Archive / Repetitions

Between the Devil and the Sky Blue Sea

In 2001 I was invited to exhibit in And the Heat Goes On (Macho, Gangster, Love), a group exhibition curated by Claire Turner of Comme Ça Art in Manchester. The exhibition occupied the display windows of Debenhams in the heart of the city, with my contribution forming a diptych: two paintings facing one another across the main entrance. Visitors entering the building found themselves, quite literally, between the two works.

At the time I remained interested in questions of identity, but here my attention shifted towards the powerful sense of belonging created through football. A local derby is far more than a sporting event. It is a ritual through which people define themselves in relation to a city, a community and, just as importantly, their rivals. The paintings explore the tribal identities that existed between Manchester United and Manchester City at the beginning of the twenty-first century, before the balance between the clubs changed so dramatically.

By this stage the cut-and-paste collages of the earlier Repetitions works had disappeared. I was now working almost entirely with transferred photographic images, allowing the paintings to be built from repeated fragments that fused together into a single visual field. Rather than depicting individual football matches, the works became portraits of two competing cultures.

Man U takes its title from both the abbreviation of Manchester United and the phrase "man you". Built around the architecture of Old Trafford, the painting combines the stadium, its surrounding cityscape, terraces filled with supporters and the distinctive striped pattern of the freshly mown pitch. At the time Manchester United had become one of the world's great football brands, with an international following that extended far beyond the city itself. The repeated Continental signage, borrowed from the club's sponsorship, reinforces that sense of global reach. Manchester is presented not simply as a place, but as an international destination shaped by commerce, spectacle and worldwide recognition.

Citi-Zen plays on the words City, Citizen and Zen. Constructed around Manchester City's former ground at Maine Road, the painting presents a different image of belonging. Before the club's transformation into a global power, Manchester City retained a reputation as a deeply rooted, working-class club whose identity was inseparable from the city itself. The repeatedCitizen signage, drawn from the club's sponsorship, reinforces ideas of local identity and civic belonging. The surrounding terraces, distant hills, architecture and sea of blue supporters create a portrait of Manchester as a lived place rather than an international brand.

Installed facing one another across the entrance to the exhibition, the paintings became opposing poles within the same architectural space. Together they examine the way football constructs collective identity through place, memory, rivalry and belonging. Although rooted in two football clubs, the works are ultimately less concerned with sport than with the ways people locate themselves within larger communities. As with the other works in the Repetitions series, repeated images become a means of revealing the cultural structures that lie beneath everyday experience.