you don't know jack
This work developed following an invitation to participate in an exhibition curated by Aimee Henny Brown. Past Place: Contemporary Art and Archives (2010) included four other artists: Daniel Bejar, Peter Dykhuis, Kiki Johnson & Rufus Lusk.
As research for this project developed, I became indebted to an archivist, intrigued by architecture, influenced by an audience and inspired by an author.
The Jack of note is Jack Davis. His story had interested me for a long time in part because I had been unable to verify family lore that Jack, my paternal grandmother's younger brother, was a champion boxer who won a Lonsdale Belt. Past Place represented an opportunity to delve deeper into records, generate a new work and, perhaps, validate the story that Jack was a national champion.
Miles Templeton's website, initially dedicated to pre-WW2 boxing in the U.K., provided access to a comprehensive record of Jack's bouts. Fighting under the name "Kid" Davis of Newmarket, it is clear that Jack's record does not include a Lonsdale Belt. Rather it shows his championship to be regional rather than national.
Of significance to the design and development of my contribution to Past Place was that most of Jack's fights took place at The Ring. This proved to be an octagonal building with an interesting history. It was constructed in 1783 as the Surrey Chapel, an independent Methodist and Congregational church on the Blackfriar's Road just south of the river Thames. The building changed hands and purpose several times including use as a warehouse before it was purchased by in 1910 boxer/promoter Dick Burge. Burge renamed it The Ring and it became the region's most important boxing venue. Jack Davis's belt was that of a Ring champion.
The design of my installation owed much to photographs like the one below that shows the building's skeletal structure, all that was left after being the target of Luftwaffe bombs in 1941.
As research for this project developed, I became indebted to an archivist, intrigued by architecture, influenced by an audience and inspired by an author.
The Jack of note is Jack Davis. His story had interested me for a long time in part because I had been unable to verify family lore that Jack, my paternal grandmother's younger brother, was a champion boxer who won a Lonsdale Belt. Past Place represented an opportunity to delve deeper into records, generate a new work and, perhaps, validate the story that Jack was a national champion.
Miles Templeton's website, initially dedicated to pre-WW2 boxing in the U.K., provided access to a comprehensive record of Jack's bouts. Fighting under the name "Kid" Davis of Newmarket, it is clear that Jack's record does not include a Lonsdale Belt. Rather it shows his championship to be regional rather than national.
Of significance to the design and development of my contribution to Past Place was that most of Jack's fights took place at The Ring. This proved to be an octagonal building with an interesting history. It was constructed in 1783 as the Surrey Chapel, an independent Methodist and Congregational church on the Blackfriar's Road just south of the river Thames. The building changed hands and purpose several times including use as a warehouse before it was purchased by in 1910 boxer/promoter Dick Burge. Burge renamed it The Ring and it became the region's most important boxing venue. Jack Davis's belt was that of a Ring champion.
The design of my installation owed much to photographs like the one below that shows the building's skeletal structure, all that was left after being the target of Luftwaffe bombs in 1941.
Written a few years after Davis retired from boxing, J.B. Priestley's essay The Ring (1932), records a visit to the Blackfriars' venue that includes an account of "two novices" who had pleased the crowd so that it had "rained pennies on them". For my version of the Ring, Priestley's evocative image of the crowd's response inspired the inclusion of heel-ball rubbings of Victorian pennies and halfpennies arrayed across a map that locates the building and evokes the surface of the boxing ring.
Copies of the Ring Magazine included first-hand accounts of several of Jack's fights two of which I read and recorded for playback via a parabolic speaker suspended above the centre of the octagon. As a means of audio authenticity, I recorded a sparring session at Palooka's Boxing Club in Halifax. The sound of feet moving around the ring together with the impact of the fighters' gloves served as background to my reading. To hear the audio it was necessary to stand inside the octagon and lean into the space above the map that, like the surface of the boxing ring itself, was stretched across a square frame (36 x 36 x 12 inches).
One of two readings from Ring Magazine can be heard on the preceding page, the text being:
“Kid” Davis, of Newmarket, bt. Billy Eynon, of Merthyr, on Saturday night at the Ring all the way. This makes the winner’s fourth - or is it the fifth? - successive victory in the same ring. It provides a peg on which psychologists can hang a moral since there can be small doubt but that Davis was encouraged by his previous successes to hope for yet another - even in spite of Eynon’s reputation. The Welshman opened strongly, and in the second meeting he made Davis clinch by his forceful punching. The alleged Newmarket man thereupon fell back upon footwork and a straight left jab to counteract Eynon’s methods and being very successful in keeping the Welshman at bay, promised to win by a big margin if only he dodged a k.o. Eynon became tired as a result of missing with heavy rights, which Davis evaded very cleverly. Now and again the Welsh boxer got home with some force, but never dangerously, and Davis kept pegging away with his left hand until he had established a substantial lead. As Eynon tired, Davis began to attack and,
in the 13th rd., banged Billy so hard on the jaw with his right glove as to make him hang on desperately. Later he followed up with another dexter delivery which split Eynon’s eye, and again the Welshman was forced to clinch. It looked as though he would be k.o'd. for the first time in his career, but he pulled himself together and got through to the end in
spite of a left swing to the stomach which floored him for a short count during the 15th rd.
Boxing: Round the London Ring, 13 July 1921 (p 360), this bout was headlined as 'Davis’s Good Win'
Copies of the Ring Magazine included first-hand accounts of several of Jack's fights two of which I read and recorded for playback via a parabolic speaker suspended above the centre of the octagon. As a means of audio authenticity, I recorded a sparring session at Palooka's Boxing Club in Halifax. The sound of feet moving around the ring together with the impact of the fighters' gloves served as background to my reading. To hear the audio it was necessary to stand inside the octagon and lean into the space above the map that, like the surface of the boxing ring itself, was stretched across a square frame (36 x 36 x 12 inches).
One of two readings from Ring Magazine can be heard on the preceding page, the text being:
“Kid” Davis, of Newmarket, bt. Billy Eynon, of Merthyr, on Saturday night at the Ring all the way. This makes the winner’s fourth - or is it the fifth? - successive victory in the same ring. It provides a peg on which psychologists can hang a moral since there can be small doubt but that Davis was encouraged by his previous successes to hope for yet another - even in spite of Eynon’s reputation. The Welshman opened strongly, and in the second meeting he made Davis clinch by his forceful punching. The alleged Newmarket man thereupon fell back upon footwork and a straight left jab to counteract Eynon’s methods and being very successful in keeping the Welshman at bay, promised to win by a big margin if only he dodged a k.o. Eynon became tired as a result of missing with heavy rights, which Davis evaded very cleverly. Now and again the Welsh boxer got home with some force, but never dangerously, and Davis kept pegging away with his left hand until he had established a substantial lead. As Eynon tired, Davis began to attack and,
in the 13th rd., banged Billy so hard on the jaw with his right glove as to make him hang on desperately. Later he followed up with another dexter delivery which split Eynon’s eye, and again the Welshman was forced to clinch. It looked as though he would be k.o'd. for the first time in his career, but he pulled himself together and got through to the end in
spite of a left swing to the stomach which floored him for a short count during the 15th rd.
Boxing: Round the London Ring, 13 July 1921 (p 360), this bout was headlined as 'Davis’s Good Win'
Note: if you look at the images page for this work, you will see an earlier red and yellow painted version of the ring surface. The version I used in the final installation is a black and white drawing. Essentially, as much as I liked the way the red and yellow canvas looked, a black and white image felt more appropriate to the time and place of the event.
Below, The Ring in its prime: a venue that reveals a diverse history.
