less constrained by the pressure to succeed in their activity - after all, it isn’t a career that is on the line.

But considering the amateur worthy of praise goes against the grain: to call someone an amateur is usually an insult. For most art world professionals, the term amateur artist would evoke the oft-derided Sunday painter, someone with a hobbyist’s Daler easel and an addiction to Watercolour Challenge. That a good deal of contemporary art is surely as formulaic as the most constrained amateur effort seems to pass them by…

Perhaps, then, McLuhan is right: the fact that amateurs can pay too much attention to what the professional considers the ‘wrong’ details might, sometimes at least, prove to be a virtue in setting activities onto hitherto unexpected tracks.