Petrol and Coffee

"Until the environment is collectively dominated, there will be no individuals — only spectres haunting the objects anarchically presented to them by others. In chance situations we meet separated people moving randomly. Their divergent emotions neutralize each other and maintain their solid environment of boredom. As long as we are unable to make our own history, to freely create situations, striving toward unity will introduce other separations. The quest for a central activity leads to the formation of new specialisations."

Guy Debord

Critique of Separation 1961

Photograph: 'PETROL & COFFEE' - Paul Conneally - Dronfield Woodhouse - May 2017

'THERESA' - Paul Conneally 2017

'THERESA'

Rape Seed Oil Monoprint

Paul Conneally

April 2017

To purchase or show this work contact: Loveandbarley@gmail.com

THE PRODUCT OF LABOUR IS ALIEN TO ME - Paul Conneally 2017

'THE PRODUCT OF LABOUR IS ALIEN TO ME'

Paul Conneally

April 2017

PEOPLE CREATED A CULTURE WHICH CONFRONTED THEM AS AN ALIEN FORCE

PEOPLE CREATED A CULTURE WHICH CONFRONTED THEM AS AN ALIEN FORCE

Paul Conneally

April 2017

'LIKE FATHER LIKE'

'LIKE FATHER LIKE'

Paul Conneally

April 2017

Giving With Benefits: Just Who Owns The National Lottery?

Gambling is firmly entrenched within British society. The National Lottery is perhaps the most accessible form of gambling with tickets on sale in almost every small grocery or news shop along with the biggest supermarkets.
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The lottery, with its huge prizes and a percentage of profits going to charitable and sporting projects perhaps feels to many as though it's not gambling at all, just a way of supporting that might result in a windfall. A kind of 'giving with benefits'.
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Let's not pull the wool over our own eyes. The National Lottery along with its associated scratch cards is gambling and for some it forms an addiction that ruins family finances and life. This is a problem that affects poorer families and communities disproportionately as it is in these communities that most scratch cards and lottery tickets are bought.
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The government uses the lottery to subsidise some services that have seen cuts through the various funds such as the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the sports funding. One can get the impression that it is in fact a national duty to buy lottery products if only to make sure that our haul of Olympic and Paralympic gold medals is maintained and in fact increased.
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The lottery is operated but not now owned by Camelot. Camelot is in fact now owned by a Canadian pension company. Annual accounts from Camelot showed that gross ticket sales secured an enormous £7.2 billion in 2015, up from £6.7 billion in the previous year. They reported a profit of around £72 million. Whilst profits go up year on year the chances of winning have actually fallen with tickets doubling in price from £1 to £2 but prize money not doing the same. In addition to the reported Camelot profits millions are also paid over to its parent company, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, rather than being handed on to good causes.
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It is improbable that lottery culture will demise anytime soon but bringing it into public ownership rather than private ownership would see more of the profits of our gambling fixation remaining within the public realm. As for online gambling companies with their emphasis on football betting and wall to wall advertising well that's another story.

Paul Conneally
September
2016

Photograph: Filbert Street Grocery, Leicester, Paul Conneally 2016
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Around The Rhubarb

I miss them the rag-and-bone men of my childhood. Taking things out to them to be rewarded not with money but perhaps a balloon. In my head a green balloon although I know it wasn't always so. The smell of the horse and the wonderment when it chose to peacefully urinate outside the house. My grandmother's house. The steam.

dragonflies
I dig in some fresh manure
around the rhubarb

Little Onion

from the haibun archives of Little Onion (Paul Conneally) - you can read a little about how writer Ray Rasmussen used this haibun as a model and how modelling from other works can help in the writing of new works here : HAIBUN TODAY


Little Onion seen eating rhubarb at Loughborough University. You can watch and hear him talking about rhubarb and politics here: DON'T VOTE TORY EAT RHUBARB 

Leicester Suffragettes

Leicester Suffragettes: "Always and always facing toward the light"

Read about Leicester's Alice Hawkins - A Sister of Suffrage

Rama Gupta - Environmental Activist and Thinker

Rama Gupta - Environmental Activist and Thinker

Photo: Paul Conneally Loughborough 2015

Jobs Fair

She tells me she's tired. Her sandwich board is heavy and she's got three more hours of street pounding to complete before lunch. I see more and more young sandwich board men and women, often stationary at the intersection of two busy thoroughfares or roads, usually advertising one pizza chain or another, sometimes in fancy dress.

This young woman is kinetic, in civvies, not carrying a fast-food chain message but boards emblazoned with the slogan 'Jobs fair today - Free to attend - Hundreds of jobs'.

She smiles and walks on. I take her photo from behind and my mind rearranges the words to align with my thoughts:

Fair Jobs

TODAY!

Paul Conneally
May 21st 2015
Leicester UK

Eddie Izzard hits the Labour Party campaign trail in Loughborough

Matthew O'Callaghan and Eddie Izzard in Loughborough Market Place UK

Comedian Eddie Izzard hit the streets of Loughborough in the heart of England to show his support for local Labour Party candidate Matthew O'Callaghan in the UK's 2015 general election.

O'Callaghan could oust sitting Tory MP, Nicky Morgan, from the Loughborough seat which she holds with just a 3,700 majority at the moment. Izzard urged everyone in Loughborough to get out and vote and when they do to vote Labour, vote O'Callaghan.

Izzard is touring the whole of the UK supporting the Labour Party. He volunteered to do the tour to show his personal support for Labour.

Loughborough was bathed in sunshine for Matthew and Eddie's town centre walkabout and they both stopped to have selfies taken with locals out shopping and workers from local shops and businesses.

Paul Conneally

April 22 2015

Exploring the Longitudinal Relationship Between Arts Engagement and Health

You can read this fascinating and important report on how arts engagement both as active participant or as audience member can have a positive impact on the health of individuals and communities here:

http://www.artsforhealth.org/research/artsengagementandhealth/ArtsEngagementandHealth.pdf

It comes via the wonderful organisation Arts for Health and is by Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt.

Paul Conneally
February 2015

The Set Up - Jeffrey Kaufman and Tony Nelson

'The Set Up' - Jeffrey Kaufman and Tony Nelson
New Walk Museum and Art Gallery
Leicester, January, 2015

Jeffrey Kaufman and Tony Nelson unpacking and setting up the banners that form part of Leicester's Holocaust Memorial Day 2015 Exhibition. The banners explain about the Holocaust and other genocides. They accompany an exhibition of excellent artworks from pupils at Rushey Mead Secondary School that runs from the 22nd January to the 3rd of February 2015.

The exhibition was curated and hung by artist Claire Jackson.

I enjoyed very much working with Claire, Jeffrey, Tony and everyone else involved in putting up the show.

It really is well worth a visit!

Paul Conneally
January 22 2015

Lean Times - Consumption and Production: Art and the Politics of Food

Lean Times

Consumption and Production: Art and the Politics of Food

November 1 & 2

2014

Independent School of Art

West Street

Penryn

The Fall of London - James Boswell

James Boswell - The Fall of London: Museum 1933 Lithograph on paper

In his series The Fall of London Bosworth gives us a city under siege but who from?

The Tate, where the lithographs can be seen, suggests that the images portray a London invaded by fascists. There are scenes of body strewn streets. Here, in Museum, a pile of dead people sits at the top of the steps, in others men hang from lamp posts.

This 'fascist invasion' interpretation is probably more palatable than the actual vision Bosworth was channelling, one not of invasion from without but from within. The people of London broken by unemployment, class division and poverty, rising up against itself as groups get behind a homespun fascist movement.

The lithographs are a particular vision of what London's streets could have become and in fact could still become given particular circumstances.

They are powerful images undermined somewhat by the Tate's view that they portray an outside invasion rather than contemplate that Londoners could in certain circumstances turn to fascism.

For those that wonder what a possible fascist or genocide perpetrator might look like take a look in the mirror and keep that face in mind.

The power for good and evil is in all of us, choose wisely.

Paul Conneally

May 18 2014

History Rewritten

history rewritten

fuel demo tragedy claims one last dance

bush seeks another life say muslim motorists

gems uncovered danger of adult aged five

celebrity brides enjoy days of misery

history rewritten by strike on blair

holocaust tide turns superbug risk

breakdown watchdog fears costs surge

warning freeze your pink cat litter

threatened mobile phone attacks police

lets slow everything

paul conneally

13^th sept 05

 shreadlines piece created by Paul Conneally from cut up headlines in the Daily Telegraph

Situationist Media Freedom

   

Electronic Agora - Situationist Media Freedom