Bryan Benge (with Natalie Low) - Flight Exhibition

 

Bryan Benge

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.

Today, as we hang on the fulcrum of the Equinox, a moment of balance between night and day we have Bryan's four-winged syringe-plane to contend with. What strange dosage or titration might result?

 

Today's words are provided by Natalie Low

FEAR OF FLYING

As a child, there were two explanations for flight,
And the first, the best one was magic.

Pixie dust, fairies, broomsticks and carpets.

Proof from butterflies and fireflies. Magic.

As I became convinced of my own omnipotence,

I developed a second theory: power.

Girl power, firepower, willpower. I knew

If I ran fast enough, eventually I would take off.

And that’s how those early planes looked:

Wheeling around, gradually leaving the ground.

Made of elastic bands, toothpicks and leftovers,

But bird-like and easier to believe in.

Now I know landing is just controlled crashing.

It doesn’t help. Up in the clouds in this metal box,

There’s no logic. I’m back to magic to console:

I’m riding the back of a giant steel butterfly,
Counting and crossing rituals to keep us all up.

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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.