Last Day - Love Tokens and Bad Pennies

Thank you to everyone who has supported our Love Tokens and Bad Pennies exhibition. From artists to writers, and not forgetting all of you who have been out looking for artworks and getting involved online. After placing artworks out on the streets for 30 days we reach the end of the exhibition. Today we are posting the final artworks, some have written pieces to accompany them and some exist on their own. We will try and write an update in the next few weeks, visiting some of the locations and see if the artworks still rest in the #unsettledgallery spaces.

The next exhibition is the Art of Caring at St George's Hospital in May (and then onto St Pancras Hospital in July). The deadline is 7th April 2019 so please send in your artwork (It's free to enter) and support the nurses, carers and the NHS. http://collectconnect.blogspot.com/p/submit.html

Tracy Boness - #unsettledgallery No.8, London Bridge

Art - Tracy Boness / Words -  Francesca Albini

Precious and frayed,

Tangled and free,

Caught in a net,

Sparkling diamonds,

Our love

Eternal

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Melanie Honebone

Art - Melanie Honebone / Words - Ed Arantus 

That knot in the pine brow

A cut near the front eye

The moon is high; from sides of the world where nightmares grow

You made all my fears and,

You held them in raptures

But there's no magic without death you said

You are a belief, short rotting

A prophecy dying on a dull mind

You can save your second coming,

I'm not the kind you need to pray for

Now I know where we went wrong

Growing green branches from dead wood

And I still swear that you can’t save me

Even when push, came to push, came to shove

Well you can swallow that sweet breath baby,

Until your death is the magic of love.

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Stella Tripp

Art - Stella Tripp / Words - Kevin Acott

One World

People have asked me what Nelson would think about Trump and all the hate swirling across the earth. Sometimes I tell them they should listen to The Three Great Alabama Icons by Drive-By Truckers. Sometimes I tell them Nina accused Nelson once of being 'no better than the rest of your people'. Sometimes I ask them why they really want to know.

The first and last interview I did with Nelson, he was drunk, drunker even than other people had led me to expect. We were in his room in some crappy hotel in Mile End and at one point he started talking about desire and Muddy Waters and - of all people - Bertrand Russell. He said Russell was convinced desire dictated everything we did, good and bad. To Nelson, Russell’s ‘desire’ wasn't about sex. He meant, instead, that even when we try to do good, it's because of desire: our desire to possess, to compete and overcome other people, to look good in the eyes of the world, to have power over ourselves, others, the whole world. To become, ultimately, God.

He told me all this and I listened and tried to follow and tried to make notes and then I watched him tip gently back onto the bed and start snoring.

So. We want the best for others because we want to become God. Nelson's 'Kissinger Blues' was, I'd always thought, simply about how there's something evil in each of us, a Kissinger, a Hitler, a Trump. But in that East End hotel, I suddenly realised it wasn't that straightforward: have a look at/listen to the YouTube video of Nelson playing it at Glastonbury in '75 and the extra, rambling verses and see what he does with the song he'd once vowed never to play again: he's saying (I think) that by pretending to have good motives for being good, rather than accepting the universality of desire, of egocentricity, we not only miss the point, we find ourselves unable to truly fight racism, hate, division. I could tell you I'm writing this purely because I want to convince you of the genius of Chopsticks Nelson and help preserve his memory. But I also want to accrue, to possess, I also want you to respect me and give me power and a way of being, however temporary, that makes me feel good. And - if we can both accept that – we can eventually find peace and love and the joy of singing a single, shared song. 

From the epilogue to 'Chopsticks Nelson: A Southern Life' by Kevin Acott (2019).

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Dean Reddick

Art - Dean Reddick /  Placement - Walthamstow

To see all the posts from this exhibition in one thread then click here - http://collectconnect.blogspot.com/search/label/Love%20Tokens%20and%20Bad%20Pennies

Tracy Boness - Love Tokens and Bad Pennies

Tracy Boness  - #unsettledgallery No.2 (Pipe Crack Site)

Does love endure forever? Does a bad penny always turn up? During this Valentine month the artists and writers from CollectConnect explore this flip-sided theme with an exhibition of 32 miniature sculptures. These objects are placed in public places (#unsettledgallery), helping us to remember those who we hold dear - or cast off those who we would rather forget. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these tokens/pennies on this website. A writer will also use the art as inspiration to create something new and fresh.

Art - Tracy Boness / Words -  Ginny Reddick 

The queen was especially frightening today. “I was promised. Promised. Where is it? Where? Is? It?” Her inflection was nonsensical, her eyes missed some essential human thing and the rage burned erratically. Anything could happen now - to the princess or to one of the others. She clutched the locket tightly. It burned her palm. A talisman against the queen but a vulnerability as well. It was filled with herself. She had loved and was loved. Her mother was long gone but she remained, in her and in the locket.

This latest storm subsided and that night she went to the river alone. (Better on her own terms.) She threw it far and her mind’s eye watched it sink to unknowable depths where it could never be taken from her.

Tracy Boness

Tracy's Love Token resides on a tiny mossy ledge in the aptly named Pipe Crack Site in Bermondsey, part of the #usettledgallery No.2 near London Bridge. The #unsettledgallery, as its name suggests, is an evolving space that we have been populating with art. The London Bridge area is a thoroughfare for thousands of commuters each day. The Tate Modern, White Cube and Jerwood Space are close by, Guy's Hospital sits within its boundary, alongside Europe's tallest building, The Shard. The area has been targeted by 'terrorists'  in the past and people queue in a long line every day outside the Immigration Centre on St Thomas St. It has given us plenty of inspiration already but we hope it will now become a breeding ground for both our own art and other artists too. 

Tracy Boness (b. Canningtown, East London) studied for a BTEC National Diploma in Art & Design at East Ham Community College then a BA Hons Degree Fine Art at West Surrey Institute of Art & Design. She consistently exhibits her work, undertaking commissions and taking part in community based workshops. Painting and drawing are essential to her work practice. Recent black and white drawings take inspiration from 18th Century engravings and botanical drawings of the era. Boness also likes to experiment with new materials, sometimes sewing and layering surfaces to create tactile pieces of work.

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/craftylittlehouse100/

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. Although there has been a 9 year hiatus between that exhibition and this one she has curated numerous CC projects including the Walthamstow street art favourite HideBird.

Don't forget to submit to our next exhibition. The Art of Caring is accepting submission until the 7th April 2019. More at http://collectconnect.blogspot.com/p/submit.html

Tracy Boness - Love Tokens and Bad Pennies

Tracy Boness at #unsettledgallery No.9

Does love endure forever? Does a bad penny always turn up? During this Valentine month the artists and writers from CollectConnect explore this flip-sided theme with an exhibition of 32 miniature sculptures. These objects are placed in public places (#unsettledgallery), helping us to remember those who we hold dear - or cast off those who we would rather forget. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these tokens/pennies on this website. A writer will also use the art as inspiration to create something new and fresh.

Artist - Tracy Boness / Words -  Natalie Low

Golden feathers about her face

With imperfection none,

The day I met my one true love,

The day my soul passed on.

A doubly afflicted soul,

My body wracked with fever,

My heart's insides wracked with desire

For that sweet maid forever.

One feather fell from her soft hair,

My hand around it curled.

“Leave it with him”, my Dear one said,

“He's not long for this world.”

I died that night, my Love spake true,

But Heav’n I did trust

For now I knew that angels lived

And walked on earth with us.

The darkest part of me did hope

I passed my sickness on

Into my angel so that she

Would join me here anon.

But when the Lord bade me come near

And asked me what I wished,

It was that my sweet Love would have

A full life accomplished.

And then he asked me what it was

That I was clutching there?

The golden feather, pure and clean,

That late had touched her hair.

My Lord he knows the worth of love

And is a master kind.

He gives me leave to visit earth

And see her time to time.

I choose to sit in Autumn's trees

To shake them from above

And watch the golden feather'd leaves

Cascade around my love.

Tracy Boness

You can see Tracy Boness' artwork on an old tree beside the River Crane at #unsettledgallery No.9. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover. The River Crane runs through the slim woodland and pasture area of Crane Park in Twickenham. It is managed to encourage wildlife, Marsh Frogs and the scarce water vole breed on the banks of the river. You can also find important industrial archaeology with relics from the Hounslow Gunpowder Works (1760s) at the western end of the park.

#unsettledgallery No.9

Tracy Boness (b. Canningtown, East London) studied for a BTEC National Diploma in Art & Design at East Ham Community College then a BA Hons Degree Fine Art at West Surrey Institute of Art & Design. She consistently exhibits her work, undertaking commissions and taking part in community based workshops. Painting and drawing are essential to her work practice. Recent black and white drawings take inspiration from 18th Century engravings and botanical drawings of the era. Boness also likes to experiment with new materials, sometimes sewing and layering surfaces to create tactile pieces of work.

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/craftylittlehouse100/

Natalie Low enjoys putting words on paper and believes that everyone has a book of some sort inside them. She has published two chapbooks, Dementia (2015) and School Run (2017). She also appears in this exhibition as an artist/maker.

Tracy Boness at #unsettledgallery No.9

Don't forget to submit to our next exhibition. The Art of Caring is accepting submission until the 7th April 2019. More HERE.

Year 2164 - Tracy Boness - Small World Futures

Tracy Boness - #unsettledgallerr No.7

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.... Tracy Boness
The year is 2164

There was a survivor who sighed

"All the people around me have died,
But I'll grow moss and lichen
To make my home striking,
Alone but at least prettified."

Ed Arantus

Tracy Boness

You can find Tracy Boness Small World Future located at the bottom of a brick indentation on Magdalen Street, London Bridge at #unsettledgallery No.7. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Tracy Boness (b. Canningtown, East London) studied for a BTEC National Diploma in Art & Design at East Ham Community College then a BA Hons Degree Fine Art at West Surrey Institute of Art & Design. She consistently exhibits her work, undertaking commissions and taking part in community based workshops. Painting and drawing are essential to her work practice. Recent black and white drawings take inspiration from 18th Century engravings and botanical drawings of the era. Boness also likes to experiment with new materials, sometimes sewing and layering surfaces to create tactile pieces of work.

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/craftylittlehouse100/

Ed Arantus is no stranger to art and writing, he first published his work in the Censored Zine (July 2010) and has exhibited his work ever since at venues like the Contemporary Arts Research Unit in Oxford (2014). Last year he exhibited his poem 'Google If' at the Museum of Futures as part of the Enemies Project.

http://edarantus.blogspot.co.uk/

Year 2218 - Tracy Boness - #smallworldfutures

Tracy Boness, Weston St, London Bridge, UK

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.... Tracy Boness
The year is 2218

On the third day we thread our way through an inhabited archipelago. Gaily painted houses festoon each peak, and the natives - all remarkably tanned and tall specimens with glinting teeth - wave us closer. I observe to my guide that they could even be beckoning for help. "No help, no stop," mutters my grizzled companion, gripping the wheel. "Devils... they are Sirens." We are nearly past the last isle when one of them lowers his arm, holds my gaze and despatches me with an imaginary gun.

Natalie Low

Tracey Boness

You can find Tracy Boness' Small World Future at #unsettledgallery No.1, built on a pebble beach behind some railings at the North end of Weston Street. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Tracy Boness (b. Canningtown, East London) studied for a BTEC National Diploma in Art & Design at East Ham Community College then a BA Hons Degree Fine Art at West Surrey Institute of Art & Design. She consistently exhibits her work, undertaking commissions and taking part in community based workshops. Painting and drawing are essential to her work practice. Recent black and white drawings take inspiration from 18th Century engravings and botanical drawings of the era. Boness also likes to experiment with new materials, sometimes sewing and layering surfaces to create tactile pieces of work.
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/craftylittlehouse100/

Natalie Low enjoys putting words on paper and believes that everyone has a book of some sort inside them. She lives in Twickenham, UK with her rather charming family. She has published two chapbooks Dementia (2015) and recently School Run (2017).