And all the friends lay down the flowers, sit on the banks and drink for hours, talk of the way they saw him last, local boy in the photograph…
On Sunday 14th April 2013 I headed down to Brighton to meet my very talented and motivated girlfriend Kate who was travelling down from Hull to take part in the Brighton Marathon… Here’s the plug: She is celebrating turning 30 by taking part in 30 sporting events for 30 different charities over the next year, hoping to raise £30,000 (£1000 for each), she has named this event Project30 and I urge you good good people reading this to give her Facebook page a look or her just giving page, just look up Project30 and it will come up, it’s for some really great charities… Plug over!!!
Brighton is a place of wonder, I have been before but years ago, I very much enjoyed my time there, but as with many tourist driven coastal towns, as well as great scenery and fun times AND Jamie’s Italian, which was Totes Amazeballs (been trying to get that new addition to the English language in for ages), there is also a large community of homeless folks, trying their luck with a tourist hotspot in a hope of making a little bit of money to feed themselves and perhaps find shelter for the night. With suck a huge event like the Brighton Marathon you would like to think that with the revenue it brings in to the local community they would distribute this to local homeless charities and shelters, I know I certainly tried to do my bit for the homeless whilst I was visiting Brighton.
Jane, I realize this has nothing to do with art but I thought why not give it a mention as my work is politically fuelled and I feels this falls under that category.
Anyway… whilst walking through the Lanes of Brighton, I happened to come across a little boutique shop, their main supplier seemed to be Vivian Westwood, so of course it had a very quirky window display. The photo here reminded me of my cones and bollards that I have made, replacing the models head with a camera had made the dummy an object of surveillance, I have spent the past few months sourcing ‘dummy cameras’ for my work and here was and entire shop window made up of ‘Dummy Cameras’. What I can take from this is future possibilities for using cameras within my practice and exploring surveillance within a completely new environment. It reminds me of the droids from Star Wars – The Clone Wars, you can imagine these mannequins walking around recording your actions and every move, perhaps this is an insight into how the government plans to move forward with future surveillance in our Big Brother generation.
