Marc Provins

Two photographs shot through glass, one is a shop window the other a display case in a museum. One is deliberately obscured to try to hide the cable mess of the modern world, to present a slick front. The other a perfectly crafted cube designed to display treasures, accidentally smeared by the cleaning process. The natural world creeps into both images; a reflected sky, a burst of sunlight. Both pictures make me think about human fallibility and our attempts to control the world,  someone ordering the wrong window film,  the cleaner doing their work and leaving their mark.

Given the right attitude it is possible to grow to like almost anything, even a motorway. I say this as driving back from my parents' home this morning it struck me that the M6 and M5 have acted as a long and winding tarmac umbilical cord over the years.  I grew up in Gloucestershire and although they're not in the same house my mum and dad are still there. Strangely, over the years I seemed to keep moving up the M5 and then the M6, going to college in Birmingham, university in Staffordshire and then on to Manchester. So we've had decades of visiting each other by travelling up and down that same stretch of highway.  The clocks went back this morning, and I woke up thinking about the aide-mémoire 'fall into winter, spring into summer'. It's definitely autumn and whilst talking to mum in her garden I couldn't help noticing the hair like seed heads of one of her clematis. This also happens to forge a further link between our two homes as I have...