Melanie Honebone (with Ellie Roberts) - Sets, Series and Ensembles

Melanie Honebone

Welcome to Sets, Series and Ensembles, an exhibition of art in public places. Accompanying each public art placement is a 'First Response' for you to read here on the website. As artists and writers we are constantly collecting ideas, objects, themes, and sentiments. We are often searching for the connections and narratives that help us understand both our lives and our art. 

Regular CollectConnect followers will know the artistic exploits of our next exhibitor, Melanie Honebone (formerly Melanie Ezra). She has been one of our most treasured and long serving CC artists over the years, and it is fitting that Time is one of the themes in her artwork for Sets, Series and Ensembles. In contrast we welcome a new writer, Ellie Roberts, to CollectConnect and hope she will be a contributor for many years to come. Read her response to Melanie's artwork below.

Melanie Honebone artwork, Hertfordshire

Ellie Roberts

Time has been on my mind

Time has been on my mind
Is it really past the 11th hour?
There was a ’rose garden’* but I know not to return
Time is now not then
that cycle of destruction and creation, reaching into the earth for renewal
feeling the pulse of the friable soil replete
with cosmic gold
Post war efforts
of urban forests falter
Lining Chandos Road
Giant slender fronds grapple with tarmac- concrete upturned knuckles of life burst
through their dark enclave
Little hands in mine
Time of my life
‘Look Nonna - the tree died, was it old?’
‘No, trees don’t die-it fell-felled………
Trees know when it is day and night
Trees know when it is hot or cold
Trees have memories’
‘Will it grow again?’
‘Maybe in time but not the same’


*T.S Eliott Four Quartets

Melanie Honebone

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Melanie Honebone is a Wales-based fine artist. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. Melanie openly describes herself as a ‘renegade arts experimentalist’ and is happy dabbling in anything that pushes her work to the limit and broadens her own potential. In her spare time she produces music videos and photography for Stone Letter Media, is attempting to learn Welsh, and likes to stroke cats.
https://melaniehonebone.wordpress.com/

This is a first appearance for Ellie Roberts in a CollectConnect exhibition.

Melanie Honebone - Translocation Dislocation (words by Maria Woodford)

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.

A truncated mini monument sits high upon the hill, a new deity ready for her worshippers. Our very own Gower Goddess Melanie Honebone is the creator, the artist who specialises is dissecting the world and then putting it back together, always with new narratives and insights. Our First Responder today is an exciting debutant for CollectConnect, writer and photographer Maria Woodford. Read her contribution below.

Melanie Honebone

First Responder: Maria Woodford

view from the hillside

a mid autumn morning. the patchwork fields unfurl like
a ribbon wound endlessly from a single spool. onwards
and onwards and onwards. from here, she watches
with a wide myopic stare - the jigsaw of farms and houses,
the clouds matted in their thick grey knot. she
feels that the town must still be sleeping. (she hears
that the birds are long awoken.) in the middle distance,
a clock chimes an uncertain hour. but still:
her eyelids never
flicker. 

---------------------------------------------------------

Melanie Honebone is a Wales-based fine artist. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. Melanie openly describes herself as a ‘renegade arts experimentalist’ and is happy dabbling in anything that pushes her work to the limit and broadens her own potential. In her spare time she produces music videos and photography for Stone Letter Media, is attempting to learn Welsh, and likes to stroke cats.
https://melaniehonebone.wordpress.com/

Photographer and writer Maria Woodford was recently one of only five poets shortlisted for the  Telegraph Poetry Prize in 2024. A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge in 2022 she has been a performer on the London poetry circuit from a young age, including at the Poetry Society.

Alertism - Melanie Honebone

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.

We love working with such a broad array of artists, but the first name often on our team sheet will be that of Melanie Honebone. An artist willing to embrace all aspects of the creative game, from painting to sculpture, often with a conceptual edge. The artist formally known as Ezra has been exhibiting with us since Rarities in 2011. When she took a train from Swansea to St Leonards-on-Sea to attend the opening of the exhibition on Hastings Pier. She really does go the extra mile! Melanie's First Responder is an artist who is very much in the Honebone mould, comfortable across the artistic disciplines, it's our co-founder Dean Reddick. He has provided a multi-media response, see it below (we have also included a transcript of the words underneath).

Melanie Honebone

First Responder: Dean Reddick

Dean Reddick

We were already partially decontextualised when they arrived before breakfast half falling through the door
Local pressure was high they were already mostly gone 

Who else knew who else could respond what were we to do
We tried diagnostics references were off the scale legends appeared and disappeared several versions manifested faded blurred reinstated 

Mapping led to further disorientation boundaries bled away islands formed static interfered everywhere

 

Melanie Honebone Now Panic Melanie Honebone Panic Melanie Now Honebone Panic Now Melanie Now 

-----------------------------------------------------

Melanie Honebone is a Wales-based fine artist. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. Melanie openly describes herself as a ‘renegade arts experimentalist’ and is happy dabbling in anything that pushes her work to the limit and broadens her own potential. In her spare time she produces music videos and photography for Stone Letter Media, is attempting to learn Welsh, and likes to stroke cats.

https://melaniehonebone.wordpress.com/

Dean Reddick is an artist and an art therapist. He frequently works with casting process and loves drawing trees. https://deanreddick.blogspot.com/

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

------------------------------------------------------------

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.

------------------------------------------------------------

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).

------------------------------------------------------------

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

Melanie Honebone - Love Tokens and Bad Pennies

Melanie Honebone

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 - Melanie Honebone / Words - Natalie Low

To be sung to a melody by Nick Cave or Chopsticks Nelson.

You are glancing my way when you think I am not,

You are making those soft summer sighs.

All those sweet little tricks that I knew from before

And have already come to despise.

I know that you long for redemption and peace

And the touch of my hand on your hair

But already I know you mean nothing to me

And when you find out I won't care.

I know you will fall for my brilliantine smile

And I know you will swallow my lies.

I'd almost be fooled by the smile of the man

That I see staring back in your eyes.

I am the bad penny who always turns up

In the depth of your dross and despair,

In your desperate escape and your faltering hope,

My darling I'll always be there.

Melanie Honebone's Bad Penny

outside Wood Street Station Walthamstow

Wood Street Station in Walthamstow is on the Chingford to Liverpool Street Line. The train line passes through Walthamstow Central and then across Hackney Marshes, Hackney Downs and Bethnal Green. The railway bridge outside Wood Street Station has its own mini eco system provided by the dark and damp conditions and the generous application of pigeon fertiliser.

Melanie Honebone has been known to us as Melanie Ezra up until last year when she got married. Congratulations to Melanie and her husband! We look forward to continuing our long creative relationship.

Melanie is a Wales-based fine artist who works using her own original photographs to create beautiful and intricate collages. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. She considers herself a specialist in the deconstruction of time and the extension of the moment. Recently Melanie has been creating videos with Stone Letter Media. Honebone openly describes herself as a ‘renegade arts experimentalist’ and is happy dabbling in anything that pushes her work to the limit and broadens her own potential.
https://melaniehonebone.wordpress.com/

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.

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

Melanie Honebone - Love Tokens and Bad Pennies

Bad Penny by Melanie Honebone

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 - Melanie Honebone / Words -  Dean Reddick

Hyper-rational love 

'Love isn't a coin that can be saved or spent.'
Her words come back to me now, as they often do in such moments when I pause for breath or courage.
She was always so sure.
She never bartered her love, or her hate for that matter, not like me.

My thumb inevitably caresses the token in the pocket of my travel-dusted jeans.
'Ugly little man,' that's my name for it; the curves and hollows of its face familiar, like the feel of my teeth inside my mouth.

I step back onto the path, not nearly finished this journey, and already despondent and soul weary.
She'd always wanted to travel.

I wish she were with me now.

Melanie's Bad Penny on a way marker at

 the #unsettledgallery in Epping Forest

Epping Forest is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, bordering London and Essex and is an Ancient Woodland, one of the few left in London. The sculptor Jacob Epstein lived on the edge of the Forest. Nowadays the Forest is used by dog walkers, mountain bikers, horse and pony riders and picnicking friends and families as well as footballers, bird watchers and runners. I like to imagine all the lovers who might have left their own love tokens in the forest over the centuries. The Forest has also had its share of Bad Pennies reaching up to the present day.
Take a walk through the Forest and see if you can find a Love Token or a Bad Penny.

Melanie Honebone has been known to us as Melanie Ezra up until last year when she got married. Congratulations to Melanie and her husband! We look forward to continuing our long creative relationship.

Melanie is a Wales-based fine artist who works using her own original photographs to create beautiful and intricate collages. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. She considers herself a specialist in the deconstruction of time and the extension of the moment. Recently Melanie has been creating videos with Stone Letter Media. Honebone openly describes herself as a ‘renegade arts experimentalist’ and is happy dabbling in anything that pushes her work to the limit and broadens her own potential.
https://melaniehonebone.wordpress.com/

Dean Reddick is an artist, an art therapist, occasional lecturer and editor on the Art Therapy Journal ATOL. He has a small studio space at his home in Walthamstow where he works on sculptures and drawings often based on his fascination with birds and trees. 

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