Retrospective: Until next time

Jill Hedges

Thank you to everyone who contributed to our exhibition at Kensington and Chelsea College gallery last week. It was a unique opportunity for a group such as ours, whose natural environment is usually exhibiting on the streets. It was a mammoth task to collate and organise the 25 exhibitions we have created between 2010 and 2016. Thank you to Matthew Kolakowski and all the staff at KCC for helping us throughout the exhibition.

Peter S Smith reads from Vertical Prose

The exhibition finished with a charming evening of talks and discussions about CollectConnect's impact and future. True to our ideals we didn't hog the floor with our thoughts but opened it up to many of the chapbook authors who have published with us recently. We were treated to insights and reading from Kevin Acott (South), Stella Tripp (Mumurmurations), Peter S Smith (Vertical Prose), Carmel Blackie (Resilience), Maartens Lourens (Poetry WTF?!) and Lucy Furlong (The Seethingographer). Thank you once again, without you we wouldn't have come so far in the past 6 years.

For those of you that couldn't be with us then view all the photos HERE.

Have a wonderful Christmas break and see you again in 2017 for some new adventures.
Bryan, Stuart, Alban and Dean

Artist Talks at the CollectConnect Retrospective

We launched the CollectConnect Retrospective with an opening party last week at Kensington and Chelsea College gallery where artists of all ages joined together to celebrate 6 years of inclusive art. With 25 exhibitions, 1200 artists and a whole gallery full of artworks it was a major effort to prepare this exhibition, and we hope the artists and visitors enjoyed both the art and meeting each other. The nature of our exhibitions and projects mean that many artists never meet each other, they are merely artworks and reputations in cyberspace. There were many London artists in attendance, Sharon Read and Jill Hedges endured the long trek from Northampton but Eskild Beck once again came the furthest from his hometown of Aabenraa in Denmark.

Catherine Wynne-Paton visited the gallery before the opening party to record some footage of the exhibition and to interview Alban, Bryan and Dean about the CollectConnect project. You can find a brief snippet of their conversation here - https://vimeo.com/194180116

Chapbooks

The exhibition isn't over yet!
Join us on Tuesday 6th Dec from 5.30 - 8pm at Kensington and Chelsea College Gallery (Hortensia Rd, London, SW10 0QS) for an evening of Artists Talks. Bryan Benge, Stuart Simler, Alban Low and Dean Reddick will be talking about the CollectConnect projects and their adventures in public art. There will also be an introduction about how to publish a chapbook and readings from published authors Kevin Acott, Peter S Smith, Carmel Blackie, Maartens Lourens (Poetry WTF?!), Lucy Furlong and Stella Tripp.

Look forward to seeing you.