Stella Tripp (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.

The delicate ecological Chinook of Stella Tripp floats into the Flight exhibition in Dagenham today. Many of the artworks in the exhibition have been carefully balanced and weighted, hanging elegantly without tipping over. Stella's sculpture talks of Nature's beautiful balance, a celebration of different species who share the flight paths above our heads. Dom O'Reilly, champion of the underdog, gives a gentle lift to one of those creature, the humble Bumblebee. Read his response below.......

Looking at the owl on this installation I wonder what happened to the bumblebee.

Dragons, owls, lions, elephants and honey bees are commonplace in mythology and folklore around the world. Top-dollar creatures who obscure the truly wonderful.

No one can explain how bumblebees can fly given their aerodynamics. They can sting multiple types but rarely do so. They live in small colonies. Miraculous, gentle and self-sufficient are qualities worthy of a place in legend.

Perhaps they have a branding problem. Their name ‘bumble’ gives the impression of a well-meaning, likeable but clumsy and chaotic type. Maybe that’s why I identify with them.

Here’s my attempt to give them their deserved spot in folklore through an alternative version of the Ants and the Grasshopper.

In the original, the grasshopper lazed around playing music all summer and gently teased the ants for working hard together to stockpile food for the winter. One snowy day, the starving grasshopper asked the ants for food and they said ‘no – you’re on your own’.

A template for capitalism’s approach to education, housing and health. Bereft of empathy, concern and summed up as ‘I’m alright, screw you.’ As a bumblebee type, I offer a humane version.

In my telling, the Bumblebee welcomes the Grasshopper into its home. After enjoying a fine feed, the Grasshopper thanks his host with a wee bit of music. The tune gives the bumblebees the solution to passing on information on where to find the good pollen.

How? Well, they bumblebee boogie to the beat and find that they can show the way to the pollen by waggling their booty down a figure of eight shape with length giving distance and the angle joining top and bottom of the figure showing direction.

Soon, bees of all kind, bumble and honey, are doing what they call the Caterpillar Dance to show how to find the good stuff. Starvation becomes a distant memory, food is plentiful and flight times plummet. Since bees live until they expend their energy, reducing the amount of flying to find pollen sends life expectancy rocketing.

Human beekeepers later observe it and call it the Waggle Dance, crediting it to bees as they are seen as more businesslike than the bumble folk. But we know the truth.

Introducing the bumblebee into the tale gives us kindness, love and community.

Some of us are organised and work through process. Some of us are creative and work through instinct. Bumbling can bring us to an unexpected and revelatory destination. The message of my fable is that all of us are equal.

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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

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.

Oscar Newcombe (with Dean Reddick) - 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.

As the Artemis II astronauts launch into the unknown world beyond Earth, today down here in Dagenham Oscar Newcombe's artwork provides its own spirit of adventure. Tentacled arms hold aloft three brass framed pictures, a cycle of forgotten lives rotating in the air. Luckily Dean Reddick is on hand with his report on these wonderous objects.

Field Report 005647-Flight Medals.

‘We found the medals in a flea market in the Human Sector on Sanctuary III.
The brass bezels were dulled with a slick, greasy patina but the faces were still bright and precise.
The designs are curious, etched and penned in a bygone era when spaceflight was still an adventure, calling to the brave or reckless to fling themselves outwards.
Our researches have turned up scant provenance for the decorations:
The blue creature in Medal I is of an unknown lifeform, probably aquatic and possibly from Old Earth’s prehistory.
The meaning of the disquieting face on Medal II is obscure. We have tentatively coined it, “The Face of Rook” with reference to an ancient wargame. Perhaps this honour was awarded for strategic prowess of defensive acumen?
The final Medal appears to be a reference to the Universal Spiritual Principal of Rebirth, represented by the Cauldron of Pair Dadeni. On what grounds it was awarded we do not yet know.’

The Medals will be archived in the CC Vault awaiting further analysis.

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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.

Dean Reddick is an artist and an art therapist. He frequently works with casting processes and loves drawing trees.
https://deanreddick.blogspot.com/

Natalie Low (with Dean Reddick) - Flight Exhibition

 

Natalie 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.

Hanging majestically and serenely in the Pink Tardis Gallery, amongst the mayhem of maniacal machinery, is Natalie Low's hand knitted sculpture. This bold bird reminds us that London is home to a wide variety and huge numbers of birds and that cities and nature are intimately entwined. Natalie shows us once again what a versatile and adept artist she is, turning her hand from writing to knitting for the first of two art works created for the exhibition.

Dean Reddick provides a haiku style poem for Natalie's mobile.

The well-hung goose, hung

Flightless, like a Kakapo

Bald, its quills for me

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

Dean Reddick is an artist and an art therapist. He frequently works with casting processes and loves drawing trees.
https://deanreddick.blogspot.com/

Alban Low (with Jack 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.

More than the sum of its parts, an expression that could describe the Flight exhibition itself. After all the Pink Tardis contains all these artworks, created in isolation in artists' studios across the globe, but here they come together as a flock of brilliant ideas that capture the imagination. Today's artwork by Alban Low is a Frankenstein creation, coming alive with a nuts and bolts moan. The words below are from Jack Low, they come from the heart, just one part that makes a person.

i am made up of shopping lists,
thank you notes,
threadbare sleeves in knitted jumpers,
tool kits full of spare nails,
hand me downs,
the pain of having nothing to show for it,
scraps of christmas wrapping paper,
plastic waterbottles,
odd socks paired together,
washed up takeaway tubs,
my mothers eyes but not her smile,
boxes that live on top of the wardrobe,
memories of being a little girl,
the scars that cut across my chest,
round gold glasses that haven’t been worn,
sunday meetings,
coffee orders,
guilt that sits with me in the morning before anyone has woken up,
the phone calls i’ve missed,
books borrowed off my sister that sit on my shelf,
empty filter and paper packets,
refolded laundry,
haircuts on the bathroom floor,
handwritten recipes,

i am made up of the sins committed against me,
unfinished loyalty cards,
anger that i couldn’t feel without questioning my faith,
rewatched movies,
keyrings from cities i haven’t seen,
freefalls from fig trees,
fridge magnets,
early mornings swimming in the sea,
broken sobriety,
tshirts i won’t grow into,
tattoos of childhood cartoons,
i am masculinity that was born with a fear of itself,
i am regretful and i am grateful

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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/

Jack Low is a Brighton based writer who often finds inspiration from the community around him.

Francesca Albini (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.

One of our most inventive and creatively exciting artists takes flight in the Pink Tardis Gallery today. A selection of charms hang from Francesca Albini's mobile artwork, light and delicate they dance like dreams. Francesca work often captures ethereal worlds, in-between spaces where the mind conjures its own flights and delights.

Words come from dexterous wordsmith Simon Tyrrell. Read them below.................

The natural tendency

Favouring fantasy to flee fancy
Fly, fin and flap flotsam
Are, on balance, pinned hopeful
Clasping a just fulcrum
To sail skies in vaned vessels
A petalled ascender inclines instead to descend
Shoot to ‘chute

Amidst a mudlark’s booty
Missing sun and son
Icarus’ halo like jet and jeton, jettisoned
With the alumin’ aileron’s answer
To that quartet of questions unasked

Forbearing some Gallic loan of a wicked wickering
As close relatives parry cosmic fire and fall
Bailing those mere loads for the sake of weight
Returning ballast-free to belong at garment’s close

A ruby’s sanctuary, where none need hear you breathe

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Francesca Albini divides her life between literary and artistic endeavours. She is a PhD in Classics, and has worked in publishing for her entire adult life, as a translator, author and editor. She is a self taught artist and photographer. Her work is inspired by folk art, but also by design. Albini is a collector of memories, and uses any medium that allows her to remember and share, express feelings and narrate stories. From line drawings to plastic cameras, from collage to upcycled jewellery and dolls. "My work is playful and dreamy, child-like but also philosophical. I fall in and out of love with many styles and tools, but I'm always me, whatever I do."

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

Alison Stirling (with Keziah Reddick) - 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.

We have Alison Stirling's neat folded sculpture in the Pink Tardis Gallery today. The folded paper grasps the disc as if hanging onto the world whilst its repeated phrase 'Flight' covers every plane and surface, a plea and a statement in multiple languages. This potent little sculpture is presented here on the Collect Connect website on the day after a massive coming together in London of hundreds of thousands of people, gathering rather than flying and offering welcome to those who are themselves having to take flight in an unstable world.

Alison Stirling

Keziah Reddick provides us with today's words.

Small hands grasp at the world, iridescent and bronzed.

Birds fall from the sky and plummet with their weight.

High above, machines fly and fly, churning through the air,  

choking out thick trails of grit and gas.

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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/

Keziah Reddick is studying Fine Art and has a burgeoning interest in visual narratives and classical storytelling.

Dean Reddick (with Bella Weerasinghe) - Flight exhibition

Dean Reddick

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.

The sculpture in the Pink Gallery today makes you think of so many different sayings and idioms, Tarred and feathered, or perhaps Holding out an olive branch. But we prefer On a wing and a prayer, a phrase originally associated with the British Royal Air Force during WW2. This powerful and evocative artwork is the creation of Dean Reddick, one of the founding members of CollectConnect.

Dean's sculpture has inspired a new piece of writing from Bella Weerasinghe, a new contributor to CollectConnect. 

flight: dreams of

you can run like thunder
your jaw can crush cars
but your back cannot be scratched
by your tiny, clawed arms

for there’s an itch you can’t quite reach
under rough and scaly skin
where your neck meets your spine
a peculiar prickling

it started when you ate a bird
ripping flesh from limb and wing
the taste impeccable, delectable
the texture; addicting

feathers fill your mouth
getting stuck between sharp teeth
flight fills your dreams at night
catching clouds in your sleep

you’ve been alone for so long
but you wish desperately for a flock
to swoop and soar and dive with,
not to roar, but to squawk

you mimic the migrating crowds
following the shadows they spit on the ground
more creatures join in the stampede
but you’re the fastest biped around

the light in the sky is blinding
hellfire burns your eyes
so, you miss the rough edge of the cliff
and finally, you can fly

you’ve won and you’re winning
willing the wings to sprout
and as feathers finally start to grow

the sun comes
crashing

down

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Dean Reddick is an artist and an art therapist. He frequently works with casting processes and loves drawing trees.
https://deanreddick.blogspot.com/

Bella Weerasinghe is a poet, writer, and performer. She has recently performed her poetry at the National Gallery, Poetry Society and various spaces in Kingston upon Thames, where she was a student.
https://bellaiw.com/

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.