Natalie Low - Dwellow Submarine

Natalie Low - Dwellow Submarine

Welcome to the Dwell exhibition and book. For a whole month we will be taking each artist's page and transforming it into a 3 dimensional dwelling. Each one of these small sculptures will be exhibited in public on the London streets



Natalie Low

Today we bring long time collaborator and CollectConnect contributor Natalie Low to the fore. Natalie has exhibited with us on too many exhibitions and books to mention all of them individually. She started out as a talented wordsmith and entered CollectConnect folklore during the Brighton Open art exhibition in 2011. Her perfectly formed poem 'Biscuits' was transformed into a magnet and exhibited along the seafront. Needless to say the fruity tone of her poem elicited some choice remarks from the liberated gentlemen of Brighton.

Nice if you were my jammy dodger and I your Garibaldi.
We'd hob-knob with the Bourbons while we gorged upon Rich Tea
Love would be our digestive, a party ring our dream
our malted milk will overboil and make our custard cream

Writing isn't the only talent of Natalie Low and as well as keeping the government to task in her daytime activities she is a keen knitter, allotmenteer and most recently the inventor of the crochet onion bag. We now need to add a new string to her bow and include paper engineer. Her net Dwellow Submarine hasn't been submerged today but gently rests upon a pond in Walthamstow, London. Natalie can't resist a little wordplay as usual and the title of her Dwell page references the popular Beatles song written by Paul McCartney with lead vocals by Ringo Starr. The single was released the same year as Natalie was born and went to number 1 where it remained for 4 weeks. We hope Natalie will carry on being one of our chart toppers for many years to come.

Don't forget to have a look at the next Collect Connect project, 'The Art of Caring' exhibition at The Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames. The theme is Caring/Care and it is FREE to enter.

To buy the Dwell Book for £6 then follow this LINK

AL.

Eleanor Bedlow - Container Dwell

Container by Eleanor Bedlow

Welcome to the Dwell exhibition and book. For a whole month we will be taking each artist's page and transforming it into a 3 dimensional dwelling. Each one of these small sculptures will be exhibited in public on the London streets.

Eleanor Bedlow at work

We keep up our theme today for all things East London, from Dean Reddick in Walthamstow to Eleanor Bedlow in nearby Leytonstone. Both are active and well known artists in their respective communities but Bedlow's journey didn't start in the capital city. She grew up in Kagawa Japan before moving to London at the age of 11. She gained a degree in Fine Art from Falmouth College of Arts in 2005 before studying observational drawing at the Prince’s Drawing School in 2008.

Lift - Eleanor Bedlow

She first came to our attention when she exhibited the brilliant 'The Lift' along the seafront at the Brighton Open in 2011. We welcomed her back into the fold last year for FAB Fridge in 2014 but in between she has filled her working life with many exhibitions, curating and experiencing foreign cultures. Although Eleanor Bedlow is best known for her imagined worlds it was the real world experiences that caught my eye during her 2 month teaching residency at the International Institute of Fine Arts in Modinagar, India.

Page 15 Dwell: A book of nets
Eleanor Bedlow

We were all really chuffed she chose to publish a net with us for the Dwell project because her work has a sensitivity to her surroundings and how the memories of these places stay with us. Her dwelling is unique to the book as it requires no glue or sticky tape, just good old engineering and plenty of skill. Although it looks simple it is one of only 7 nets in the book that has received a COMPLEX rating from Dean. For me it reminds me of the open wooden structures we find in gardens and public parks. It's floor is crazy paved and I imagine a miniature band striking up a tune whilst families play on scorched grass and over-excited dogs dig under rose bushes.

Don't forget to have a look at the next Collect Connect project, 'The Art of Caring' exhibition at The Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames. The theme is Caring/Care and it is FREE to enter.

To buy the Dwell Book for £6 then follow this LINK.

AL.

The Mysterious Malc Dow

It isn't quite peasouper density but the London fog has now cleared and reveals Social Advent Door No.10.

Cardboard City #10

The hazy and atmospheric conditions are certainly in keeping with today's artist, Malc Dow who remains one of the mystery men in our band of Creatives.

Once again we find ourselves at the foot of the Oxo Tower, as tourists start to unhitch their vast telephoto snatchers and the London commuters suck in their collective breaths for another day at the office.



Malc Dow's open door

Malc Dow has been exhibiting with us since the Brighton Open in 2011 when we placed his 'Naked Ape' magnets along the seafront of the popular arty town. Since then he has been a regular contributor to both exhibitions and our publications, including FreedBook and Patternotion. Despite regular contact he still remains an enigma, his art graces the cover of a Fernando Poo record and he leaves snippets of his life in my inbox which lay tiny thought-bombs in my mind. Dow is an artists who is passionate about communications, non coercive learning, freedom of speech. So our philosophies here at Collectconnect have comfortably rubbed shoulders with his.

Malc Dow's submission to the Cardboard City exhibition, Minimal Living, is just as mysterious as the man himself. The image represents anything but minimal living, here is a luxurious wood panelled room with canopied bed and an exotic vista through the window. I assume it is a dig at our modern consciences, where we salivate over glossy magazines, feather our own nests and covet they neighbour's Scandinavian ceramics. We give our post chintz movement the clean and classy title of Minimal but what truly represents that word is to have nothing. A sparseness that could be the result of unfortunate circumstance rather than design and choice.

AL.