Natalie Low - Love Tokens and Bad Pennies

Natalie Low #unsettledgallery No.4

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 - Natalie Low / Words - Dean Reddick

For 'A'

'Officers were allowed very few personal mementos.

Partly it was the weight issue, even aboard the massive deep space battleships.

Mostly though it was to help them forget.

This artefact was found 32.7 light years from Earth on a satellite installation orbiting a little known ocean moon. The Satellite was a standard research type, kitted out for a small team.

The records show that the interior of the research station was completely covered in drawing, painting and sculpture, depicting unusual concepts, weird designs and fantastical ideas. No satisfactory explanation for this irregular occurrence has been formulated.

The small memento, sewn with the letter 'A' in gold thread was found pinned to the Satellite's navigation consol. The bright wools are woven on standard colonial mesh, no doubt appropriated from a medical kit. The wools themselves are hand dyed and from the original earth species 'sheep'. This fact alone makes the object incredibly valuable.

We will never know the true significance of this small brightly coloured token. Some historians have suggested that the 'A' stands for 'Art', the well known and highly decorated Captain Arthur Kingston a prominent figure in the 27th intergalactic Cultural Revolution. Despite the attractiveness of this romantic explanation there remains little factual evidence to support this interpretation.'

Extract from 'The Histories of the Great Expansion' 4045, p1502 

Natalie Low

You can find Natalie's artwork in the streets around London Bridge at #unsettledgallery No.4 . Last year we placed all our artworks for the Small World Futures around these locations. It was a fascinating way of engaging with the public and changing the dynamics of the cityscape around Borough and Bermondsey. It is an area dominated by the giant Shard building, and it is easy forget the small details of the streets and the stories of the people who walk around them.

Natalie Low enjoys putting words on paper and believes that everyone has a book of some sort inside them. She has published two chapbooks, Dementia (2015) and School Run (2017). She also appears in this exhibition as an artist/maker. Dean Reddick is an artist, an art therapist, occasional lecturer and editor on the Art Therapy Journal

ATOL. He has a small studio space at his home in Walthamstow where he works on sculptures and drawings often based on his fascination with birds and trees.  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

Natalie Low #unsettledgallery No.4