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
---------------------------------------
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.
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/
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
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.
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.
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.
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/
Welcome to the Alertism exhibition, featuring artistic and literary works that were inspired by the Emergency Alert test message that was sent to people with a mobile device on Sunday 23rd April at 3pm.
Lucy Furlong has been a long time collaborator on CollectConnect projects. She contributed to the memorable eMotion installation at the Tate Modern, and more recently was a writer for the Urban Tree Festival's Sentinel Trees. Nature and walking both play an important role in her work. Lucy released a second edition of her Amniotic City map in 2022, learn more about it here. Our First Responder is Vicki Kaye. Lucy and Vicki have shared a stage before at various poetry events (Writers Kingston event #52 / European Poetry Festival / Óvinir: The Enemies Project) and feature in the anthology FRACTURED LIGHT (ISBN 978-1-915505-09-5).
First Responder: Vicki Kaye
Is kindness an act of revolution? kindness with 'gentle indifference' that word - gentle
gentle
so soft yet powerful in the hands of a warrior so full of feeling that implies minding caring judgement is hard-wired and hard to resist
there is a revolution to be fought
What is the value of inner peace?
-----------------------------------------------
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.
Vicki Kaye is an experimental artist/writer. Having a BA (Hons) in Drawing and Applied Art and an MA in Fine Art, she has had work shown in numerous exhibitions and her visual poetry has appeared recently in Periodicities Journal, and Beir Bua Journal. She is a member of the Space Place Practice artists’ research hub and Spike Island Associates.
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.
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.
