Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Apple Peel Poetry Installation - Paul Conneally 2014



Initial sketch plan for making ‘Involuntary Apple Peel Poems’ a performative, collaborative art intervention - Paul Conneally, Loughborough University Fruit Route, October 2014.

Visitors to the Fruit Route were asked by Conneally to select an apple and peel it trying to do so in ‘one peel’ trying to get as long an apple peeling as possible.

The length was measured in centimetres and this with the persons age was used to find a quote in a book of Wordsworth poetry that was then changed by replacing nouns with apple or Apples.

The new poems were hung with the peel that helped create them on the Landscaping and Gardening Society Shed as poetry installation.

The apples were then pressed on site by Transition Loughborough to make apple juice and cider.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Container Drivers



Look at a car park for two days
Look at a grey port for two days
Train line, stone and grey
Train line, stone and grey,

they're

Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers

Mark E. Smith

Lyric excerpt from Container Drivers by The Fall

Image:
'Container Drivers'
Digital photograph of a photograph in the book Renegade
Paul Conneally 2015

Thirty Pieces of Silver - Paul Conneally 1999


Lunch in Loughborough Market - Paul Conneally 2015


THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER - Paul Conneally 1999

Artist / Poet Paul Conneally created this audio piece out of field recordings made during a psychogeography drift or splacist exploration as Conneally prefers to term it, through Loughborough Market. It features the sound of a three-piece busking jazz band that he passed during the drift. The piece seeks to convey the mood set up in the artist as he passed through the market through the sounds. The piece forms part of a larger piece created out of the drift in video and audio for The Gallery of The Future.


Monday, December 28, 2015

What is Haiku?



'What is haiku?'

Paul Conneally talks in Loughborough with poets Debi Bender and Susumu Takiguchi,later editing out his own voice to better hear Debi and Susumu.

Hear the interview here: What Is Haiku? 

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/haikumania/conneallytakiguchibender.mp3

Ghosts

Around the end of a chain link fence, a dark place of rushing water.

The Stonebow Bridge, also known as the Monk’s Bridge for this is the path they used, off to tend their livestock in the days before the dissolution of the monasteries.

We listen for ghosts.

acorns

on the old stone bridge

she fastens his coat

Paul Conneally

First World Haiku Festival Ginko
Loughborough, 2000

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Stacked - George Sfougaras



'Paul Conneally' by George Sfougaras

Part of George's experiments with light and dark - acrylic paint on birch board then cut up into squares and recombined... for me the work also works when stacked...


'Stacked Portrait of Paul Conneally' - George Sfougaras

George Sfougaras works out of his studio in the new and brilliant Leicester Print Workshop where continually explores the possibilities of painting, print, art.

Thursday, December 03, 2015

Contextually Happy


Contextually Happy - Paul Conneally December 2 2015


Contextually Unhappy - Paul Conneally December 2 2015

Both windows are in the old Towles Building, a former hosiery factory in Loughborough, UK.

The building is a 'locally' listed building. In the Charnwood Borough Council listing one part of the building in terms of fenestration (windows) and brickwork is described as 'contextually unhappy'. The other part of the building we must assume is then 'contextually happy'.

I visited the building, which now hosts the wonderful furniture recycling charity SOFA, to see the Nine Frames Project, a project that sees part of the top floor host an 'unrestricted' art show and happening space devised and curated by artist Thomas Walker with other art students from Loughborough University. It was in preparing for this visit, with artist photographer Kev Ryan of Charnwood Arts, that I discovered the official listing description of the building and for the first time the term 'contextually unhappy'. It immediately struck home with me, it's unwritten counterpoint too 'contextually happy'.

A text piece came to mind the words 'CONTEXTUALLY UNHAPPY' perhaps on a banner, hand painted or otherwise on a bed sheet or some other substrate or echoing the nearby Brush factory, a neon sign, hung on the unhappy side of the building. Another 'CONTEXTUALLY HAPPY' hung on the happy side of the building, the Nottingham Road frontage, straight opposite the busy T-junction if possible.

It opens the possibility of a psychogeography type, a splacist drift, through areas labelling stuff contextually happy or unhappy, based on our own reaction to things in relation to other things around them.

Catalogues and maps.

Talking it through with Kev I begin to get drawn more to the 'CONTEXTUALLY HAPPY' slogan.

Yes I'd wear a T-Shirt with that on it. Better make some.

Paul Conneally
Loughborough, UK
December 3, 2015

Additional Material:

 

Charnwood Borough Council Local Listing Text:

"Hosiery Factory. Late C19 with C20 addition (on Clarence St). Red/brown brick with piers and terra-cotta cornice surmounting stone string course. Quite plain. Substantial stone dressed neoclassical entrance set within rounded corner ?tower? linking workshops. Flat roof with upstanding parapet and shaped gable to corner tower. 3 storeys. 10 bays fronting Nottingham Road, 6 bays fronting Clarence St (excluding extension). Prominent square boiler stack with corbelled head. Original small paned metal windows largely preserved. Extension in style of original but fenestration and brick colour contextually unhappy."

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Freedom For A Song



"Freedom For A Song comes from INDIFFERENT, a series of prints, images and texts, by artist, poet and cultural forager Paul Conneally. INDIFFERENT emerges from cultural forages in and around Snibston Discovery Park and the villages that surround it. The forages form part of the process underpinning Spoil Heap Harvest a piece commissioned by Snibston as part of TRANSFORM.

INDIFFERENT sees Conneally juxtaposing the poetry of the playwright and poet Francis Beaumont, who was born in Thringston, North West Leicestershire, with not frottages but presages of plant and other materials, made on a cultural forage through the Snibston Colliery spoil heap, now a country park. The artist invites the viewer to seek for pictures within the presaged image in the same way that a psychologist might ask a patient to look for images in the famous Rorschach or Ink Blot Test. What can you see? You can report back to the artist what you feel the image to be by email: little.onion@ntlworld.com or by commenting on this page using the comment form.

Throughout Spoil Heap Harvest Conneally will make psychogeographic cultural forages through the wider footprint of the former Snibston colliery which is in Coalville, North West Leicestershire. The forages and interventions will be mediated by the poetry of William Wordsworth, Francis Beaumont and the paintings of John Constable. All three of these cultural giants deeply connected with the area in ways for the most part unknown by local and wider communities.

Wordsworth lived in the area, with his whole family, for a whole year and it was at Coleorton that he first read his completed masterpiece, The Prelude, to Coleridge. Constable, Sir Walter Scott and many other famous artists and writers clamoured to North West Leicestershire to stay with George Beaumont at his home Coleorton Hall, just down the road from Snibston. George Beaumont himself was the lead benefactor for the setting up the National Gallery in London."

SNIBSTON DISCOVERY MUSEUM - 2011

Snibston has now been closed down by Leicestershire County Council it sits at this moment closed up with all the people's cultural and heritage artefacts locked up inside.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Circle of Fire the World's First Renga Ramble Sheffield 2007



It's over eight years ago now since artist Anne-Marie Culhane and myself undertook the world's first ever 'Renga Ramble', CIRCLE OF FIRE, in Sheffield.

It was part of the Off The Shelf festival of reading and writing in October 2007 and with / for GROW SHEFFIELD.

Paul Conneally
November 2015

Friday, November 20, 2015

Mosquito At My Ear



Mosquito at my ear—
does he think
I’m deaf?

Kobayashi Issa

1763–1828

from The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa, edited and with an introduction by Robert Hass. Copyright 1994 by Robert Hass. Source: The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho Buson and Issa (The Ecco Press, 1994)

Photograph: Paul Conneally, Loughborough, 2015

Sunday, November 15, 2015

RE-TALE: PANDORA - Leicester Highcross Shopping Centre



PANDORA
Paul Conneally
Highcross Shopping Centre
Leicester UK
November 2015

from Paul Conneally's ongoing series of works: RE-TALE 

Sunday, November 08, 2015

The Cinderella Bench - Loughborough 2015



Cinderella had to
help her sisters to
put on their new
dresses and arrange
their hair

The Cinderella Bench is one of eight benches installed in Loughborough as part of the Loogabarooga Festival of Children's Illustration 2015.

Photo: Paul Conneally 2015

Thursday, November 05, 2015

RE-TALE: TAMMY GIRL



The closest I get to going into British Home Stores these days is to walk past it. BHS used to be a landmark shop for ordinary folk with ordinary taste and a patriotic streak, all merchandise proudly claiming to have been made in Britain. Not these days, only the name remains.

The shop looks so dowdy. Boring. Unenticing to the point of drawing me in. I walk over to the entrance but I'm just too late. Peering in I'm glad it's closed. Headless male mannequins in grey suits lounge on white hardboard stands. 

A sign proclaiming 'NEW TAMMY GIRL COLLECTION IS HERE'.

November rain
I finger the horse chestnut
in my pocket

Paul Conneally



from the Paul Conneally's ongoing series of works: RE-TALE

Friday, October 30, 2015

RE-TALE: October Rain



Around the outside of Leicester City's King Power Stadium are a number of fast food wagons.

They almost all serve exactly the same range of products, essentially burgers and hot dogs.

Many believe that the food on sale outside the ground from these wagons is superior to that inside and so they do a brisk trade.

Today I'm a little later to the ground than normal and all the 'Handmade Beefburgers' van can lure me in to do is take a photograph.

For the record, Leicester City beat Crystal Palace one nil and I had a Pukka Pie inside the ground.

October rain
a pied wagtail dips
along the touchline

Paul Conneally
October 24 2015


from Paul Conneally's ongoing series of works RE-TALE 

Cheeky Letters and Dream Lists - Pete Mosley at Cake Loughborough



How to make extraordinary things happen

Pete Mosley's working life has brought him into contact with hundreds of entrepreneurs. He has noticed recognisable patterns in the behaviour of those who have become successful on their own terms.

Most are not held back by the quality of their ideas - but by the way their courage and ambition is impeded by their thinking.

In his talk 'Cheeky Letters and Dream Lists' at Cake Meetup, Loughborough, Pete explored and shared the things that motivate us and the things that hold us back, offering both insights and explanations.

A really engaging talk that left members of the large and enthusiastic audience of creatives with a few simple strategies that they can use to successfully overcome or work around these blocks and make significant things happen in their lives and businesses.

Check out Pete Mosley's Website here: http://crumbhuddle.com/wp/

Cake is a bimonthly meet up for creatives, entrepreneurs and others held at Loc8Me, Ashby Square, Loughborough, with free beer, pizza & cake plus great talks & great networking opportunities, what more could you want?: http://cakemeetup.co.uk

Cake is made possible by support from:

Paul Conneally
October 29 2015

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Artist Millree Hughes talks on the move from New York to New Parks Involuntary Painting Group


Millree Hughes talks on the move from New York to New Parks Involuntary Painting Group as they prepare in March 2015 to explore their area via involuntary painting. This was part of a six week intervention and workshop piece 'Involuntary Painting 1 New Parks : New York' with and for Soft Touch Arts and Leicester City Council New Parks Library and members of the New Parks community.

Involuntary Painting is a term first coined in this context by New York artist Millree Hughes and further developed by Hughes with UK based cultural forager Paul Conneally.

Involuntary painting asks if an alien landed on Earth with all the knowledge painting but never having seen one what might it mistake for a painting that wasn't intended as one?

Hughes and Conneally set up their ongoing artwork, the 'Involuntary Painting Facebook Group' in October 2014. The first Involuntary Painting Show was Involuntary Painting 1 New Parks : New York at Soft Touch Arts, New Walk, Leicester and was opened by HRH Prince Edward.

#involuntarypainting 

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

RE-TALE: Into The Light



a young woman walks
out from the shade of
the city centre
down past the cobblers
and into the light

Paul Conneally
October 2015
Leicester

from Paul Conneally's ongoing series of works RE-TALE

Monday, October 26, 2015

Friday, October 23, 2015

LOOGABAROOGA FESTIVAL BANNER



A banner flying high above Loughborough's famous twice weekly street market heralds the first ever festival of children's book illustration in the UK, the LOOGABAROOGA FESTIVAL.

The festival runs from the 22nd October until the 25th October 2015.

Paul Conneally
October 22 2015
Loughborough

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Anne-Marie Culhane and Rama Gupta at Loughborough University Fruit Routes



Artist and environmental activist, Anne-Marie Culhane, pictured with environmentalist and Green Party pioneer, Rama Gupta, during the artist led walk around Loughborough University 'Fruit Route'

Fruit Routes is an ongoing artwork conceived by Culhane that involves planting fruit trees and bushes around the university campus along with other artistic and environmental interventions.

The project urges users of the University to 'EAT YOUR CAMPUS'

Photograph: Paul Conneally

October 2015

Paul Conneally

Friday, October 16, 2015

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Still Hungry



still hungry
after the full English
a hole in the road
the knowing that October
is followed by November

Paul Conneally
October 2015
Leicester

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Dylan Thomas: portrait of the artist as a young dog



Dylan Thomas: portrait of the artist as a young dog
New Directions Paperbook Cover

Click here to read the tanka series After Fern Hill:
https://burnthewater.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/after-fern-hill/

Paul Conneally
October 2015

Saturday, October 10, 2015

The Globe - Leicester


The Globe, Silver Street, Leicester, UK

"The Globe has been synonymous with serving fine ales and food since 1720, where quality ales were brewed using spring water drawn from its own well beneath the pub, which still exists today.

Prior to becoming a public house, the Globe had several interesting uses, including a cattle merchants and accommodation for women awaiting impending execution at the hands of the noose man in nearby Gallowtree Gate.

This may go some way to explaining the reported hauntings within the premises, which includes the ghost of a woman on the stairs, two disagreeing brothers that argue over the bar and a young boy in the cellar who turns off the beer!"

Text: Everards Brewery

Photo: Paul Conneally
October 2015

"Don’t commit suicide just because you are afraid of death" Danai Anesiadou

Danai Anesiadou: "Don’t commit suicide just because you are afraid of death"

Working across performance, installation and video, Anesiadou plays with rumour, fantasy, the mystical, and the intimacy of sharing secrets. For her first UK solo exhibition, Anesiadou layers allusions to classical myths from her native Greece, pop culture and contemporary politics together with references to her personal biography and every day experiences. Her exhibition includes sculptures from compressed personal objects, and a monumental wall installation which she imagines as a “horror-vacui” of theatrical and movie props. Anesidaou has also created a new performance that will be presented on 11 December.

At Nottingham Contemporary 10 Oct 2015 - 31 Dec 2015
http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/art/alien-encounters

Don't Commit Suicide Just Because You Are Afraid Of Dying

Don't Commit Suicide Just Because You Are Afraid Of Dying

Don't Commit Suicide Just Because You Are Afraid Of Dying
Photographs by Paul Conneally

Thursday, October 08, 2015

The Agony And Ecstasy Of Collegiate Sumo Training In Japan - Charnwood Museum


Scene from the opening of "Asa Geiko" an exhibition by Francis Harrison

The Agony And Ecstasy Of Collegiate Sumo Training In Japan

Charnwood Arts presents a unique documentary photo series on the brutal, rarely glimpsed training of amateur sumo training at a major Tokyo university.

The exhibition, called "Asa Geiko" (Morning Practice), is the work of Francis Harrison, a photographer and long-time resident of Japan.

Shot in moody monochrome, the photographs recall photo essays by Eugene Smith and others during the heyday of Life Magazine.

Francis Harrison describes the project thus:

"I was attracted to traditional themes as a counterpoint to the soullessness and wholesale Westernisation so prevalent in modern Japan.

My early background in the martial arts naturally led me to an orthodox sumo club at an agricultural college near my home, where I was eventually allowed to shoot freely by the coach, a fiercely traditional man.

What struck me from the start was the aura of discipline and sacrifice that suffused the place. Long periods of stretching and limbering up would be interrupted by instants of total violence, none of it personal but totally committed nonetheless.

Over time, I was deeply moved by the dedication of these young men, most of whom would never make it to the Pros while punishing their bodies sometimes with lasting effect.

My promise to the coach was to give an accurate representation of genuine sumo to the outside world, where so often the sport is seen as "fat babies in diapers", and I only hope that I have kept my promise and done justice to these powerful athletes."

The exhibition is divided into three phases: "Preparation", "Combat" and "Contemplation" reflecting the various parts and moods of any given practice session. Through these stages one can catch glimpses of an older Japan where ancestral voices predominate...

Text: Charnwood Arts
Photo: Paul Conneally

Monday, October 05, 2015

Announcement of a Provisional Congress for the Psychogeographic Fragmentation of the London Agglomeration - Guy Debord 1956

Source: Oeuvres. Gallimard, Paris, 2006;
Translated: from the original for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeftCreative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2008.


'Diversion End' Paul Conneally 2015

In the month of August we propose to bring together for a week a certain number of individuals called on to discuss the first concrete results of psychogeography; of that discipline’s place in the group of problems posed by the creation of a new culture, and the possibilities of its concrete application to the city of London. At the end of this week of discussions the group will enter into action in order to verify by experience some of the theoretical conclusions of the Congress. 


This action will inevitably take on multiple – and occasionally violent – aspects. Its usefulness will principally reside in the study of the effects, on a great modern urban center, of a series of rapid and sustained shocks calculated to introduce -during a period limited to one month – an element of uncertainty in the normal social and affective organization of the city. 


We recognize that an urban agglomeration the size of London represents nothing psychogeographically. It is important in the very beginning to divide it into several clearly defined zones. And then, within these juxtaposed zones, we must study the placement and limits of the different ambience units in order to utilize them in function of our plans, and to anticipate their emotional perfecting by means of an appropriate architecture and urbanism. 


We know that the inhabitants of London, like those of all the other cities of current society, suffer from nervous problems, which are the inevitable consequence of today’s urbanism and, more generally, of a profound mental misery, which is a product of our primitive society. 


We feel ourselves capable of participating, in the important sector of the modern sensibility, in the labor of change our times demand. It is with this goal in mind that we are undertaking the London experiment. It is a matter of offering everyone the chance of adopting a global solution to the problems of 1957. The solution offered will exercise a radical influence on activities of all kinds: plastic, psychological, musical, political, literary, social, journalistic, erotic, popular, military, philosophical, cinematographic, aristocratic, pedagogical, commercial, religious, culinary, architectural, etc. 


In fact, we hope to assemble in London experts in the revolution in every aspect of life in order to work together at the creation of transitory affective situations consciously constructed. 


It isn’t currently possible to foresee the results of such activity. We invite all those who want to participate in its invention to contact the organizing committee. 


Organizing Committee of the Provisional Congress for the Psychogeographic Fragmentation of the London Agglomeration. 


Guy Debord 1956


c/o I.C.A. 17-18 Dover St, Piccadilly, London, W1
Potlatch, 32, rue de la Montagne-Geneviève, Paris 5



Thursday, October 01, 2015

Connecting Cultures



A Year 5 pupil from Abbey Community Primary School hard at work during a Connecting Cultures session at Brahma Kumaris Spiritual University in Leicester. He is illustrating his tanka poem about his grandad, his hero:

my grandad lives in
Uganda but he has to
go to India
then travels to the UK
goes to London buys a house

Connecting Cultures is a project conceived and organised by photographer Kajal Nisha Patel bringing together two culturally different British community schools from urban Leicester and rural Harby to work on stories, poetry, illustration and bookmaking.

In this session over a hundred pupils worked with artist Paul Gent on illustration and poet Paul Conneally of Leicester City Council PCAS on tanka poems.

September 2015

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Not Quite Warm Enough


not quite warm enough
to eat outside
we do

Paul Conneally
Loughborough
Sept. 2015

Morning Practice - The Agony and Ecstasy of Sumo Training in Japan



Morning Practice - The Agony and Ecstasy of Sumo Training in Japan
This is a wonderful and not to be missed exhibition of photographs by Francis Harrison.

The exhibition is put on by Charnwood Arts / Pixel & Grain at Charnwood Museum, Loughborough, UK and runs from the 7th of October to the 1st of November 2015.

Free Entry

Paul Conneally
Sept. 2015

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Beer Is Not The Answer

Public house interior design people in a pub drinking beer
Beer Is Not The Answer
Inside The White Hart Public House
Paul Conneally
Quorn 2015

After All These Years

Photo haiku by Paul Conneally Leicester 2015

after all these years
a five pound note and a card
from Auntie Ethel

Paul Conneally
Leicester 2015

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Looking For Something



looking for something
in the bottom of a cup
the low autumn sun

Paul Conneally
Leicester 2015

Tuesday, September 01, 2015

Lengthening Shadows

Haiku and photograph Paul Conneally Loughborough England psychogeography

lengthening shadows
things best said
in a letter

Paul Conneally
Loughborough
2015

Monday, August 31, 2015

Weighing It Up



weighing it up
at the hot potato stand
baked beans and cheese

Paul Conneally
Loughborough
August 2015

Star of Bethlehem

Flower remedies poetry Paul Conneally Starof Bethlehem

after the news
of their daughter's death
Star of Bethlehem

Paul Conneally

from The Bach Flower Remedies - 38 Haiku by Paul Conneally with plant images taken with permission from the Healing Herbs Pocket Prescriber, free with any purchase from Healing Herbs.

BAG IT BEAT IT

Street Photography Loughborough Paul Conneally
BAG IT BEAT IT
Paul Conneally
Loughborough
August 2015

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Let's Dance

Street photography Paul Conneally Loughborough dance

Saturday night
the doorman says
not in those shoes

Paul Conneally
Loughborough
August 2015

Friday, August 28, 2015

Got A Funny Feeling

Taiwan art psychogeography with Paul Conneally Splacist Cliff Richard movies The Young Ones

be smiling
be imaginative
you're getting a funny feeling
that you're falling in love

from the third work from #wevegotashow

More here: http://issuu.com/charnwoodarts/docs/weve-got-a-show

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Jesus On Jarrom Street


Jesus On Jarrom Street
Paul Conneally
Leicester 2015

Two Moons



two moons
somewhere between ports
she tells him it's over

Paul Conneally
Calais 2015

Friday, August 21, 2015

Short Shadows



a granita before
the afternoon shift
short shadows

Paul Conneally
Cannes 2015

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Headache



headache
the scent of something
on the sea breeze

Paul Conneally
Cannes 2015