Year 2561 - Natalie Low - #smallworldfutures

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....

Natalie Low

The year is 2561.....

Humans Become Fish

We have learned to breathe underwater,
traded our salt-choked lungs for gills,
At first, it was difficult, many died.
But slowly, we trained ourselves
to become elemental,
Our filament fingers,
scraping the seaweed
from foamed faces,
Became fine-feathered fins.
Last of all to go, was the legs,
We were loath to lose them,
but one day, after years of
running along the bottom
of the ocean, we found
we could fly.
We flicked our new-grown tails,
somersaulted bubbles and swam,
Our pellucid eyes bulging,
Mouths an open question,
And made our homes
among the reeds and coral.
Lately, we have lost
all power of speech,
but find ourselves able
instinctively to feel
the shoal’s clamour,
Our sleek armoury
of scales
Streamlined
to the flow.

by Rebecca Lowe

You can find Natalie Low's Small World Future behind the Greenwood Theatre on Snowsfields, London at #unsettledgallery No. 8. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Natalie Low is a creative knitter, stitcher and quilter. Her small future world uses a mixture of natural and manmade materials that intertwine into an fluid growth.  She lives in Twickenham, UK with her rather charming family. She has published two chapbooks Dementia (2015) and recently School Run (2017).

Rebecca Lowe

Rebecca Lowe is a Wales-based writer, editor and performance poet. She has been featured on BBC Radio 4's Poetry Workshop, and her work has appeared in anthologies including Bristol Poetry Can, Red Poets, Blackheath Countercultural Review, and Three Drops from a Cauldron, an anthology of poetry based on folklore and myth. She also plays hammered dulcimer and zither, which she sometimes incorporates into her performances.

http://www.writerscafe.org/BeckyLowe

http://swanmedia.wix.com/copywriter-cv

https://dizzysheep.livejournal.com/

Year 2091 - Stella Tripp - Small World Futures

Stella Tripp - #unsettledgallery No.2

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....

Stella Tripp

The year is 2091.....

"It was six months after the rains started, when we still had dry memories. My mother said, we will drown down here in the mud, why should it only be the rich who have life. So we did it ourselves: we up-ended the favelas, raising them into the saturated sky. And now we are one of the Mardi Gras giants, swaying, ready to fight."
Natalie Low

Stella Tripp

You can find Stella Tripp's Small World Future at #unsettledgallery No.2, beside a downpipe on Melior Street and next to the Horseshoe Inn. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Born in Somerset, Stella Tripp trained locally before attending Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts where she went on to lecture part-time. At the beginning of the eighties Stella travelled to America, Illinois where she developed much of her over arching themes and work practices, such as the decision to stop using rectangular stretched canvases and instead building makeshift constructions to paint on. These better reflected her situation and state of mind. She wrote a thesis exploring the nature of art by comparing art from different cultures and was excited by the possibilities that surface when exploring the nature of art in the light of cultural and societal conditioning: "things don’t have to be as they are; anything goes; anything is possible". Stella has been a regular contributor to CollectConnect projects and has notched up over 14 shows exhibitions or publications.

www.stellatripp.co.uk/

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).

Small World Futures - #unsettledgallery

Here at ColllectConnect we're starting 2018 with a fascinating little exhibition. 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 an inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Security Crow - Dean Reddick (#unsettledgallery 2017) 

In the autumn of 2017 Dean Reddick and Alban Low began cultivating a series of public exhibition spaces around London Bridge called the #unsettledgallery. These include flowerbeds, railings and gates, as well as spaces between bricks, in gullies and beside drainpipes - basically anywhere an artwork can rest and be seen by the public. Although these spaces change and evolve on a daily basis, several housed artworks for a longer period of time. The Small World Futures will find their homes in these public spaces. They may stay there for an hour or a week.  Perhaps they will plant a seed of an idea in the people who see them.

#unsettledgallery sites

Artists who have created worlds for the exhibition include: Sara Lerota, Ann Kopka, Bryan Benge, Bethany Murray, Wayne Sleeth, Dean Reddick, Lesley Cartwright, Melanie Ezra, Natalie Low, Stella Tripp, Tracy Boness, Jill Hedges, Jenny Meehan, Francesca Albini, Alan Carlyon Smith and Alban Low. As part of the exhibition we have invited 6 writers to create new works inspired by the worlds. Look out for the words of Kevin Acott, Rebecca Lowe, Natalie Low, Dean Reddick, Ed Arantus and Alban Low.

"Someone else seems to own my future at the moment. Politicians gamble with it, declaring that they speak for me, that they know my hopes and desires. The United Kingdom is in a state of flux as it prepares to leave the European Union. I feel disconnected from the future worlds that are being built in my name. I wanted to ask a group of CollectConnect artists to imagine what the future will look like. To envisage a world that they could call their own."

Alban Low (London, UK, 2018)

RIP Tom Hosmer (1943 - 2013)

Tom Hosmer (left) placing magnetic art on the streets of Concord, NH, USA

It is with a heavy heart that we learnt the news that one of our regular contributing artists, Tom Hosmer, has died at the age of 69. Many of our artists dip in and out of our exhibitions so we don't always keep in regular contact but we started to worry as we hadn't heard from Tom in the last four years. He died on 4th March 2013 in Pennsylvania, USA. Just the day before his death we had been in contact about sending him a copy of the Patternotion book, one of the early CollectConnect publications that he had contributed to.

Tom first exhibited with us for the Brighton Open in 2011, and quickly followed that up by exhibiting magnetic art on the gates of Hastings Pier at Rarities (2011). He was so inspired by this spirit of inclusivity that he organised his own magnet show. In August 2011 he worked with the New Hampshire chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA-NH) to exhibit hundreds of magnets at the Minor Threat Pop-Up Gallery. He also hit the streets of Concord, placing magnets on store facades for the public to pick up. http://artconcord.blogspot.co.uk

He was a man of many talents and loved being creative, he sculpted and was a keen photographer. I shall remember him as a great thinker, a sensitive man, a person who chose his words carefully and cared very much about the world and its children.

Wings by Tom Hosmer

Collectconnect published two books with Tom's work in it. FreedBook was released in 2012 when a group of us visited all the Books For London libraries on the London transport network (80 miles!). Tom submitted one of his poems (see above). Tom was hugely enthusiastic about being part of our modest group of artists, and was very keen to be included in our second book Patternotion. We released Patternotion on the 9th March 2013, unknown to us he had died just a few days before. The book tried to inspire people to make interesting and positive changes in their lives. Here is Tom's contribution.....

Wisdom by Tom Hosmer

"When I was really quite young, I remember browsing through the local Woolworth's Five & Dime.  There was a middle age couple dressed in working class clothes, who were standing silently staring into space not saying anything for some minutes, and then conversing and then silence again.  I stood some distance away from them watching.  They went on for a number of minutes in this manner.  Even in this mime I could imagine the words exchanged and the thoughts which were held in silence.

After a while I moved on, but I realized that they were agonizing over a decision to make a purchase, and that the purchase would impact them in a very deep way financially.  And, as I have walked through life I have seen this same scene play out in differing ways not only across this country but in different nations over the globe.  Even in rich cities and countries, you can see the Invisibles if you just stand in one place long enough and watch."

Tom Hosmer (2013)

Tom Hosmer with his wife Jennifer Van Cor in England (early 1980s)

Thomas Hosmer was born August 21, 1943, to Harold and Mary Hosmer in York, Maine, the middle child of three. He graduated R.W. Traip Academy in Kittery, Maine. Tom was deeply affected by the war in Vietnam and the involvement of the USA. In 1968 he dodged the draft and escaped to Montreal, where he spent months struggling with the personal conflicts that burned inside of him. He was a contemporary of both Mark Lane and Dick Gregory in Canada. Tom was imprisoned upon his return to the US and had a mixed time in New York after his release. With prison fresh on his mind he found it hard to get involved with the esoteric events in the city but it didn't stop all his cultural activities, as he explains....

"I did get to the opening night of the Whitney Biennial when I was there.  Two things opened the door for that.  I painted the walls of the Whitney at night when they were setting up the show.  That gave me a free pass to the Whitney.  But I was also dating the daughter of the head of the sculpture department at the Rhode Island School of Design, and that got me into the opening night."

He worked as a merchant seaman and brought up his two children, Pieter and Sarah Van Cor-Hosmer. In later years he moved to Warner, New Hampshire where he was often to be found in the company of fellow artists and poets. He took great comfort in the beauty of nature, a passion he shared with friends David M Carroll (Macarthur Foundation Fellow) and his wife Laurette.

We will miss Tom, his wisdom and his kindness.

Submissions Open - Art of Caring 2018

Now in its 4th year The Art of Caring is needed more than ever to show support for Nurses, Carers, and the NHS. This is your chance to exhibit an artwork or haiku that demonstrates your passion for this theme. If this is your first time then check out Anna Bowman's documentary film about last year's exhibition HERE.

The Art of Caring is split into two clear exhibitions.
The first is at St George's Hospital (10th-30th May 2018) where printed postcards of your artwork are displayed on the walls of the hospital to help celebrate International Nurses Day. This is an inclusive exhibition.
The second is at St Pancras Hospital (July - October 2018) and uses a mixture of original artworks and printed postcards. Works will be selected by the
Arts Project curators Peter Herbert and Elaine Harper-Gay.

It is Free to enter.
Send up to 3 jpeg images at an A6 size to collectconnect4@gmail.com
and/or send a haiku to the same email address

We are looking for artworks/poems about Care and/or Caring but also consider the theme for International Nurses Day this year..... Health is a Human Right.

You will receive a confirmation email within 7 days with your catalogue/exhibition numbers.
Before the exhibition we will print 2 postcards of each of your artworks. One copy will be sent to you and the other will be exhibited at St George's Hospital, Tooting, UK from the 10th-30th May, 2018.

For the full details about how to submit your work visit our SUBMIT page.
Deadline for submissions is 6th April 2017
(We may close early if all 400 exhibition spaces are filled)

Alban Low, Bryan Benge, Dean Reddick and Stuart Simler

The exhibition is once again kindly supported by Supported by Kingston University and St George's, University of London

Small Worlds: Future Lives - Exhibition opportunity

Small Worlds: Future Lives

An exhibition of small sculptures that are inspired by the dwellings, societies and worlds of the future. During February 2018 we will placing small artworks (Maximum size = 5cm wide x 5cm deep x 8cm high) on the streets around London Bridge. The artworks can be picked up by the public for free.

Over the past few months we have been finding and cultivating a series of public art spaces (niches, ledges, railing, flowerbeds etc) called the #unsettledgallery. The artworks will be placed one by one in these spaces during February 2018.

We will be photographing the worlds once they are in place and asking writers to create small written works inspired by these miniature societies. These written pieces will be published alongside photographs of your world on the CollectConnect website/blog. Hopefully we'll produce a small physical catalogue/book too, but I'll ask your permission separately if this comes to fruition.

There are further opportunities available too. Eskild Beck will organising a Small Worlds exhibition in Aabenraa, Denmark in May-June 2018 (Opening 3rd May). He will select some artists from our exhibition (but probably not everyone as he has limited space).

How to get involved
Small Worlds: Future Lives (#unsettledgallery London Bridge)

1) Contact Alban Low at his email address to express an interest.
or email collectconnect4@gmail.com
2) Alban will email you his home address.
3) Send your Small Worlds to this address by 19th January 2018.
4) Your sculptures should not be larger than 5cm wide x 5cm deep x 8cm high. A maximum of 3 artworks per artist.

Don't forget you must be prepared that these artworks will be exhibited on the streets and therefore may be taken by members of the public or destroyed by the weather/animals/refuse collectors etc.

Dazzle High-rise - Alban Low (#unsettledgallery No.8)

#unsettledgallery

Mooncrow - Dean Reddick (#unsettledgallery No.2)

It is only a lack of time that keeps us from organising more exhibitions each year. Our annual flagship exhibition the Art of Caring continues to grow in popularity, and stays true to our original ideals of inclusivity for artists. Because of its theme the Art of Caring is usually shown in hospitals or in nursing related spaces. But recently we've been getting that itch to exhibit artworks back out on the streets.

When we first started CollectConnect we found exhibiting outdoors was the most flexible, accessible and democratic of spaces. If someone didn't like the art we'd displayed in public, they quite simply picked it up and threw it away. More frequently people would pocket our art magnets, and take them home to display in their own gallery at home (usually their fridge!).

Dean placing Dogcrow at #unsettledgallery No.1

Over the last few months Dean Reddick and Alban Low have been cultivating a series of public spaces around London Bridge. Although these spaces change and evolve on a daily basis, we have located several that can house artworks for a longer period of time. These have been in flowerbeds, on railings, between bricks, in gullies, beside drainpipes, attached to gates and basically anywhere an artwork can rest and be seen by the public.

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 a few metres away, Guy's Hospital sits within it boundary, alongside Europe's tallest building, The Shard. It has recently been targeted by 'terrorists' 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.

Small Talking Heads - Alban Low (#unsettledgallery No.8)

Dean Reddick has exhibited several bird related sculptures in Gallery No.1 (Dogend Gallery) and Gallery No.2. While Alban Low has settled on a group of railing in Snowsfields at Gallery No.8. Where he's been placing a series of painted wooden heads based on his friend's profiles called Small Talking Heads.

Your can follow all the placements on Twitter or by dipping into this online photo album. #unsettledgallery Photos

Of course we'll be posting many of them here on the website/blog too, especially as more artists come together for exhibitions. Our first exhibition will be Small Worlds which we'll be running in conjunction with Danish artist Eskild Beck. More info soon.

Art of Caring Film Night

The Art of Caring closed on October 19th 2017 at St Pancras Hospital with a wonderful night of artistic goodbyes, where fresh ideas flowed forth and future plans were laid. It was an opportunity for artists to collect their work and for the buyers to take their treasured purchases home.


Anna Bowman premiered her brilliant short film about the 2017 Art of Caring exhibition. Curated by Peter Herbert, the Gallery exhibition expands CollectConnect's St George's Hospital Art of Caring show, held in connection with International Nursing Day. As you probably already know Alban and the CollectConnect team started the annual Art of Caring exhibition in 2015. The film gives us a unique insight into the exhibition and we also meet nine of the 35 artists whose work is on show at the Gallery, St Pancras Hospital and see many of the 200 postcards and haikus first displayed at St George's Hospital.

We hope the future of the Art of Caring is secure and we'll return in 2018.

Keep an eye out for Dean Reddick and Alban Low as they are researching a new CollectConnect exhibition around London Bridge. #Unsettledgallery goes back to CollectConnect roots, exhibiting on the streets, making an immediate commentary on our modern lives in a contemporary living space.

AOC Opens at St Pancras Hospital

Ella Penn

Last night (20/07/2017) we officially opened the Art of Caring at St Pancras Hospital with a fantastic summer's evening of wine and song. The exhibition started as a postcard show at St George's Hospital way back in May but here it took on a new life. St Pancras curators Peter Herbert and Elaine Harper-Gay brought together many of the postcards again but also a healthy slice of original work by the artists involved.

There were many eye-catching contributions, including David Marron's Fentanyl Dreams, and Mark Carr's two paintings from his Cup of Life series. Two sculptural pieces which captured the attention of the Private View revellers were Louise O'Boyle's glass domed world and the Melanie Ezra and Graham Parker hand that reached out from beyond the a mirror. Once again Herbert and Harper-Gay had engineered an artistic exhibition that broke boundaries, creating a new exciting physical space but also an emotional world that talked of compassion and shared experience.

artwork by

Melanie Ezra and

Graham Parker

Many of the artists exhibiting were also in attendance. This was Caroline Streatfield Chalk's first exhibition with CollectCollect, while Ella Penn is a die-hard of the CollectConnect inclusive genre and has been exhibiting with us for more than 5 years. Penn had brought along Freya, the subject of her Alopecia Tableau, to join in the opening night celebrations. Aran Illingworth had sold two of her beautiful textile pieces by the end of the night, as had the famous Stuckist and Outsider artist John Sheehy. Chris Brown and Dean Reddick chatted amiably to the gallery visitors, and David Napier was on hand to demonstrate his ceramic chessboard/backgammon set.

The Sensory Garden was full of visitors and just by its entrance was Jill Rock and her challenging work Duty of Care. Many more of the artists were in attendance, thank you to everyone who was there to make this night such a success. We had speeches from Caroline Harris-Birtles (C&I Director of Nursing) Andrew Machin, (Associate Director and Charity Development Project Manager from The Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust NHS Charitable Fund) and Paul Newcombe (Pre -Registration Nursing Course Leader at St George’s Hospital and Kingston University).

Sarah Vista

We were treated to a live set of original country and western ballads from The Sarah Vista Social Club (with Jeff Mead). It was an evening both of celebration and though provoking pathos, many of the artists were explicit in their support for Nurses and NHS, with artworks that highlighted the political and financial threats that currently harry the profession.

Once again thank you all for supporting the Art of Caring. The exhibition runs until the 19th October at CONFERENCE CENTRE GALLERY, ST PANCRAS HOSPITAL, 4 ST PANCRAS WAY
LONDON, NW1 OPE. Please go an visit.

You can see a selection of photos by following this LINK.

See you next year.