The Greatest Thing Ever Known

Hmmm, it's been a while I know.  Remember my post about warm Italian air?  Today I found a book that looked really promising (imagine something so promising yet only costing £2, which is very nearly the bus fare one way into town) but, being wrapped in its original sealed film, is tantalisingly inaccessible.

Googling tells me that it was originally published in 1898 and that this copy was probably published nearly a hundred years later, that's longevity for you.

I can't bring myself to unwrap it on account of the potential to be disappointed.  Does that point to a poor attitude?  Possibly.  But to discover that The Greatest Thing Ever Known wasn't would be a bit like finding out that I didn't like Limoncello after all.

Meanwhile new work is emerging from the depths of my consciousness around the idea of air.

Overlooking

I see that my memory has let me down, it didn't prod me to follow through with my promise of 21st September 'Coming soon'...  I vaguely remember writing exactly those words another time on a different blog and not following through with that either.  It's safe to say now that if I ever write 'Coming soon' I don't mean it.  My conscious mind has the good intentions to want to do just that but is contending with the unknown and hidden aspects of my sub-conscious which is always a little tricky to negotiate and is clearly trying to sabotage me. 

Brighton and Hastings have again been hotbeds of photographic activity and it has at times been difficult to keep up.  The 'Coming soon' that appears here referred to some emerging work that can be seen in Brighton in the PhotoFringe as part of a group show curated by Sue Steward for PhotoHubGroup also part of PhotoHastings 2014.   My offering consists of three images each from separate strands of the overall growing body of work 'In Search of The Real', including Glitches, Spikes and Pixels.  The image below is included and it's the second time this year it has been seen, the first was on page 16 of Trash'd.

Page 16 from Trash'd fanzine, Trash Cannes Festival 2014

The exhibition at Vantage Point, Brighton continues until November 2nd 2014 and includes work from Myka Baum, Alex Brattell, Cathryn Kemp and me.

We're at the end of a long corridor of collectives work but it's worth the walk. 

Coming soon ...

...of the silv-er-y moon

Image courtesy of

Tracy Jones

www.tracyjones.info

Swimming

I swam.  Today.  Tonight.  The very fat full harvest supermoon overhead shone it's light towards my gaze and I sunk myself into the sea and swam.   Hurrah!   Breaking a 7 year bad habit and immense fear.  The water was amazingly warm, it's gentle but huge ferociousness horrifyingly worrying and yet calming once in it!  I know: what a scaredy cat.    Couldn't have done it without my lovely friend Tracy Jones (check out her work - it's really good).

Ha! It's been a while.

And it has. 

Meanwhile I've been looking around as ever.  And been affected by what goes on around me. 

East Sussex Open

Getting ready for tonight's opening of the East Sussex Open at Towner Art Gallery that beautiful gallery on the south coast that I wrote about in a much much earlier post (http://lucinda-wells.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/strange-links).

'In Search of the Real: Glitches' (digital video, 2013) was selected by 'Exhibitions Curator Sanna Moore ... (and) ... guest selectors, Matthew Cornford, Professor of Fine Art, University of Brighton (and one half of artist duo Cornford & Cross) and Hastings based artist Becky Beasley, whose work has been exhibited extensively in the UK and internationally.' (Towner Art Gallery).

I sneaked a view of the show's installation while dropping off my work and it promises to be a fascinating, thought provoking show.

& Some More

Telling Stories & Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Gallery

More

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I've been busy

Beach Shorts & Radio Days

This is a crucial moment...

 

Him:  (He waves his hands in the air) I'm in the middle of eating my dinner.  I'll put it through your door after the ... (what was it he said?), it's a crucial moment.

Me:  No (emphatic) NOW.  What can I do to help (me trying to be forgiving/diplomatic)?  Him:  he points upwards and mouthed something at me.  Me:  It cannot continue.

The first conversation with my neighbour of 5 years.

Today started at 2.38 am.  With an intermittent high pitch beep.  I looked out the window, nothing but black and the beep which seemed to move around the garden space so that I couldn't be sure of its source.

Man-made beeps are not nearly so beautiful as birdsong.  The day before I was woken by birdsong at 4.38. Man is behind the times clearly.  Or aggravatingly before.  The birds today remained silent or went elsewhere - the ugliness of the beep drowning out any possibility of joy.

After 12 hours - what took me so long?  I called the council.  They could hear the beep during the call.  Them:  We don't normally hear it over the phone.  Me:  Can you help?  They came around.  The beep mysteriously stopped on their arrival.  Sod's law isn't it.

A little later, after 5pm - beep.  Then more and more and more.  It was back.

What to do?  The council are shut.  Deciding on a plan - that is: to visit each of my neighbours to see if they've heard it and know it's source - I go next door.  There are no door bells.  None.  The wires are all hanging out of the frame in a huge bundle.  But I can hear the beep loudly through the door.   Aha.  I call loudly through the letterbox.  HELLO.  HELLO.  HELLO.  HELL-O.  A light goes on and a door along the corridor opens.  A woman appears:  Yes, Yes, Yes?  The beep is ringing in her ears.  It's a neighbour's beep not hers and she is so tired of the incessant sound. 

She lets me in and I climb the stairs to the freeholder.  He doesn't answer my knocks or my hellos through his letterbox.

I go home.  How would you get hold of a neighbour 1 storey up with no doorbell who won't answer his front door?  I'm elevated too.  I get a pole, write a note, attach it then wave it in front of his window while calling out his name very loudly.  KEVIN.  It worked.

I could see him through the window with his headphones on - he turned around with surprise and gestured through the window at me - a hand to the ear - a moue - then that shrug that people do from their shoulders to their hands hopelessly.  I carried on waving the homemade flag and pointed downstairs.  He knew why I was waving - his headphones gave him away.

Damn beep is still beeping away.  

I'm often surprised and delighted

Telling Stories: Hastings

It's begun...

www.tellingstories.info

The undeniable

Remember the post: 'the imponderable' 21/5/2010 - consisting of merely this...




 

A photograph of some sky blue doors.  Closed off to me.  By me?  Not wishing to contemplate what lay beyond them, paralysed by the outer potentially reflecting the inner. The lack of handles adding to the mystery (or horror) of what they shut in or out.  The only suggested access via what might be a key-hole or worse still, lots of them on their surface.  The green foliage on the outside suggesting that the outside was by far the better place to be.

Is it always to be the case that things are often not what they seem?  And if so, how much do we miss through our avoidance of really looking.  Had I allowed my inate curiousity to look a little bit closer or more accurately, more openly then I would have seen earlier what I now have seen.  It's not that it wasn't that bad, it's more that it was so incredibly good.