Love Tokens and Bad Pennies – Collect Connect Exhibition, and the joy of 'found' art

Stella Tripp's artwork, waiting to be found

There’s something about the idea of scattering little pieces of art in random locations that appeals to my inner child. I’ve always loved the idea of discovery – of venturing forth and finding new adventures. Perhaps that’s partly why I adore visiting charity shops. It’s that sense that you never quite know what you will find. Another person’s cast-off might yet turn out to be the beginnings of a new adventure. I shall never forget the excitement, for instance, of finding a hand-printed Victorian book of love poems, languishing in a pile of postcards at my local Oxfam shop. But it’s not just shop-bought treasures. All small things have the capacity to thrill me. I’m a nightmare to go on a walk with because I can never resist picking up a heart-shaped leaf or a beautifully polished pebble.


There’s something of this thrill of discovery in Alban Low and Dean Reddick’s creative exhibitions. I say ‘exhibition’ but, really, that word seems wholly inadequate. Imagine an exhibition with no walls, whose gallery is the wide-open spaces, and whose visitors are anyone who happens to walk past.

Each of the small artworks in ‘Collect Connect’ are placed in public spaces, where passers-by can connect and interact with them. There are no rules; no money changes hands. Only adventures to be shared and enjoyed.


In keeping with the month of Valentine’s Day, the theme of the latest exhibition is Love tokens and Bad Pennies. This is explained on the Collect Connect blog:

“Does love endure forever? Does a bad penny always turns up?

Both the Love Token and the Bad Penny are part of the currency of life, two sides of the same coin. These everyday objects are defaced or distinguished to help us remember those who we hold dear and those who we would rather forget.”

Artwork by Alban Low at #unsettledgallery No.10

Artworks from 17 artists will appear placed in or beside fountains and sacred waterways in London during each day of February. Accompanying the artworks are new written works by a poets or authors, which appear on the CollectConnect blog.

https://collectconnect.blogspot.com/
https://collectconnect.blogspot.com/

This is where I come in. I volunteered to write responses to three of the artworks because it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. I love the idea of ‘found’ art. I also relish the creative challenge of responding to somebody else’s art and, in doing so, finding new creative forms of expression. My selection was based purely on emotional response. Those artworks that seemed to stimulate words or ideas were the ones I chose to write about. In fact, the poems (and one short prose piece) wrote themselves. I’d come up with a vague idea and often find that, once I started writing, the words ran away from me and took on ideas of their own. So a story that was meant to be about first love quickly became a study in dangerous obsession. And a poem about the interconnectedness of things turned into a sort of folk riddle. I like the fact that the three pieces I wrote are each completely different in character, each identifying a different form of love. That wasn’t intentional; it just happened, as these things so often do.

Anyway, I hope you’ll take a look at the blog https://collectconnect.blogspot.com/ and if you happen to be anywhere near London, specially around Walthamstow/ Twickenham area, see if you can spot one of the artworks. Who knows, it may take you on creative adventures of your own…

‘The wave makes a sullen sound’ - symbolism and the sea

I live within walking distance of the beach, and the sea is one of the first things I see when I open my curtains. I love that view because it is always changing. Some mornings the sea is flecked with gold and red, at other times the sky is stormy grey, with the thinnest line of sunshine streaking down through the clouds. On a calm night, when the moon is full, the surface of the water looks like silk. At other times, it’s wild and choppy and I fall asleep to the sound of a distant foghorn blaring its ghostly warning to passing ships.

Since I’ve been living here, the sea has entered my subconscious like an unseen presence. Mermaids, seal wives and selkies sail through my stories. Even the poems I’ve intended to be about other things often feature the sea or water as a metaphor. It’s as if it has become part of me.

The sea, of course, is full of symbolism. At its primordial mythological level, the sea represents the watery chaos that existed before the world was formed. The first book of the Bible describes ‘formless depths’ – the Hebrew word is ‘tehom’, from which the chaos monster Tiamat also takes root.

Water is death

If water represents chaos, it is also a harbinger of death. I was born in Southampton and most of my ancestors were sailors. From my nan’s tiny cottage (now long-since demolished) overlooking the busy docks, sons, uncles and brothers would depart, often for years, with no guarantee of return. Along the walls of every major port are plaques commemorating the names of those whom the sea has claimed as her own.

Water is life

Paradoxically, water is also the stuff of life. Millenia ago, our ancestors crawled from the sea onto dry land. We are 65 per cent water and need water to survive. The human body can go 30 to 40 days without food but only two to three days without liquid.

Flux and flow

In mythology, water is often depicted as feminine. The pagan symbol for women resembles a chalice cup. She represents the ebb and flow of female intuition and emotion, drawn by the monthly cycle of the moon. She is also the element of imagination, of high adventure and fairytale. Perhaps this is why, when faced with the sea, my first inclination is to sing.

Water is the element of emotion, our tears spilling through from soul to reality, the expression of love, or loss, of great joy or unspeakable pain. When words will not do, our tears speak.

Tears have healing powers

A woman who was a sinner poured precious oil over the feet of Jesus with perfume and wiped them away with her tears, and found herself forgiven.  Like the ocean, tears are salt water. Our tears, when we cry, contain a chemical called ‘lysozyme’, which washes away bacteria and prevents infection. After crying, our breathing and heart rate decrease, and we enter into a calmer emotional state. Crying releases stress hormones and other toxins and stimulates the production of endorphins, our body’s natural pain killer.

Water transforms

Almost all religions use water in their purification rituals, to symbolise cleansing, both inward and outward. When we are cleansed, we are transformed and made ready to encounter the divine. To enter the waters is a metaphorical drowning, a little death, a baptism, a rebirth. In fairytale, water is liminal, having the power to cross over worlds. Humans discover new lands and dream of adventure on distant shores; mermaids lose their tails on the sands to become recast as wretched human lovers; seals shed their coats to dance naked and free in the moonlight.

Water transcends

The tongues of the waves sculpt new landscapes, carve out rocks, transform our hard and brittle edges to soft sand. So water is at the same time destructive and constructive, building up and knocking down. The clamour of waves upon the beach calls us to greater depths – of emotion, of feeling, of spirit. The salt of the water, which echoes our own tears, invites response.

Water never stands still

Like water we are in a constant state of creative flux and flow. Ideas and energy pour through us, are born and reborn through words, paints and sounds. Like the waves, we are constantly pulled this way and that, never settling nor stopping. There are hidden depths beneath – places in which, if nurtured, beautiful things might live and grow, pearls of great price caught beneath the weeds. It is our job, as creators, to dive deep and dig them out, to polish them up as best we can, and hold them to the light for everyone to see. 

Sources:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/emotional-freedom/201007/the-health-benefits-tears

http://www.africanwater.org/religion.htm