Thursday 21 February 2019

Tracy Boness - Love Tokens and Bad Pennies


Tracy Boness  - #unsettledgallery No.2 (Pipe Crack Site)
Does love endure forever? Does a bad penny always turn up? During this Valentine month the artists and writers from CollectConnect explore this flip-sided theme with an exhibition of 32 miniature sculptures. These objects are placed in public places (#unsettledgallery), helping us to remember those who we hold dear - or cast off those who we would rather forget. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these tokens/pennies on this website. A writer will also use the art as inspiration to create something new and fresh.

Art - Tracy Boness / Words -  Ginny Reddick 

The queen was especially frightening today. “I was promised. Promised. Where is it? Where? Is? It?” Her inflection was nonsensical, her eyes missed some essential human thing and the rage burned erratically. Anything could happen now - to the princess or to one of the others. She clutched the locket tightly. It burned her palm. A talisman against the queen but a vulnerability as well. It was filled with herself. She had loved and was loved. Her mother was long gone but she remained, in her and in the locket.

This latest storm subsided and that night she went to the river alone. (Better on her own terms.) She threw it far and her mind’s eye watched it sink to unknowable depths where it could never be taken from her.

Tracy Boness
Tracy's Love Token resides on a tiny mossy ledge in the aptly named Pipe Crack Site in Bermondsey, part of the #usettledgallery No.2 near London Bridge. The #unsettledgallery, as its name suggests, is an evolving space that we have been populating with art. The London Bridge area is a thoroughfare for thousands of commuters each day. The Tate Modern, White Cube and Jerwood Space are close by, Guy's Hospital sits within its boundary, alongside Europe's tallest building, The Shard. The area has been targeted by 'terrorists'  in the past and people queue in a long line every day outside the Immigration Centre on St Thomas St. It has given us plenty of inspiration already but we hope it will now become a breeding ground for both our own art and other artists too. 

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.

Ginny Reddick is a writer and educator. She was one of the artists who exhibited at the first ever CollectConnect exhibition, Open Fridge, in March 2010. Although there has been a 9 year hiatus between that exhibition and this one she has curated numerous CC projects including the Walthamstow street art favourite HideBird.

Don't forget to submit to our next exhibition. The Art of Caring is accepting submission until the 7th April 2019. More at http://collectconnect.blogspot.com/p/submit.html

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