Floating

It was my final day as a member of the interaction team with De La Warr Pavilion and the penultimate day of the Yass exhibition. It was also the last weekend of the summer holidays. So there was a sense of things coming to a close, with many visitors, as well as myself, in a thoughtful, reflective mood. As result the afternoon was punctuated with conversations about the palpable sense of transition, looking out across the water as the clouds blew in and out. The Pavilion felt like a lookout post, for ideas as well as the weather. Our transparent, floating images, wafting in the air in the stairwell seemed very appropriate to the moment.

Quite of a number of conversations over the worktables revolved around the surprise and pleasure at being permitted/encouraged to make artwork in an art gallery. Many galleries provide opportunities for children to engage with their exhibitions, but far fewer recognise that adults of all ages take delight in and gain enormously from being invited into making creative responses to what they are seeing. This highly inclusive aspect of the gallery interactions has been one of my greatest pleasures during my year working with the Pavilion.

As usual, there were so many lovely people, making lovely work and enjoying a chat over the scissors and glue.

Thanks to Callum for his excellent assistance running the interaction and thanks to all my participants, for this day, and all the other days over the last year.

A rather damp end to the summer holidays and the last Lift the Lid of the Catherine Yass season was pretty busy. Parents and children got stuck into the painting the sea, creating an atmospheric postcard and constructing a lighthouse, or in some cases a boat. The session was enlivened by the upbeat and lively Gipsy Hill Band, driven inside by the blustery rain.

Thanks to Gaby, Georgia and Ben, the volunteers, for helping out and clearing up.

Strange sunsets over the sea

The third session of conjuring up a "dream-scene" was an interesting interaction between favourite images from the exhibition, the nature of the imagery provided as a basis for creating different scenes, and child and adult working alongside each other in quiet contemplation.

A deliberate choice of images involved the natural elements as settings which could be transformed into personal interior narratives. The very nature of a dream is a private and secret world where anything may happen.

In response to the activity of creating a light-box image, the qualities of Catherine Yass' films in particular were an evocative catalyst for personal narratives.

Contributors were not always able to give verbal specific explanations of their scene, such as Amelia (below) who described her piece as "loads of things which merge together".

If we consider the random nature of dreams which elude our ability to be defined, this also relates to the subliminal layers which can be perceived in the work of Catherine Yass, where an emotional response is triggered by the interplay between the intangible qualities of space and time.

The sea and the waves, a sunset with or without strange animals, a beach with rock pools recurred in different manifestations.

Much admiring attention by the passing public was drawn to the growing display of magical scenes which effectively masked the untidy urban aspect to the sea view caused by the presence of machinery.

My first group were a very creative family of three sisters: Agnes, Amelia, Lola and their brother Oscar. Agnes was inspired to create work which had two different view points in reference to the lock where the viewer simultaneously shares a boat journey going arriving and departing.

The last participants brought fire and brimstone to the final dreams:

"God looking down on the earth" by Nieve

Ellie's "Invasion" with a War of the Worlds II.

A special mention for Sonam who created the most amazing anarchic piece with a strange creature which appeared to burst forth from its own dream, see below.

The adults also enjoyed the chance to dream aloud.

As my final gallery interaction I would like to show my appreciation of all the amazing work created by Agnes, Lola, Oscar, Amelia, Kyiga, Sonam, Norpelt, Marysia, Nieve, Ellie, Jessie, Patrick, Natalie, Peter, Louis, Amelie, Daisy and Clover and their parents Tony and Charlotte, and those who worked fast and left before I could record their names or work. And thank you to volunteer Jess for such excellent and efficient support.

Lighthouse Stories 3

A glittering sea day, the lighthouse clear on the horizon and a steady flow of people of all ages, locals and tourists, enjoying the De La Warr Pavilion.



This was my last gallery interaction session as a member of this year's Interpretation Team. It's been excellent. Today, I did collage with kids and recorded people's reactions to the Catherine Yass film "Lighthouse".





Many thanks to volunteer helper Callum the Chemist.

Lighthouse Stories 2

Last time, collage and modelmaking were popular (see Lighthouse Stories 1, 16 July). This time, there was more text and drawing was clearly ahead of collage until right at the end. Attendance at the Pavilion was different to July, many more of the very young and those with much longer memories. People in the gap between childhood and maturity were largely elsewhere unless they had kids to entertain which is where we came in handy. The Red Arrows flew a long loop from the Eastbourne Air Show. Bob only gave them a glance as he was stationed in Cyprus for three years and used to see them six times a day.

Thanks again to volunteer Penny Hobson (www.pennyhobson.co.uk) for a good collaboration and even transcribing.

Signing the OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT!

"In 1967, I worked as a ‘temp’ for Trinity House – in the beautiful Trinity Square near Waterloo. I was working on a database of lighthouse keepers’ addresses, which necessitated me signing the Act. I still have my faded copy…"

"In around 1991, I went to the Trinity Buoy Wharf in East London where Matts Gallery [then in Bethnal Green] were holding an event. Poet Brian Catling, unshaven and dishevelled, sat muttering in a corner. The light still had its mirrors then. It is London’s only lighthouse where they used to train lighthouse keepers. I was told that before that, the site was where those transported to Australia were embarked."

Loneliness
Quiet
Shout, but no one hears you
What a sad existence

Fire!
Noise!
Sirens!
Danger
Pain
RIOTS
Anger in the cities
Seemed a good idea at the time

Trendy living
consumerism
Fancy house
now I’m not so sure

stability…. not loneliness
calm …. cwll ok …. quiet
whisper or shout, I don’t mind
what an existence!

Let everyone live in the lighthouse
it may teach us how to live with each other ♥

Linda Gill [Guildford, Surrey]

"The old Sovereign Light Ship is now in St Katherine’s Dock in Wapping, London. It is surprisingly small. People remember its light, every 15 seconds, as a comfort."

"A bit like a fairground ride it gave me vertigo. I felt a bit ‘giddy’, had to steady myself on back wall."

Commonwealth War Graves Commission
"I think if Trinity House personnel died during WWII*, they are considered to be casualties and are therefore commemorated by them [WGC] see www.cwgc.org. If you go to that website you will be able to contact them and get further information.
* it might be that they had to had to have died “as a result of enemy action” e.g. on a ship which sank."

"I visited the Royal Sovereign Lighthouse in the early eighties with the local Eastbourne MP, Ian Gow (later murdered by the IRA). I worked for the Eastbourne Herald as a snapper and he was delivering Christmas cheer to the lighthouse keeper. We all got seasick [it was December!] and were hoisted onto the platform in a balloon basket with a Christmas Tree."

lift the lid

A buzzy Sunday at the dlwp and the Lift the Lid session was pretty busy all afternoon. Grandparents happily spent time constructing and helping their granchildren realise improbable ideas and fantastic forms inspired by Yass's Soveriegn Lighthouse photographs and other images of lighthouses. The lure of cardboard boxes and masking tape was strong and the desire to design, cut, build, stick and colour the lighthouses was experienced by all ages.

Watercolour painting which allowed a range of brushes to create watery shapes and patterns was also popular with parents and children - all sloshing filmy blues and greens across the paper, seeing the sea as something dreamy and insubstantial.

A productive session with many keen and able participants all inspired by the Catherine Yass exhibition to make marks, shapes and forms which refelcted her unique view of the sea and man made structures.

Dreaming Landscapes II

Flying through the stars by Madeleine

Red crab at large by Rhiannon

A wealth of dreams intertwined and came to 'technicolourful' life in this second interaction exploring the connection of creating personal dreams with the landscapes and surreal images of Catherine Yass. A steady flow of contributors from small children to adults, invoked strange, distorted realities which form unconscious journeys of dreaming.

The first to take part was Olivia, accompanied by her mother Kate, and aunt Ann, revealed the lovely fact that they are a 'dream sharing family', often discussing the content and meaning of their dreams. We all agreed that we were great fans of the Platypus, (see below) largely because it seems to be assembled like a living animal collage.

Listening to the key details of the wide range of conscious dreams which unrolled throughout the afternoon, I decided take a little artistic licence to use the way in which the individual art works were collaged together to create one magnificent and dramatic dream of rescue, thull-duggery with a happy ending....

Under a big red sun in a tunnel of trees, a platypus flies past over tropical trees and looks down on a fire engine driving fast through the trees to the rescue of a naughty woman stuck in a tree, narrowly avoiding a car driving fast, which is about to knock down those trees...The sun becomes yellow as it lights up the beach at Bexhill, the sky fills with birds and a big red crab running through seaweed. A rocket waits at some steps for a lady and her dog, who was lost, but rescued and returned by a ladybird and two bees.

The rocket will take them to see if any birds need rescuing. They may be lucky enough to see Madeleine (top left) by on a little ship, being shown around the stars. The sun turns red as it sets in the forest, where a monster tries to take some gold but is beaten by a knight who gets there first......

Megan's gold

Maya's red rocket taking off.

Sarah's cityscape in surreal reflection

The last two people to leave were Sarah, a scientist from Stoke Newington and Vanessa an artist based in Finsbury Park, who had both very much engaged with the exhibition. A meandering exchange which ranged from taking almost identical shots of Brighton beach, to the way in which a reflection in water can appear like an entrance to another world, integrated itself into each artwork as can be seen above and below.

Their responses concluded the strange and imaginative spaces which were conjured into new surreal realities in dialogue with the exhibition by each thoughtful and generous participant: Joe and brother Sam, Rhiannon and her companions uncle Wayne and auntie Becky, Maya, Olivia, Madeleine, Megan, Yasmin, Kasia, and several families who worked so fast that there was no time to catch their names. A big thank you to Calum and Anne for their sensitive support.

Vanessa's inside out reversed seascape

Bees and ladybirds to the rescue by Yasmin