Alban Low (with Diya Sengupta)- Flight exhibition

Alban Low

Welcome to the Flight Exhibition, a selection of artists’ mobiles celebrating Dagenham’s history of aviation and its transmigratory population. Eleven artists and eleven writers explore this multi-layered theme during March and April at the Pink Tardis Gallery, Heathway Shopping Centre, Dagenham. 

Stare through the Pink Tardis window and marvel at these suspended sculptures, prototypes, and conceptual clouds. If you can't see the exhibition in person then don't worry, we'll be featuring all seventeen artworks here on the website. Every artwork has its very own dedicated writer, and we'll publish their responses here throughout March and April 2026.

Alban's mechanical mayhem hangs suspended in the Pink Tardis Gallery today. Referencing Dagenham's long association with the aviation and car industries this vibrant mobile is festooned with human hands, reminding us of the workers and the jobs that are lost when manufacturers move away.

Artist Alban Low at the Pink Tardis Gallery

Diya Sengupta provides the words to help us unravel the machine.

Hanging taut 

Hanging taut,

I work to work,

Cleaning the rust

Off shelves of disuse.

Standing fraught,

The goal swivels, blurs,

Hinges grown heavy

From nights in rain.

Wrought focus

Lights up the headlamps,

Tightens the bolts

And bites the torque.

Caught moving

I stumble on streetsides,

Losing the highway,

Fragments turn, now whole.

Alban Low is an artist and illustrator, working in a signature graphic style for album covers and specialising in impromptu portraits of jazz musicians. Alban is a founder member of the Artists' collective  Collect Connect and is a tireless creative force in realising the many exhibitions that the collective host.

http://albanlow.com/

Diya Sengupta is a Masters Graduate Student in English at the University of Oxford. She was Vice President of Warwick University Shakespeare Society, and in 2024 directed the Greek tragedy Electra, for the Warwick Drama Society. Diya is currently a junior editor of The Oxford Blue, Oxford University’s independent and cooperative newspaper.

 

Eskild Beck (with Dom O'Reilly) - Flight exhibition

Welcome to the Flight Exhibition, a selection of artists’ mobiles celebrating Dagenham’s history of aviation and its transmigratory population. Eleven artists and eleven writers explore this multi-layered theme during March and April at the Pink Tardis Gallery, Heathway Shopping Centre, Dagenham. 

Stare through the Pink Tardis window and marvel at these suspended sculptures, prototypes, and conceptual clouds. If you can't see the exhibition in person then don't worry, we'll be featuring all seventeen artworks here on the website. Every artwork has its very own dedicated writer, and we'll publish their responses here throughout March and April 2026.

Fizzing with humour we find Eskild Beck's delightful corkscrew tail bird flapping its feathery wings in the sky today. Eskild is the curator of Aabenraa's famous Miniart projects, this year he is organising the third instalment of Small Worlds, the exhibition of tiny and imaginative 10cm sculptures and artworks. For more details visit the website.

Words are from equally whimsical Dom O'Reilly, read them below.......

One of the great unwritten texts of history is how champagne was once the preferred fuel for aviation.

In those days of flying follies when any means of propulsion was considered, aviators seized upon the oomph that the pop of a champagne cork provided. Back then there was none of that ‘cruising at 35,000 feet’ lark. Merely breezing along higher than a giraffe’s horns was sufficient.

Without knowledge of propane or other fancy fuels, the derring-do types worked with what they had and a bumper grape harvest meant a surplus of fizz.

The force of expelling the cork gave the impetus to get air bound and engineers became skilled in judging when to pop the next one. For thrill-seekers they would wait until the plane skimmed the ground, for luxury travellers they would ensure a smooth ride.

It was risky but the passengers were distracted by the plentiful supplies of champagne that were the byproduct of the engine be it a Magnum for a cross-Channel hop or a Nebuchadnezzar for treks to the Antipodes.

Sadly, a class system kicked in. The airlines’ marketing tapped into the innate vice of snobbery and it became all about the fuel. Superficial types believed that a vintage Dom Perignon was ‘the only way to travel, darling’. Others, who prized value above all, were drawn to airlines who relied on Cava or Prosecco.

It became known as the ‘Wars of the Bubble Bubble’ and the great fizz fuel boom collapsed. Now, instead of organic propulsion we have flights based around aviation fuel that is killing the planet and which serve up warm white plonk best described as Chateau Antifreeze.

The glamour has gone and so has the ingenuity. In every way, flying has gone flat.

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Eskild Beck was trained in graphic design, art, and restoration, in Copenhagen and New York. His work has been exhibited in museums and public collections in Denmark, South Korea, Japan, Egypt, Germany, and many more countries. 
www.starflight.dk/

As a journalist Dom O'Reilly reported from 26 countries from Afghanistan to Serbia covering everything from Olympics to revolutions. He wrote for newspapers which included The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Toronto Globe & Mail, Glasgow Herald and Sunday Herald and The Scotsman and Sunday on Sunday. Dom is currently exploring new avenues for his creativity.

Bryan Benge (with Natalie Low) - Flight Exhibition

 

Bryan Benge

Welcome to the Flight Exhibition, a selection of artists’ mobiles celebrating Dagenham’s history of aviation and its transmigratory population. Eleven artists and eleven writers explore this multi-layered theme during March and April at the Pink Tardis Gallery, Heathway Shopping Centre, Dagenham. 

Stare through the Pink Tardis window and marvel at these suspended sculptures, prototypes, and conceptual clouds. If you can't see the exhibition in person then don't worry, we'll be featuring all seventeen artworks here on the website. Every artwork has its very own dedicated writer, and we'll publish their responses here throughout March and April 2026.

Today, as we hang on the fulcrum of the Equinox, a moment of balance between night and day we have Bryan's four-winged syringe-plane to contend with. What strange dosage or titration might result?

 

Today's words are provided by Natalie Low

FEAR OF FLYING

As a child, there were two explanations for flight,
And the first, the best one was magic.

Pixie dust, fairies, broomsticks and carpets.

Proof from butterflies and fireflies. Magic.

As I became convinced of my own omnipotence,

I developed a second theory: power.

Girl power, firepower, willpower. I knew

If I ran fast enough, eventually I would take off.

And that’s how those early planes looked:

Wheeling around, gradually leaving the ground.

Made of elastic bands, toothpicks and leftovers,

But bird-like and easier to believe in.

Now I know landing is just controlled crashing.

It doesn’t help. Up in the clouds in this metal box,

There’s no logic. I’m back to magic to console:

I’m riding the back of a giant steel butterfly,
Counting and crossing rituals to keep us all up.

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Bryan Benge  explores the digital art medium, his work draws upon autobiography, family history and cultural icons from his past to explore visual memory and re-positioning of the past. Walter Benjamin observes in a Berlin Childhood , around 1900 “Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but its theater.” https://www.bryanbenge.co.uk/

Natalie Low is a creative knitter, stitcher and quilter. She lives in London, UK with her charming family.  

Melanie Honebone (with Simon Tyrrell) - Flight Exhibition

 

Welcome to the Flight Exhibition, a selection of artists’ mobiles celebrating Dagenham’s history of aviation and its transmigratory population. Eleven artists and eleven writers explore this multi-layered theme during March and April at the Pink Tardis Gallery, Heathway Shopping Centre, Dagenham. 

Stare through the Pink Tardis window and marvel at these suspended sculptures, prototypes, and conceptual clouds. If you can't see the exhibition in person then don't worry, we'll be featuring all seventeen artworks here on the website. Every artwork has its very own dedicated writer, and we'll publish their responses here throughout March and April 2026.

Today a flock of four origami birds soar in formation toward an unknown destination, is it science that keeps them high in the sky or a desire for knowledge that helps them fly. The birds have been created by the brilliant Welsh based artist Melanie Honebone, who has been exhibiting in CollectConnect shows for 15 years now. 

The words below, inspired by Melanie's work are by Simon Tyrrell.

Relative density

Some foundational gathering
To support and stabilise
Regrouping all the details of the static grounded

Tending towards a point drawn central
Thence soaring some great easy curve
In an aeolian ritual of sacramental tradecraft

Fold and flap heeding the benefit of no doubt
A wing’s fewer precedents
Than a swan squadron’s formation
In some ratio more magnificent
Than a six of one to half the dozen, half and half

Flocking some sounding for the pre-print manuscribe
Quilling constellations with serious authorial barbs
The voluminous metaphyisic’ surfacing some mystery
From all that passes
Notching sense for something remarkable
Attached by the edge

To ground
On the dust dense void-free foundation
Of that other thing that’s a gathering
En route to metaled desire

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Melanie Honebone is a Wales-based fine artist. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. Melanie 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. In her spare time she produces music videos and photography for Stone Letter Media, is attempting to learn Welsh, and likes to stroke cats.
https://melaniehonebone.wordpress.com/

Simon Tyrrell is a writer and artist whose work celebrates the customary language, marks and symbols people have used to present, protect and promote their community and make sense of the relationships, time and space they share. He’s a founder of The Museum of Futures in Surbiton, has exhibited and performed across London and contributed to several published books and pamphlets. He’s participating in emerging collective PoPoGrou and published his debut book poetry collection, Presently, in 2022.
www.tyrrellknot.com

Chris Brown (with Natalie Low)- Flight Exhibition

Welcome to the Flight Exhibition, a selection of artists’ mobiles celebrating Dagenham’s history of aviation and its transmigratory population. Eleven artists and eleven writers explore this multi-layered theme during March and April at the Pink Tardis Gallery, Heathway Shopping Centre, Dagenham. 

Stare through the Pink Tardis window and marvel at these suspended sculptures, prototypes, and conceptual clouds. If you can't see the exhibition in person then don't worry, we'll be featuring all seventeen artworks here on the website. Every artwork has its very own dedicated writer, and we'll publish their responses here throughout March and April 2026.

Chris Brown

Today we feature Collect Connect stalwart Chris Brown. Chris' mini sculpture hangs from a metal chain with its own legend and a Moment Mori nestled under an astronaut. Perhaps a reminder of the dangers of flights of fancy or of the necessity of flight in the face of real danger.

The words for Chris' sculpture are provided by long time and much loved Collect Connect contributor Natalie Low.

FRANZ REICHELT

Pre-soar, one thing -

Do you ever know?

That plumb line could

Signal up or down.

We think we fly

Till we hit the ground.

In dreams afloat,

I paddle through air,

And wake to see

You there on the brink.

Doubt hides on the

Dark side of your face.

Do you recall

When you glance behind?

Chris Brown is an artist, art therapist, publisher, educator and editor. He lives high up in the sky on the edge of the City of London.

Natalie Low is a creative knitter, stitcher and quilter. She lives in London, UK with her charming family.  

Stella Tripp (with Katerina Koulouri) - Flight Exhibition

Stella Tripp

Welcome to the Flight Exhibition, a selection of artists’ mobiles celebrating Dagenham’s history of aviation and its transmigratory population. Eleven artists and eleven writers explore this multi-layered theme during March and April at the Pink Tardis Gallery, Heathway Shopping Centre, Dagenham. 

Stare through the Pink Tardis window and marvel at these suspended sculptures, prototypes, and conceptual clouds. If you can't see the exhibition in person then don't worry, we'll be featuring all seventeen artworks here on the website. Every artwork has its very own dedicated writer, and we'll publish their responses here throughout March and April 2026.

Today is Mother's Day here in the UK, the perfect day to celebrate the arrival of new creative work into the world. We welcome long time collaborator and Collect Connect exhibitor Stella Tripp, here is the first of two beautiful new works she has made for the Flight exhibition. Ringlets drip down from an empty caul, a cloudburst whose shape and form suggest new meanings every time it turns in the sky. 

Our writer today is Katerina Koulouri, read her response below.

your paperwhites keep gliding across

if I were to die one day
this view would be a comfort
the first memory of a newborn
trying to make sense of the sudden light 

                    fragility is spelled with a p
                    for porcelain for porous 

this ceiling now observed
upside-down
with feet hanging as if grasping for air
            the soft kind, transparent and light
this ceiling could only be white 

your paperwhites, flying shadows
hand in hand with beautiful
weeds
born from wounds
cloud spells and irises 

hanging in the air
invisible and alive
a crib mobile and a skull
remind me I was missing you
could it be that one of my first glimpses
was what you saw last?

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Born in Taunton, Somerset, Stella Tripp travelled to her current home in Devon, a very long way round. After a few years in Israel, Stella returned to Taunton to do a foundation course; then on to Portsmouth (BA Hons Fine Art); a few years in London; three in the USA (MA Fine Art; MFA) and a year in Cornwall, before settling in Exeter. Stella works in a wide variety of media, crossing boundaries between drawing, painting and sculpture.
www.stellatripp.co.uk

Katerina Koulouri is a poet and translator from Athens, Greece. She lived in France for 5 years where she studied Oenology and Modern French Literature, and is an MA graduate in Creative Writing (poetry) from Kingston University, London. Poetry, wine and childrens’ books are her passions. She published her debut pamphlet, INVITATION TO ELSEWHERE in 2023.

Alison Stirling (with Diya Sengupta) - Flight Exhibition

 

Alison Stirling

Welcome to the Flight Exhibition, a selection of artists’ mobiles celebrating Dagenham’s history of aviation and its transmigratory population. Eleven artists and eleven writers explore this multi-layered theme during March and April at the Pink Tardis Gallery, Heathway Shopping Centre, Dagenham. 

Stare through the Pink Tardis window and marvel at these suspended sculptures, prototypes, and conceptual clouds. If you can't see the exhibition in person then don't worry, we'll be featuring all seventeen artworks here on the website. Every artwork has its very own dedicated writer, and we'll publish their responses here throughout March and April 2026.

Today we are pleased to bring you the work of Alison Stirling, a widely exhibited artist who is new to Collect Connect. Alison's postcard is a reminder of industrial infrastructure once familiar to London and other UK cities and towns but now increasingly the site for urban regeneration in the form of flats and retails outlets. The skeletal structure of the gasometer evokes a powerful stillness, enlivened by a brief flight of birds, perhaps starlings - those great urban dwellers.

Alison Stirling

Our writer today is Diya Sengupta.

An etching 

An etching; I remove
And rewrite, as the sun

hits the ground and

the sky turns to black.

These four words form a groove,

Ink splatters my hand,

A mark upon many,

No sense to relax.

I speak to a ghost;

A version you’re not,

Reaching out in the darkness,

I almost forgot your smile

Is not mine

To look for in rooms.

 Try as I might 

I won’t send the letter,

Now it’s replaced

A stone in my pocket,

Permission to drown,

The flight could be minutes,

Consumed–your moments,

Eyes eager, they sharpen,

A lion or worse

Your fate moves as a predator

And mine hovers, a bird

Whose cage is unlatched,

The circular bell.

Jarring fragments turn and splinter,

One reach to be heard.

 An angel that’s struck me,

I lose both my breathing

And then comes the words,

A lady and a pen

A girl with no voice.

 An etching; it sits

and stays. Rewritten by time

Over many mornings

Where the sun turns high.

Marionette on display,

Who never sends the letter,

A friend and a foe

To some and then none

A cold statue

Becomes one.

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Alison Stirling's work investigates the coexistence of nature and the built up environment; where urbanity encroaches on natures and vice versa in liminal or forgotten spaces. Her interest lies in subverting the genre of landscape painting as ‘scenic view’. She uses photography, collage and art historical references to reimagine landscape in its elemental form. Her paintings evoke a dreamlike quality of both trepidation and equanimity. Alison has exhibited her work internationally including: The Royal Academy of Arts Mall Galleries; Brunswick Art Gallery; Unit 1 Gallery, London. She is a featured Artist for Collective Arts Canada

https://www.alisonstirling.com/

Diya Sengupta is a Masters Graduate Student in English at the University of Oxford. She was Vice President of Warwick University Shakespeare Society, and in 2024 directed the Greek tragedy Electra, for the Warwick Drama Society. Diya is currently a junior editor of The Oxford Blue, Oxford University’s independent and cooperative newspaper.

Oscar Newcombe (with Ginny Reddick) - Flight exhibition

Oscar Newcombe

Welcome to the Flight exhibition, a selection of artists’ mobiles celebrating Dagenham’s history of aviation and its transmigratory population. Eleven artists and eleven writers explore this multi-layered theme during March and April at the Pink Tardis Gallery, Heathway Shopping Centre, Dagenham. 

Stare through the Pink Tardis window and marvel at these suspended sculptures, prototypes, and conceptual clouds. If you can't see the exhibition in person then don't worry, we'll be featuring all seventeen artworks here on the website. Every artwork has its very own dedicated writer, and we'll publish their responses here throughout March and April 2026.

We launch the Flight exhibition with a new CollectConnect artist, Oscar Newcombe. His rotating wooden panel reflects the duality of Dagenham's history. On one side we look up to the skies to see Hardy Amies' costume design for 2001: A Space Odyssey. On the flipside we look down to discover the Dagenham Idol, a Bronze Age wooden statue found in marshland on the north bank of the River Thames in 1922. It is an artwork of aspirations and dreams, fitting for a young artist with a bright future ahead of him.

Our writer today is Ginny Reddick, read her response below.

Oscar Newcombe

There you are,

You went so far,

Now there’s miles in your eyes, and a moon.

Look at you,

The one who flew,

Who heard star songs and orbital tunes.

What did you say?

I missed that, come again,

To the birdsong, the green and the blue.

Do you remember Major Tom

Who strayed too far and stayed too long?

Come back to the green and the blue.

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Oscar Newcombe is a multidisciplined artist who will be studying on the Foundation course at Kingston School of Art (Kingston University) in 2026.

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. She has curated numerous CC projects including the Walthamstow street art favourite HideBird.

 

Flight exhibition - Pink Tardis Gallery, Dagenham Heathway

 

CollectConnect artists are exhibiting a selection of mobiles at the Pink Tardis Community Gallery in Dagenham Heathway during March and April 2026. The theme, Flight, reflects Dagenham's history of early aviation. In the early 1900s the Royal Aeronautical Society established a test facility for prototypes and experimental flying machines near Dagenham Dock. Several machines were built at Dagenham, including a quadruplane designed by Baden Baden-Powell, brother of Robert, the scouting founder.

In recent years Dagenham has become one of the most diverse boroughs in London, with more than 70 different languages spoken within its boundaries. This flourishing diversity is a result of increased migration over the past two decades. It is an excellent representation of CollectConnect artists who draw upon their rich and varied experiences, backgrounds, cultures and nationalities to display their work here during March and April 2026.

The mobiles hang in the Pink Tardis Gallery, Heathway Shopping Centre, Dagenham. Open Monday to Saturday 8:30am – 8:00pm and Sunday 10:00am – 4:00pm. 

Artists include Francesca Albini, Eskild Beck, Dean Reddick, Alban Low, Bryan Benge, Oscar Newcombe, Melanie Honebone, Stella Tripp, Chris Brown, Alison Stirling and Natalie Low.

During March and April we will be publishing written responses inspired by the artwork here on the website and on Facebook. This includes creative writing from Dom O'Reilly, Bella Weerasinghe, Katerina Koulouri, Simon Tyrrell, Keziah Reddick, Natalie Low, Ed Arantus, Jack Low, Diya Sengupta, Dean Reddick, and Ginny Reddick.

Stella Tripp

A special thank you to Katja Rosenberg of Art Catcher for giving us this opportunity.

Katja Rosenberg, Alban Low and Dean Reddick