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.

Nick Roberts - Translocation Dislocation (words by Ed Arantus)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the traditional gallery walls. Alongside the art, you can read written works by our First Responders. We will choose a different location for each artwork, the art might be placed in a complementary location (to add to the narrative) or juxtaposed against a competing backdrop to create new meaning.

This is the final day of the exhibition, thank you to everyone who has followed its progress over the past fortnight. Today we're doing exactly what we said we wouldn't do, placing the work in a gallery environment. This isn't the traditional hanging on a wall though, Nick Roberts' artwork has been printed on a t-shirt and taken for a walk around London, visiting the sights, and ultimately rubbing shoulders with Yoko Ono's creations at the Tate Modern. Our First Responder is Ed Arantus, who explains why you should never stand still in an art gallery. Read his words below.

Nick Roberts

First Responder: Ed Arantus

The gallery was bright white, even the exhibits were white. I wore a white t-shirt. 

I leaned back against the white wall, looked at my shoes, noticed the flecks of paint. 

They were white too.

His finger tapped my chest, “what’s that you’ve got there?”

I knew the game, I’d look down and he’d flick my nose. 

Playground stuff. I stood completely still and stared straight ahead.

“It looks like someone’s tarmacked over Miss Marple’s cottage”.

His finger rested on the t-shirt design. I was ready for the flick.

He turned to his friend, “absolute genius that Yoko Ono”.

They walked away, in that slow way.

I moved a little, stretched my legs, looked up, the gallery attendant smiled at me.

I walked toward the exit.

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

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

Robin Vaughan-Williams - Translocation Dislocation (words by Lucy Furlong and Dean Reddick)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the traditional gallery walls. Alongside the art, you can read written works by our First Responders. We will choose a different location for each artwork, the art might be placed in a complementary location (to add to the narrative) or juxtaposed against a competing backdrop to create new meaning.

Today we have a double-header to share with you, two poems by Robin Vaughan-Williams come alive in the home environment. Originating from the same starting point (words on a page), each poem finds a new life.
First we'd like to share the poem Sparkling. Someone has taken Rizla sheets, jotting reminders on mini post-its, and dotting them around a house. Writer and artist Lucy Furlong is our First Responder. 
The second poem by Robin is Half life, a pair of slippers lie at the bottom of the stairs, an interactive voice assistant talks into the empty hallway. Our First Responder is Dean Reddick, read his words below. A big thank you to all our artists and writers who have contributed such wonderful work to this exhibition. 

Robin Vaughan-Williams - Sparkling

First Responder: Lucy Furlong

Sparkling (Cut-glass mix)

As if clues on cut-out humans were frozen in time

As if an angel were coming through venetian blinds

As if whiskey had a deep green reflection

As if he was rocking in a swirling silver lining

As if a windscreen could turn into frothing dazzle

As if a ship’s library of unopened antique boxes was watching

As if he’d made it Christmas - carved turkey all around him

As if the night’s blue blooms were too angelica

As if he’d fallen asleep transfixed by streetlamps in the deep freeze

As if time was untraversable darkness seeping to the river

As if a chandelier had crashed near water

As if light was drawn to carved up diamonds

As if he were gilded books draining of life

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Robin Vaughan-Williams - Half life

First Responder: Dean Reddick

I had sterilised most of my life by this point, cleansed it to within acceptable parameters.
Intonation and rhythm had succumbed to Occam, sliced away in the search for the Algorithmic Ideal.

Routine and hard surfaces held most of the pain at bay and my purification was close at hand.

And yet.

The little things persist, nagging, sinking their soft claws into my repose.

The smell of coffee.

Your slippers, soft, fluffy and worn at the foot of the stairs.

Why can't I forget?

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Robin Vaughan-Williams is a poet, producer, and author of The Manager (Happenstance Press). He has run live literature events like Spoken Word Antics in Sheffield and Word of Mouth in Nottingham, and pioneered collaborative poetry improvisation.
www.zeroquality.net

The writing journey of Lucy Furlong has taken her from signing a record deal aged 19, as a singer and lyricist in a band, to a stint in corporate communications working on in-house publications in the 1990s and early 2000s. She attained a degree in creative writing and journalism at Kingston University, and then a MFA in creative writing, specialising in poetry, alongside a Post Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCLTHE). Lucy has published and performed poetry for over a decade, and her work is taught as part of the Open University MA in Creative Writing.

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

Sandra Crisp - Translocation Dislocation (words by Dean Reddick)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the traditional gallery walls. Alongside the art, you can read written works by our First Responders. We will choose a different location for each artwork, the art might be placed in a complementary location (to add to the narrative) or juxtaposed against a competing backdrop to create new meaning.

Today Sandra Crisp's film 'Strange Attractors [...1.000 years]' beguiles and disturbs the viewer with its fractal forms, pulsing nerve-like images and commentary. The film, displayed on a tablet in a hollowed out tree stump is accompanied by the singing of woodland songbirds. Dean Reddick provides a written response as today's first responder.

Sandra Crisp

First Responder: Dean Reddick

The Return of The Machine Elves

The Machine Elves returned after their extended trip in hyperspace, bonged and fluid.

Pulverised by nonsensical plastics and polluted by dreamers they flashed their fractal teeth at the world.

Really they had no message for the rest of us already saturated in particles and pieces and practicalities.

Frustrated in every place they sought out the woody stumps.

Busted remnants of the World Tree.

Sandra Crisp is a celebrated artist who predominantly works in digital media using processes to critique and experiment with open source software and digital imagery. Her work is informed by her training as a printmaker at Wimbledon School of Art.

https://sandracrispart.com/

Dean Reddick  is an artist and an art therapist. He frequently works with casting process and loves drawing trees. 

https://deanreddick.blogspot.com/

Chris Brown - Translocation Dislocation (words by Natalie Low)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the tradition gallery walls. Alongside the art, you can read written works by our First Responders. We will choose a different location for each artwork, the art might be placed in a complementary location (to add to the narrative) or juxtaposed against a competing backdrop to create new meaning.

Chris Brown's wandering cowboy waits at a bus stop in Hampton Hill, he doesn't dream of the American frontier but of travelling to Kirkwall, the home of the finest ginger ale in Scotland. Natalie Low composes a ditty for our rhinestone hero, or should it be for our bovine hero. Read it below, or if you are in good voice, sing it out loud.

Chris Brown

First Responder: Natalie Low

(There are cowboy versions of  ‘My bonny lies over the ocean‘. Here is a boycow version.)

My Boycow lies under the peat gley,
My Boycow lies far from the sea,
My Boycow lies under the peat gley,
Oh, rescue my Boycow from me.

[Chorus]

Rescue, rescue,
Oh, rescue my Boycow from me, from me.
Rescue, rescue,
Oh, rescue my Boycow from me.

Oh, dig the ground under the peat gley,
Oh, dig the ground far from the sea,
Oh, dig the ground under the peat gley,
And rescue my Boycow from me.

[Repeat Chorus]

Today as I walk by the kirk wall,
To hide in the standing stones near,
Today as I walk by the kirk wall,
I wish that my Boycow was here.

[Repeat chorus]

They're digging the ground in the peat gley,
They're digging away from the sea,
They're digging the ground in the peat gley,
To rescue my Boycow from me.

[Repeat Chorus]

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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.

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 School Run (2017).

Francesca Albini - Translocation Dislocation (words by Jack Low)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the tradition gallery walls. Alongside the art, you can read written works by our First Responders. We will choose a different location for each artwork, the art might be placed in a complementary location (to add to the narrative) or juxtaposed against a competing backdrop to create new meaning.

An open hearted figurine from Francesca Albini waits on a bridge in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow today, do you dare flick the switch and discover the hidden secrets of the lady with the red hair? First Responder Jack Low tries to unravel her mysteries, read his words below.

Francesca Albini

First Responder: Jack Low

The movement of something from one place to another

I am miles from where I came from
But I am still the lady with the red hair
It disobeys the movement of the wind like I’ve always despised
Holding something back,
not free like the shadows I see from where I sit
Chopping and changing, changing in the wind
My eyes are wide, wide enough to see what I can’t have and always narrow enough to see myself,
If you looked in far enough you would see my home,
A place, the one place, where my eyes can only stretch to the confines of familiarity
Maybe they will dance far enough from there, to here
To this stretch of stone spotted by history and a thousand finger prints
And I will see another familiar sight.
Or
just
A familiar disturbance,
Can I ever break from the family I had when
I hold the key to my mothers youth
Yet no power to unlock it?
Just as my own heart is held in shackles,
Like a proper lady,
Just as I was taught,
Far enough from the original but never out of line,
The people that pass never see anything despite the usual,
Yet I sit there, new and unusual, and even then
You can read all about me
And never see me
Never place me
Or pick me out from the line up, a fallen leaf, the passers-by, the state of me once I am discarded,
Can you keep the memory of where I was?
Would you remember me?

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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."

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

Keziah Reddick - Translocation Dislocation (words by Ed Arantus)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the tradition gallery walls. Alongside the art, you can read written works by our First Responders. We will choose a different location for each artwork, the art might be placed in a complementary location (to add to the narrative) or juxtaposed against a competing backdrop to create new meaning.

Keziah Reddick's astronaut sits high above us. We don't often take the time to consider the hidden objects and mystery narratives floating way up there! Ed Arantus muses on the missing canines that may still be lost in space, read his words below.

Keziah Reddick

First Responder: Ed Arantus

Oleg called out to them. They never answered back but they always returned. He called their names into the radio, Belka, Strelka, Dezik, and Tsygan. 

He kept calling out to Laika. 

Cats did not tolerate flight conditions, monkeys were, in fact, problematic. Stray dogs were hardier than the purebreds. So they decided that a pack of Moscow street mutts would be the first cosmonauts.

Laika! 

Bobik escaped just before the mission, so Oleg was put in charge. He cared for the pack, and they loved him. They say that dogs possess such human qualities as courage and loyalty, but they are better than any humans he has ever met. 

Laika!

He climbs as high as he can, and still calls,

Laika!

Laika, please come back.

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Keziah Reddick is an artist 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.

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 - Translocation Dislocation (words by Maria Woodford)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the tradition gallery walls. Alongside the art, you can read written works by our First Responders. We will choose a different location for each artwork, the art might be placed in a complementary location (to add to the narrative) or juxtaposed against a competing backdrop to create new meaning.

A truncated mini monument sits high upon the hill, a new deity ready for her worshippers. Our very own Gower Goddess Melanie Honebone is the creator, the artist who specialises is dissecting the world and then putting it back together, always with new narratives and insights. Our First Responder today is an exciting debutant for CollectConnect, writer and photographer Maria Woodford. Read her contribution below.

Melanie Honebone

First Responder: Maria Woodford

view from the hillside

a mid autumn morning. the patchwork fields unfurl like
a ribbon wound endlessly from a single spool. onwards
and onwards and onwards. from here, she watches
with a wide myopic stare - the jigsaw of farms and houses,
the clouds matted in their thick grey knot. she
feels that the town must still be sleeping. (she hears
that the birds are long awoken.) in the middle distance,
a clock chimes an uncertain hour. but still:
her eyelids never
flicker. 

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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/

Photographer and writer Maria Woodford was recently one of only five poets shortlisted for the  Telegraph Poetry Prize in 2024. A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge in 2022 she has been a performer on the London poetry circuit from a young age, including at the Poetry Society.

Alban Low - Translocation Dislocation (words by Lucy Furlong)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the tradition gallery walls. Alongside the art, you can read written works by our First Responders. We will choose a different location for each artwork, the art might be placed in a complementary location (to add to the narrative) or juxtaposed against a competing backdrop to create new meaning.

Living in the cracks, lurking in the spaces left behind, Alban Low's crackmen are now starting to emerge from the shadows. Words are by artist and poet Lucy Furlong, read them below.

Alban Low

First Responder: Lucy Furlong

Caught between
the cracks/ hiding behind/
out of view/ habitat
rusty ironwork/ graffiti
decorated edges/ the back
of beyond/ underneath,
the beside/ out of view/
the unlooked for/ unspoken
place/ the soundless house/
the edge of life/ the edge of
the park/ hanging on/ hanging
out/ caught between the cracks/
sliding/ sticking and catching
in the awkward spaces/ dis-placed
but still there/ hiding in plain site/
forgotten/ disregarded/ unseen
on purpose/ un-looked for
on purpose/ falling and caught
in the cracks in-between/
stuck in the empire of in-between/
dis-placed in full view/ un-viewed
in dis------------------------------place,
spirits of uproot and unkempt

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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. He currently presents the JazzLondLive radio show on Brooklands Radio.

http://albanlow.com/

The writing journey of Lucy Furlong has taken her from signing a record deal aged 19, as a singer and lyricist in a band, to a stint in corporate communications working on in-house publications in the 1990s and early 2000s. She attained a degree in creative writing and journalism at Kingston University, and then a MFA in creative writing, specialising in poetry, alongside a Post Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCLTHE). Lucy has published and performed poetry for over a decade, and her work is taught as part of the Open University MA in Creative Writing.

Ian Parker-Translocation Dislocation (words by Ros Taylor)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the tradition gallery walls. Alongside the art, you can read written works by our First Responders. We will choose a different location for each artwork, the art might be placed in a complementary location (to add to the narrative) or juxtaposed against a competing backdrop to create new meaning.

Todays art work provides remembrance, distance and transformation through the acts of walking and writing. Ian Parker's video records a walk around a large ‘pond’, a crater left from the detonation of 70,000 pounds of high explosives under 'The Caterpillar' in the Battle of Messines on June 7, 1917. 

Ian Parker

Ian tells us that the trip to the crater was made at the height of Brexit, after the vote but before the UK left the EU. Knowing what was coming, freely crossing borders felt like a poignant and melancholy act. Ian's video is viewed over Bryan's shoulder as he walks through the grounds of Polesden Lacey.

First Responder Ros Taylor

We welcome Ros Taylor to Collect Connect as our First Responder. All our writers words are written without them knowing any of the contextual details provided by the artists, they are genuinely a first response to the art work. Here Ros' playful take on Bryan's presentation of Ian's walk are in startling contrast to the violent history of the Pond. The writing points us to innocence and the simple pleasure of play but also hints at what is lost over time and re-found through walking alone and playing together.

Shall we play? 

Let’s play! 

I’ll hide! 

Where’s a good place? 

1.. 2.. 3.. 

There’s nowhere to hide! 

4.. 5 

Don’t look! 

6.. 7 

Where can I hide? 

8.. 9 

Wait! 

10.. 

This is a good place… 

11.. 12.. 

Argh! It won’t work! 

They’ll see me here 

13.. 14.. 

Hang on! 

I’m not ready! 

15.. 16.. 17.. 

This is better! 

18.. 19.. 

20.. 

Phew! 

Coming! Ready or not? 

Where could you be? 

This is fun! 

They’ll never find me here! 

Where are you? 

Here?

Here? 

They’re so close 

I mustn’t move, 

I mustn’t breathe! 

Please don’t find me! 

Where are you? 

Phew! They’ve gone 

I know! 

No! Not here… 

Not here… 

Where could they be? 

Shall I give up? 

Will they ever find me? 

There you are! 

Found you!

Dean Reddick - Translocation and Dislocation (words by Natalie Low)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the tradition gallery walls. Alongside the art, you can read written works by our First Responders. We will choose a different location for each artwork, the art might be placed in a complementary location (to add to the narrative) or juxtaposed against a competing backdrop to create new meaning.

If you go down in the woods today you're sure of a big surprise! Dean Reddick's umbilical wires are left exposed in Polesden Lacey. Multi-coloured threads snake out of a tree, searching for a new ending or a new beginning. We'll let you decide. Our writer today is Natalie Low, read her response below.

Dean Reddick

First Responder: Natalie Low

You continue asking why
stones endure from fossil wood?
Under stress they petrify.

Such processes fortify,
having sucked what flesh they could.
You continue asking: why,

after organisms die,
when the breath is gone for good,
under stress they petrify?

I’m a glacier running dry,
not ablating as I should:
you continue asking why?

I am holding in a cry,
mineralised from pain withstood.
Under stress I petrify.

Even when I say goodbye,
emptying the spot you stood,
you continue asking why
under stress I petrify?

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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/

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 School Run (2017).

Ania Tomaszewska-Nelson - Translocation and Dislocation (words by Ginny Reddick)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the tradition gallery walls. Alongside the art, you can read written works by our First Responders. We will choose a different location for each artwork, the art might be placed in a complementary location (to add to the narrative) or juxtaposed against a competing backdrop to create new meaning.

Particles fly through the dark skies in Ania Tomaszewska-Nelson's film Before Religion. It is the time of magic, myths and stories passed down through generations. We find ourselves mesmerised by the patterns and movement. These ancient feelings still pulse under the surface of our modern lives. Our First Responder is Ginny Reddick, who is searching for the spaces in between.

Ania Tomaszewska-Nelson

First Responder: Ginny Reddick

The Spaces In Between

There’s magic in the spaces in between.

There’s this one, there’s that one

And the difference.

But as you go along

you lose, this and that and them.

Again 

And again

And before you know it you’re rushing through a tunnel in the dark with nowhere to stop and nothing to hang on to

Stop!

We play

the final bar

of the final minuet,

the f sharp fades.

The grey lady says

I feel so…contained.

We don’t laugh.

We hold a silence.

(beat)

For a moment, we are the thing to hang them on.

The spaces in between.

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Ania Tomaszewska-Nelson is a visual contemporary artist of Polish origin. She moved from Poland to study art at The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University. After graduating in 1996 in Painting and Mixed Media, Tomaszewska-Nelson settled in Brixton, London, where she has a studio. Predominantly a painter, Tomaszewska-Nelson also works with video, photography, performance, land-art, installation and sound, always seeking a language best suited for the subject matter.
http://www.aniatn.space/

Ginny Reddick is an educator, musician and long time supporter of Collect Connect and its many ventures. Ginny lives in East London with her family.

Lucy Furlong - Translocation and Dislocation (words by Dean Reddick)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the tradition gallery walls. Alongside the art, you can read written works by our First Responders. We will choose a different location for each artwork, the art might be placed in a complementary location (to add to the narrative) or juxtaposed against a competing backdrop to create new meaning.

Created by artist and poet Lucy Furlong, this Asemic Airways flight was first flown outside the British Library on a very wet day. Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. With the non-specificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning, which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. First Responder Dean Reddick has recorded his own interpretation for us, read it below.

Lucy Furlong

First Responder: Dean Reddick

Dart

Flat to start with a rippled skin, a premonition and prayer for rain.
Then the folds, carefully administered with your tongue sticking out,
A small concentration crease on your brow.

Pristine and new, sharp nosed and eager, waiting
For the fuel of your arm to enter the air and let me go.
Briefly alight, slicing, gliding, falling.

The destination is wet, muddy and puddled.
All my hard edges gone soft and loose.
A single flight from here to there.

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The writing journey of Lucy Furlong has taken her from signing a record deal aged 19, as a singer and lyricist in a band, to a stint in corporate communications working on in-house publications in the 1990s and early 2000s. She attained a degree in creative writing and journalism at Kingston University, and then a MFA in creative writing, specialising in poetry, alongside a Post Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCLTHE). Lucy has published and performed poetry for over a decade, and her work is taught as part of the Open University MA in Creative Writing. 

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

Bryan Benge - Translocation and Dislocation (words by Ed Arantus)

 Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the tradition gallery walls. Alongside the art, you can read written works by our First Responders. We will choose a different location for each artwork, the art might be placed in a complementary location (to add to the narrative) or juxtaposed against a competing backdrop to create new meaning.

Bryan Benge's dark and brooding film Translocation - Dislocation appears across the pages of a book. The blank eyed figure looks back at us from the heart of darkness, and although the narrator's lips don't move, we still hear and see his thoughts as though we are reading them from the page. Ed Arantus provides the words below. 

Bryan Benge

First Responder: Ed Arantus

You haven't looked in the mirror for a long time,

because you don't know if the eyes will ever open.

When you haven't seen the sun for several months,

you dream like you’re drunk in the basement.

When the days slow you to a crawl,

there’s still an answer in the pages.

And you remember dancing in the fog as a child,

when the bushes whispered that anything was possible.

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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/

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

Lesley Cartwright - Translocation and Dislocation (words by Dom O'Reilly)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the tradition gallery walls. Alongside the art, you can read written works by our First Responders. We will choose a different location for each artwork, the art might be placed in a complementary location (to add to the narrative) or juxtaposed against a competing backdrop to create new meaning.

The floating world of Lesley Cartwright has been caught in a bush beside a road, as the cars rush by the inhabitants of this gentle world wave back. It is a space that captures the imagination of passing passengers, a dreamcatcher for the modern motorist. The words below are from Dom O'Reilly.

Lesley Cartwright

First Responder: Dom O'Reilly

The Clangers had been happy inside their empty and isolated world until a Rover from Earth looking for Mars had broadcast ‘No music on a dead planet’ by the Soup Dragons to speak to the out there folk. 

As the Soup Dragon fed them, the Clangers saw this as a divine announcement. Well, they would have done had they known of divinity. They asked themselves what was ‘music’ and ‘dead’ for Clangers are immortal unless they unravel themselves. It is why they consume so much tea, for without it they are immoral.

They set off for Earth in search of music and death and the answers each would bring. Since they operate as a hive mind the Clangers felt at home when they landed in London and saw everyone linked by the same phone, tattoos, trainers and haircut. 

They saw people sitting down in unison to a song that spoke of individualism but provoked groupthink. They eagerly sought out where they could be absorbed into this collectivism.

Scuttering along guttering they had an epiphany, a moment of existential realisation, when they saw a young woman emerging from a building with bundles of wool, crocheting for the use of. 

They stared themselves, at the wool and back and forth. This must be the Creator, the one who made all Clangers. 

Following her back to her small, overpriced room in Bermondsey, they saw her bed covered in what looked like Clanger DNA, patch after patch of crocheted wool in the same pattern. 

The woman saw them and, being both originally minded and part of the cult of Taylor Swift she could understand the language and mentality of the Clangers. They found it was a giant bedspread in honour of Taylor Swift and, after hearing the young woman speak for three hours nonstop on being a Swifty, they knew this was where they belonged. 

In an act of mass rebirth, they unravelled themselves so they could become part of the bedspread. There, they would be joined with something bigger than themselves and yet still be as one.

All except one Clanger.

She had spotted the chance to be an individual and to offer hope and encouragement to those who felt the same. Bidding farewell to her fellow Clangers and the young woman, she left the gastrogentrification behind and found a simple tree in a quiet area. 

There she learned by observing. The birds taught her how to lay eggs. She gave sanctuary to an orange frog who had been lured from its home by a flood that quickly receded. She had a toy phone, to remind herself to avoid addiction to the real ones.

As with so many before her, she came to London and integrated without needing to assimilate. 

She sees herself as a ‘Reverse Rover’ – sending a signal to attract to Earth those in out there land who want to be individuals. 

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Lesley Cartwright made her name in the commercial graphic field and music photography until she developed MS and now creates magic artworks from her Billericay studio. She is a multitalented artist who is not bound by genre nor convention. Cartwright has been exhibiting with CollectConnect since the Cardboard City exhibition in 2013. https://twitter.com/ley9

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, we are hoping he'll be a regular contributor to the CollectConnect exhibitions.