Art From London Markets, a-n feature

So apart from flu, this week has included an inviation from a gallery and a visit to that gallery, with a fuzzy head I met the lovely Maria Rzepecka and Patrick Needham (no relation) at Gabriel Fine Art in the docklands. They have offered me the opportunity to show in a group show on the run up to Christmas. This came as a direct result of having shown at Parallax, where Maria first saw my work. They are delightful friendly people, and despite my malfunctioning brain I really enjoyed talking to them and look forward to working with them.

In addition to that I managed by the skin of my very poorly teeth to get my submission into The Thames: The ARTery of London, so I am waiting for their response. Otherwise I have been in my pyjamas.

The river Thames runs across the country, collecting evidence in its bedload of all that it has been through, both physically, in time, and in the abstract collecting from here and depositing there in fragments, like a giant Lethe. These works explore the metaphor of the Thames as a Lethe, holding all the lost stories of London, the thoughts that have fallen in as people stand on the bridges, the physical deposits of its ancient history, the evidence it holds of both human endeavors and disappointments. And in particular there is a fascination with the way a river matures along its route, depositing most in its meandering maturity.

In the painting “Fulham Lethe”, the Thames holds all our dreams, and I have created the space to consider those dreams.

Bedload Part1
The piece “ Bedload” is a participatory project which I started with my daughter, she is 12, just emerging from childhood. She took the role of collector of information, I of recorder, depositor. We have visited the Thames from Thames Head to Southend and collected samples of the bedload which are seen here in testubes. We have wondered about what they might contain, what evidence of geology, of stories, of histories, new ideas and dreams in the different locations and how these change as the river matures.

This work invites participation, with small bottles for the viewer to take away, tiny messages in bottles an invitation to respond to the piece with their own collection from the bedload. It is the starting point for a project that will continue online through my blog.

Bedload Part 2
“Thames’ Empty Bed”:

Larger deposits collected from the Thames, evidence of the Thames starting point in nature, through the very human geography of London and the maturation point at the sea where nature and humanmade struggle for dominance. While collecting these items we came across what looked like a human shoulder blade(not collected), hoped it was in fact animal but it made us think about what we were collecting as “evidence” in a bigger sense of life around the Thames.