Mr Willett's Popular Pottery

In the Brighton and Hove museum I greatly enjoyed Mr Willett's popular pottery collection. His thesis was that "the history of a country may be traced on its homely pottery". In that he was a little bit like Henry Wellcome. Depicted in porcelain and ceramic there were domestic and public scenes of every nature. Here are just two shelves of Mr Willett's treasure - a 1700 delftware fruit dish depicting Mary II and a bone jug featuring George III and Napoleon as The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver.

Paper cinema


















Emily and I went to see King Pest & the Nightflyer by Paper Cinema at the little Angel last night. A lovely illustrator with an old-fashioned beard and an assistant, took his shoes off to present two short stories, one original, one Edgar Allan Poe.
His black ink pen drawings were presented live to a video camera which was projected on a larger screen, sometimes four drawings at once, some very close to the camera, framing and revealing others further away, the auto focus of the camera working hard and my brain too. The methods were all exposed in the music as well, Kora accompanied the story with many different instruments sitting to the right of the stage. My favourite of the two was King Pest, especially the part where two characters are walking a long way together, and everything slows down for a moment. It created a bit of punctuation in the narrative and change of pace that was perhaps missing from Nightflyer, but I still wouldn't have missed going, it was really great.
Thanks Sam for the tip off!

Paper Bag Lady















I was lucky enough to be invited to be the special guest at Paperbaglady in Brighton which is organised by Laura Seymour and Sam McCarthy of Open Book. I hadn't met Sam and Laura before but I said yes as soon as I saw their website because the gingham made me think of cake and I thought they would be good people. I was right, Poppy and I had a really good time, the event has a cabaret feel and everything is carefully thought through. I had an extremely tasty roast dinner and listened to Jane Bartholemew's first set, I liked it very much especially her song 'Ghost'. They screened six women-directed animated short films and afterwards Sam talked a little bit about the films (see picture) and explained why they had chosen them, which made the screening a bit special. They screened two of my films: The Old Man and The Emperor and I answered some questions posed by Sam. It was hard to remember the answers to questions about my practice, I've been on maternity leave for nearly six months now, but it was good to have a professional moment. Thanks to Sam and Laura, see you again one day I'm sure.