June Artist's 'Meet Up'

Veronica and Karen were joined at the June ‘meet up’ by Jenny Fairweather, Teatime and Tide, Mike Harrison, Mark Priestly, Nina Shilling Alan Hockett, and Sue Willis in the Marcel Gallery Beach Creative.

Jenny Fairweather was starting by photographing abandoned houses, continuing her fascination with “absence” and the issues around houses that are not lived in, including homelessness. She mentioned the current tragedy of Grenfell Tower and unsafe housing.

Teatime and Tide works in photography and film and have initial ideas of bringing outside elements into the house, like  investigating fly tipping into the cosy apartment and maybe portraits, scenes of former lives and issues like domestic violence.

Mike Harrison is progressing with ideas around his found object of a large hamster cage, which synchronized with being invited to show in HOUSE Paradox. A kind of abandoned building with allegorical links to the home, yet something that could have resonances to the human body, self and a relationship to Duchamp’s Large Glass.

Alan Hockett and Sue Willis from Essex were collaborating in work on empty houses, the essence of what it was and memory by experimenting in film making and sound using layers, which they found very exciting. They were also looking at town planning and issues of the idyll.

Mark Priestley was moving on with his large scale, autobiographical work relating to childhood fears of his unlit bedroom on the top floor of a Victorian house. He is focusing on the graphic imagery of torn, multilayered wallpaper whose sinister shadows play into a child’s imagination.

Nina Shilling is working with a Victorian dolls house she acquired as an abandoned, unstarted, white painted project. She plans to destroy its perfection, creating a ruinous and imperfect “messy” house and a feeling of absence. She will explore what makes a home (belongings, clothes retained even after someone’s death) and has meaning precious to the family.

Karen Simpson is developing her household medicine cabinet, dealing with the issue of healing versus disaster, and the presence of poisonous substances in homes of the past. Her cabinet, about 15 inches high, will be set against arts and crafts wallpaper and she is adding to her cache of found glass bottles from a disused coastal tip.

Veronica Tonge has a similar start point to Nina but plans to create an alluring Victorian cottage exterior which reveals unspoken dark fears behind shuttered windows and locked doors. Using a stage managed “Hitchcock effect” and deceptively ordinary scenarios in miniature, this work will be surreal and ambiguous.