Wednesday, August 18, 2021

Your eyes of pain - Kev Crane

Your eyes of pain

A prerelease treat of Your Eyes of Pain by Kev Crane from his upcoming album ‘Why Can’t I Be You?’ Out on New Reality Records 20th August 2021

Thursday, April 23, 2020

Monday, May 06, 2019

‘SE T VP’ Involuntary Painting Birmingham UK


Involuntary painting found during artist Cathy Wade’s Paradise Remix walk through Birmingham city centre.

The walk started inside Vivid Projects. It explores “how the voice/body can articulate itself within digital/physical space. The route chosen considers how urban sites are navigated, their affect on day to day lived experience and the potential they hold for radical transformation.”

Read more about Paradise Remix here: Paradise Remix

Paul Conneally
May 5th 2019

Links:

Cathy Wade profile at BCU

Vivid Projects - Vivid Projects


Monday, April 22, 2019

That Summer - Ray Winstone 1979


‘John’
Twiggy’s Bar
Torquay
April 2019

John is the barman at Twiggy’s Bar in Torquay. Twiggy’s Bar was formerly The Pickwick which was the pub that featured in the 1979 movie That Summer which stars a very young Ray Winstone. Ray plays a young man just released from borstal who goes to Torquay to find a job and enter the long distance round the bay swimming race. He finds a job as bar and pot man in The Pickwick.

It’s a good film in its own way and has a really good soundtrack that is of it’s moment.

John wasn’t aware that he was now the equivalent of the young Ray Winstone as he didn’t realise that the pub had featured in the film. Many of the punters in the pub did know and some even remembered the film being made.

I’ve got into the habit of searching out films made in and around place that I’m visiting. I watch them before the trip. It’s good tracking down the places films were shot once we arrive.

You can watch the film here - not a great copy but watchable.

Here’s The Pickwick as it was:


And below as it is now, Twiggy’s Bar:

Friday, March 29, 2019

Served In A Mug - Gavin Wade and Paul Conneally 2019


SERVED IN A MUG
you know my life
machines the arcades
oxeye daisies

tripping himself he falls
onto his broken hand

time passes
I carry on looking up
into the sky

Murdoch Priestly and Watt
coated in gilded bronze

I’ve got a feeling
we aren’t going to get
a fee for this job

she turns back smiling
and gives me a wave

it’s a funny thing
the half moon

scrolling Baburnama
she tells me with confidence
that tulips are from Turkey

a pint of bitter
in a straight glass

embedded assumptions
encoded in expecting
this seamless conformity

sunshine and showers
we’re going to take this
to the next level

Freya makes atmospheric
changes to the lighting

you’re a big man
in bad shape
behave yourself

quadrophonic sound
and feet on pink underlay

chilled to the bone
we make love
in our ankle socks

I take the call during
my keynote lecture

I miss you
I fancy you
I wish I was touching you

Tracey has a gin
served in a mug

I’d almost forgotten
what your eyes looked like
piss holes in the snow

plaster flowers captured
in bright sunlight
Gavin Wade and Paul Conneally
March 2019
----
Notes 

‘Served In A Mug’ is a collaborative poem written originally as a series of tantwenga poems (tanrenga written via Twitter) presented here in a renga like format to be read aloud by two voices or in your head in two voices.

It ‘links and shifts’ to and from and includes direct quotes from the script of the British movie ‘Get Carter’ by Mike Hodges.

It is an intertextual intercranial collaborative poem rooted in the practice of renga poetry. The poem comes out of the ongoing Bred Pudding Collective’s work ‘Man From The North’ an original film script intended to move to film that in some ways mirrors ‘Get Carter’ in reverse written by the BPC’s Russ Ralph.
———h
.

Sunday, January 27, 2019

'Frankie Was Shocked' - Paul Conneally 2019

‘Frankie Looked Shocked’
watercolor and sharpie on cardboard
Paul Conneally 2019
From the new and ongoing series of work 'Sun Says'
Contact: Love & Barley – LoveandBarley@googlemail.com for information, pricing and commissions

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

The Sockman’s Toe


There are no ‘keep off the statue’ notices on The Sockman in Loughborough town centre.
People rub his toe for good luck.

I don’t think it works but just like my mum I always do it.

Others sit their children on Sockman’s outstretched stockinged leg.

His other foot is bare. One sock on one sock off. The statue is by Shona Kinloch and when commissioned and unveiled the press printed comments from outraged councillors and a few members of the public. They were wrong in their protestations. People in general love him.

a toe in the hand
or coins in a fountain
good luck hunting

Paul Conneally
January 2019

Thursday, September 21, 2017

LIE EVADE - Policy Show - Eastside Projects


LIE EVADE - inside the first Policy Show meeting at Eastside Projects
Paul Conneally September 2017

Was good to be part of Policy Show 'Meeting #1: Unspoken policies of the art organisation' which took place on the 15th of September, 2–5pm, 2017.

Policy Show is Eastside Projects as a think tankmade up of a core group of artists and curators. The core group will create three new policies at three different scales through the processes of Policy Show. Each policy will be an artwork or be informed by art thinking and art making.

Core artists of Policy Show are:

Teresa Cisneros

Policy Show is curated by Gavin Wade and Lucy Lopez

The next two policies to be looked at are:

Meeting #2: Unspoken policies of housing,
19 October, 2–5pm

Meeting #3: Unspoken policies of education,
1 December, 2–5pm

See more here:


Paul Conneally
Cultural Forager

September 2017

Monday, September 18, 2017

GAGGED BY DIAMONDS (No Green Screen)


GAGGED BY DIAMONDS
(No Green Screen)

Paul Conneally
September 15th 2017

Made in the DIAMONDS (GREEN SCREEN VERSION) video installation by Nick Briz part the excellent Vivid Projects show curated by Antonio Roberts 'No Copyright Infringement Intended'.

Saturday, September 09, 2017

Stuck In The Gap



stuck in the gap
between my front teeth
summer's end

Little Onion
September 2017

Little Onion is haiku poet, artist and cultural forager Paul Conneally
For workshops and commissions contact Love & Barley

Sunday, August 20, 2017

'Matching Man'


'Matching Man'
Paul Conneally
King Power Stadium
August 19 2017

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

GRIT / SALT - Paul Conneally 2017

Street Photography Paul Conneally Dronfield Woodhouse England

GRIT / SALT
Paul Conneally
Dronfield Woodhouse
July 2017

"In 1957 Canada's National Defense Research Service carried out an experimental study into boredom, in which subjects were isolated in a hermetically sealed environment (a constantly lit cell with clear walls, furnished only with a comfortable sofa, rigorously devoid of sound, smell or variations in temperature). Extensive behavioral disturbances were noted by researchers. In the absence of external stimuli the brain was incapable of remaining in the state of regular excitement necessary for its normal functioning. They could therefore conclude that boring surroundings have a negative influence human behavior. This would certainly explain the unpredictable accidents that occur in monotonous labor, which would no doubt increase in frequency with the extension of current forms of automation."

Situationist International Issue 1 1958


Monday, June 05, 2017

Fledgling Sparrows

Photograph of an Empty Bench Dronfield Woodhouse UK - street photography - Paul Conneally 2017

fledgling sparrows
on the last flight of the day
an empty bench

Paul Conneally
Dronfield Woodhouse
June 4th 2017

Saturday, June 03, 2017

YOU CAN'T BLAME THE YOUTH


Walking with no aim I come across a green bus shelter with the name of Peter Tosh graffitied on it. I'm immediately hearing The Wailers in my head and carry them with me for the next few hundred yards.

I've no idea if this scrawled 'Peter Tosh' was in homage to the great Peter Tosh or just some local youth inscribing himself into the very white very middle class seventies urban landscape at least until the next council paint over job but it raised the spirit of the the Bush Doctor in me and up the Gosforth Valley Road.

You can't blame the youth
You can't fool the youth
You can't blame the youth of today
You can't fool the youth

Paul Conneally

June 2nd 2017

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

ANOTHER CITY FOR ANOTHER LIFE


ANOTHER CITY FOR ANOTHER LIFE

"The increasing dissatisfaction that dominates the whole of humanity will arrive at a point at which we will all be forced to execute projects whose means we possess, and which will contribute to the realization of a richer and more fulfilled life."

Internationale Situationniste #3 (December 1959)


Photograph: Pentland Road Dronfield Woodhouse Drift May 2017 Paul Conneally

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Petrol and Coffee

Psychogeography - image during drift by Paul Conneally Dronfield Woodhouse England May 2017

"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

Saturday, May 27, 2017

Memorial Stones

A pile of bricks represented as a memorial by artist Paul Conneally 2017

a pile of red bricks
under a horse chestnut tree
memorial stones

At the site of the Califat Mine on the eighth of October 1863 a coming in of water filled the mine workings killing three miners:

Harry Clements 16
Jeremiah Rose 40
Thomas Bird 50

Paul Conneally
Califat Colliery
Swannington, UK

May 2017

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Foan Hill to Balm of Rakasiri


Leaving the Robin Hood pub Russ Ralph and I set off not knowing exactly which way to go and choose to go up Foan Hill. I'm not sure of the origin of this word 'foan' it might be an old name for a moor or a bog, well that's what just one reference on the internet told me. I also found a map showing the distribution of the word foan as a surname which seems to be mainly in the south and south west of the UK. Maybe the hill is named after someone. The first thing that crossed my mind was 'fawn' a young deer and the 1911 census tells us that at that time there were in Swannington four houses with a Fone Hill address and one with a Fawn Hill address. The Swannington History Society believes all these houses were on the same road and it is not known when the spelling standardised as Foan Hill. The spellings in the census could just be due to the way the forms were filled in by individual householders.

Walking up the hill we come to the Incline Kennels named after the Swannington Incline, part of Stephenson's Swannington Railway, one of the earliest railways in the Midlands and used to transport coal from the local mines to Leicester.

From behind the fence unseen dogs bark at us.

Russ and I both agree that we are not big fans of dogs but that some are okay and make you think maybe having a dog like that wouldn't be so bad.

Later, still intrigued by the name Foan Hill I search it on Google and it somehow takes me to a page in 'THE DRUGGIST'S RECEIPT BOOK' and to Balm of Rakasiri which was 'Oil of Rosemary dissolved in common gin'. It was made by the Jordan brothers in Canon Street Road, London, who marketed it throughout most of the 1800's as a cure for nervous diseases but actually without saying so openly as a cure for venereal diseases. They were outed as quacks but were still trading through till the 1860s. Oil of Rosemary in gin sounds quite interesting and maybe worth trying not for its 'restorative' properties but for its beverage qualities if it has any.

Any point on a vague walk can lead us to new discoveries, emotions and stories true, half-true and false. Welcome them all.

Paul Conneally
Swannington
Leicestershire
May 2017

Monday, May 15, 2017

Cod Cheeks and Loin

Fish Stall - Loughborough - Paul Conneally May 2017
Loughbohemia is almost as far from the sea as you can get in Britain but every Thursday and Saturday the sea comes to town with the market and its fresh fish and seafood stalls.

her shopping bag drips
all the way home
cod cheeks and loin

Paul Conneally
Loughbohemia

May 2017