Letting the silent speak: SUNARA BEGUM & DUNSTAN PERERA
Visual artists Sunara Begum and Dunstan Perera host their new exhibition at The Crypt: Retracing the Eye: Giving a Voice to the Voiceless.
Here, Sunara Begum and Dunstan Perera create a visual exploration of the work of influential photographer Margaret Cameron. Positioned in the stunning location of The Crypt; the 18th century architecture and brick vaulted ceilings will serve as the perfect atmospheric backdrop for this new exhibition.
Begum engages with culture in all her work, desiring to tell stories through her visual interpretations and in doing so, forming connections between the past and the present. These two artists collaborate together to re-awaken the meaning behind the images of this influential English photographer.
Julia Margaret Cameron was born in Calcutta over 150 years ago. This exhibition explores the photographs she took in her later life whilst living in Ceylon; as she captured people forever in a frame of silence. Begum and Perera let the silent speak once more, exploring these photographs and their subjects and setting free the unspoken narratives within.
Displaying not only photography but etches and wood-cuts, these visual pieces once again inject life into Cameron’s work, tracing the past and relating it back to the voices of the present. Blurring the boundaries of time, the artists cast new perspectives and interpretations on to Cameron’s collection.
The exhibition runs from the 29th September to 12th October at The Crypt Gallery, St Martin in the Fields.
Making a splash at NY FASHION WEEK
While New York Fashion Week is no stranger to the glitz, glamour, and genius of the world’s most celebrated designers, this year, the legendary Ralph Lauren has taken the catwalk by storm – literally
While New York Fashion Week is no stranger to the glitz, glamour, and genius of the world’s most celebrated designers, this year, the legendary Ralph Lauren has taken the catwalk by storm – literally. Using CGI technology, Lauren presented his Spring 2015 collection in a very big way: in lieu of a traditional runway, Lauren opted instead to project a combination of live footage and computer-generated graphics onto a massive screen of water in Manhattan’s Central Park.
Reaching heights that even New York City would be proud of, each projection featured larger-than-life footage of Polo-clad models strutting before artificially-created scenes of the city – including, among others, a lit up Brooklyn Bridge, the streets of SoHo, and, of course, Central Park. Although the depicted scenes of New York are entirely fabricated, the models that complement them are the real deal. Using the same green screen technology popular and increasingly prevalent in Hollywood, Ralph Lauren’s team was able to transport the models into these surreal settings, transcending the traditional catwalk and contextualizing his collection within new and exciting realms.
While New York Fashion Week has come and gone and, having made it splashy debut on 8 September, Ralph Lauren’s tech-savvy show has since dried up, the spectacle has been immortalized as myriad images and videos available at the click of a mouse. Although laptops and tablets are not yet hologram-compatible and water screens aren’t quite household objects, at this rate, who knows what the future holds for technology and fashion shows?
One thing is certain: New York Fashion Week 2015 has some big stilettos to fill.
BLOOMBERG New contemporaries 2014
Since 1949 Bloomberg New Contemporaries has given a platform to the UK’s brightest emerging artistic talent. This year the exhibition begins at Liverpool’s World Museum before moving once again to London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts.
BNC gives final year and recent graduates a chance to display their work to the public. From almost 1,400 submissions, this year’s selectors; Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Enrico David and Goshka Macuga, have given the spotlight to the most promising few.
Celebrating the organisation’s 65th year running, fifty-five artists have been chosen, coming together to produce a diverse and exciting exhibition of talent. Those selected have joined a roster that has previously included names such as Jake & Dinos Chapman, Tacita Dean, Mona Hatoum, Mike Nelson, David Hockney, and Damien Hirst.
With a focus on moving image, performance and print making, there are a plethora of themes being explored this year. Many venture into exploring materiality and methods of production in their work, while others delve deeper into the subjects of current affairs, human behaviour, language, desire and the body.
With many prestigious artists having started out here, there are high hopes for these artists and what they will be capable of in the future.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries at the World Museum 20th September to 26th October 2014
Bloomberg New Contemporaries at the ICA 26th November to 25th January 2015
Interview with RACHEL GOODYEAR
Sufficiently sticky from twenty-six degree heat, I was more than pleased to be invited into the cool and creative rooms of Salford-based independent arts organisation Islington Mill, by Rachel Goodyear. With her bohemian-like attire and relaxed demeanour, she seemed very much a part of the place. Her studio is her scrapbook; here you can find magical traces of her imagination such as odd clippings about fungus, her mascot ‘A Girl with Birds Inside Her’ mask and a collection of gothic figurines in a glass cabinet. In her darkly fairytale work you’ll find relentlessly dancing devils, humans wearing beastly masks, young doppelgangers, the trappings of vulnerable animalistic stances, and even a couple feeding each other like birds. Yet her world is her own; these are not archaic characters, but slightly skewed versions of her everyday experiences and observations. Her most recent exhibition work at London’s Pippy Houldsworth Gallery differs significantly from her previous work, and now she’s in collage-style experimental mode. It was a privilege to hear her talk so openly, especially about her collection of drawings ‘Unable To Stop Because They Were Too Close To The Line’ which were her diary while she was undergoing chemotherapy in 2006 for Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Where did you train as an artist?
I did my BA at Leeds Metropolitan University. It was quite a long time ago now! I was in a really productive year, so I think as a year group we all got along well. There was a lot of support and enthusiasm, which helped a lot.
What has made you stay in Manchester – what is it about the art scene that has made you stay?
Predominantly this place (Islington Mill) – I do sometimes wonder that, especially being in the same studio for so many years and watching everything change around me – even the view out of the window is changing. It does come back to this place. There are some really fantastic places in Manchester as well; it’s a brilliant support network. There’s the International Three Gallery, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery…It’s a good city to be in, but the Mill is definitely my creative home.
“It’s a kind of in-between, sleepwalking state, real but not real. that’s the kind of state i’m interested in.”
Much of your work is like a twisted folklore, a darker version of Alice in Wonderland which sucks all the cliché out of the Disney adaptations. Were you read fairy tales as a child?
Yeah I was read fairy tales, but also my Mum was really into Norse and Greek mythology, there was always these peculiar story books lying around – a lot of them were really old. Also, my great aunty was a mischievous old storyteller – she was quite a character – she would look after me quite a lot and just sit and tell me loads of stories. Some of them were true, others she just made up. I grew up with a lot of tall tales!
Are there any particular figures which feature in your work?
There tends to be more of a serendipitous meeting of characters. Whenever I make work I never actually think about fairy tales or folk tales. What I tend to do is look at the everyday and twist it slightly, perhaps using the objects as metaphors. Because a lot of folklore is built upon those lines as well, I think you get a crossover of old characters and beliefs. I start to notice little similarities there. A few years ago I started to look closely at the trickster character in mythology, mainly because I started reading about the trickster from various different mythologies and cultures and started to notice so many similarities between the characteristics of the trickster and those in my own work. There’s mischievousness, deception…
Explain your use of white space… It seems to correspond to your artwork titles which are simple and devoid of excessive allusion – it’s as if each one encloses a moral or a secret which can’t quite be pinned down the same way as conventional fairy stories…
Right from when I very first started bringing the drawings out of the sketchbook, I saw them as being fragments almost like if you extract something from its natural surroundings, or a sentence from its usual context. If you just strip everything else away it just heightens that ambiguity of who it is, where it has come from, what it’s doing. That white space becomes a charged space even though there’s nothing in it, making you question what could be there. When there’s a lot of space around something it can become quite bleak and maybe appear to be quite vulnerable. It can be like a sinister character in the mist.
Have you ever considered book illustration?
Not as such. I have had people come to me, and if there’s a particular drawing they like that already exists which they think will really suit the story then that’s fine, but it’s more a meeting of creative minds. Robert Shearman, who has written collections of dark short stories, has used some of my drawings in this way. I’ve also done album covers for close friends; when I really like their music and they like my art work, we put the two together and it just kind of works. But it doesn’t happen very often, I can’t illustrate other people’s ideas! I find it quite peculiar when I’m labelled as an illustrator, because I can’t!
There’s something addictively uncanny about your work, which is both familiar and distancing at the same time. Is this intentional?
In a way. Sometimes more so than others, I will have an idea before I put it on paper and it will be quite deliberate. The other way I work is more like a stream of consciousness. To be honest, I prefer the stream of consciousness, but it does tend to take a little longer for things to happen that way, it’s more of a process that’s ongoing over time. There are definitely things you can recognise in my work, because of the way it takes in what’s around, sometimes very ordinary things and twisting them – putting things together that might not necessarily go together. Kind of just screwing things up a little bit! It’s a kind of in-between, sleepwalking state, real but not real. That’s the kind of state I’m interested in.
“I love horror films that create a sense of anxiety from very little at all”
I loved seeing your animation ‘Girl with birds inside her’ – I felt she was inescapably trapped, in comparison to the characters in your drawings…
That’s pretty much what I want the animations to do. When I first started getting interested in animation it wasn’t to make a story. The girl with birds inside her is a long standing character for me, even my studio mascot is ‘the girl with birds inside her’. It’s a sketch which I’ve been doing for years and years. I always imagined she would have all these birds inside her; she would cough one up and another one would take its place so she could never get her breath or be given her voice. But then again I had this idea that she was guided by the fluttering, and the birds’ compass direction was working inside her.
The scenarios I draw on paper tend to show characters caught in a moment, so you could imagine anything could happen next. I had ideas for characters caught in a cycle, which I knew could only be achieved through movement and creating a loop. That’s when I got interested in animation. Most of my animations work as an inescapable cycle, but this was my most ambitious. I underestimated the amount of work which goes into them!
How did you make the animation?
Alex Hindle, an animator from the group Soup Collective, assisted me with all of the technical stuff. I told him what I wanted to do and he gave me quite a bit of guidance, but I also wanted to keep it really DIY. First I made hundreds and hundreds of drawings, then he helped put these into animation programme After Effects and played around with timing/loops. Sound artist, Matt Wand, did the sound for me – most of one day I spent coughing out tomatoes in front of a microphone!
Your artistic repertoire is one of abject substances, claws, teeth, whips, masks and cloaked identities. Art critic Cynthia Freeland notes that art in recent years has shown an obsession with horror; would you say that the contemporary Gothic realm is a spectacle, rather than a physical presence?
Horror has become such a broad term, as has Gothic, and I struggle with them as labels for genres and cultures with so many layers and subtle differences. I think that contemporary Gothic Horror offers both the spectacular and physical presence and I do tend to dip in and out of it. I am a huge horror film fan, particularly silent films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu, and really enjoy a good zombie or monster movie, but I love horror films that create a sense of anxiety from very little at all. I really enjoyed ‘Under the Skin’ for these very reasons – I still keep thinking about it.
“…it’s really unhealthy to just expect everything to happen in one room”
Looking at your portfolio, your style has changed. This is especially so in 2012, and in your work exhibited at Pippy Houldsworth, where your pages seem to have become fuller of activity, in comparison with earlier drawings. Do you ever feel like the world you’ve created is growing or simply changing?
It’s changing constantly. I’m now in another period of change. I’ve just finished my show at Pippy Houldsworth, so I’ve been thinking about some new techniques and directions. More recently I’ve been looking at a larger landscape and at what would happen if I put multiple characters together. I have noticed in the most recent larger drawings that there seems to be quite a lot of overlapping going on, so one character’s set of activity would create a platform for a parallel activity. Now I am looking at how I might be able to develop that and see where the drawings can go next. I’m allowing myself a little time in the studio to be playful.
Is your sculpture a tangible extension of your drawings? These are like nothing I’ve seen before, in their combination of pencil drawing with materials like porcelain.
Yeah. I wouldn’t ever call myself a sculptor, although I did do sculpture at college. These porcelain works came from a desire to play with what a drawing can be. With my works at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, in combining 3D objects with drawing, I saw the 3D elements as drawings which had fallen off the paper. I got the idea that if the drawing escaped it would be all floppy and unable to hold its weight. This mixed in with the figure of the trickster – kind of creeping out, then suddenly in uncomfortable territory. It wasn’t about making sculptures, but extending what a drawing might be.
Is there a place for drawing as a medium in the contemporary art world?
The contemporary art world certainly seems to recognise Drawing as a medium in its own right and there is a lot of discussion around the importance of drawing and what it can be. Some institutions focus predominantly on Drawing in its widest sense, notably The Drawing Room in London and The Drawing Center in New York. Drawing can be so extensive and this is something I am thinking a lot about at the moment. I mostly work with pencil on paper, but I am open to the possibilities of what it means to ‘draw’ – with different materials, maybe even the body…
If you had a twin what would they be like?
I think of myself as a double personality anyway. I can be gregarious one day and insular the next, depending on where I am and how I wake up that day. Dressing up can change how I feel too! I like how with a mask or a wig, you can completely change your personality. So my twin would probably be one of them! There have been times where I turn costume into performance, the mask ‘the girl with birds inside her’ was originally part of an art performance I used to do with my friends where I just used to skulk around and hide in corners – I made myself into a strange illusion.
Do most of your ideas come to you in your studio, or elsewhere? The countryside in this area is beautiful…
I’m always looking for ideas. It happens in different ways, sometimes a lot will come together in the studio but then I have to remind myself it’s really unhealthy to just expect everything to happen in one room. Recently, I went on holiday to Scotland. My boyfriend and I just got in my car and drove up to Scotland, all around the Highlands right to the very top. We went to some of the most remote, beautiful places. That definitely got under my skin; when I got back it got me thinking of a whole new body of work, maybe even a new way of working. It was a different jolt to what I would get in this room, or in the city.
I’m visiting Fairfield Hospital to see your series ‘Unable to Stop Because They Were Too Close to the Line’. Were these a kind of diary you kept whilst you were there?
When I was ill, I kept these really intense diaries. The stuff I was drawing in those tended to be really loose scribbles. About half way through the treatment I started to translate these images into more coherent drawings. Even though this is the most personal body of work I have ever made, the final drawings were more about unrest and a period of struggle, rather than about Hodgkin’s disease itself.
There’s a UK based charity called Paintings in Hospitals which uses visual art to create environments that improve health and wellbeing for service users, their families and staff…do you think that art be used as therapy?
Yes, definitely. Art can play a very important role in therapy.
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m giving myself a bit of time to put some new ideas together. I’m pulling back a little bit from the fantastical and looking a little more closely at the everyday and playing around with combinations of images and installations. So rather than try and get too bogged down in narrative, I’m taking more of a collage approach and exploring new techniques.
A night of OUT-SPOKEN entertainment
Walking in to The Forge, you might first think you’ve got the wrong place… Woah! Well, hold on there, just a second… Indeed, the venue is a large, open-spaced building with a quirky, kitsch, light scene, a lovely sky-light roof and foliage rampaging down one of the walls (Yes, truly!), but so what? When you take a few paces into a room and your initial sense of anxiety (Think: Do I belong here?) is consolidated, along with your querulous sense of identity or dress to the event, all rescinded by appeasing grooves, one’s mind soon starts to follow their heart and an air of openness dawns and drifts upon you.
The night goes by the name of Out-Spoken, and the location sure speaks for itself. Immediately, any sense that poetry must be for the super-refined, magisterial, or entirely self-aware groups to covet for themselves, is blown apart; here you might just expect to get a couple of drinks to kick off your night out (Recollections of the world cup being screened in the room overhead…), so why not just jam with a select of the finest local entertainment? After all, poetry is for everybody. This seems to be the keen mantra behind Out-Spoken’s thing; hand-picked by the group to diversify the show, the entertainment in store really is of such quality that it has tremendous appeal, even if you aren’t something of a scribbler, yourself. The night, hosted by resident MC The Ruby Kid, was kicked off with a dazzling piano performance by contemporary-classicist composer Karim Kamar, which, for it’s astounding elegance, would have given even the hardiest of misers a difficult time of not being roped in and succumbing to curiosity as to the remainder of the evening.
Run by a tight-knit crew of four friends and long-time contributors to the scene, and headed by acclaimed UK poet Anthony Anaxagorou, the vision of the night’s direction is one such as will cater to anyone’s mood and taste; a varied demographic with each their own unique voice, and the whole thing is never chagrined by unequal levels of talent but is kept in check and curated through inspection and appreciation, securing a night of returning talent as well as those who are new to the scene; each as wonderfully charismatic as the last, the smoothness and setting sees the whole operation glide across various styles and forms, always with something of a musical impetus to cling to and carry it across, there’s a seamless blend of jokes, (Thank you Chris Redmond) anecdotes and poetry; really, it becomes more of a variety act, without the embarrassing clown-school types (Big pants, red noses…) or dogs jumping through hoops. Not here! It’s all kept relatively much more cool and down to earth, whether through sarcasm, or the politically charged aspects of the diaspora. By this point you might think it’d all be too much to carry off, or to take home upon your shoulders, but the acts are broken up mid-way, and there’s always some light-heartedness to be had at the end of a dark day, with such evocative performances; judicial, profound, belligerent, and many things more, that the speakers come to represent something more than just their flesh and blood and become paradigms: sensational ideals incarnate; a ‘movement’, in motion that is sure to catch on.
“I WAS ALSO EVER-SO-LUCKY TO GET A CHANCE OF CATCHING UP WITH ROOMS’ VETERAN HOLLIE MCNISH”
and though I couldn’t hide my preliminary excitement to catch her in the flesh, figuratively speaking, I did soon espouse my professionalism again…
I see you’ve been rather busy on tour recently, so how does it feel to be here?
It’s good! It’s really good, yeah. It’s tiring, but it’s not normally in such a nice venue, to be honest, normally it’s just back rooms in pubs and that sort of thing.
Do you think that’ll have a positive repercussion in terms audience’s reaction to your work?
I don’t know, to be honest, maybe if it’s so much lighter, they might get a bit nervous with the sexual content of my work, but I’m not sure…
I guess if people start to look nervous, we could always dim the lights a little bit. Still, it must be nice to have a varied audience and not all people who are reinforcing a poetry elitism.
Yeah, I come from a little village and I think people are still intimidated by poetry a little, whereas in London, people seem to be more open to it, I think.
Have you noticed much of a difference in attitudes to poetry as you’ve travelled around?
Hmm, I don’t know. In some places I suppose people see it more, but there’s plenty of people who love poetry all over the country, not just in London, and likewise, there’s probably a lot of people in London who are a bit bored of spoken word poetry, while others love it because they get to go to so many things. I guess maybe it’s more special if you only get to see one thing a year, but generally, no, the audiences are always kind of similar.
I THINK A LOT OF PEOPLE STILL ONLY HAVE THAT EXPERIENCE OF WHAT THEY LEARNT FROM SCHOOL. AND A LOT OF THAT IS ACTUALLY REALLY BLOODY GOOD POETRY…
Do you think people are adapting to poetry more, maybe it’s becoming more spoken of?
I think it’s slowly changing but there’s still that traditional attitude where people think ‘Oh, I don’t like poetry’, and they remember the poetry from school. Maybe not so much if you’re in the city centre, and maybe it’s changing more with YouTube, but I think a lot of people still only have that experience of what they learnt from school. And a lot of that is actually really bloody good poetry, it’s just maybe taught a bit crappy. It’s about getting it spoken and animated, I think, because if you read it, it’s a bit different. But a lot of kids love poetry for the rhyme and rhythm, and with my daughter, if I say ‘That’s poetry’, she says ‘No it’s not! It’s just a rhyme!’
Ha! Really? Why’s that?
Because she knows I do poetry and she doesn’t want it to be the same!
I’m sure she’ll come round to it, in time.
I hope so, but she’ll probably be embarrassed by it, to be honest. I can’t imagine what it’d be like if my mum wrote poems about sex or birth and they were all online…
Ah, it’s all very valid.
Haha, I’ll see what she thinks when I let her listen to it! One day.
She may well turn around and ask: ‘Who even is Flo Rida?’ One day, hopefully, he’ll be a thing of the past and it’ll be your poetry that keeps him alive.
Hopefully, yes! Haha… I think I’m going to read that poem tonight, but you can never tell if it’s the right audience. They’ve already dissed me back stage, saying they were going to snatch my book away from me, because I’m the only one that reads my poems, really, lots of other people recite them, and they know it by heart, but I just can’t.
It just means you do the most work, that’s what I’d say.
Well, I do an hour long set a lot of the time, and I know people can, but they’re usually used to drama or they’re used to acting, and I’m not used to that. They said they were going to hide my book, backstage, and I said ‘Don’t you dare do that!’
That sounds like bullying, really.
Haha, I know! I swear that’s what happens when I come to London.
You gotta hold your ground, y’know? Or, just get someone to keep a beat going for you and do it all freestlye.
I don’t know what I’d say if I tried to freestyle; the worst things would come out of my mouth… I’m really terrible.
Are you sure?
Yeah…
I bet you’d surprise yourself…
No, my partner’s really good at freestyling and he always does it on our journeys, like on our way to London, and I try to start it but I just say things like, ‘willy’, I don’t know, just the most stupid things come into my head.
I guess there’s a reason to start getting into writing silly kid’s poetry instead.
Yeah, definitely! I think that’s the thing I’d like to do next, start writing loads of kid’s poetry for my daughter, and just other kid’s stuff.
I think older generations kind of lose touch, maybe not with ‘creativity’, but with getting out of practice, perhaps people become intimidated to try, in case of fear of failure, by getting out of touch with expression, maybe you feel you can never express yourself properly.
Yeah, that could be true…
So, if you can always instil this love, to always be creative from a very young age…
Yeah, in whatever you do. Because I don’t know if I’ll be doing poetry for a very long time, I might want to be doing something different, for sure. But yeah, so long as they have an outlet in some way. I’m not too precious about my poems, I don’t think they’re great poems, in terms of not every word has been carefully thought out, they’ve just been written quickly and so if I feel dissatisfied with a line, I’m quite happy to scribble it out and write something else in.
That’s pretty good though, it becomes about instinct, in a way. No one ever goes out of their way to tell you ‘You’re really good, you’re really good!’ you know, everyone tries to make you second guess yourself- you’ve just got to be very confident!
Yeah, exactly. And I quite like my old job, anyway, so I don’t mind so much if I go back to it.
You’re just trying to further the good of humanity!
Oh, I don’t know, haha. It’s just, people write so much rubbish, and in newspapers, they’re full of so much bloody rubbish, it’s just good to do something that goes against that… I think the show’s about to start again, so I have to go!
And thus, we said farewell.
“I was also ever-so-lucky to get a chance of catching up with rooms’ veteran hollie mcnish,”
and though I couldn’t hide my preliminary excitement to catch her in the flesh, figuratively speaking, I did soon espouse my professionalism again…
I see you’ve been rather busy on tour recently, so how does it feel to be here?
It’s good! It’s really good, yeah. It’s tiring, but it’s not normally in such a nice venue, to be honest, normally it’s just back rooms in pubs and that sort of thing.
Do you think that’ll have a positive repercussion in terms audience’s reaction to your work?
I don’t know, to be honest, maybe if it’s so much lighter, they might get a bit nervous with the sexual content of my work, but I’m not sure…
I guess if people start to look nervous, we could always dim the lights a little bit. Still, it must be nice to have a varied audience and not all people who are reinforcing a poetry elitism.
Yeah, I come from a little village and I think people are still intimidated by poetry a little, whereas in London, people seem to be more open to it, I think.
Have you noticed much of a difference in attitudes to poetry as you’ve travelled around?
Hmm, I don’t know. In some places I suppose people see it more, but there’s plenty of people who love poetry all over the country, not just in London, and likewise, there’s probably a lot of people in London who are a bit bored of spoken word poetry, while others love it because they get to go to so many things. I guess maybe it’s more special if you only get to see one thing a year, but generally, no, the audiences are always kind of similar.
“I think a lot of people still only have that experience of what they learnt from school. and a lot of that is actually really bloody good poetry…”
Do you think people are adapting to poetry more, maybe it’s becoming more spoken of?
I think it’s slowly changing but there’s still that traditional attitude where people think ‘Oh, I don’t like poetry’, and they remember the poetry from school. Maybe not so much if you’re in the city centre, and maybe it’s changing more with YouTube, but I think a lot of people still only have that experience of what they learnt from school. And a lot of that is actually really bloody good poetry, it’s just maybe taught a bit crappy. It’s about getting it spoken and animated, I think, because if you read it, it’s a bit different. But a lot of kids love poetry for the rhyme and rhythm, and with my daughter, if I say ‘That’s poetry’, she says ‘No it’s not! It’s just a rhyme!’
*Ha! Really? Why’s that? *
Because she knows I do poetry and she doesn’t want it to be the same!
I’m sure she’ll come round to it, in time.
I hope so, but she’ll probably be embarrassed by it, to be honest. I can’t imagine what it’d be like if my mum wrote poems about sex or birth and they were all online…
Ah, it’s all very valid.
Haha, I’ll see what she thinks when I let her listen to it! One day.
She may well turn around and ask: ‘Who even is Flo Rida?’ One day, hopefully, he’ll be a thing of the past and it’ll be your poetry that keeps him alive.
Hopefully, yes! Haha… I think I’m going to read that poem tonight, but you can never tell if it’s the right audience. They’ve already dissed me back stage, saying they were going to snatch my book away from me, because I’m the only one that reads my poems, really, lots of other people recite them, and they know it by heart, but I just can’t.
It just means you do the most work, that’s what I’d say.
Well, I do an hour long set a lot of the time, and I know people can, but they’re usually used to drama or they’re used to acting, and I’m not used to that. They said they were going to hide my book, backstage, and I said ‘Don’t you dare do that!’
That sounds like bullying, really.
Haha, I know! I swear that’s what happens when I come to London.
You gotta hold your ground, y’know? Or, just get someone to keep a beat going for you and do it all freestlye.
I don’t know what I’d say if I tried to freestyle; the worst things would come out of my mouth… I’m really terrible.
Are you sure?
Yeah…
I bet you’d surprise yourself…
No, my partner’s really good at freestyling and he always does it on our journeys, like on our way to London, and I try to start it but I just say things like, ‘willy’, I don’t know, just the most stupid things come into my head.
I guess there’s a reason to start getting into writing silly kid’s poetry instead.
Yeah, definitely! I think that’s the thing I’d like to do next, start writing loads of kid’s poetry for my daughter, and just other kid’s stuff.
I think older generations kind of lose touch, maybe not with ‘creativity’, but with getting out of practice, perhaps people become intimidated to try, in case of fear of failure, by getting out of touch with expression, maybe you feel you can never express yourself properly.
Yeah, that could be true…
So, if you can always instil this love, to always be creative from a very young age…
Yeah, in whatever you do. Because I don’t know if I’ll be doing poetry for a very long time, I might want to be doing something different, for sure. But yeah, so long as they have an outlet in some way. I’m not too precious about my poems, I don’t think they’re great poems, in terms of not every word has been carefully thought out, they’ve just been written quickly and so if I feel dissatisfied with a line, I’m quite happy to scribble it out and write something else in.
That’s pretty good though, it becomes about instinct, in a way. No one ever goes out of their way to tell you ‘You’re really good, you’re really good!’ you know, everyone tries to make you second guess yourself- you’ve just got to be very confident! Yeah, exactly. And I quite like my old job, anyway, so I don’t mind so much if I go back to it.
You’re just trying to further the good of humanity!
Oh, I don’t know, haha. It’s just, people write so much rubbish, and in newspapers, they’re full of so much bloody rubbish, it’s just good to do something that goes against that… I think the show’s about to start again, so I have to go!
And thus, we said farewell.
MATTER is taking your photos to new dimensions
App company Pixite is transforming ordinary photos into images that look like stills from Star Wars, or some sort of “sea punk-esque” internet illustration. Pixite’s new app Matter allows users to add 3D geometric shapes and architectural structures to their photos. With over 64 pieces to choose from, there is a multitude of ways to get creative with your photos. Each object can further be altered with 11 visual styles, which range from reflective to translucent. Users can also colorize objects with entirely separate photos. If you’re bored of regular landscape shots, Matter will take your pictures to new dimensions.