Chris Brown 1 (with Kim Reddick) - Sets, Series and Ensembles

Chris Brown

Welcome to Sets, Series and Ensembles, an exhibition of art in public places. Accompanying each public art placement is a 'First Response' for you to read here on the website. As artists and writers we are constantly collecting ideas, objects, themes, and sentiments. We are often searching for the connections and narratives that help us understand both our lives and our art. 

It's our penultimate day on the Sets, Series and Ensembles exhibition and it's a familiar face who is back, full of originality and thought provoking art. Chris Brown's artefact looks like it has been liberated from the British Museum, but we find it on a small bridge over a culvert. It's the third of Chris Brown's work for the exhibition and each time a new writer has responded. Today it's the turn of Kim Reddick, who last joined us for the Sentinel Trees exhibition in 2020. Read his response below.

Chris Brown

Pitted iron who holds to history,

Twisted and dulled, beyond its use

It sits on display, held gently

Elevated,

Curated,

Fragile.

It asks of the stands,

"Why am I here, to be held aloft,

I have long since lost my purpose,

My edge is dull, my end blunt,

My metal rusted and thin."

The stands reply,

"We lift you up,

We keep you safe,

Because we can,

Because you were

Useful,

Crafted,

Loved.

Chris Brown

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Chris Brown is an artist, author, editor and art therapist living amongst skyscrapers and regularly exploring the wilder landscapes of the United Kingdom.

Kim Reddick exhibited in the first ever CollectConnect exhibition, Open Fridge. A highlight of his CollectConnect participation was his contribution to Dwell: A book of Nets (published in 2015).

Stella Tripp 3 (with Ed Arantus) - Sets, Series and Ensembles

Stella Tripp 3

Welcome to Sets, Series and Ensembles, an exhibition of art in public places. Accompanying each public art placement is a 'First Response' for you to read here on the website. As artists and writers we are constantly collecting ideas, objects, themes, and sentiments. We are often searching for the connections and narratives that help us understand both our lives and our art. 

We're nearing the end of our exhibition (two more to go), and we've really enjoyed the trilogies presented by both Stella Tripp and Chris Brown. Today we have the third of Stella Tripp's artworks. We are always delighted by the range of work that Stella sends us, and the rich ideas that her art inspires. It is Ed Arantus who takes a walk on the darker side of these themes, read his words below. 

Stella Tripp 3

Pit
Ed Arantus

I stepped to the edge freely, though not so freely as to present myself into apparent danger, they had dug the great pit in the churchyard of our parish, St Mary’s.
A terrible pit it was, and I could not resist my curiosity to peer inside. As near as I may judge, there was about forty in number. Atop the pale and wrapped figures lay on many, a trinket. Sixteen at the time I first looked. It was said they were made by the hand of the kind and kin. I saw the bauble of the Digger and the Dikeman, the Horsehair Dealer and the Feather Wife, the canes of the Nightwalker and Gynour. The sickness was long a-coming to our people, yet, when it did come, there was no family spared, no land nearby where it raged with such violence as ours.

Stella Tripp 3

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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

Ed Arantus is a conceptual artist and writer. He 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.

https://edarantus.blogspot.com

Stella Tripp 3

Chris Brown 2 (with Jack Low) - Sets, Series and Ensembles

Chris Brown 2

Welcome to Sets, Series and Ensembles, an exhibition of art in public places. Accompanying each public art placement is a 'First Response' for you to read here on the website. As artists and writers we are constantly collecting ideas, objects, themes, and sentiments. We are often searching for the connections and narratives that help us understand both our lives and our art.  

Love is the answer today, and it is our very own creative cupid Chris Brown, who has fired his artistic arrow into the Pevensey Road Nature Reserve in Hanworth. Responding to Chris' artwork is erudite Eros and creative all-rounder Jack Low. Read his response below.

Chris Brown 2

“Baby on board”
reflects in the glass
of the first class carriage,
Displaying over empty seats,
yet the destination 
is filled with open arms 

Armed with cannons
Castles crumble
as if nobody took their first steps within
memories are forgotten
like empty bottles
buried like a mothers touch
And still resurrected years later
within a wooden toy soldiers
brushed off with a promise to cherish 

Cherished unto a fault
The land is torn apart
By the blistering and caring heat
Enacted by a minority
Whilst people rise
And placards are thrown high,
what it means to be human 

Human spirit cries out like tears
shed infront of strangers
and splinters like glass  

I take away the equation
But the love Remains

Jack Low

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Chris Brown is an artist, author, editor and art therapist living amongst skyscrapers and regularly exploring the wilder landscapes of the United Kingdom.

Jack Low is a Brighton based writer. He published his debut poetry pamphlet, aesthetics of a dropout, in 2019. He currently leads a poetry group in Camden.

Alban Low (with Dean Reddick) - Sets, Series and Ensembles

Alban Low

Welcome to Sets, Series and Ensembles, an exhibition of art in public places. Accompanying each public art placement is a 'First Response' for you to read here on the website. As artists and writers we are constantly collecting ideas, objects, themes, and sentiments. We are often searching for the connections and narratives that help us understand both our lives and our art.  

Alban Low

I met Alban 35 years ago when we were both studying on an Art and Design Foundation course in Hounslow, London and I am taking the opportunity of writing todays post to say a big thank you to Alban from Bryan, myself and everyone involved with Collect Connect for his amazing energy, generosity and creativity. 

Todays set of painted pebble people comes from Alban Low and the little faces have made their way to all sorts of places. Dean Reddick provides a rhyme.

Alban Low

Alban Low

Alban Low and Henry Moore

Alban Low

The Dream Of Knuckle Number Five

 

Five Yeller knuckle-heads

Sleeping in their stony beds

Goofy teeth and google eyes

Took the world by surprise

 

Nelly-Knuckle liked to chuckle

Knuckle Lily was loud and silly

Knuckle-me-pink liked a drink

Barny Knuckle was fond of trouble

 

Knuckles number Four to One

Went out in the Yeller sun

Goofy teeth and google eyes

Took the world by surprise

 

Laughing Nelly was first to go

All the way to Walthamstow

Knuckle Lily, being silly,

Went as far as New York City

 

Knuckles number three and four

Followed their sisters out the door

Goofy teeth and google eyes

Took the world by surprise

 

Knuckle-me-pink, what a bum

Ended in a beer drum

Barny Knuckle, for a lark

Claimed a place in modern art

 

But what of Knuckle number Five

Where did they go? Did they survive?

Goofy teeth and google eyes

Took the world by surprise

 

Knuckle Five was never found

Though rumour is they went to ground

Planted in earthy borders

To dream about her son and daughters

Alban Low

Alban Low is an artist and illustrator, working in a signature graphic style for album covers and specialising in impromptu portraits of jazz musicians. He currently presents Directorrific! the radio show for directory lovers.

http://albanlow.com/

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

Bryan Benge (with Natalie Low) - Sets, Series and Ensembles

Bryan Benge

Welcome to Sets, Series and Ensembles, an exhibition of art in public places. Accompanying each public art placement is a 'First Response' for you to read here on the website. As artists and writers we are constantly collecting ideas, objects, themes, and sentiments. We are often searching for the connections and narratives that help us understand both our lives and our art. 

Bryan Benge

They live among us! We are surrounded by Bryan Benge's art invasion. Bryan has been among us here at CollectConnect since the start of our public art adventure. Today his small art army leave their calling cards on the streets of the UK, watch out, they have arrived! Natalie Low is keeping tabs on their movements, read her story below.

Bryan Benge

Our first missions were to save the pollinators, the clothed and naked snails, and the soft pink serpents. 

At night, the Master prayed and murmured to the silver-framed lithograph of his cloaked hero. 

He mused and philosophised with us. Once he explained the significance of the wine glass made of wood: “A glass made of wood may still be a glass.”

The robot twins (non-identical) and I would have followed Master anywhere. 

But by the last mission, to claim the red tower, he had grown troubled and quiet. No matter how many we saved, the monster-birds would always snatch them up in their mouths and into the sky. Our dwellings were repeatedly demolished by the walking giants, each demolition squashing his heart as well.

We scaled the red tower, with the support of our flotsam flotilla, although I could not plant our flag in its impenetrable shiny surface.

“The tower is ours, Master,” I cried.

But he was looking away from me, and I could not see his face.  “How many more red towers are there? How vast is this world?”

Our night of triumph was instead subdued and despondent.

I lay my head in his lap, curling my tail around his hand.

“You are too good for this world, Master.”

He shook his head. “I am too small for this world.”

“Your ambitions are great.”

“My ambitions are too great for my size.”

The next morning he had gone, the dew of his footprints already disappearing under the warmth of the blue day.

We continue our work, moving paper boulders to the side of the road, claiming new towers and righting inverted bugs.

But in truth our leaderless band of ill-assorts is heartsore and weary, our spirit decapitated. Without the Master, we have grown inch-high and inconsequential.

Each night I howl to the moon: Where are you, Master? 

Master, under you we were mile-high heroes with noble purpose! Return so we can continue our endeavours and change the world! 

Come back, Master! We will be waiting!

Natalie Low

Bryan Benge

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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. She has published two chapbooks Dementia (2015) and recently School Run (2017).

Bryan Benge

Bryan Benge

Bryan Benge

Bryan Benge

Stella Tripp (with Dean Reddick) - Sets, Series and Ensembles

 

Stella Tripp

Welcome to Sets, Series and Ensembles, an exhibition of art in public places. Accompanying each public art placement is a 'First Response' for you to read here on the website. As artists and writers we are constantly collecting ideas, objects, themes, and sentiments. We are often searching for the connections and narratives that help us understand both our lives and our art. 

Stella Tripp's packets hang over a murky river, a lure or an offering to whatever lies in the waters below. Look closely at the packets and see what has been prescribed. Stella is a regular and long standing exhibitor with us and we are delighted, as ever, to bring you her art. Our first responder this morning is Dean Reddick who adds his words.

Stella Tripp

The River Goddesses 

The Algorithmic Idiot Machine lurched into action

Blister-packing our fragile skeletons and sweet memories

Attempting to codify our subtle differences, our blushes and spirals.

 

Confined in plastic and separated we slowly dried out and hardened.

 

We sang our discontent, each in our bubble, our complaint against uniformity.

And from outside, from the River, the Goddesses heard us and took pity on our desiccation.

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

Dean Reddick is an artist and art therapist. He likes to work with casting processes and has a passion for drawing and growing trees.  https://deanreddick.blogspot.com/ 

S J Fowler (with Ginny Reddick) - Sets, Series and Ensembles

S J Fowler

Welcome to Sets, Series and Ensembles, an exhibition of art in public places. Accompanying each public art placement is a 'First Response' for you to read here on the website. As artists and writers we are constantly collecting ideas, objects, themes, and sentiments. We are often searching for the connections and narratives that help us understand both our lives and our art. 

S J Fowler's clutch of cuddly critters are on the loose! Two Collect Connect regulars join forces this morning to deal with the fluffy little creatures. The five soft toys were last seen in a procession along the edge of a pond. Each one has a fading message written on their bellies. Ginny Reddick finds the words to help us make sense of this latest ensemble.

S J Fowler

Still Waters

Here we go

Orderly

Slow.

 

No one could know

The hashed out

Harsh half meaning.

Un-whole ideas

and broken portmanteau.

The lonely fragments

Underneath.

 

So come together.

Run deep.

 

Here we go.

Orderly.

Slow.

S J Fowler

SJ Fowler a poet, writer and performer working in the literary, modernist and avant-garde traditions. He has published ten collections of poetry, over twenty publications of limited edition poetry, art and collaborative works and been commissioned by Tate Modern, BBC Radio 3, The British Council, Tate Britain, Liverpool Biennial and Wellcome Collection amongst others for texts, performances and installations. www.stevenjfowler.com/

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.

Francesca Albini (with Diya Sengupta) - Sets, Series and Ensembles

Francesca Albini

Welcome to Sets, Series and Ensembles, an exhibition of art in public places. Accompanying each public art placement is a 'First Response' for you to read here on the website. As artists and writers we are constantly collecting ideas, objects, themes, and sentiments. We are often searching for the connections and narratives that help us understand both our lives and our art. 

Francesca Albini's cabinet of curiosity is a feast for the eyes and imagination, full of hidden imagery and long forgotten memories. It sits beside the dark teak Lion and the Lamb in Farnham, who guards its secrets. We welcome a new writer to CollectConnect, Diya Sengupta, who is unlocking our cabinet of mysteries, read her poem below.

Francesca Albini

Rebirth by Diya Sengupta

a response to Francesca Albini

Kneeling, I craft

Altars of belongings

Dice and scattered joys,

Cracked banks, Pandoric secrets

A line of sandy beaches

A twinkle of the stars.

Clearing, I breathe

The incense, salt air,

Ribbons of girls and scars

Confessions and youthful guilt

Stifled; buried relics of

Ages passed.

Boxes turned tabernacles;

The pinecones, the driftwood,

The myrrh.

I exhale the final Breaths of

Adolescence

She is stuck, she cannot convert.

Lifetime of nostalgia and glee,

Rose-tinted perfection

Horror-felt, a beg for mercy.

A life beyond resurrected ends

A tale of bewonder laid to rest

In purgatory, in death

As young turns to old

I start to hold dripping water

As taps stutter in

Grime and mould

The beast of Time

Turns angels, they fall

Enthralled, it burns

A tomb of past

A carcass of “was”

I scream in silence

Glass turned violent

I see my child

Tied inside

She reaches to me

She breathes softly

She’s ready to leave.

To beam, to squall, to revolt.

No longer a cadaver,

No longer her mother,

No longer a force,

No longer her corpse.

A life once lived.

            A promise to live once more

Francesca Albini

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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."

Diya Sengupta is a Final Year History and English Undergraduate at Warwick University. She is Vice President of Warwick University Shakespeare Society, and earlier this year directed the Greek tragedy Electra, for the Warwick Drama Society.

Chris Brown 3 (with Carole Bulewski) - Sets, Series and Ensembles

Chris Brown 3

Welcome to Sets, Series and Ensembles, an exhibition of art in public places. Accompanying each public art placement is a 'First Response' for you to read here on the website. As artists and writers we are constantly collecting ideas, objects, themes, and sentiments. We are often searching for the connections and narratives that help us understand both our lives and our art. 

On this cold crisp Autumnal day we step inside for the first time, where we find the first class artwork of Chris Brown. This is the first of three artworks that Chris has created for Sets, Series and Ensembles. We are always thrilled to receive his work, conceptually brilliant they have such a breadth of ideas and forms. Responding to Chris' artwork is Carole Bulewski, who has an equally broad rage of skills and ideas up her sleeve. She is a painter, singer, and weaver of dark lyrics and mysteries. Read her response below.

Chris Brown 3

Carole Bulewski

Prince Charles… Oops, sorry, King Charles. A photo of King Charles when he was still only Prince Charles, attempting to be seductive, and pretty much failing at it. A stamp of King Charles when he was still only Prince Charles, on top of a collage of stamps of the Queen. Lilac. The stamps of the Queen are of a vibrant lilac hue, contrasting with the black and white of King Charles’s photograph.

The camera moves away and we are… in an art gallery most likely? A photograph exhibition. And there King Charles when he was still only Prince Charles, on a stamp, sitting there on a table next to a flower arrangement, something reminiscent of a funeral parlour, heavy, white and lavender hues, nothing bright and joyful. Just like the picture of King Charles when he was still only Prince Charles. 

Time for my tea in the set the previous tenants got back in July 1981 for the royal wedding. 

Chris Brown 3

Chris Brown 3 - Pick Up

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Chris Brown is an artist, author, editor and art therapist living amongst skyscrapers and regularly exploring the wilder landscapes of the United Kingdom.

Born and raised in the south of France, Carole Bulewski moved to the UK at the end of the second Millennium, eventually settling down in London after a few years in the South West of England, a place that has inspired her with many a supernatural story since – writing first in her native French, but now almost exclusively in the English language. In her writing, she explores how the supernatural can creep into the most mundane of situations. Carole is a member of urban baroque group Firefay.
Tales of Confinement - Carole Bulewski

Dean Reddick (with Ed Arantus) - Sets, Series and Ensembles

Dean Reddick

Welcome to Sets, Series and Ensembles, an exhibition of art in public places. Accompanying each public art placement is a 'First Response' for you to read here on the website. As artists and writers we are constantly collecting ideas, objects, themes, and sentiments. We are often searching for the connections and narratives that help us understand both our lives and our art. 

Dean Reddick's mysterious totem pegs are laid out in a row for us on Sets, Series and Ensembles today. They talk of another time, of talismans and rituals, and of wisdoms that remain, even to this day. Dean is one of the founder members of CollectConnect, always bringing fresh ideas and new work to our exhibitions. Ed Arantus has also been with us since the start, he exhibited a magnet in our first show, 'Open Fridge'. Now, as a writer, he discovers the old wisdoms of our past. Read his proverb below.

Dean Reddick

Proverb 

Lies

behind

marble eyes

catch flies ne’er bees.

Honeyed be, truth and web will stick to thee. 

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

Ed Arantus is a conceptual artist and writer. He 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.

https://edarantus.blogspot.com

Melanie Honebone (with Ellie Roberts) - Sets, Series and Ensembles

Melanie Honebone

Welcome to Sets, Series and Ensembles, an exhibition of art in public places. Accompanying each public art placement is a 'First Response' for you to read here on the website. As artists and writers we are constantly collecting ideas, objects, themes, and sentiments. We are often searching for the connections and narratives that help us understand both our lives and our art. 

Regular CollectConnect followers will know the artistic exploits of our next exhibitor, Melanie Honebone (formerly Melanie Ezra). She has been one of our most treasured and long serving CC artists over the years, and it is fitting that Time is one of the themes in her artwork for Sets, Series and Ensembles. In contrast we welcome a new writer, Ellie Roberts, to CollectConnect and hope she will be a contributor for many years to come. Read her response to Melanie's artwork below.

Melanie Honebone artwork, Hertfordshire

Ellie Roberts

Time has been on my mind

Time has been on my mind
Is it really past the 11th hour?
There was a ’rose garden’* but I know not to return
Time is now not then
that cycle of destruction and creation, reaching into the earth for renewal
feeling the pulse of the friable soil replete
with cosmic gold
Post war efforts
of urban forests falter
Lining Chandos Road
Giant slender fronds grapple with tarmac- concrete upturned knuckles of life burst
through their dark enclave
Little hands in mine
Time of my life
‘Look Nonna - the tree died, was it old?’
‘No, trees don’t die-it fell-felled………
Trees know when it is day and night
Trees know when it is hot or cold
Trees have memories’
‘Will it grow again?’
‘Maybe in time but not the same’


*T.S Eliott Four Quartets

Melanie Honebone

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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/

This is a first appearance for Ellie Roberts in a CollectConnect exhibition.

Stella Tripp 2 (with Natalie Low) - Sets, Series and Ensembles

 

Stella Tripp

Welcome to Sets, Series and Ensembles, an exhibition of art in public places. Accompanying each public art placement is a 'First Response' for you to read here on the website. As artists and writers we are constantly collecting ideas, objects, themes, and sentiments. We are often searching for the connections and narratives that help us understand both our lives and our art. 

Here's the first of three collections from multimedia artist Stella Tripp. Today she casts us a lifeline of blister packs, but do they help us sink or swim? Natalie Low provides us with our daily dose of writing. Read it below.

Stella Tripp

One pill kill and one pill cure,
But which one’s which? I’m never sure.
Your poison and your ecstasy
always taste the same to me.
I don’t know until too late
If I’ll overdose on love or hate.
And as I sink the doubts begin:
Did you throw a line or throw me in?
One pill cure and one pill kill,
I can’t tell which you give me. Still.

Natalie Low

Stella Tripp

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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

Natalie Low is a creative knitter, stitcher and quilter. She lives in London, UK with her charming family. She has published two chapbooks Dementia (2015) and recently School Run (2017).

Kezia Reddick (with Laura Webb) - Sets, Series and Ensembles

Kezia Reddick

Welcome to the first day of our Autumn exhibition, Sets, Series and Ensembles. Over the next two weeks here on the CollectConnect website we've got a fabulous selection of art in public places alongside 'First Responses' from a series of writers and creative people. As artists and writers we are constantly collecting ideas, objects, themes, and sentiments. We are often searching for the connections and narratives that help us understand both our lives and our art. 

We start the exhibition with this wandering sculpture from Kezia Reddick. It has crawled into the Feltham Circles, a series of outdoor graffiti walls in Pevensey Road Nature Reserve, in South West London. We also have an amazing CollectConnect debut today, from writer Laura Webb. Read her response below.

First Response - Laura Webb

A to B

I've been crawling around for a while now,
curving wire fingers around
objects which delight me.

I swallowed mouthfuls of the sea
and coughed up these stones
one by one, their pilchard song

echoing around the car park
in a way which surprised everyone.
Later, I wound myself up

so tightly I could feel my heart swinging
in the soles of my feet. These walls bring
faces to my dreams and I transmit 

the signals I detect: three quartered moon,
smalltalk of fox and helicopters.
The unlit earth turning on its hinges.

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Keziah Reddick is an artist and Foundation student in London who works across a range of media. She has a particular interest in telling stories through her art. She has a passion for stories from ancient civilisations.

Laura Webb made her debut with CollectConnect in November 2024.