Paul Bloomer is a contemporary British artist living and working in the Shetland Islands.
The Blackcountry is a large heavily industrialised area in England, laying to the west of Birmingham consisting of the boroughs of Walsall, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton and Dudley.
The name appeared sometime early 18th century when the abundant natural resources of iron ore, coal and lime saw heavy industry grow at a spectacular rate. By 1860 within five miles of Dudley there were 441 collieries, 181 blast furnaces, 118 iron works 79 rolling mills and 1500 pudding furnaces.
Charles Dickens wrote in The Old Curiosity Shop:
“On every side and as far as the eye can see into the heavy air, tall chimneys, crowding on each other and presenting that endless repetition of the same dull ugly form which is the horror of oppressive dreams poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light and made foul the already melancholy air”.
When describing the area by night Henry James wrote in his autobiography:
“The journey through the Black District, another lesson which needed much more to be rightly felt. The plunge into darkness, lurid with flames, the sense of unknown horror in this weird gloom which then existed nowhere else and had existed nowhere else and never existed before except in volcanic craters”
The Blackcountry was the ultimate in industrial progress and a distinct culture emerged there, a culture that was born to work, with social solidarity and meaning given by the dominance of industry. Around the 19th century the area saw the gradual transition from very heavy industry to the manufacture of highly finished articles in large factories. As wrought iron works and mines begun to close steel works sprang up in their place. Apart from the depression of the 30s the area enjoyed relative prosperity through out the 20th century but the Thatcher policies of the 80s saw large-scale economic destruction as industries collapsed in a ripple effect.
The region suffered the highest sudden rise in unemployment any where in Britain just as I left school. This is the backdrop for my early work that documents and expresses life as I experienced it growing up in this industrially scarred and ravaged area.
It has been said that the Blackcountry of recent years is no longer not so much of a place but more of a state of mind. The heavy heavy industry has declined and in its place we have the shoppingcenterization of society making it like any other town or city in the UK. The unique culture remains and finer people or beer you will not find anywhere else.
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