Nick Roberts - Translocation Dislocation (words by Ed Arantus)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the traditional 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.

This is the final day of the exhibition, thank you to everyone who has followed its progress over the past fortnight. Today we're doing exactly what we said we wouldn't do, placing the work in a gallery environment. This isn't the traditional hanging on a wall though, Nick Roberts' artwork has been printed on a t-shirt and taken for a walk around London, visiting the sights, and ultimately rubbing shoulders with Yoko Ono's creations at the Tate Modern. Our First Responder is Ed Arantus, who explains why you should never stand still in an art gallery. Read his words below.

Nick Roberts

First Responder: Ed Arantus

The gallery was bright white, even the exhibits were white. I wore a white t-shirt. 

I leaned back against the white wall, looked at my shoes, noticed the flecks of paint. 

They were white too.

His finger tapped my chest, “what’s that you’ve got there?”

I knew the game, I’d look down and he’d flick my nose. 

Playground stuff. I stood completely still and stared straight ahead.

“It looks like someone’s tarmacked over Miss Marple’s cottage”.

His finger rested on the t-shirt design. I was ready for the flick.

He turned to his friend, “absolute genius that Yoko Ono”.

They walked away, in that slow way.

I moved a little, stretched my legs, looked up, the gallery attendant smiled at me.

I walked toward the exit.

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

Ed Arantus is a conceptual artist and writer. He published his first work in the Censored Zine in 2010 and has exhibited his work ever since at venues like the Contemporary Arts Research Unit in Oxford and the Museum of Futures in Surbiton.

https://edarantus.blogspot.com

Robin Vaughan-Williams - Translocation Dislocation (words by Lucy Furlong and Dean Reddick)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the traditional 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.

Today we have a double-header to share with you, two poems by Robin Vaughan-Williams come alive in the home environment. Originating from the same starting point (words on a page), each poem finds a new life.
First we'd like to share the poem Sparkling. Someone has taken Rizla sheets, jotting reminders on mini post-its, and dotting them around a house. Writer and artist Lucy Furlong is our First Responder. 
The second poem by Robin is Half life, a pair of slippers lie at the bottom of the stairs, an interactive voice assistant talks into the empty hallway. Our First Responder is Dean Reddick, read his words below. A big thank you to all our artists and writers who have contributed such wonderful work to this exhibition. 

Robin Vaughan-Williams - Sparkling

First Responder: Lucy Furlong

Sparkling (Cut-glass mix)

As if clues on cut-out humans were frozen in time

As if an angel were coming through venetian blinds

As if whiskey had a deep green reflection

As if he was rocking in a swirling silver lining

As if a windscreen could turn into frothing dazzle

As if a ship’s library of unopened antique boxes was watching

As if he’d made it Christmas - carved turkey all around him

As if the night’s blue blooms were too angelica

As if he’d fallen asleep transfixed by streetlamps in the deep freeze

As if time was untraversable darkness seeping to the river

As if a chandelier had crashed near water

As if light was drawn to carved up diamonds

As if he were gilded books draining of life

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Robin Vaughan-Williams - Half life

First Responder: Dean Reddick

I had sterilised most of my life by this point, cleansed it to within acceptable parameters.
Intonation and rhythm had succumbed to Occam, sliced away in the search for the Algorithmic Ideal.

Routine and hard surfaces held most of the pain at bay and my purification was close at hand.

And yet.

The little things persist, nagging, sinking their soft claws into my repose.

The smell of coffee.

Your slippers, soft, fluffy and worn at the foot of the stairs.

Why can't I forget?

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Robin Vaughan-Williams is a poet, producer, and author of The Manager (Happenstance Press). He has run live literature events like Spoken Word Antics in Sheffield and Word of Mouth in Nottingham, and pioneered collaborative poetry improvisation.
www.zeroquality.net

The writing journey of Lucy Furlong has taken her from signing a record deal aged 19, as a singer and lyricist in a band, to a stint in corporate communications working on in-house publications in the 1990s and early 2000s. She attained a degree in creative writing and journalism at Kingston University, and then a MFA in creative writing, specialising in poetry, alongside a Post Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCLTHE). Lucy has published and performed poetry for over a decade, and her work is taught as part of the Open University MA in Creative Writing.

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

Sandra Crisp - Translocation Dislocation (words by Dean Reddick)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the traditional 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.

Today Sandra Crisp's film 'Strange Attractors [...1.000 years]' beguiles and disturbs the viewer with its fractal forms, pulsing nerve-like images and commentary. The film, displayed on a tablet in a hollowed out tree stump is accompanied by the singing of woodland songbirds. Dean Reddick provides a written response as today's first responder.

Sandra Crisp

First Responder: Dean Reddick

The Return of The Machine Elves

The Machine Elves returned after their extended trip in hyperspace, bonged and fluid.

Pulverised by nonsensical plastics and polluted by dreamers they flashed their fractal teeth at the world.

Really they had no message for the rest of us already saturated in particles and pieces and practicalities.

Frustrated in every place they sought out the woody stumps.

Busted remnants of the World Tree.

Sandra Crisp is a celebrated artist who predominantly works in digital media using processes to critique and experiment with open source software and digital imagery. Her work is informed by her training as a printmaker at Wimbledon School of Art.

https://sandracrispart.com/

Dean Reddick  is an artist and an art therapist. He frequently works with casting process and loves drawing trees. 

https://deanreddick.blogspot.com/

Chris Brown - Translocation Dislocation (words by Natalie Low)

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.

Chris Brown's wandering cowboy waits at a bus stop in Hampton Hill, he doesn't dream of the American frontier but of travelling to Kirkwall, the home of the finest ginger ale in Scotland. Natalie Low composes a ditty for our rhinestone hero, or should it be for our bovine hero. Read it below, or if you are in good voice, sing it out loud.

Chris Brown

First Responder: Natalie Low

(There are cowboy versions of  ‘My bonny lies over the ocean‘. Here is a boycow version.)

My Boycow lies under the peat gley,
My Boycow lies far from the sea,
My Boycow lies under the peat gley,
Oh, rescue my Boycow from me.

[Chorus]

Rescue, rescue,
Oh, rescue my Boycow from me, from me.
Rescue, rescue,
Oh, rescue my Boycow from me.

Oh, dig the ground under the peat gley,
Oh, dig the ground far from the sea,
Oh, dig the ground under the peat gley,
And rescue my Boycow from me.

[Repeat Chorus]

Today as I walk by the kirk wall,
To hide in the standing stones near,
Today as I walk by the kirk wall,
I wish that my Boycow was here.

[Repeat chorus]

They're digging the ground in the peat gley,
They're digging away from the sea,
They're digging the ground in the peat gley,
To rescue my Boycow from me.

[Repeat Chorus]

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Chris Brown is an artist, author, editor and art therapist living amongst skyscrapers and regularly exploring the wilder landscapes of the United Kingdom.

Natalie Low is a creative knitter, stitcher and quilter. She lives in London, UK with her charming family. She has published two chapbooks Dementia (2015) and School Run (2017).

Francesca Albini - Translocation Dislocation (words by Jack Low)

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.

An open hearted figurine from Francesca Albini waits on a bridge in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow today, do you dare flick the switch and discover the hidden secrets of the lady with the red hair? First Responder Jack Low tries to unravel her mysteries, read his words below.

Francesca Albini

First Responder: Jack Low

The movement of something from one place to another

I am miles from where I came from
But I am still the lady with the red hair
It disobeys the movement of the wind like I’ve always despised
Holding something back,
not free like the shadows I see from where I sit
Chopping and changing, changing in the wind
My eyes are wide, wide enough to see what I can’t have and always narrow enough to see myself,
If you looked in far enough you would see my home,
A place, the one place, where my eyes can only stretch to the confines of familiarity
Maybe they will dance far enough from there, to here
To this stretch of stone spotted by history and a thousand finger prints
And I will see another familiar sight.
Or
just
A familiar disturbance,
Can I ever break from the family I had when
I hold the key to my mothers youth
Yet no power to unlock it?
Just as my own heart is held in shackles,
Like a proper lady,
Just as I was taught,
Far enough from the original but never out of line,
The people that pass never see anything despite the usual,
Yet I sit there, new and unusual, and even then
You can read all about me
And never see me
Never place me
Or pick me out from the line up, a fallen leaf, the passers-by, the state of me once I am discarded,
Can you keep the memory of where I was?
Would you remember me?

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Francesca Albini divides her life between literary and artistic endeavours. She is a PhD in Classics, and has worked in publishing for her entire adult life, as a translator, author and editor. She is a self taught artist and photographer. Her work is inspired by folk art, but also by design. Albini is a collector of memories, and uses any medium that allows her to remember and share, express feelings and narrate stories. From line drawings to plastic cameras, from collage to upcycled jewellery and dolls. "My work is playful and dreamy, child-like but also philosophical. I fall in and out of love with many styles and tools, but I'm always me, whatever I do."

Jack Low is a Brighton based writer. He published his debut poetry pamphlet, aesthetics of a dropout, in 2019.

Keziah Reddick - Translocation Dislocation (words by Ed Arantus)

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.

Keziah Reddick's astronaut sits high above us. We don't often take the time to consider the hidden objects and mystery narratives floating way up there! Ed Arantus muses on the missing canines that may still be lost in space, read his words below.

Keziah Reddick

First Responder: Ed Arantus

Oleg called out to them. They never answered back but they always returned. He called their names into the radio, Belka, Strelka, Dezik, and Tsygan. 

He kept calling out to Laika. 

Cats did not tolerate flight conditions, monkeys were, in fact, problematic. Stray dogs were hardier than the purebreds. So they decided that a pack of Moscow street mutts would be the first cosmonauts.

Laika! 

Bobik escaped just before the mission, so Oleg was put in charge. He cared for the pack, and they loved him. They say that dogs possess such human qualities as courage and loyalty, but they are better than any humans he has ever met. 

Laika!

He climbs as high as he can, and still calls,

Laika!

Laika, please come back.

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Keziah Reddick is an artist who works across a range of media. She has a particular interest in telling stories through her art. She has a passion for stories from ancient civilisations.

Ed Arantus is a conceptual artist and writer. He published his first work in the Censored Zine in 2010 and has exhibited his work ever since at venues like the Contemporary Arts Research Unit in Oxford and the Museum of Futures in Surbiton.
https://edarantus.blogspot.com

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. 

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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.

Alban Low - Translocation Dislocation (words by Lucy Furlong)

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.

Living in the cracks, lurking in the spaces left behind, Alban Low's crackmen are now starting to emerge from the shadows. Words are by artist and poet Lucy Furlong, read them below.

Alban Low

First Responder: Lucy Furlong

Caught between
the cracks/ hiding behind/
out of view/ habitat
rusty ironwork/ graffiti
decorated edges/ the back
of beyond/ underneath,
the beside/ out of view/
the unlooked for/ unspoken
place/ the soundless house/
the edge of life/ the edge of
the park/ hanging on/ hanging
out/ caught between the cracks/
sliding/ sticking and catching
in the awkward spaces/ dis-placed
but still there/ hiding in plain site/
forgotten/ disregarded/ unseen
on purpose/ un-looked for
on purpose/ falling and caught
in the cracks in-between/
stuck in the empire of in-between/
dis-placed in full view/ un-viewed
in dis------------------------------place,
spirits of uproot and unkempt

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Alban Low is an artist and illustrator, working in a signature graphic style for album covers and specialising in impromptu portraits of jazz musicians. He currently presents the JazzLondLive radio show on Brooklands Radio.

http://albanlow.com/

The writing journey of Lucy Furlong has taken her from signing a record deal aged 19, as a singer and lyricist in a band, to a stint in corporate communications working on in-house publications in the 1990s and early 2000s. She attained a degree in creative writing and journalism at Kingston University, and then a MFA in creative writing, specialising in poetry, alongside a Post Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCLTHE). Lucy has published and performed poetry for over a decade, and her work is taught as part of the Open University MA in Creative Writing.

Ian Parker-Translocation Dislocation (words by Ros Taylor)

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.

Todays art work provides remembrance, distance and transformation through the acts of walking and writing. Ian Parker's video records a walk around a large ‘pond’, a crater left from the detonation of 70,000 pounds of high explosives under 'The Caterpillar' in the Battle of Messines on June 7, 1917. 

Ian Parker

Ian tells us that the trip to the crater was made at the height of Brexit, after the vote but before the UK left the EU. Knowing what was coming, freely crossing borders felt like a poignant and melancholy act. Ian's video is viewed over Bryan's shoulder as he walks through the grounds of Polesden Lacey.

First Responder Ros Taylor

We welcome Ros Taylor to Collect Connect as our First Responder. All our writers words are written without them knowing any of the contextual details provided by the artists, they are genuinely a first response to the art work. Here Ros' playful take on Bryan's presentation of Ian's walk are in startling contrast to the violent history of the Pond. The writing points us to innocence and the simple pleasure of play but also hints at what is lost over time and re-found through walking alone and playing together.

Shall we play? 

Let’s play! 

I’ll hide! 

Where’s a good place? 

1.. 2.. 3.. 

There’s nowhere to hide! 

4.. 5 

Don’t look! 

6.. 7 

Where can I hide? 

8.. 9 

Wait! 

10.. 

This is a good place… 

11.. 12.. 

Argh! It won’t work! 

They’ll see me here 

13.. 14.. 

Hang on! 

I’m not ready! 

15.. 16.. 17.. 

This is better! 

18.. 19.. 

20.. 

Phew! 

Coming! Ready or not? 

Where could you be? 

This is fun! 

They’ll never find me here! 

Where are you? 

Here?

Here? 

They’re so close 

I mustn’t move, 

I mustn’t breathe! 

Please don’t find me! 

Where are you? 

Phew! They’ve gone 

I know! 

No! Not here… 

Not here… 

Where could they be? 

Shall I give up? 

Will they ever find me? 

There you are! 

Found you!