Alison Carlier - groving / Acts of Resistance

Alison Carlier's piece has found an appropriate home on a window sill at the top end of Guildhall Street. 

As I write this I’m thinking about Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk in Memphis, Tennessee. I’m driving down to New Orleans (the Ipswich of Louisiana) tomorrow and I’ve just been reading something Martin Luther King said: that the real opponents of equality, the real defenders of hate and bigotry, are not the racist right but moderate whites ‘who prefer order to justice’. I wonder what he’d make of our big-small British fears here, now? And I wonder how he would pick his way through the swamps of ‘identity’ we find ourselves negotiating, dodging tweeted bullets and tube-carriage abuse as we go?

They want us to be divided into ‘Remoaners’ or ‘Brexshiteers’, to feel one thing or the other, to render the other side unhuman, because they benefit if we do. The narrow, twisted little haters benefit. The clever, clean, privileged liberals benefit. The rest of us are left feeling a kind of resigned despair and try to close our eyes while they loot all the hope from our flooded hearts.

I think somewhere, deep down, we all know the truth: the truth that we each - every single one of us - have Brexity bits and Remainy bits. And that we each have a whole host of bigotries and fears and creepy-crawly darknesses, but just don’t want to admit it. And when they give us a Rubik’s cube and tell us we can easily solve it if only we saw it for the simple child’s game it really is, we believe them...

I nearly voted for Brexit. I nearly voted for Brexit because the EU is undemocratic and unjust, because it sadistically assaulted the Greek people, because it wilfully punished refugees, because it solidifies a fake-liberal, destructive capitalism which benefits - of course! - the few... and because Coca-Cola (oh yes!) sponsored the EU Presidency.

I nearly voted for Brexit because I mistrust those with power, because I mistrust the Clintons as much as I mistrust the Trumps, because I mistrust The Guardian as much as the Express... and because I mistrust the BBC as much as Sky.

I nearly voted for Brexit because the middle-classes didn’t want it, because Crouch End really didn’t want it at all, because I think I probably became a sort-of Socialist as a kid because I envied and admired and wanted to hurt my Mail-reading, sweet and distant Dad... and, I admit, because it’s fun to throw everything up into the air and see where it lands: order, followed by chaos, followed by rebirth.

I didn’t vote for Brexit in the end. Jo Cox was murdered and I realised I just couldn’t do it: and that, if I’m honest, was about as thoughtful and considered as I got as I walked into the booth.

So. Which is the true ‘democratic’ option now, three years on? I’ve no idea. I just know if we don’t acknowledge the devil in ourselves, the Christ in ourselves, the nurse in ourselves, the patient in ourselves, the refugee in ourselves, the border guard in ourselves, the Farage in ourselves, the Jean-Claude Juncker in ourselves... we’re done for.

This isn’t really another plea for unity. It is instead, I think, a plea for us to recognise and value our own individual disunities, to try to love our own order and disorder, our own justices and injustices, for us to celebrate them and to mock them, to let uncertainty seduce us, have its way with us, spill all over us. A desire for order, for certainty is the real enemy of resistance: three years on from my/your act of emotional cross-in-boxing, I’m sure of that.

Kevin Acott

Alison Carlier studied fine art at Surrey Institute of Art & Design and has an MA in Drawing from Wimbledon College of Arts. She went on to win the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2014, the first entry for a sound piece. She has exhibited widely, including at Fratton Festival of Light, Portsmouth; Netpark, Southend on Sea; Aspex, Portsmouth; National Gallery, London. She was awarded the Alexandra Reinhardt Residency and Commission in 2016.

Kevin Acott is a writer, lecturer, whiskey lover, and Spurs sufferer. He’s a sort of left libertarian/sort of anarchist who feels strangely attracted to French chansons, Greenland and Joseph Conrad as he gets older. His own acts of resistance have included wearing socks with ‘Tuesday’ on them on a Thursday and ordering coffee before the starter.

Alban Low - groving / Acts of Resistance

A dodgy looking sculpture by Alban Low has been left at the top end of Abbeygate Street today.

drug stub doggy bag
suck it up
suck it in
dollar god
tobacco king
snow queen

Sue Burge

Alban Low is involved in many creative projects including 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. This year he is working on a walking project about London Musicians from the 1920s-1940s. In 2018 he spent a week at grove with Kevin Acott where they published two chapbooks. See http://albanlow.com

Sue Burge is a North Norfolk based poet and freelance tutor in creative writing and film studies.  Her first collection In the Kingdom of Shadows was published in 2018 alongside her debut pamphlet Lumiere. For more information go to www.sueburge.uk

Julia Manheim - Groving / Acts of Resistance

This morning an innocuous plastic canister appeared on rough ground in St Andrews Street South. Inside Julia Manheim's text reads Resist with Love in the Mist. Sow these seeds on barren ground, water them. Refill this container with seeds and leave it for someone else. 

http://www.groveprojects.org/

Love in a Mist

Amy enters ahead of Ryan. She’s holding a small plastic container.

Amy: What's in it then?

Ryan: Seeds.

Amy: That's not much of a proposal thing.

Ryan: Well it's, like, about the future, innit. They're only little dots now, but they will be flowers.

Amy: I don't get it. Why can't I have a diamond ring like other people? You're not even on one knee.

Ryan: I didn't want to do the same as other people. I wanted to be a bit, y'know, quirky. Bit...different.

Amy: This is certainly bloody quirky. How can I show this to the girls at work?

Ryan: See, you plant them, and next year, about when we're...our... y'know, our wedding date, they'll all be lovely blue flowers.

Amy: Fuckin' hell, Ryan. I don't get you.

Ryan: No... (he lets out a wistful sigh).

They stare at each other for a while both occasionally looking at the little plastic pot.

Amy: Can't I have a ring as well?

Ryan: No.

Amy: Just a cheap one?

Ryan: No.

There's a long pause

Amy: In the garden? Plant them in the garden?

He puts his arm around her - exeunt together.

Lynn Whitehead

​Julia Manheim's work has encompassed contemporary jewellery, public art projects, sculpture, installation and video. As grove resident artist in July this year, Julia walked through Bury St Edmunds and the discarded objects that she found took on a new life in a beautiful  installation.  See www.quay2c.com/index.php/m2/detail/julia_manheim1

Lynn Whitehead studied at Bretton Hall, and she has worked extensively as an actress/singer in regional theatres, on national and international tours, and at the Edinburgh Festival - with some forays into television and more into radio, which she loves. She has a wealth of experience writing for and running community theatre and singing classes  across all ages and abilities. She also works as a storyteller with RojoArt and has written her first solo show which is  about an 18th Century Midwife. 

Bryan Benge - Acts of Resistance

Acts of Resistance​, this year's theme for #groving, continues today with the placing of Bryan Benge's badge in the Buttermarket. 

Bringing home the bacon

​What a drag it is,
not just mum and dad

but the whole family,
needing to pull together

in a sterling effort
to bring home the bacon,

while revolution
flourishes in the house

and on the box –
Liberty leading the people.

We’re all right,
we’re all white,

but revolution
is steadfastly going on

beneath our calm exteriors.
And left out in the cold

we’re like a monument
to our own struggle;

taking back control,
taking back ownership

that’s what we voted for,
but it looks like

we’ll just have to
get on with it,

do it on our own,
with incessant argument

going on inside ‘The House’,
between these four walls.

Phil Barrett

Bryan Benge has exhibited widely, including with the London Group, and recently in In The Dark, The Cello Factory, London; The Art of Caring, St Georges Hospital, London in 2018 and 2019; Penrith Gallery, St Ives; Pulchri Studio, The Hague. He has work in numerous private collections, and in the Tate Gallery Archive. See www.bryanbenge.co.uk

​Phil Barrett taught art for 27 years, then retired to his home county of Norfolk where he concentrates on writing. He teaches creative writing, in schools and libraries across North Norfolk. He has won prizes and commendations in national competitions, and has been published in anthologies including In Protest: 150 poems for Human Rights (2013), Word Aid Anthologies Did I Tell You? (2010), and Not Only The Dark (2011), the Ink, Sweat and Tears webzine, and Poems in the Waiting Room in 2016 and 2019. In January 2017 he published a book of poems, Writing Me, about growing-up. 

Eskild Beck - Acts of Resistance

This morning Eskild Beck's work was placed at three locations in the town; Abbeygate Street, Moyses Hall Museum and The Traverse. His work ​Diversity is a multiple so that a number of people can take a piece. 

Diversity

Diversity celebrates difference;

    Includes  imperfection,

      Values the various,

         Eccentric, extraordinary;

             Rejoices in rainbows,

                    Sings solidarity,
  
                    I nsists: be

                   T rue to

                   Yoursełf.

Lynda Turbet

I held a most distressing thought last night
In dream I was a crystal bird
Blinded by a pride so bright
Ascend and soar and rise and more
Shine high and never alight
My luck to take a breath of glass
And saved another night of endless flight
Colours awoke my heart beat fast
Your blank doves swallowed by the sun at last
​
Ed Arantus

Eskild Beck trained in Copenhagen and New York. His work is represented in museums and collections in Denmark, Germany, South Korea, Japan. For interesting exhibitions please see www.starflight.dk, including Kunsthals forårsudstilling, Copenhagen; Den fries Efterårsudstilling,  Copenhagen; Oriel Davies Gallery, Wales; Cubeopen, Manchester; Artinternational, Zurich.

Lynda Turbet observes the world from North Norfolk and tries make sense of it all through writing.

Ed Arantus published his first work in the Censored Zine in 2010 and has exhibited his work ever since at venues like the Contemporary Arts Research Unit in Oxford and the Museum of Futures in Surbiton. Earlier this year he was a writer for the Love Tokens and Bad Pennies exhibition with CollectConnect. See http://edarantus.blogspot.com/, twitter @edarantus

Groving - The eve of resistance

Groving launches tomorrow, as the first of seventeen fantastic small artworks is placed on the streets of Bury St Edmunds. Each day the situation of a new artwork will be revealed on this blog; find it, enjoy it, photograph it and post #groving

Groving Exhibition in Bury St Edmunds

This summer we're teaming up with Barbara Dougan at Grove Projects in Bury St Edmunds. Barbara  contributed to our Love Token's and Bad Pennies exhibition in the Spring of 2019 and she is growing the same format in the fertile arts ground of East Anglia from the 20th August to 5th September.

Groving is a new annual summer exhibition that explores aspects of Bury St Edmunds through specially commissioned works of art placed in public. People who come across the work can enjoy it, leave it for other people to see, or take it home. The theme this year is Acts of Resistance. Writers have been commissioned to write about the artworks, and the project will be documented on the Grove Project Blog and here at CollectConnect. 

Artists exhibiting are Alban Low, Alison Carlier, Amilia Graham, Bryan Benge, Chris Brown, Dean Reddick, Deborah Pipe, Eskild Beck, Jacquie Campbell, Julia Manheim, Sarah Sabin and Simon Brewster. They have made 17 new works of art - each less than 5cm x 5cm - which will be put out on the streets of Bury St Edmunds. The writers Astra Papachristodoulou, Amilia Graham, Ed Arantus, Kevin Acott, Lynda Turbet, Lynn Whitehead, Phil Barrett, Natalie Low, Sue Burge and Tim Welton are responding to the artworks. 

Art of Caring opens at St Pancras Hospital

It was a wonderful evening at the St Pancras Hospital gallery when we launched our fifth ART OF CARING exhibition. A lovely balmy evening brought out a big crowd of art lovers who spilled out into the St Pancras courtyard. The evening was launched by a fantastic passionate speech from St Pancras/CANDI CEO Angela McNab followed by Professor Karen Norman from Kingston University. She presented a well deserved award to the winner of the Art of Caring Writing Competition, Bola Lafe. Then we were treated to fabulous entertainment from Matt Grabham and his magic subterranean violin, Paul Destry with two soul searching blues numbers and our headliner Lucinda Sieger who performed with professional sparkle and joy and captivated our audience with 3 of her key hit songs.

Many thanks to all the artists supporting us who came with family and friends. Reaction to the artwork is strong and positive .Watch out for the premiere of Anna Bowman's new film about the exhibition on our closing night 4/10/19. 

Thank you to the continued support from The Nursing school at Kingston University and Peter Herbert and his team at St Pancras. This is truly a magical exhibition.

If you would like to see a larger selection of photos then follow this link - https://photos.app.goo.gl/19TmbhuMmTXFFvuL8

eMotion: Emotional Transitions in Healthcare

Yesterday Alban set up the eMotion interactive art exhibit at the Tate Modern alongside Harvey Wells (Senior Lecturer in Medical Education, Barts and the London School of Medicine) and Nikki Yun (an Intensive Care and Trauma & Orthopaedics Nurse at St George's Hospital). You can see/experience it from 11-16 June 2019, 12-5pm daily as part of the Ideas in Motion exhibition. More information here - https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/tate-exchange/workshop/ideas-motion-borders-bodies-and-universe

Our artwork is called eMotion: Emotional Transitions in Healthcare. Ill-health requires us to make transitions: to move emotionally, spiritually, socially, physically. We adjust from being 'healthy' to being 'ill', from ‘independence’ to ‘dependence’ and back again. The project highlights the joys and fear of impermanence, of the changes that occur every second, minute and hour of our lives. It embraces movement as normal, as part of the flow of life – something that should neither be resisted nor forced. 

We’ve built a huge interactive floor map, in the style of a tube map, which has ‘end stations’ labelled with key points of ‘stasis’. Visitors to the Tate Modern can place their own ‘station stops’along each route and navigate the transitions that are the narrative of their own lives.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to it during Mental Health Awareness Week 2019 (your names are printed on the artwork itself) including... Andrea Rinciari, Anne Beach, Anonymous, Astra Papachristodoulou, Ben Honebone, Carole Bulewski, Caroline Streatfield, Charles Lambert, Dawn Goodwin, Dean Reddick, Denise Cowan, Denise Ledgerwood, Diane Taber, Francesca Albini, Ginny Reddick, Glen Strachan, Harley Richardson, Helen Nicholas, Jackie Franklin, Jacqueline Smith, Jennie Gray, Jenny Meehan, Jessica Sedler, Jill Hedges, Jim Edwards, Jina Wallwork, Jo Silver, John Tilt, Judith Parry, Julie Reay, Kate Cox, Katie Stone, Katya Duft, Laura Hulse, Lesley Cartwright, Lesley Crowhurst, Leslie Baldock, Linley Weir, Lorraine Bewes, Lucy Furlong, Lucy Newton, Margaret McCloy, Mark Carr, Mark Lomax, Melanie Honebone, Mike Dunn, Mike Russell, Mike Soper, Natalie Low, Nick Mort, Nigel Price, Penny Parr, Peter S Smith, Peter Turton, Phil Deed, Rebecca Lowe, Robert Good, Robin Helweg-Larsen, Robin Hutchinson, Rose Catling, Ruth Payne, Sam Furlong, Sarah Taylor, Shirley Smart, Sophie Bradbury, Stella Tripp, Stephen MacLachlan, Steve Cohen, Stuart Crewes, Stuart Hawkes, Tahira Mandarino-Simler, Tamara Jelača, Terence Collie, Theo Wood, Tony Martin, Tracy Boness, Tracy Ann Ferriss and Wayne Sleeth. Apologies to the Danny Mooney who did contribute but we managed to mislay his entry.