Alan Currall, Tidy Desk, Tiny Mind, 2025, b&w photographs. [Photo credit: Michael Mersinis] 
Alan Currall, Raised bathtub/broken fence, 2025, C-Type print from b&w negative. 
Alan Currall, Retaining wall with logs, 2025, C-Type print from b&w negative. 
Alan Currall, Disorderly grass with log, 2025, b&w photograph, hand-printed on fibre-based paper. 
Alan Currall, Drain rods on grass, 2025, b&w photograph, hand-printed on fibre-based paper. 
Alan Currall, Compost bin with broken fork, 2025, b&w photograph, hand-printed on fibre-based paper.
Tidy Desk, Tiny Mind
From Fleming’s chance discovery of penicillin, resulting from his unkempt laboratory, to Einstein’s work on Brownian Motion, demonstrating the efficiency of disorder, messiness has often had the edge over tidiness. With untidiness comes greater opportunity for serendipitous discoveries. With disorder comes unknowingness, and fertility for the imagination. This is at the heart of my own creative practice, and a necessary substrate for my research.
Messy Gardens: The Abject Sublime
I like a messy garden. I consider the imposition of curated nature as an abomination. Non-spaces in the urban environment often become natural messy gardens. The ad hoc adoption of the grounds surrounding the Stow Building means this quality can be cherished.
Several photographs, from a collection I call ‘Landscape as Autofiction’, document aspects of my own messy garden. It’s not much of a stretch for me to also see an element of self-portraiture in these photographs.
Caitlin DeSilvey, Curated Decay: Heritage beyond Saving (2017) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Reading Landscape 