Power Barge to Dead-Fishville

So here I was on the Phnom Penh quayside, ready to embark on a 250km journey up river, staring down at what appeared to be a barge. A BARGE! I'd bought my ticket and was assured that this was the correct vessel, so I went aboard. It was 6:30 am after all, following a fairly harrowing night, so I was consequently tired and not in the best position to be overinquisitive.

The thought of spending however many hours inside the barge was less than a thrilling thought - even at 6:30 am! The seats were tiny, being designed for deminutive Khmer bottoms, and even the bottom that was attached to my sparingly framed physique had to sit lozengelike in order to fit in next to my ever-smiling neighbour. I tried to nod off, but the constant chatter, bustle and intriguing goings on kept at least one of my eyes open. The cockpit (because that was what it was) was incredibly tight. It accommodated more people than could possibly ever fit into it (yes I know that makes no sense, but look where I am - in a bloody barge in Cambodia, set to plod the 250 km up the Tonle Sap River and Lake). Not only was it ridiculously overcrowded, but each person seemed to have enough livestock to fill the average farm; chickens, pigs, sacks, wives - how many were going to St. Ives? Sorry, got carried away there!!

Eventually, after I'd had some couple of dozen strangers sitting on my knee (some of whom I'd have been more than happy to remain there), the vessel shoved off. It chugged out into the middle of the river and then did something wholly unexpected - it leapt forward as if it had a couple of massively high-powered engines, which actually it did have. I've no idea what kind of speeds that little beauty achieved, but Christ did it shift! I christened my mode of transport the "Power Barge". It kind of summed it up.

After a few minutes, I ventured to extricate myself from my seat in order to pop my head out of the cockpit hatch and enjoyed the gloriously refreshing blasts of wind caused by the power barge's swift movement across the water. The heat inside had already risen past 'sweaty' and was bordering on 'melt', so this was very welcome indead. As i looked around, I noticed that there were passengers on top of the power barge. So many in fact that some of them seemed to be hanging on rather precariously. I'm sure that no-one was in any danger of tumbling overboard, but even so...

Pretty soon I became something of an obstruction, so I reluctantly "flowed" back inside and regained my seat (other cheek prominent this time) next to Mrs Grin. It was around this time that the two TV screens crackled into life - both at the front of the cockpit, and both relatively tiny in comparison to the size of the "auditorium" that they were due to serve. The in-flight entertainment was about to begin.

Now what happened next was a little - no, a lot strange. A karoake film came on. It was very definately Japanese, it had Korean subtitles, and it was dubbed into Khmer. It was aweful! I'm face to the floor when I utter that word, eyes screwed shut, and I'm shaking my head at the same time! Wait, I was the only one who thought that though. All of the locals sang along and seemed to be having a gay old time. It was excruciating! The film lasted around half an hour . . . and then started again!!! It played on a loop until I got my jibbering arse out of there. The journey lasted for eight hours. "I'LL TELL YOU THE SECRET PASSWORD . . . Just stop - pleeeeeease!"

Next time: disembarkation to Dead-Fishville, tuberculosis scare, and just where is "The Red Piano"?

And I promise it won't be as long a wait as the last time, honest :o)

PS. Don't worry, Alan's tale is still to come.

Clockwork Gallery Ventures into T-Shirt Territory

You can now get your favourite Clockwork Gallery designs on a T-shirt. The most T-shirty designs are going onto Ts, hoodies, bags, aprons and other things. Please be patient, as it'll take some time to get them all uploaded. If you have a particular request, just ask, OK?


create & buy custom products at Zazzle

Get your ClockworkG designs here

Sales are up on Clockwork Gallery

The new Clockwork Gallery site is doing very well, with unusually high traffic for such a young site. I hope this trend continues.

Merry Christmas from Clockwork Gallery

The new Clockwork Gallery site is doing very well, as is the old Gallerisation site, especially on the run up to Christmas. This is due in no small part to the increased activity in social networking via this and another blog, the Squidoo lenses 'Clockwork Gallery' and 'Continental Underground Travel - of the fantastic kind', and with the ClockworkG Twitter Tweets.

We're going to have a good Christmas, and we hope you all do too,

Best Wishes,

Chris Gray and the Clockwork Gallery and Gallerisation Team

Phnom Penh - The Dark Side

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Flying into Cambodia necessitates changing planes in Bangkok. If you're wise that is. I have a friend who we were due to meet up with in Siem Reap, Cambodia's second city. Let's call him Alan, because that's his name, and get to his tale a little later.

Once any sane person has changed planes in Bangkok, there then ensues a rather uncomfortable two hour flight to Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. The plane takes off and doesn't stop climbing for an hour, wherein it begins it's descent into Phnom Penh, Pochentong airport. Anyone who's taken a short flight knows the drill; stewardesses shove their trolley's uphill to dispense drinks and plastic food, and then try to prevent the same trolley's from disappearing through the front of the plane as they grab the empties. But this is a little different as the plane climbs so steeply for so long and the planes that ply away between these two South East Asian countries are designed for slighter frames than the average chubby European!

We landed and disgorged during the rebuilding of the airport's reception area and followed people who had no idea where they were going. When finally we were herded into the correct temporary shelter, we were confronted by a sinister looking row of officials who strained through dark glasses to peer at us and then at the passports that had been swiped from us on the plane.

Everyone sweated, not only due to the 80% humidity, but also because of the projected guilt that we all felt as though we'd had our foreheads tattooed with 'I done it', 'It's a fair cop', or some other suitably Sweeneyesque slogan. It was like Midnight Express! Honest!!

Next, fresh meat was called forward by one official or another by means of a pointed finger and a sharp grunt. My turn came and I was asked a few questions, which I neither understood or could possibly have answered adequately. Shockingly, I was ushered away con-passport and exited the building through the Exit tarpaulin...into the heaviest rainstorm I've ever encountered. Even worse than the one I'd encountered in Hong Kong a couple of years ago, which nearly washed me down the Mid Levels. I managed to bag a taxi, or rather, the taxi driver managed to bag me, and we set off for the city. The place was packed with people calmly sheltering from the deluge anywhere they could, smoking to pass the time. This meant under bridges, doorways and quite worryingly due to the proliferation of lighted cigarettes, underneath petrol station forecourt awnings.

It's a little known fact, but if you get into a taxi in Cambodia, the driver owns you! He'll take you to a hotel of his choice even though you state your own preference, and will be waiting to pick you up in the morning to take you to the river harbour, whether you want him to do so or not! I did, so that was OK. The hotel to which he took me not wholly against my will as I was knackered. It was however a very scary place; screams, chain-dragging-on-floor noises and knocks on the door came free of charge most of the night.

Thank God for the morning, the waiting taxi driver and the escape to the river harbour...

River journey, the wonders of the Siem Reap region and Alan's Tale coming soon.

Flickr gallery now live

Some of the Clockwork Gallery images are now available to view via Flickr. The aim is eventually to have all images up there, along with concept work and in-progress stuff too.

Crikey, it's been a long time since I updated this blog. Busy, busy! I've just set up Flickr account, which will have more added as time goes by. I've also enetered the world of Twitter! I wait with unbaited breath for the deluge of interest that these new streams will bring...

Clockwork Gallery Welcomes a New Artist

I'm glad that Clockwork Gallery has added of a new range of artworks by a new artist. Chris Watson is a graphic artist and illustrator with a very logical mind. This is evident from his work, which tends to focus predominantly on planning and step-by-step thought processes. Have a look at: http://www.clockworkgallery.co.uk/?p=1&a=CW

New Site Going Well

The new Clockwork Gallery site is doing very well, with unusually high traffic for such a young site. I hope this trend continues. http://www.clockworkgallery.co.uk/

New Site Launch: Clockwork Gallery

Clockwork Gallery is a new home for the work of contemporary digital artist Chris Gray, who is now joined by Paul Phelan. www.clockworkgallery.co.uk/

This site should prove easier to navigate (and administer) than the old Gallerisation site, which is however still active. www.gallerisation.co.uk/

Other artists that are coming to Clockwork Gallery soon: Chris Watson, Dominic Deane, Grace Clifford and Ben Lear.

Spending Time in Hong Kong - Without messing about with maps!

Four days in Hong Kong. Just right!

I'm not going to preach about what's best to do, just how I like to spend my time there.

The Jade Market: This is a fanastic place, full of nick-nacks and friendly stall holders who are eager to haggle over their wares. You can spend hours in this place and never get bored.

Hong Kong Park Aviary: Sounds dull - isn't!! This place is fantastic, especially if you're looking to chill out and recover a little from jet lag. It's the size of a football field, drops down some thirty feet (ten meters) from the walkways, is chock-a-block with fully grown trees, and is entirely covered with a semi-permeable roof that allows the rain, light and breeze to pass through it. The birds flutter around the place and probably don't even realise that they're incarcerated in this huge capsule.

I love to spend a couple of hours here, just standing or sitting around while the most unbelievably gorgeous birds and small dear go about their business. It's quite usual to be stood in a spot for a quater of an hour and then notice a bright orange bird sitting a couple of feet away right in front of you.

OK, so it's possibly not everyone's cup of tea, but I'm no twitcher, and this is fab.

The Night Market: Vibrant, busy, massively interesting! The Night Market is in Kowloon (just over the bay from HK proper) and is a must to visit. It's open every night, and stretches a mile or two right up Temple Street. Even if you don't want to buy any of the fake labels or latest technology out of Japan or China, it's thriving with entertainment and food stalls. Just the atmosphere alone makes it worth a visit. I do, just about every night that I'm there!

Hong Kong Science Museum: Great fun if it rains...or doesn't actually! There's tons to do here, loads of it being interactive and not at all focused on kids, although they love it too. Rather than me bashing on about it, /www.lcsd.gov.hk/CE/Museum/Science/eindex.php">have a look for yourself.

Just walking around in the city is a treat. It'll take you an hour or two to walk straight through Kowloon (via a 15 minute ferry trip) and get to the other end of Hong Kong; longer if you have your eyes open and want to do things! The street markets are great; livestock, clothes, watches and jewellery for sale - everything. There's no need to catch a taxi or bus or tube, or anything if you don't want/need to - the ferries are a good idea though if you don't want to get wet!!

OK, not the usual list of things to do in Hong Kong, and not exhaustive either, but possibly something different to consider if you're lucky enough to get out there.

Nightmare Asia! - January 2003, Hong Kong

Flying into Hong Kong always gets me excited. I love the place and drop in for a few days every time I travel out to Oz or NZ. The place has a massive atmosphere; it always smells of...something. It's usually just that 'Hong Kong smell', but every now and again it changes to something fantastic, and on rare occasions to something not too hot!!

As I was moving up the east coast of Asia, I thought I'd show that area of the map. Sorting out the coast and islands such as the Philippines was no real problem, but when confronted with the heavily populated areas of China it became a bit of a nightmare. I can't remember how many 'first' drafts of this area I went through, but I nearly gave up; especially when I realised that the whole of Asia would be similarly difficult to de-construct into underground form. The problem was the lack of natural barriers like the ocean that more or less corral the cities into logical lines. The Asian interior is just a jumble of places without any formal linear structure (no offence intended interior Asian folks). Just look at the sketch of eastern Asia:



After hours of frustration, it finally came together into a cohesive, believable format. Hallelujah, I was happy! Needless to say, the featured sketch isn't the final version (it's a mess), but it shows some of the difficulties involved.

The next step in my journey was the homeward stretch, but as I like Hong Kong so much I'll plug it a little more. The next part of the map was western Asia.

I'll be writing more soon.

This finished artwork from an Asian viewpoint

'Asiocentric' is available to view and purchase online @ gallerisation.co.uk

[Online gallery artwork is necessarily small in order to avoid reproduction]

Best 'Til Last

Wow, if there's ever a good place to see in the New Year, Sydney's got to be right up there with it!! The city's busy but not so much as to get jostled; everyone gets a good view of the proceedings and all of the proceedings are in one good view. It's fairly perfect - oh, and it's T-Shirt weather too. Compare this to sub-zero Yorkshire, England avoiding leary would-be-kissers, beer drenched clothes and foot-treading aplenty...I think I know where I'd like to be!

Anyway, the featured area of this article is South East Asia. I'd pondered getting straight to work on Europe, but being a European I figured (rightly as it turned out) that that Continent would be the easiest to define as an underground map. Better save that to last then - especially seeing as I was looking forward to doing that bit the most.

Here's the South East Asia sketch below. As with all the areas of the world (yes, even Europe), it took hours and hours of trial and error and atlas scanning before I was happy with the end result.



This isn't the sketch that was produced on the plane from Auckland to Sydney, but it was this area that was featured - in a much rougher format at that time.

Back in Sydney, and England were fiddled out of the Fifth Test as Steve Waugh was out around three times before the umpire finally gave him out. The Aussies were in a bit of a panic as Andy Caddick and Steve Harmison set about them, but they scraped home in the end to put the seal on a good old fashioned drubbing. Still, Sydney's a nice place!!

More incursions into Asia next time.

This finished artwork from an Antipodean viewpoint, 'Antipocentric' is available to to view and purchase online @ Gallerisation Just click the image!

[Online gallery artwork is necessarily small in order to avoid reproduction]

First Steps - 5 years ago: End December 2002, Auckland

By the time I'd left Melbourne, Melbourne was on the map, and before I'd touched down in Auckland, that city was also represented. A rudimentary plan of the area took shape on the plane, but there were questions to be addressed:

• Should the lines go under the oceans? Yes I supposed so - this is a fantasy underground map after all.
• What should constitute a station? Should it go on city population or general area population? A great deal of Canada would suffer from severe stationlessness if either of these became the rule, so a mixture of both with a dash of common sense and aesthetic licence was to be employed.

Shown here is one of the first sketches:

As I was in this part of the world it seemed like a logical place to start. I reckoned that a line covering east coastal Australian cities might do well to carry on through Papua New Guinea and up the Eastern Asian seaboard, a line could take in Alice Springs and Darwin before moving into South East Asia, and another could cut across to the west of Oz before moving up into India. As it turned out, Perth was the last stop on that line as the Darwin line took in India.

This part of the map was a joy to create along with many other parts; many regions proved to be a nightmare!

More soon


http://gallerisation.co.uk/

Inception - 5 years ago: 29th December 2002, Melbourne

It's December 2002 and I've just witnessed England's demise at the hands of the Australians in the 4th (cricket) Test match. There's another Test due to start in Sydney in a few days and I'm off to see my friends in Auckland after that before flying home via Hong Kong. Home's 11,000 miles away in Yorkshire, England and it's new year. Wouldn't it be great if it were possible to just jump onto the World Tube, pop home for new year and then pop back to watch the 5th Test?

The seed was sown...


http://gallerisation.co.uk/