Friday 27 October 2023

Alertism - Stanimir Dimitrov

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.

It's the final day of the Alertism exhibition and we hope you feel fully alerted! Thank you to everyone who has taken part (artists, writers and First Responders). We finish the exhibition with a new writer (to us), Stanimir Dimitrov, a bright spark in the world of poetry and creative writing. He echoes a sentiment that we at Collectconnect hold in very high respect, to stay connected to each other. Sometimes it's that simple. Dean Reddick sends us his response below. 

Stanimir Dimitrov

First Responder: Dean Reddick


Dean Reddick

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Stanimir Dimitrov is a graduate of Creative and Professional Writing (incl. Foundation) at Kingston University London. He has performed live at the National Gallery, London and published his brilliant debut pamphlet, man/ia, in 2022.

Dean Reddick is a legend, art therapist by day, highly original sculptor and conceptual artist by night. He likes drawing trees, birds and sharing ideas with his fellow CollectConnect artists.
https://deanreddick.blogspot.com/

Alertism - Alban Low

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 have a tempting proposition for you today on the Alertism exhibition. CollectConnect co-founder Alban Low asks you to push the button, but just once only. Can you resist? And what would happen if you pushed it twice. The First Responder who has to exert self control is writer Katerina Koulouri. Read her response below.


Alban Low

First Responder: Katerina Koulouri

Clear instructions
In capitals
I could ignore the urge
Follow the instructions
Keep this somewhere safe
Only use it in case of emergency
Only once

    Some other me is tempted to do the opposite and will probably go ahead
    at some point very soon and will press the red button a few times because
    what’s the point of pushing it only once anyway. I’ll wait to see what happens.
    Could it be flooding, an earthquake, a fire? Did I just escape some certain
    death and should be grateful?

Or, I could just store it in a box
Store the box in the cupboard with all the other boxes
Postcards and other mementos
Forget about it, like all the other
Postcards and mementos
After all, it’s only a red button next to some clear instructions
What matters is that someone thought of me

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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 is currently artist-in-residence at Twickfolk and presents the Jazzlondlive radio show on Brooklands Radio.
http://albanlow.co.uk/

Katerina Koulouri is a poet and translator living in London. She was born in Athens, Greece and lived in France for 5 years where she studied Oenology and Modern French Literature. Katerina also holds an MA in Creative Writing (poetry) from Kingston University, London. Poetry, wine and childrens’ books are her passions. She recently published her debut pamphlet, INVITATION TO ELSEWHERE .


Thursday 26 October 2023

Alertism - Bryan Benge

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.

As we near Halloween the dark nights are full of surprises, orange ghouls and ghostly premonitions. True to form, Bryan Benge's artwork gives us everything we fear. The co-founder of CollectConnect, Bryan's work often reaches beyond home shores, from the Reichstag in Germany to the Ewha University in Seoul, he has an eye for the international landscape. Here he sends out a worldwide alert, beware the Bogeyman! For such a big global threat Bryan has been given 2 First Responders, Sophie Darling and Dan Clarke. Read their responses below.

Bryan Benge


First Responder: Sophie Darling
Fear, sadness… eternal panic at what already happened and what’s to come. How do we understand what is danger, what is panic, and according to who? Do these people care about me? I doubt it

First Responder: Dan Clarke
A sense of foreboding dread at the thought of his potential second term, and what that would mean not only terms of his destructive policies, but in terms of the current thinking of US voters

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Bryan Benge explores the digital art medium, his work draws upon autobiography, family history and cultural icons from his past to explore visual memory and re-positioning of the past. Walter Benjamin observes in a Berlin Childhood , around 1900 “Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but its theater.”
https://www.bryanbenge.co.uk/

Dan Clarke and Sophie Darling are a creative force, their current work includes fashion, design, photography, DJing, music production, radio show presenting and art, plenty of art.


Wednesday 25 October 2023

Alertism - Paul March

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.

A new name to us here at CollectConnect, but we're really pleased to welcome him to the Alertism exhibition. Paul March is our artist, a mystery, just like the people who send government alerts. Do we ever know the people who are behind an alert, could it be an unauthorised sender? We will forever remember the rogue civil service tweet in 2020, when an unknown employee posted “Arrogant And Offensive. Can you imagine having to work with these truth twisters?” just after Boris Johnson's press conference. Paul's First Responder is Anglo-Brazilian artist Ed Arantus. Rio de Janeiro uses a Siren Alert System that includes a Master Control Station that has the ability to control 180 High-Powered Speaker Stations across the city. Read Ed's response below.

Paul March

First Responder: Ed Arantus

I had one chance to wake them from this world
Running blind, just to stay still
It is a kindness to stop them all

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Paul March retired from lecturing in 2017 where he worked on, HE and FE, he is still involved in education supporting students. He has decided not to return to lecturing as he finds the education system today has lost it way from its true purpose, so he spends most of his time involved in his own art projects.
On leaving school he studied engineering; he later joined the army as a mechanical engineer rising to the rank of corporal in charge of a workshop. His interest in teaching started during this time, having to train other soldiers in engineering. He became an instructor in the army and later in civilian life in sailing, canoeing, climbing, and other outdoor pursuits.
He went back to college in later life to study Art and Design, gaining a BA (hons) and later a MA. His latest endeavour is a PhD on the link between science and art focusing on artist and scientist thought processes.
For the past 24 years he has been involved in most areas of art and design. He has had several exhibitions around the country and a virtual exhibition in Italy.
He is a big advocate of cross discipline teaching, which shows in his work where he combines art, science and engineering, including past professions and hobbies. He has been part of the push towards changing the area of STEM to become STEAM adding art to science, technology, engineering and maths.

“Equations are to science,
what abstraction is to art”.
Paul March 2023

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



Tuesday 24 October 2023

Alertism - Stella Tripp

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.

Often alerts come in the form of a visual warning, a code that needs to be deciphered. In an increasingly overloaded visual landscape we are bombarded with signals via phones, road signs, and packaging. Which do we act upon first? Do we need to make a decision quickly? Here, artist Stella Tripp sends a triptych of images, the challenge for our First Responder is to unravel the mystery behind them. Jessie G Vaughan is our brave responder, she really puts herself on the line by opening the alert live on camera! Thank you to both artist and First Responder for adding a new and unexpected interplay for the exhibition.

Stella Tripp

First Responder: Jessie G Vaughan


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Born in Taunton, Somerset, Stella Tripp travelled to her current home in Devon, a very long way round. After a few years in Israel, Stella returned to Taunton to do a foundation course; then on to Portsmouth (BA Hons Fine Art); a few years in London; three in the USA (MA Fine Art; MFA) and a year in Cornwall, before settling in Exeter. Stella works in a wide variety of media, crossing boundaries between drawing, painting and sculpture.
www.stellatripp.co.uk

Jessie G Vaughan has been with us at CollectConnect since our first street art exhibition in 2010, Fab Fridge. When we exhibited mini magnetic artworks on the streets of Bath. She followed this up quickly with Freezchester, a magnetic exhibition in the Arndale Centre in Manchester. An excellent printmaker and artist in her own right, we look forward to exhibiting more Jessie G Vaughan artworks in the future.

Monday 23 October 2023

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 

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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.

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

Sunday 22 October 2023

Alertism - Mark Carr

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.

Mark Carr is one of those artists who seems comfortable making work at any scale, in any media, and is willing to tackle any concept we throw his way. One of the themes that runs through his work is a willingness to embrace both written and visual language. This is his eighth exhibition with CollectConnect. His first combined words and mixed media when he became a sushi laureate for the Jawspring exhibition in 2014. The exhibition celebrated World Poetry Day, and typically Mark chose to cast light on a subject that is often brushed under the carpet, mental health. Mark's First Responder is also a polymath (like himself), read the response of writer, artist and filmmaker Francesca Albini below.


Mark Carr

First Responder: Francesca Albini

I wondered if the alarm was for me. If I was a pawn or a node. If the alarm was for them out there or for us. If there is such a thing as us. Am I rescued or targeted? Who belongs? An ominous sense of having to trust the invisible, a spiral screaming a sterile safety.

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Mark Carr is a multimedia artist from North East England who says that since he was a child, he has always felt a need to be creative and produce art. In 1984 he graduated with a degree in Fine Art, which he took to Master’s level in 1994. Mark’s inspiration is taken from the world around him and the interactions he sees between people as they express their deepest emotions.
https://armchairanarchist.wixsite.com/mark-carr

Francesca Albini was born in Venice, and raised in Florence and Genoa. She was always surrounded by art and books, and grew up with a love and need for culture and cultural enterprises. She lives on the South Coast of England where she works as a freelance literary translator and artist. She is often involved in interesting, fun projects, for the promotion of art and culture. She was also a sushi laureate for the Jawspring exhibition in 2014.
https://www.francescaalbini.com/



Saturday 21 October 2023

Alertism - Julia Rose Lewis

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.

And breathe! Today we take a pause to consider a message that unfolds more slowly than some we've read during the exhibition, and we're appreciating it, after 10 days of being on full alert here at CollectConnect HQ. Julia Rose Lewis asks us to be alert, to awaken our senses, to be aware of the environment around us. We have had the pleasure of exhibiting Julia's artwork before at the Art of Caring and her subject matter for Alertism is one of our favourites too, trees. Julia's First Responder is Natalie Low, who sent out her own alert earlier in the exhibition. Read them both below.




First Responder: Natalie Low

yes okay 

i will do what i think you are asking me to

go out from the house and into the dark

stand barefoot in the grass

feel your face, tear-tracked and memory-stained

regard the new stars

and wait until i hear

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Julia Rose Lewis is a writer and academic. Her research draws on her background in the natural sciences, philosophy of science, and medicine in order to create experimental and hybrid works. She is interested in digital and face-to-face collaborative projects. She has written or performed with poets, scientists, and chefs in Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She has published two full length collections, Phenomenology of the Feral (KFS Press) and Strays (co-author James Miller, HVTN Press). As well as a number of excellent chapbooks and pamphlets.

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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).


Friday 20 October 2023

Alertism - María Celina Val

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.

María Celina Val is one of those exciting creative minds that we have been eager to work with since she first performed at the European Poetry Festival in 2020 and subsequently for Saatchi Lates, at the Saatchi Gallery. It was a defining year for María Celina, with the release of two excellent publications Children draw fivelfold stars, and Myth & Metamorphosis (Penteract Press). Here she gives us a glimpse of a world where communication is both art and constellation. Our First Responder is Terence Collie, the jazz pianist, composer and creative force in his own right. Read his thoughts below.

Maria Celina Val - Starlike Thoughts

First Responder: Terence Collie

Confusion 

Inversions

What is happening?

Patterns but no pattern 

Precision in the randomness

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Maria Celina is an artist, architect, visual poet, contemporary dancer and performer who explores how language shapes and creates atmospheres, worlds and realities through the typographic effect of fonts made of geometric figures and abstractions.
Maria intertwines art, typography design, space, geometry, language, dance and architecture, when creating compositions with her letters.
She investigates letters as particles, atoms, symbols, glyphs, and/or as objects. Letters as events that embody potential movement or contain energy. Letters as mass, air, music and/or sound that are meant to be listened with the eyes and that could be related to kinetic art and cosmic energies, interweaving notions of energy, matter and language.
https://mariacelinaval.com/home

Terence Collie is a musician, composer and educator and also a director of Mood Indigo Events, a jazz promoter/agency. He has just released his new quartet album 384,400. The album features roaring virtuoso Italian saxophonist Roberto Manzin, the hard swinging UK based American drummer Ted Carrasco and British bass player and Guildhall graduate with impeccable time and feel, Nick Lenner-Webster.