Exhibit like the world’s about to end, Part 2
So there we were in June, sweltering under a recording-breaking sunshine, cooking in the tube (EU - metro, US - subway), melting onto pavements, our pretty London gardens reduced to Gobi desert lookalikes.
I’d been invited to join an artist collective by Evelyn, the curator of the EXI shows. It was called Experimental Art Rising (EAR) and of course I say ‘Yes!’ Since the ‘100 years of Surrealism’ exhibition at the Pompidou Centre, Paris in Janauary, I’d been looking around for some sort art group I could be part of. It can be a lonely business being an artist, painting in your studio, battling with the feelings of futility and despondency that habitually attack you.
EAR were putting on their inaugural show at Candid Gallery in Angel. It was called ‘Third Places, Non Places’ and brought together a wide range of London-based experimental artists. One of my larger acrylic on canvas pieces, ‘Awakening’, had been chosen and given the nightmare of transporting art by car to the EXI show in February (the powers-that-be declared war on London car drivers a few years ago), I opted to use the train and tube. Except that we were in the middle of a heat wave. Hot doesn’t describe it. Passengers were melting all over the seats and floors: they had to employ extra staff to clean up the mess.
Anyway, I got there with my large canvas and discovered the delightful Candid Gallery, enjoying a Peroni upstairs in the cafe, whilst scribbling down the beginnings of a poem.
The exhibition was a great success, with a lively crowd enjoying the artworks, sculpture pieces, experimental film and artist talks; visit here for more on this: https://www.earcollective.org/
Two glamorous ladies and the artist: Awakening gave rise to some fascinating discussions
After an even hotter July in the Ardeche mountains, two hours south-west of Lyon, France, August saw an interesting invitation. This time, not art but music: Ealdspell, curated by Seb Bradshaw, was to be a 21st century exploration of the Anglo-Saxon concept of Ealdspell - the never-ending chain of sagas (stories) that make up our mythology.
The exhibition took place in the art district area of Copeland Park in Peckham, south London. To be honest, it was a bit scarey for me as I’d not played my folk songs for years. On the day, everything went fine and as well as my two songs I ended up playing a selection of traditional (e.g. Kishmul’s Galley, From Clare to Here) and contemporary folk for nearly an hour. As well as poetry and dance performances, we were treated to a solo show by the excellent Alice Stewart-Sykes. Photographer Stuart Peatty was on hand to catch these lovely shots of Alice and myself, bringing a more Gothic-Folk feel to the proceedings.
Following Ealdspell, daughter and I drove up to God’s Own Country - the land of my birth - where we went on hikes, ate lots of brambles (blackberries), ate even more cakes , drank gallons of Yorkshire tea and dodged Biblical downpours down in Whitby. The cherry on the cake was walking into a new Gothic bar on Church street and finding our very own ‘Guardians of the Abbey’ bats adorning the wall beside the Count himself (that’s Dracula to the uninitiated). Not a bad way to end our summer.
So here we are in September, and time waits for no man, woman or hamster. The leaves are starting to turn and, with the haunting season coming up, it’s WhitbyGothic’s turn to come out of her hibernation.
Next week: A month-long exhibition in York and then it’s time for the Whitby Goth Weekend!
