Sunday 24 March 2024
Telephone box Painter
Wednesday 3 January 2024
Wednesday 8 November 2023
Wild Corners on the Western Borders
Behind some flats in the shadows, a dark path can be seen through scrub and pine trees.
The Tunnel cuts into the Sydenham hill. The portal is to a long forgotten internal network eventually leaving Lewisham at its furthest south western boundary and entering Crystal Palace.
After many years of struggling, the fire that destroyed the Crystal Palace also sealed the fate of the line, as it declined further and finally closed in 1954.
The tunnels were still accessible up to the 1980’s and used by local kids until some younger local children went missing and police searched the tunnels. No children were found but the council sealed them off with heavy gates after this.
On approach to the Tunnel, a familiar shape can be seen through the trees.
Sources: Subterranea Britannica, Disused Stations, Portals of London, 'Sydenham and Forrest Hill Through Time' - Steve Grindlay, History of the Borough of Lewisham - Duncan Leland, Lost Lines of the South - Nigel Welbourn
Sunday 15 October 2023
Bunking - a Mini Workshop
This is a mini workshop I ran as part of a two day online event for Chisenhale art studios, the Alt-MFA and Into the Wild alternative art programs:
Workshop by Jack Thurgar [WILDCORNERZ]
A workshop focussing on hiding places, spaces away from authority and the public eye.
This is a quick exercise in imaginative thinking.
The workshop aims to create a small five minute window out of our studio practice
to focus-in and meditate on a specific place.
Participants are encouraged to think like a child, reinterpreting the local area to find their own hiding place. Think about how it stimulates all senses. Describe its location and geography. Why did you choose this place for bunking?
As a group we will spend 5 minutes drawing a quick sketch and/or write a few sentences about the place from memory/imagination.
Participants then spend the last few minutes sharing back to the group.
Wednesday 26 April 2023
Lightship Artwork
Radio producer Cathy FitzGerald and digital innovator Tony Churnside collaborated on this excellent audio installation on the LV21 Lightship, as part of the Thames festival 2016. The work is broadcast on an fm radio signal and is received on the ship by a column of the thames salty estuary water which is used as an aerial.
The audio, softly played out on the deck, is made from FitzGerald's interviews with characters she meets at the riverside, along the estuary where the river gets wider and wilder - Here
Monday 13 March 2023
Governors, Duo's, Lone-wolfs - Graf Storytellers of old London Town
Wednesday 1 March 2023
Uncle Yammy; The great storyteller of life behind the door
Thought this was definitly one for the wildcorner corner. Check out Yammy B's youtube channel for his regular stories from over 40 years in the uk prison system.
Yammy came from an extremely traumatic childhood and was put into care at the age of 9 and then on to borstal and then prison. He spent years in the 'Cat A's' where he got hooked on class a drugs and became a notorious hitman for various inmates.
He is now many years clean and a reformed character. He is an amazing story teller, with bags of charisma, natural intellect and humble wisdom .. and so dam likeable too! His stories come effortlessly from his memory and couldn't be told better if they had been written and rehearsed a hundred times.
Here also is his excellent James English interview which goes back to his childhood and where he is at today.