THERE IS A GREENHILL

'THERE IS A GREEN HILL'

Paul Conneally 2017

HELTER SKELTER - A Proposal To Alter Carillon Tower

HELTER SKELTER - Paul Conneally 1999

HELTER SKELTER is a splacist art work from 1999 where I faxed Charnwood Borough Council's Director of Planning and Technical Services, Jonathan Hale, a proposal to form a Helter Skelter for peace around Loughborough's famous Carillon Tower war Memorial.

The intervention was based around the fact that all planning proposals have to be responded to by the council. The piece generated several press reports and a number of responses from the public. Contrary to Jonathan Hale's view that the public might find it controversial and be against it many were broadly in favour of it, at least as an idea. The official Carillon player, who fisted out songs from the shows and such on the Carillon keyboard in among the bells at the top of the tower, told Loughborough Echo that it was a fun idea, the bells playing as Loughbohemians slid down the helter skelter in the name of peace and in memory of those who died in the First World War.

I'm now revisiting engagement with Loughborough's Carillon Tower, an amazing building and now on all the signs heralding entry to Loughborough by road. Watch this splace!

Extract from The Splacist Manifesto:

We will own this city.
We will take it back.
We will link and shift; across time, space, people, places and processes
We will weave throughout the fabric of people’s lives.
We will unpick it.

We will affect and be affected.
We will glory in the moment, the collage, the marking and then passing on.

We reject your shopping centre, your pavement, your cultural quarter;
We will undermine pre-defined spaces. We reject them.

We will reclaim the city, not for you, but with you.
We are you.

Splacism is a contemporary mode of practice proposed by Paul Conneally. A new set of ideologies defined by Hannah Nicklin and Nikki Pugh. A hop, skip and a jump away from phsychogeography and the works of the situationist international. Think space, place and splice. Developed empirically by whoever’s interested.

Paul Conneally
May 24 2015

Loughborough Carillon:


Loughborough Carillon Tower War Memorial, Paul Conneally, 2015

Loughborough Carillon Tower and War Memorial

'Loughborough Carillon Tower & War Memorial was built after WW1 to commemorate the men of the town who gave their lives. Unique in Britain, it is the only purpose built carillon tower.

Set within the beautiful Queen's Park the tower is also home to a museum, 3 rooms packed with military memorabilia. Including one room dedicated to the Leicestershire Yeomanry.

Climb the 138 steps, past the 47 bells and you are out onto the balcony with fantastic views across Loughborough.'

Above text from Go Leicestershire

In 1999 artist Paul Conneally proposed to Charnwood Borough Council planning committee that the Carillon Tower be turned into a Peace Beacon with the addition of a helter skelter slide around the external walls of the tower. The proposal itself was the artwork as Conneally knew, correctly, that the proposal would be rejected but would have to be considered. The proposal was made in the form of a poem and resulted in newspaper coverage and media discussion of the piece.

As Britain embarks on a frenzy of state funded events between 2014 and 2018 to commemorate 100 Years passing since the carnage of World War 1 Conneally will formally once again propose the transformation in some way of the Carillon Tower War Memorial into a more upfront peace proposing landmark whilst still remembering all those from all sides that lost their lives in the conflict, the war (Conneally will not call it the 'Great War') of 1914 to 1918 and all other wars too.

Photograph: Paul Conneally May 1st 2015

Macramé For Beginners

World matters make me feel that Macramé for Beginners is ripe for reiteration and so it's begun. 

Last night in the relative quiet of a small town superstore the screens lit up with Mother Goose as she told her tale of weaponry, words, class struggle and religion. 

knots in string 

the sound of artillery 

and prayer 

This session lasted 13 minutes before the electrical department sussed what was on their bank of flat screens and closed down the show. 

Tomorrow's another day. 

Paul Conneally

September 2014

Click here to see the video: http://vimeo.com/7778943

Macramé For Beginners sees Mother Goose meet Marx and Engels.

Macrame For Beginners caused controversy when Conneally managed to install the video without permission on to the master DVD player of a large national electrical retail store.

The piece was seen and heard on a bank of 26 in store for sale TVs for 48 minutes in the busy retail park store before staff realised that it was not the Cartoon Network and turned it off.

Macrame for Beginners is available for installation and public viewing both in outside, gallery and other locations.

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Macramé or macramé is a form of textile-making using knotting rather than weaving or knitting. Its primary knots are the square knot and forms of hitching (full hitch and double half hitches). It has been used by sailors, especially in elaborate or ornamental knotting forms to decorate anything from knife handles to bottles to parts of ships.

Remembrance Day - Where The Bee Sucks - Paul Conneally 2006

Video installation by artist Paul Conneally first shown during Liverpool Biennial 2006 as part of the RedSkyAtNight show. Explores issues of remembrance through images of bee's leaving a poppy. Made in Windmill Community Garden Nottingham UK on UK Veterans Day 2006 - 90 Years on from the Somme.

On a personal level the piece brings memories of the artist's two grandads together - Grandad Peace who ran away underage to the great war and Grandad Conneally who was blown up on the beaches the day after D-Day but survived. The song 'Roses of Picardi' was recorded during the First World War by John McCormac - a singer that was also Grandad Conneally's favourite singer of Won't You come Home Again Kathleen.