Redevelopment

progress?

The Derbyshire Open Arts - Carson House

Nice

Exhibition Updates

I have been struggling tremendously with the two exhibitions that I am due to open next week. Both for the Derbyshire Open Arts - one at my home and the other a guest appearance at the Level Arts Centre in Rowsley. The pieces for the house are mostly complete- save the 'big story' portrait of tory chief whip Patrick McLoughlin and one other of a prominent local business man. I still have to hang them all, which is an arse-ache, but have enjoyed clearing out the cellar space to form the coalhole gallery, or as kelly amusingly called it island6-feet under :). Thats not been the stress causer though, it has been the bespoke pieces that I have decided to create for the Rowsley space. Based on Wordsworth's 'On Oker Hill' it tracks my path around the globe over the last eight years, and contrasts it with the contended world of Oker hill to which I have moved in coming to Derbyshire. Wordsworths tale exaggerates the prospects of two brothers in a similar way- one brother stays at home in the countryside and prospers, the other travels and ends up in penury and perishes. heavy stuff. My grief has arisen not from understanding the romaticistic sentiments that would lambast the mind-opening activities of travel, but more to do with spray mount not fastening my prints sufficiently to the steel sheets i'd like to use. Then I have to sort a hanging system for the bloody things, which in itself is engineering that wordsworth himself would be 'afeared of'. As it is, I may have to cut the contribution slightly and use small scale prints from my photos, and scrap the steel. I guess WIlliam would have approved of that :)

Chesterfield

She stood outside William Hill, pram in one hand, her back turned affectionately towards it as she gently and determinedly sucked on a cigarette, exhaling willfully downwind of her offspring. A beautiful, fat round face covered in freckles, a healthy moonish face, contorted into a grimace of enjoyment for her cigarette. A young man emerged shabbily from the betting shop and shrugged the words ‘number one is free’ at her without looking up from his phone, and sloped to the other side of the pedestrian street where he slunk against the wall, still thumbing. automatically at the screen. He glanced surreptitiousluy left and right from this vantage point, his pudgy pink digit tapping pointless texts from his unlimited SMS per month stash.

With number one now free (whatever number one was) the moon faced woman screamed a hoarse vowel across the street to some unseen third party whose instructions were concise and rudimentary, with the emphasis that they should be carried out without delay. She wasn’t necessarily Romany or Irish Gypsy but her demeanor like many of those of ex mining towns might be difficult to distinguish from such by anyone not familiar with the subtleties of class and bloodline in these parts. The arbitrary toddler in the pram, whose care was now the responsibility of some one who “needed to git a fookin move on”, was oblivious to the changeover in custody, and dozed on from behind polyester knitted lemon bonnet and matching cardigan. Number one had already been pumped with several rounds of pound coins by the time I had passed the door, and looked to be relinquishing its jackpot just as much as the William Hill would have hoped.