Showing posts with label Jill Hedges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jill Hedges. Show all posts

Saturday, 10 February 2018

Year 2041 - Jill Hedges - Small World Futures

Jill Hedges
Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of.... Jill Hedges
The year is 2041

My eyes start to deceive me, I now have to look twice, maybe three times before I cross the road.
In my youth it was a quick glance. The world was so solid and definite.
There was never time to doubt the integrity of the physical life that surrounded me.

Today it has become a game of perception. The waning of my body makes me challenge my own eyesight, touch and the decisions I make. The screen based worlds I work and play on give me powers that exceed my childhood dreams. Nights are plagued by visions of losing data, corrupted digital images, and unresponsive screens dying in black stillness. In my waking hours I find myself reaching to press CTRL + Z when things go wrong.

Yet there is a positivity in this doubt. I look twice, maybe three times at two small squares of turquoise hidden down a London alleyway. My fellow pedestrians do not notice me, and do not see the pixilating boxes as they vibrate against the terracotta wall. I am nearly 70 years old now, I am a glitch and I do not care for the realities of others. This world is mine.

Alban Low


Jill Hedges
You can find Jill Hedges' Small World Future located down a little alleyway called Gibbon's Rent #unsettledgallery No.6. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Jill Hedges has had a lifelong fascination with the Moon and the stars. She is an artist who naturally uses different materials and alternative art forms to convey her ideas. In 2015 she created A Space Walk map, an imaginative 5 kilometre walk that has conveniently scaled down the solar system to a manageable size. This map was first exhibited at the ‘On the map’ exhibition at the Sunbury Embroidery Gallery, Sunbury-on-Thames. In 2017 she published Christina's Moon, a charming little chapbook that tells a tale of enduring love through the phases of the Moon. Hedges was one of the original artists behind Gallery 202, a contemporary artist led non-profit initiative based in Northamptonshire. Bringing contemporary art to rural and urban communities through exhibitions and artist involvement with the public. She has been a regular contributor to CollectConnect exhibitions since 2011.

Alban Low is involved in many creative projects, these include album artwork, publishing chapbooks, making films, maps, conceptual exhibitions, live performance and good old drawing. He is artist-in-residence at the School of Nursing, Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education at Kingston University and St George's University of London. Low spends his evenings in the jazz clubs of London where he captures the exhilaration of live performances in his sketchbook. On Wednesday evenings he sketches the performers on the radio show A World in London at Resonance FM. He is about to open an exhibition of these drawings at the Yehudi Menuhin Concert Hall on the 14th February 2018.
http://albanlow.com/


Monday, 12 December 2016

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

Monday, 5 December 2016

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.

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

On The Map exhibition

On The Map Exhibition
Welcome to the On The Map exhibition from CollectConnect artists. Earlier this year publisher Sampson Low Ltd commissioned 12 new maps from a group of exciting contemporary artists. Each map was designed to be printed as an A3 fold out sheet with 4 supporting pages on it's reverse side.


The Sunbury Dice Game
Alban Low and Harvey Wells
There is an inherent beauty in maps, like the Dwell book that proceeded this exhibition maps are a 2 dimensional rendering of a 3 dimensional form. They are often interpretations of the real world in a graphic light with motifs and lines that help us find anything from roads to windmills.

Artists are natural observers and organisers who like categorise through visual means. This map exhibition gives us the chance to see the world around us through the eyes of 14 artists from around the UK.

The artists were asked to consider 3 criteria.
Their map should be set in the real world, somewhere in the UK.
That it should include a route which could be walked.
The walking of the map shouldn't cost more than £10 (train fares, entrance to museums, lunch)

Sampson Low Ltd have printed them all in colour at an A5 (21x14.8cm) size with an A3 fold out map incorporated. They will be selling the maps at an affordable £2 (+ Postage and Packing) so that anyone can try one of these artist's walks or frame them on their wall.

The artists are -

Bill Mudge
Melanie Ezra and Rose Davies
Bryan Benge
Robert Good
Peter S Smith
Dean Reddick
Tahira Mandarino
Alban Low and Harvey Wells
Phillip Cribb
Stuart Simler
Jill Hedges
Glyn Walton

The exhibition runs from 14th April to 10th May 2015
Private View - 23rd April, 6.30-8.30pm
at
The Sunbury Embroidery Gallery
The Walled Garden, Thames Street
Sunbury-on-Thames, TW16 6AB
http://www.sunburyembroidery.co.uk/index.htm

All welcome. We hope you can find your way there.
If not, I'll draw you a map!

AL.

We would especially like to thank Robert Shaw, Barbara Robertson, Tahira Mandarino at the Sunbury Embroidery Gallery. Also Spelthorne Borough Council for their support of the exhibition.