Wednesday 28 February 2018

Small World Futures - Last Day

Thank you to everyone who has visited the Small World Futures exhibition on the streets or who has joined us online throughout February. The exhibition draws to a close today amongst the melting snow around London Bridge. Many of the mini sculptures have already been picked up but we'll try and visit all the locations in the #unsettledgallery over the next month to find if any still remain. You can see a full portfolio of the street placements HERE.

As this is the last day of the exhibition we're placing all the sculptures that we couldn't quite fit into the 28 days of February. That means no imagined worlds from the writers but some fantastic treasures to find around London Bridge. Thank you to Kevin Acott, Dean Reddick, Natalie Low, Rebecca Lowe, Ed Arantus and Alban Low for your diverse and evocative writing throughout the month.

#unsettledgallery locations
The artists have given us a real insight into what future worlds could look like. The project has been a genuine success and a joy to organise, it is one that we would like to develop in the future. The next chance to see these miniature dioramas is in Aabenraa, Denmark from the 3rd May until June 2018. Eskild Beck will be organising this Small World exhibition and we'll post up some images when the time comes.

Thank you finally to all the artists involved - Sara Lerota, Ann Kopka, Bryan Benge, Bethany Murray, Wayne Sleeth, Dean Reddick, Lesley Cartwright, Melanie Ezra, Natalie Low, Stella Tripp, Tracy Boness, Jill Hedges, Jenny Meehan, Francesca Albini, Alan Carlyon Smith and Alban Low.

Below are today's Small World Futures.......


Bethany Murray at unsettledgallery No.3
As an artist Bethany Murray takes seemingly empty space, juxtaposing it with physical matter in an attempt to make the intangible tangible. Through the use of cast space, poetry and found objects she attempt to describe a sense of ‘otherness’. Exploring the distinction between the known and unknown that is directly linked to her research of the ‘sacred’. These mere encounters with material and language sit in the hinterland between that which is considered earthly and the ethereal.

Bethany Murray
You can find Bethany Murray's Small World Future where the pavement meets a brick wall on Melior Street (London Bridge) at #unsettledgallery No.3.

Dean Reddick - #unsettledgallery No.7
Dean Reddick is an artist, an art therapist and a lecturer. He uses a range of media and enjoys experimenting with casting processes using plaster, metal and resin to explore the tensions between organic and geometric forms, positive and negative space and the distortions that occur in producing casts. As an artist and art therapist Reddick has a keen interest in the role of art as a cultural phenomenon and as a container for inter-personal meaning. He enjoys working collaboratively and has been a regular exhibitor at Walthamstow's E17 Art Trail as well as exhibiting with CollectConnect. Recently he published Art Therapy in the Early Years: Therapeutic Interventions with Infants, Toddlers and Their Families (pub. 2016, Routledge) alongside co-editor Julia Meyerowitz-Katz.

Dean Reddick
You can find Dean Reddick's Small World Future at the bottom of a brick gully on Magdalen Street (London Bridge) at #unsettledgallery No.7.

Wayne Sleeth - #unsettledgallery No.8
In his mature work since moving to the Lorraine region of France in 2001, Wayne Sleeth reiterates and re-explores the source and schema of his more formative sensations; the big skies above the flat lands of both the Lincolnshire coast of his father and the polders of maternal Flanders, where he also spent his childhood. The Lorraine region for this confirmed European is not only geographically strategic, but offers an echo of that very play of horizontality and verticality where the artist draws freely on “l’espace” as he knows and feels it, as far as the canvas edge…
http://www.waynesleeth.com/

Wayne Sleeth
You can find Wayne Sleeth's Small World Future behind a pick pillar at the back of the Greenwood Theatre on Snowsfields (London Bridge) at #unsettledgallery No.8.

Lesley Cartwright - #unsettledgallery No.1
Lesley Cartwright was born in Liverpool but later moved to Essex to run a Hostel for homeless teenagers. She made her name in the commercial graphic field and music photography until she developed MS and now paints portraits from her Billericay studio. Cartwright is a multitalented artist who is not bound by genre nor convention. The work you see here is an extension of a fabulous Pokémon Go project where she knitted small versions of Pokémon characters and left them in public places for collectors to find. Cartwright has been exhibiting with CollectConnect since the Cardboard City exhibition in 2013.
https://twitter.com/ley9


Lesley Cartwright
You can find Lesley Cartwright's Small World Future between two concrete bollards where Weston Street meets St Thomas Street (London Bridge) at #unsettledgallery No.1.

Ann Kopka - #unsettledgallery No.4
Ann Kopka studied Fine Art at Central St Martins College of Art and Design and the City Lit. She has studied The Practices and Debates of Modern Art and graduated with a First Class Honours degree from The Open University. She has also studied Museum Curating at Tate Modern. Kopka has exhibited in London, the UK and USA. Her work is held in private collections in France, Spain, UK, Australia and Australia. Her experimental work engages with the research, process and transformation of discarded everyday ephemera and disposable objects of little or no intrinsic value. Through the concept of ‘making something out of nothing’ Kopka seeks to draw attention to the throwaway nature of consumer society and question our perception of its value systems.
http://www.artcontemporary.co.uk/

Ann Kopka
You can find Ann Kopka's Small World Future inside the orange dispenser on Snowsfields (London Bridge) at #unsettledgallery No.4.

Melanie Ezra - #unsettledgallery No.1
Melanie Ezra is a Wales-based fine artist who works using her own original photographs to create beautiful and intricate collages. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. She considers herself a specialist in the deconstruction of time and the extension of the moment. Recent works have evolved her practice to include three dimensional mixed media art forms based on dolls, mannequins, and the human form. The theme is always deconstruction and reconstruction, whether this is through a photograph or through her mixed-media works. Ezra openly describes herself as a ‘renegade arts experimentalist’ and is happy dabbling in anything that pushes her work to the limit and broadens her own potential.
https://melanieezra.com/

Melanie Ezra
You can find Melanie Ezra's Small World Future sandwiched between a corrugated wall along Weston Street where it meets St Thomas Street (London Bridge) at #unsettledgallery No.1.

Goodbye everyone, and see you in the future.

Don't forget to send us your images for the Art of Caring exhibition (deadline 6th April) - More details HERE.

Tuesday 27 February 2018

Year 2164 - Tracy Boness - Small World Futures

Tracy Boness - #unsettledgallerr No.7
Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of.... Tracy Boness
The year is 2164

There was a survivor who sighed
"All the people around me have died,
But I'll grow moss and lichen
To make my home striking,
Alone but at least prettified."

Ed Arantus

Tracy Boness
You can find Tracy Boness Small World Future located at the bottom of a brick indentation on Magdalen Street, London Bridge at #unsettledgallery No.7. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Tracy Boness (b. Canningtown, East London) studied for a BTEC National Diploma in Art & Design at East Ham Community College then a BA Hons Degree Fine Art at West Surrey Institute of Art & Design. She consistently exhibits her work, undertaking commissions and taking part in community based workshops. Painting and drawing are essential to her work practice. Recent black and white drawings take inspiration from 18th Century engravings and botanical drawings of the era. Boness also likes to experiment with new materials, sometimes sewing and layering surfaces to create tactile pieces of work.
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/craftylittlehouse100/

Ed Arantus is no stranger to art and writing, he first published his work in the Censored Zine (July 2010) and has exhibited his work ever since at venues like the Contemporary Arts Research Unit in Oxford (2014). Last year he exhibited his poem 'Google If' at the Museum of Futures as part of the Enemies Project.

Monday 26 February 2018

Year 2525 - Alan Carlyon Smith - #smallworldfutures

Alan Carlyon Smith, Weston Street, London Bridge. #unsettledgallery No.1
Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of....Alan Carlyon Smith
The year is 2525

Two by one hands. Sliver sliver sliver, thin like flying seeds. Can cut. Can't eat. More slivers than fingers and toes. Pictures of us, but clean, with teeth, covered. I think these are their gods.

Natalie Low


You can find Alan Carlyon Smith's Small World Future beside the Greenwood Theatre on Weston Street, just south of #unsettledgallery No.1. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Alan Carlyon Smith is an artist and curator currently working from his studio in Wimbledon. He has curated a number of exhibitions at the Shaw Gallery in Croydon, including The Jade Event, Art Jazzed Up and Ballet Russes. The latter involved the London Russian Ballet School performing in the Mitre Theatre. Smith enjoys exhibiting his art in the public domain and regularly contributes work to the Art of Caring at the Rose Theatre (Kingston), St George's Hospital (Tooting) and St Pancras Hospital. In 2015 his work was included in the 70th Anniversary of Korean Liberation International Art Exhibition in Seoul. As a studio artist he works in a range of mediums and has been shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery.
www.wimbledonartstudios.co.uk/alan-carlyon-smith/

Natalie Low enjoys putting words on paper and believes that everyone has a book of some sort inside them. She lives in Twickenham, UK with her rather charming family. She has published two chapbooks Dementia (2015) and recently School Run (2017).


Sunday 25 February 2018

Year 2059 - Bryan Benge - Small World Futures

Bryan Benge, Weston St, London Bridge.
Small World Futures is a collection of 36 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.
Bryan Benge, Weston St, London Bridge.
Today we discover the Small World Future of....Bryan Benge
The year is 2059

DD231248
My name means nothing to you now.
My world a dial nearing empty.
Once, I was a politico. A warrior. A man searching for a righteous cause.
As our world fell, each of us in our own way was broken. It was hard to know who was more crazy... me... or the people who cast their lot with me.

I run now from both the living and the dead. Hunted by scavengers, haunted by those I could not protect. So I exist here in the emptiness of a ruined isle, reduced to one instinct: survive.

Yet I am the chosen one, the mighty hand of vengeance... ... sent down to strike the unroadworthy!
The nightrider... ...hotter than a rolling dice..... .. letters of desire scrawled across my bus.

Ed Arantus
Bryan Benge
You can find Bryan Benge's Small World Future beside the Greenwood Theatre on Weston Street. Between #unsettledgallery No.1 and No.8. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Bryan Benge is a practising artist, currently exploring digital media in his Fine Art practice.
He has always been an exhibiting artist. In 1992 he became a Member of The London Group.
Benge is co-founder of CollectConnect and exhibited at their first show, Open Fridge, at Gallery 89, Barnet in March 2010. The philosophy of CollectConnect sits alongside his belief that creativity and all its outcomes need to be encouraged and supported for all ages and backgrounds, that is without sanctions of selection or application of a personalised aesthetic.  To enable artists opportunities to exhibit their work, free from barriers and gatekeepers.
http://bryanbenge.co.uk

Ed Arantus is no stranger to art and writing, he first published his work in the Censored Zine (July 2010) and has exhibited his work ever since at venues like the Contemporary Arts Research Unit in Oxford (2014). Last year he exhibited his poem 'Google If' at the Museum of Futures as part of the Enemies Project.

Saturday 24 February 2018

Year 2035 - Bethany Murray - #smallworldfutures

Bethany Murray, Snowsfields, London, UK, #unsettledgallery No.8
Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of.... Bethany Murray
The year is 2035....

The Point

He wandered the earth for a few weeks after The Great Comeback. He met up with old mates, his parents, his disciples. Well, eleven of them, anyway. Everyone who met him felt calmer, surer. Everyone felt a little less angry. He seemed, for a while, like a bit of a force for good. A mate of mine - a PA to Pontius Pilate - said even The Prefect spoke well of him.

We weren’t all so impressed though. Some of us wondered why he didn’t do more. He could have done anything he wanted - anything. He could’ve made a real difference. But no. He had A Cunning Plan, apparently. And one afternoon - forty days after - he gathered a few of us together on a hill and we watched him Ascend. Just like that. That grief-stricken night, he called me and I followed him Upstairs: what else could I do? I was a little flattered, to be honest. And a little scared. And a little ecstatic. He was so, so lonely. Always had been. I think the sharp, dark anomie he’d always carried with him like a sack of rocks finally got to him. What do you do after you’re Resurrected? After you’ve made your point? After you’ve made The Point? I knew what I’d done, what we’d all done. That too helped me make the decision to join him.

Time nodded past us. Years, decades, centuries. We sat, the two of us, in his father’s place and talked and sang and watched what was happening down there and reminisced. I apologised. I apologised so much.

Together, we watched acts of kindness, of sweetness. We watched The Inquisition. We watched games of Scrabble and stand-up comedy. We watched The Holocaust. We watched love-making and cheese-eating. We watched The Trump War. And then, one day - October, 2035 - He announced he was going to go back. He asked me if I wanted to go with him. But it felt wrong. ‘I’d rather not,’ I said.

I watched him. I watched him Descend and announce Himself. Some laughed when they met him. After a week or so wandering, chatting and sunbathing in The Secular State Of Israel, he took The SpaceHopper, for some reason, to The Free And Proud Kingdom Of England (c) (TM). And people there told him to go back to where he came from.

And then he went to Greater Russia - to Moscow and to Krakow and to Ljubljana - and to the Beneath-The-Wall Southern States - to Texas and to Louisiana and to Mexico. He spoke to people, performed miracles, started delivering speeches, sermons - in ShopMalls, on the MindWeb and in Insert.

I think I saw what was happening before he did. They were interpreting. They were twisting. They were skewing his words. All dully predictable, of course. They started to wrench his words to fit their ideas, their hates, their desires. Some said He was the reincarnation of The Great Boris. Some that he was the new Martin Luther King. A group in France said that he was Johnny Hallyday.

He stuck with the stuff that had always (sort of) worked: be kind, be nice. But I watched him getting older, tireder. He did a lot of bathing of sinners, men and women, boys and girls, and he was soon ‘exposed’ as a sex pest (#Christperv). They started a campaign to have him banned from universities.

I wondered for a while if I should - if I could - go Downstairs and help. But I knew that what was happening was all part - consciously or unconsciously - of his plan. One night - after an expose on BBC MindWeb’s ‘CrushACeleb’- he spoke to me from a motel room in Carolina. ‘Too much. Time to die,’ was all he said. In Aramaic. And I watched him open a bottle of whiskey and I watched him open a bottle of pills and I watched him die a second human death and I watched them bury him, bury him as one of them. I cried. I cried for days.

There was no Ascension this time. I gradually realised he knew all of this would happen, knew the message this time would be so much more powerful without the party tricks. And I decided then: I needed to go down there. I knew what I had to do.

I think you do too.

Kevin Acott


Bethany Murray
You can find Bethany Murray's Small World Future between two concrete bollards where Weston Street meets St Thomas Street (London Bridge) at #unsettledgallery No.1. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

As an artist Bethany Murray takes seemingly empty space, juxtaposing it with physical matter in an attempt to make the intangible tangible. Through the use of cast space, poetry and found objects she attempt to describe a sense of ‘otherness’. Exploring the distinction between the known and unknown that is directly linked to her research of the ‘sacred’. These mere encounters with material and language sit in the hinterland between that which is considered earthly and the ethereal.
http://bethanymurray-artist.blogspot.co.uk/

Kevin Acott is a London-based model, cult singer and poet. He divides his creative time between writing, photography and collaborative projects. His stories and poems can be found on the websites Sad Paradise, Londonist, Smoke: A London Peculiar and Ink, Sweat And Tears. In 2017 he dedicated six months to travelling and writing. Starting in North Carolina (USA) he eventually ended his adventures in Limoux, France. Along the way Acott spent a month as writer-in-residence in Qaqortoq (Greenland) where he wrote several short stories. He has released several books with publisher Sampson Low and is currently working toward a one-man show at this year's Crouch End Festival in June 2018.

Friday 23 February 2018

Year 11,344 - Dean Reddick - Small World Futures

Dean Reddick between #unsettledgallery No.8 and No.1
Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of.... Dean Reddick
The year is 11,344

Time dissolves
It sticks to everything
And then we open up
Melting our faces away

I can see past lives in your eyes
I know the future will be just passing more time
How to ride the crashwaves that tide in the night
But I got the dreams, and you still believe
Our minds the place that is pristine
They breakin' us but we broke out the seams
Perhaps I'm a fiend, but I got the dream

We have to take the turn
Sink metal nailheads so we return
And we could live every time
But first taste the fire
Where the thoughtflame still burns

Ed Arantus

Dean Reddick
You can find Dean Reddick's Small World Future beside the Greenwood Theatre on Weston Street, London Bridge, UK. Between #unsettledgallery No.8 and No.1. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Dean Reddick is an artist, an art therapist and a lecturer. He uses a range of media and enjoys experimenting with casting processes using plaster, metal and resin to explore the tensions between organic and geometric forms, positive and negative space and the distortions that occur in producing casts. As an artist and art therapist Reddick has a keen interest in the role of art as a cultural phenomenon and as a container for inter-personal meaning. He enjoys working collaboratively and has been a regular exhibitor at Walthamstow's E17 Art Trail as well as exhibiting with CollectConnect. Recently he published Art Therapy in the Early Years: Therapeutic Interventions with Infants, Toddlers and Their Families (pub. 2016, Routledge) alongside co-editor Julia Meyerowitz-Katz.

Ed Arantus is no stranger to art and writing, he first published his work in the Censored Zine (July 2010) and has exhibited his work ever since at venues like the Contemporary Arts Research Unit in Oxford (2014). Last year he exhibited his poem 'Google If' at the Museum of Futures as part of the Enemies Project.
http://edarantus.blogspot.co.uk/


Thursday 22 February 2018

Year 2019 - Wayne Sleeth - #smallworldfutures

Wayne Sleeth, Little Library, Gibbon's Rent, #unsettledgallery No.6
Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of.... Wayne Sleeth
Year 2019

I met a man who could make something out of nothing.

"Like an alchemist!" (Except none of them succeeded.)
"Like a wizard!" (Except they're not real.)
"Like a magician!" (Except the songbird is in reality squashed flat beneath the false floor of the cage.)

And then he was speeding away, ahead of me, out the door.

What I loved about him was his positivity, his self-belief, his happy-face and his vigorous sexual energy. And all the champagne bars he took me to. And the dresses from Jones.

On the day he came home early, I knew something bad was on its way because that morning he dropped a penny on the carpet. He'd never lost money ever before. I picked it up and turned it in my hand. It had been so long since I'd seen one, I almost thought they'd been abolished.

He appeared with his box of belongings, six hours before he would usually arrive home.

"It's all gone," he said.
"It?"
"Everything."
"Everything?"
"There's nothing left."
"Nothing?"
We sometimes had trouble communicating.

"There's less than nothing left," he said. And that suddenly did seem more serious.

"Are we poor?" I asked.
"We are destitute," he said. I should have known we couldn't just be poor.

"We'll have to cash it all in - the house, the other houses, the cars, the holidays, the pets, the children..."
"Not the children," I said.

"We'll have to tighten our belts," he said.
"And roll up our sleeves," I added but he did not seem to think this was helpful.

"I'll have to offload everything - the shares, the phones, the watches, the phablet..."
"Okay stop," I said. I got the gist and I liked him better when he was positive.

"You have me," I said.
He laughed. "You don't own people."
This was news to me.

"Well you have this," I said and held the penny out.

He took it from me. He sat down on the floor. He rolled it on the ground. He polished it between his index finger and thumb. He tapped it against his lip and then his teeth. He flipped it in the air. It came up heads.

"Okay," he said, getting up, "I know what to do now."



Wayne Sleeth
You can find Wayne's Small World Future tucked into the Little Library in Gibbon's Rent at #unsettledgallery No.6. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.


In his mature work since moving to the Lorraine region of France in 2001, Wayne Sleeth reiterates and re-explores the source and schema of his more formative sensations; the big skies above the flat lands of both the Lincolnshire coast of his father and the polders of maternal Flanders, where he also spent his childhood. The Lorraine region for this confirmed European is not only geographically strategic, but offers an echo of that very play of horizontality and verticality where the artist draws freely on “l’espace” as he knows and feels it, as far as the canvas edge…
http://www.waynesleeth.com/

Natalie Low enjoys putting words on paper and believes that everyone has a book of some sort inside them. She lives in Twickenham, UK with her rather charming family. She has published two chapbooks Dementia (2015) and recently School Run (2017).


Wednesday 21 February 2018

Year 2083 - Lesley Cartwright - #unsettledgallery

Lesley Cartwright, #unsettledgallery No.2
Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of....Lesley Cartwright
The year is 2083.....

It's a Charlie World! He keeps lookin' at me.
It's Charlie's World! It ain't easy him seeing me.
If I was him, I'd hate me too.
He watching me in park bay like it's 82!
I'd hate him but he's making me the news,
I'll shank you CAT!
That night in 82 the parking lot was stacked,
I grabbed my Shade and got my eyes stamped black.
I could barely walk around 'cos the city is pack.
I walked to the mezz and lit off some black spats - BAP! BAP! BAP!
Dead cats, tired of gettin' spied on by mean cats.
I'd hate to be a wrong kid, but now you seen my tru-light?
I know you have, 'cos your eyes are ticking like a hitbomb!
My head lit more than Tom Tom!
These scenes, I run these.
I need the hide 'n shout "Stop looking at me Dummy!"

Ed Arantus


Lesley Cartwright
You can find Lesley Cartwright's Small World Future at #unsettledgallery No.2, beside a downpipe on Melior Street and next to the Horseshoe Inn. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.



Lesley Cartwright was born in Liverpool but later moved to Essex to run a Hostel for homeless teenagers. She made her name in the commercial graphic field and music photography until she developed MS and now paints portraits from her Billericay studio. Cartwright is a multitalented artist who is not bound by genre nor convention. The work you see here is an extension of a fabulous Pokémon Go project where she knitted small versions of Pokémon characters and left them in public places for collectors to find. Cartwright has been exhibiting with CollectConnect since the Cardboard City exhibition in 2013.
https://twitter.com/ley9

Ed Arantus is no stranger to art and writing, he first published his work in the Censored Zine (July 2010) and has exhibited his work ever since at venues like the Contemporary Arts Research Unit in Oxford (2014). Last year he exhibited his poem 'Google If' at the Museum of Futures as part of the Enemies Project.
http://edarantus.blogspot.co.uk/




Tuesday 20 February 2018

Year 5046 - Ann Kopka - Small World Futures

Ann Kopka #unsettledgallery No.8
Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of.... Ann Kopka
The Year is 5046...

We have been released. There are infinitely many of us but we are each on our own. That was made clear at the briefing. Each of us is deliberately unique as uniformity has proved to be our undoing. We must learn to trust, nay celebrate, chance - hard after decades of attempting to master it. Our leader was inspired by the legendary dandelion plant which after centuries of presumed extinction was found thriving, evolved, imperfect. Not all of you will survive or be happy, she said, but I realise now that uncertainty is life and we have been keeping you from it. I cannot come with you, she said and we all saw that her eyes were shockingly wet, on behalf of the past, I apologise.

Natalie Low

Ann Kopka
You can find Ann Kopka's Small World Future at the back of the Greenwood Theatre on Snowsfields, #unsettledgallery No.8. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Ann Kopka studied Fine Art at Central St Martins College of Art and Design and the City Lit. She has studied The Practices and Debates of Modern Art and graduated with a First Class Honours degree from The Open University. She has also studied Museum Curating at Tate Modern. Kopka has exhibited in London, the UK and USA. Her work is held in private collections in France, Spain, UK, Australia and Australia. Her experimental work engages with the research, process and transformation of discarded everyday ephemera and disposable objects of little or no intrinsic value. Through the concept of ‘making something out of nothing’ Kopka seeks to draw attention to the throwaway nature of consumer society and question our perception of its value systems.
http://www.artcontemporary.co.uk/

Natalie Low enjoys putting words on paper and believes that everyone has a book of some sort inside them. She lives in Twickenham, UK with her rather charming family. She has published two chapbooks Dementia (2015) and recently School Run (2017).


Monday 19 February 2018

Year 2275 - Stella Tripp - #smallworldfutures

Stella Tripp  #unsettledgallery No.6 Gibbon's Rent
Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of....Stella Tripp
The year is 2275.

Welcome to Calibration Class 15b. Real for Beginners will start shortly.

Stand comfortably now, move yourselves gently towards the light.
In front of you is the fourth wall. It is not a screenscape.
The light is harsh. I cannot dial it down unfortunately.
Lower your hands please, trust me.
Your eyes feel restless. Don't panic. They will calm, your breathing will be stillness soon.

There is nothing to see I know. The whitescape below is barren and bright.
Move your eyes to the dark lines that reach out into the courtyard.
These are shadows, something we don't see inside do we, with our multisoft ecoglobes.
The shadows come from the buildings we stand in. Five of them, like the fingers on your hand.

Now wait a few minutes....... the shadows move. So slowly we cannot detect them. Imagine the black shadows are YOUR fingers, hold up your own hands if it helps.
It is YOU that is reaching out into the whitescape.
YOU exist beyond the fourth wall.

Thank you everyone that's enough for today. You've all done very well.
That is your first taste of Realness, something you will never be able to touch.
Although in time you'll come to appreciate its beauty.

Goodbye and see you all tomorrow.

Alban Low


Stella Tripp
You can find Stella Tripp's Small World Future at #unsettledgallery No.6, deep in the undergrowth of Gibbon's Rent, London Bridge. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Born in Somerset, Stella Tripp trained locally before attending Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts where she went on to lecture part-time. At the beginning of the eighties Stella travelled to America, Illinois where she developed much of her over arching themes and work practices, such as the decision to stop using rectangular stretched canvases and instead building makeshift constructions to paint on. These better reflected her situation and state of mind. She wrote a thesis exploring the nature of art by comparing art from different cultures and was excited by the possibilities that surface when exploring the nature of art in the light of cultural and societal conditioning: "things don’t have to be as they are; anything goes; anything is possible". Stella has been a regular contributor to CollectConnect projects and has notched up over 14 shows exhibitions or publications.
www.stellatripp.co.uk/

Alban Low is involved in many creative projects, these include album artwork, publishing chapbooks, making films, maps, conceptual exhibitions, live performance and good old drawing. He is artist-in-residence at the School of Nursing, Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education at Kingston University and St George's University of London. Low spends his evenings in the jazz clubs of London where he captures the exhilaration of live performances in his sketchbook. On Wednesday evenings he sketches the performers on the radio show A World in London at Resonance FM. He is about to open an exhibition of these drawings at the Yehudi Menuhin Concert Hall on the 14th February 2018.
http://albanlow.com/



Sunday 18 February 2018

Year 5012 - Melanie Ezra - Small World Futures

Melanie Ezra, #unsettledgallery No.1
Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of.... Melanie Ezra
Last Age: Year 5012

Open Line: 22,017 joined. Designation: Curiosity, sub emo; perplexed.
'What is/was/would be this [undesignated] physical carbon structure'
     Open Line: Singular Mind. Designation: Teaching, sub emo; excited.
     'House/Home for soft bodies before Separation Event'
Open Line 21,123 joined. Designation: Curiosity, sub emo; clarifying.
'Soft bodies resided in House/Home (archaic)? Shell designation?'
     Open Line: Singular Mind. Designation: Teaching, sub emo; excited.
     'Shell designation probable. Safe environmental condition sought for
soft bodies'
Open Line 76,541 joined. Designation: Curiosity, sub emo; excited.
'Shell designation House/Home provides environmental conditions for soft bodies.
Confirmed Authentic?'
     Open Line: Singular Mind. Designation: Teaching, sub emo; triumphant.
     'Confirmed Authentic:
     Ref 209876-4758 {Research: Anthro/Arch; Ancient prehistory}'
Open Line 185,987 joined. Designation: Curiosity, sub emo; wonder.
'Research Artefact Accepted. House/Home Environmental Shell object for pre Separation Event
soft bodies. In what forms does Artefact exist?'
     Line: Singular Mind. Designation: Teaching, sub emo; cautious.
     'Artefact exists in Prime Material Existence'
Open Line 2,903,305 joined. Designation: Curiosity, sub emo; disbelief.
'Artefact exists? Confirm [imperative]. Explain resource acquisition
[imperative]. Describe Locations.'
     Line: Singular Mind. Designation: Teaching, sub emo; defensive.
     'Artefact exists; confirmed. Resources reclaimed [permit:
     307-RED099-carbon/wood/metal]. Artefact is placed on
     Planet Earth in Prime Material Existence only [permission requested]'
Open Line 87,5678,873,902 joined. Designation: Curiosity, sub emo; terror/fear.
'Permission denied for Research Artefact House/Home Environmental Shell
object for pre Separation Event soft bodies to BE in Prime Material Existence.
Citation: Non Proliferation of Objects. Report to Closed Line. End'

Closed Line 7 IMPERATIVE.
'Close Line:
Remove Singular Mind.
Expunge would be Research Artefact House/Home Environmental Shell object for pre Separation Event soft bodies.
Classification: Heresy.
Clause: Pollution of Prime Material Existence.
Sub Clause; Improper Use of Reclaimed Resources.
End.'

Dean Reddick

Melanie Ezra
You can find Melanie Ezra's Small World Future located behind the railings at the top of Weston Street, London Bridge at #unsettledgallery No.1. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.


Melanie Ezra is a Wales-based fine artist who works using her own original photographs to create beautiful and intricate collages. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. She considers herself a specialist in the deconstruction of time and the extension of the moment. Recent works have evolved her practice to include three dimensional mixed media art forms based on dolls, mannequins, and the human form. The theme is always deconstruction and reconstruction, whether this is through a photograph or through her mixed-media works. Ezra openly describes herself as a ‘renegade arts experimentalist’ and is happy dabbling in anything that pushes her work to the limit and broadens her own potential.
https://melanieezra.com/

Dean Reddick is an artist, an art therapist and a lecturer. He uses a range of media and enjoys experimenting with casting processes using plaster, metal and resin to explore the tensions between organic and geometric forms, positive and negative space and the distortions that occur in producing casts. As an artist and art therapist Reddick has a keen interest in the role of art as a cultural phenomenon and as a container for inter-personal meaning. He enjoys working collaboratively and has been a regular exhibitor at Walthamstow's E17 Art Trail as well as exhibiting with CollectConnect. Recently he published Art Therapy in the Early Years: Therapeutic Interventions with Infants, Toddlers and Their Families (pub. 2016, Routledge) alongside co-editor Julia Meyerowitz-Katz.

Saturday 17 February 2018

Year 2048/9 - Alan Carlyon Smith - #smallworldfutures

Alan Carlyon Smith, #unsettledgallery no.4
Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of....Alan Carlyon Smith
The year is 2048/9

Sex
Sex. How dare we?
We look back to freedom
And the short years
Of sweet balance.

Sex. Born in 1963.
We leap back to the mornings
We censored nothing
And consent was not funny.

Sex. Died in 2047.
We once walked into minds
Which caressed bodies
With all the hope we had.

No longer.

Sex. Is it possible to fuck without either love or abuse? For years we clung hopelessly to nuance and to complexity and to the kisses of uncertainty. Now we reminisce endlessly about the clothes we wore and the tingles we felt and the laughing and the larking and the love we exchanged before they occupied us from left and from right, filled us with twittering hate and a million selves defined by pitch-forked opposition. Now we yield to the self-theft of freedom from desire and to the absence of bridges that once took us from man to woman and back again.

Once upon a time there was a difference between acceptance and approval.

No longer.

Kevin Acott

Alan Carlyon Smith
You can find Alan Carlyon Smith's Small World Future behind a wire fence on Snowsfields, London Bridge, next to #unsettledgallery No.4. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Alan Carlyon Smith is an artist and curator currently working from his studio in Wimbledon. He has curated a number of exhibitions at the Shaw Gallery in Croydon, including The Jade Event, Art Jazzed Up and Ballet Russes. The latter involved the London Russian Ballet School performing in the Mitre Theatre. Smith enjoys exhibiting his art in the public domain and regularly contributes work to the Art of Caring at the Rose Theatre (Kingston), St George's Hospital (Tooting) and St Pancras Hospital. In 2015 his work was included in the 70th Anniversary of Korean Liberation International Art Exhibition in Seoul. As a studio artist he works in a range of mediums and has been shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery.
www.wimbledonartstudios.co.uk/alan-carlyon-smith/

Kevin Acott is a London-based model, cult singer and poet. He divides his creative time between writing, photography and collaborative projects. His stories and poems can be found on the websites Sad Paradise, Londonist, Smoke: A London Peculiar and Ink, Sweat And Tears. In 2017 he dedicated six months to travelling and writing. Starting in North Carolina (USA) he eventually ended his adventures in Limoux, France. Along the way Acott spent a month as writer-in-residence in Qaqortoq (Greenland) where he wrote several short stories. He has released several books with publisher Sampson Low and is currently working toward a one-man show at this year's Crouch End Festival in June 2018.
www.kevinacott.com


Friday 16 February 2018

Year 2068 - Sarah Lerota - Small World Futures

Sara Lerota #unsettledgallery No.1
Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of.... Sara Lerota

The Daily Londoner, 16th February 2068
Big Bong was almost entirely covered in scaffolding again today as repair work continues apace on the iconic 300ft clock tower. The world-famous clock face was barely visible as wooden scaffolding rose up above its hands for the second time this century. The renovation project has caused controversy as it means removing Big Bong’s iconic fibreglass Gorilla for up to four years due to health and safety concerns for workers.

A spokeswoman for the House of Commons said: "The commissions expressed their disappointment that the Disney Corporation has removed Boris the Gorilla. We are a national of animal lovers whether they be fibreglass or otherwise”

But the Commons has confirmed that Boris will still ring in the New Year and make an appearance for Remembrance Day, as well as any other important national events.

Tourists disappointed by the removal of London's loveable ape can have their holiday selfies fixed for free the government have announced. Data storage company HomeOfficeInc is offering to digitally alter photos taken of the landmark to restore it to its former glory. The firm said a flood of customers had asked for the service and since it has more than 200,000 pictures of the clock tower and ape on file, the in-house Photoshop team are well-armed to transform snaps marred by the building works.

Alban Low

HomeOfficeInc (2068)
You can find Sara Lerota's Small World Future tucked into the metal grills at the North end of Weston Street, London Bridge #unsettledgallery No.1. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Sara Lerota was born in 1989, in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She represented her country by participating in a world art project "PLUS YOU" which brought together artists from all over the world and which was organized by Brigitte Williams and exhibited at Woburn Studios (Slade-UCL) in London, United Kingdom. Although she favours traditional mediums like acrylics and pencils for her art she is currently experimenting in the use of technology (3D modelling & 3D printing). Lerota recently exhibited some of this new conceptual work at the Ruskin Gallery in Cambridge with Art Language Location colleagues (Feb 2018).


Sara Lerota
Alban Low is involved in many creative projects, these include album artwork, publishing chapbooks, making films, maps, conceptual exhibitions, live performance and good old drawing. He is artist-in-residence at the School of Nursing, Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education at Kingston University and St George's University of London. Low spends his evenings in the jazz clubs of London where he captures the exhilaration of live performances in his sketchbook. On Wednesday evenings he sketches the performers on the radio show A World in London at Resonance FM. He is about to open an exhibition of these drawings at the Yehudi Menuhin Concert Hall on the 14th February 2018.
http://albanlow.com/