Kneehigh
Tue 23 – Sat 27 May
Theatre Royal Brighton
Tristan
& Yseult
Directed & adapted by
Emma Rice
Writers Carl Grose &
Anna Maria Murphy
‘If this show doesn’t
make you fall in love
with theatre, there’s
no potion on earth
that can help you’
The Guardian
brightonfestival.org
01273 709709
Image © Steve Tanner
vivabrighton
Issue 50. April 2017
EDITORIAL
.......................................................................................
“It’s just so not me.” Deputy editor Steve agonises. He’s got to go on a stag
weekend in June, to Liverpool. “It’s a terrifying prospect… A combination of all
the things I’m very bad at or dislike: group conversation, lots of drinking and
too much stimulation - the loud music, the nightclubs...”
“So why go?” I ask. Steve isn’t usually given to doing things that he doesn’t want
to do. “I have to. It’s a ritual. It’s a rite of passage. At least the groom’s a doctor,
so I can rest assured that we’re not going to drink enough to actually die.”
The Stag Do. Just one of life’s inescapable, time-honoured rituals. Apparently, in French-speaking
countries, it’s termed ‘enterrement de vie de garçon’ - ‘burial of the life of the boy’. Cheery. A final
hazing on the threshold of adulthood.
I’ve long been fascinated by the rituals we observe. As a species, we seem to add ceremony and ornament
whenever possible. Sacred or secular, solitary or in congregation, grandiose or mundane, they
seem to steady us. Bind us together and orient us in time and space.
In this issue we examine just a few of them. From Norwegian shock rockers to modern-day pilgrims,
religious leaders to ritualistic tea drinkers, we all draw succour from the knowledge that we belong
to something greater than ourselves. To each other, to society, or the natural order of things… We
remind ourselves that what we are doing is worthwhile and has meaning. Touch wood.
THE TEAM
.....................
EDITOR: Lizzie Lower lizzie@vivamagazines.com
DEPUTY EDITOR: Steve Ramsey steve@vivamagazines.com
ART DIRECTOR: Katie Moorman katie@vivamagazines.com
WRITER/DESIGNER: Rebecca Cunningham rebecca@vivamagazines.com
PHOTOGRAPHER AT LARGE: Adam Bronkhorst mail@adambronkhorst.com
PUBLISHER: Becky Ramsden becky@vivamagazines.com
ADVERTISING: Hilary Maguire hilary@vivamagazines.com, Sarah Jane Lewis sarahjane@vivamagazines.com
ADMIN ASSISTANT: Kelly Hill kelly@vivamagazines.com
INTERN: Jasmine King hello@vivamagazines.com
DISTRIBUTION: David Pardue distribution@vivamagazines.com
CONTRIBUTORS: Alex Leith, Amy Holtz, Andrew Darling, Ben Bailey, Cara Courage, Chloë King,
David Jarman, Emma Chaplin, JJ Waller, Jay Collins, Joda, Joe Decie, John Helmer, Lizzie Enfield,
Mark Greco, Martin Skelton, Michael Blencowe and Nione Meakin
Viva Brighton is based at Brighton Junction, 1A Isetta Square, BN1 4GQ
For advertising enquiries call 01273 810 277. Other enquiries call 01273 810 259
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CONTENTS
...............................
Bits and bobs.
10-23. Tandem-riding mayor. Devotional
toilet graffito. Sleepy cartoonist’s routine.
Cultish cover artist. Patcham-born Archbishop.
Lost art gallery. Fly-tipping rage.
Other stuff too.
My Brighton.
24-25. ‘I don’t get angry looking at them
in the shop window anymore’. Neurotic
cartoonist and artisan-scotch-egg avoider
Joe Decie.
Photography.
27-31. The photographer, model and war
correspondent who left a 60,000-shot
legacy. We delve into (a tiny fraction of)
the Lee Miller archive.
41
49
Photo by Paul Bergen
46
Columns.
33-37. John Helmer’s ritual is mocked,
Amy Holtz’s is interrupted, and Lizzie
Enfield’s is surprisingly useful.
On this month.
38-49. Salem Witch Trials. Masked
Shock Rockers. Experimental Narrative
Circus. Managing Medical Uncertainty.
Ghanaian Kogolo Star. French Character
Comedy. Plus Billy Ocean.
....7 ....
CONTENTS (CONT)
...............................
Art, design and making.
51-65. Taking inspiration from a Nigerian
parable; tracking down Constable’s Brighton
studio; painting with hot wax; fumbling
for words in front of Picasso; and more.
The way we worship.
67-71. Five religious leaders, of different
faiths, walk in front of Adam Bronkhorst’s
camera lens. No joke.
Food and drink.
73-77. Casual dining (with a two-week
waiting list); very-non-casual tea drinking
(Song Dynasty style); plus thinking about
sugar, agreeing with Jay Rayner, and (inevitably)
more.
62
Photo by Dan Weill
73
97
Features.
79-97. Could society exist without
rituals? How does Google referee the
internet? Who killed off ladies’ football
in 1921? How scary are parliamentary
whips? Can you have a church ‘without
the god bit’? Which kind of insect is a
‘tiny Travolta’? These, and other questions,
tackled.
Inside left.
98. The height of modernity (briefly): the
old Churchill Square building, in 1973.
THIS MONTH’S COVER ARTIST
..................................................
“A lot of my work has been described as ‘cultish’,”
says Billy Mather, the illustrator behind this
month’s cover. “I wanted to be sensitive to the
theme. Ritual, when it’s applied to religion, is
something people take very seriously, and I didn’t
want the design to make fun of anybody’s beliefs,
so I made up my own ritual/worship world. I’m
really obsessed with the idea of secret societies,
so that was where the idea for the characters
came from. Rituals are a way for people who
might be different from each other to share
experiences, so I liked the idea of the people
wearing cloaks, because underneath you don’t
know if they are young or old, rich or poor, what
language they speak… the cloaks symbolise a sort
of uniform, making everybody equal.
“The tower is based on the i360, which kind of
makes a crucifix shape, and that made me think
about how symbols are used in rituals. What I
like about the i360 as a symbol is that it can be
quite divisive, because it’s a part of the fabric of
the city now. We have to drive past it every day
on our way to work, we see it from our offices,
we can’t avoid it, and the fact that it goes up and
down on a cycle is sort of a ritual in itself. It’s a
focal point of the city and it kind of looks down
on all of us. Sometimes I think that if aliens
landed in Brighton they would probably think it
was our leader.”
As well as our cover, Billy has recently been
....10....
BILLY MATHER
..........................................
working on the branding and labelling for Holler
Boys, a new brewery down the road in Lewes.
The designs feature more of his quirky, vibrant
characters, illustrating each of the equally
quirky beers. Moving into a slightly more
unusual medium, he recently started working
on an exhibition of socks called ‘A Tus Pies’
(‘At Your Feet’) which will open at Fábrica
Moritz in Barcelona in November. He’ll
be putting his designs onto a pair of socks
which will be displayed and sold at the
exhibition.
Rebecca Cunningham
Check out more of Billy’s work at
billymather.co.uk
....11....
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CHARITY BOX #13: BARNARDO'S
Barnardo’s has been supporting children and families for over 150
years. I work for one of their services, Brighton and Hove Link Plus,
which provides specialist foster care placements for disabled children and
young people on the autistic spectrum and/or with challenging behaviour
in the local area, enabling them to live in a family home.
We are currently in need of more full-time, shared-care and short-break carers for disabled children from
newborn up to aged 18. We’re looking for families and individuals from all sectors of the community, who live
in Brighton, Hove and surrounding areas, to provide care for disabled children. We want people who can offer
anything from occasional overnight stays, through to shared-care and full-time fostering.
Carers we currently work with find it a rewarding role. Experience with disabled children isn’t essential, but
a love for children, a sense of humour, time, energy and patience are all important. A spare room is also required.
All applicants undergo an assessment process, during which we explore the role in-depth, and consider the profile
of the child that the particular person or family would be caring for. We then offer ongoing support, training
and supervision from our small and friendly team of social workers. An allowance is paid.
As told to Emma Chaplin by team manager Vicky Lloyd
For more information, or a chat about whether you might be suitable to help us, please contact Vicky on 01273
295179 or vicky.lloyd@barnardos.org.uk [barnardos.org.uk]
....12....
BITS AND BOBS
...............................
ON THE BUSES #24: JOHN PECHAM (ROUTE 50, 50A, 46)
What was John Pecham like? Well, to grow up poor, and rise to become Archbishop
of Canterbury; to argue with the king about power, and with Thomas Aquinas about
philosophy; to write an optics textbook which was still being used centuries later - to do
all this, from a working-class background, in the thirteenth century…
It’s believed that Pecham was born in Patcham, which may explain his surname. It’s
believed that he was born around 1230, and educated at the Priory in Lewes. His rise
through academia and the church means that his later life is better documented, though
he remains a puzzling figure.
For example: Pecham believed in religious self-denial and poverty; but on being appointed
Archbishop in 1279, one historian notes, ‘he entered Canterbury with the utmost pomp
and magnificence’. Pecham was noted for ‘his kindness, sincerity and humility’, according
to the Dictionary of National Biography; however, he could also be ‘overbearing’, ‘high handed’, and rude. Reading
about Pecham’s dogged anti-corruption efforts, he seems modern and forward thinking; but then one finds out
that, in 1282, he ordered the demolition of every synagogue in the diocese of London.
This order, according to the historian Mark Antony Lower, ‘would assuredly have been carried into effect but
for the wise and foreseeing policy of King Edward the First, who temporarily became their protector.’ However,
Pecham wasn’t defrocked or forced to resign in disgrace - he was still Archbishop at the time of his death in 1292.
Steve Ramsey
Illustration by Joda, jonydaga.weebly.com
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BITS AND BOBS
...............................
SPREAD THE WORD
Here we are with Steve (pictured right), one half of Alan and Steve, ‘and
a bit of colourful Spanish pottery’. They are more usually to be found
around the West Hill and Seven Dials areas of Brighton, but they took
us on a sunny winter break to Seville. They tell us they couldn’t leave us
behind, so caught up with our March issue in
between trips to the great tapas bars they found
on every corner. And Pat Scott (left) took our
‘flesh’-themed issue with him on a recent trip
to that infamous fleshpot, the Colosseum, in
Rome. Whilst the naked bike ride might raise an
eyebrow or two in Brighton, our research tells
us that those gladiators got up to so much worse, with very few clothes on.
It makes for grisly reading. Keep taking us on your adventures and send your
pictures to us at hello@vivamagazines.com
BITS AND BOBS
...............................
JJ WALLER’S BRIGHTON
The dark clouds gathering overhead reflect JJ Waller’s mood in response to this
scene, captured last month on the road to Ditchling Beacon. ‘This dumping on
the Downs is really hard for me to comprehend’ writes JJ… ‘It verges on a raw
wickedness, a grotesque metaphor for human contemptuousness.’
We couldn’t agree more, JJ.
....15....
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For full terms & conditions, please visit buses.co.uk/app
BITS AND BOBS
...............................
PUB: THE FONT
“Classy joint,” says my mate Dave, down from
London for the day, who’s asked me if I fancy
Friday-afternoon lunch, in a swanky restaurant,
on his business account. Thing is, I need to do
some fieldwork research on the Font, so I’ve told
him we’re eating there instead. I arrive early, and
wait with a pint of Camden Hells, absorbing the
oddity of my surroundings. I’ve never before
been in a pub that was originally designed as a
Nonconformist chapel.
I’ve done enough onscreen research to bore poor
Dave to tears. In the late-seventeenth century,
when Brighton was expanding as a fashionable
resort, it only had one church, St Nicholas’, so a
second was built nearer the seafront, named the
Union Chapel. The date of its foundation is under
dispute: some have it as early as 1668, some
as late as 1698. Its first Minister was a Presbyterian,
and the space was also used by other Non-
Anglican groups; 8% of the city’s population was
then Nonconformist.
In 1825, when Brighton was undergoing its
Regency facelift, the building was redesigned
- probably by Amon Wilds Junior and Charles
Busby - which explains its rather gorgeous Classical
façade, rather difficult to admire nowadays in
the narrow alley it resides in. In 1853 it merged
with the Queen Square Congregational Church
(as featured in VB#49); by 1905 it had become an
Evangelical Mission Hall, and subsequently an
Elim Pentecostal Centre. The evangelists left in
1985, and the building was bought by the Firkin
group, who turned it into a real-ale pub - The
Font and Firkin.
Nowadays, run by pubco Mitchells & Butlers,
it’s become something of a twenty-something
vertical-drinking establishment on Friday and
Saturday nights, filling up with revellers enjoying
the sounds spun by its resident DJs, and the
cheap booze on sale. In the weekdays and daytime
weekends its huge screen (above what used
to be the altar) shows live football and rugby: the
seats in the semi-circular gallery on the first floor
look like the perfect place to settle in for a game.
It’s fairly quiet this Friday lunchtime: I enjoy
another couple of pints of craft lager and a very
reasonably priced (£8.95) meat platter as we catch
up on gossip and news. The sausages are pretty
average, but the steak isn’t, actually, at all bad.
It’s not quite The Salt Room, which Dave had in
mind for the afternoon, but when you can mix
work with pleasure… Alex Leith
Union Street, fontbrighton.co.uk
Painting by Jay Collins
....17....
BITS AND BOBS
...............................
Brighton Picture Gallery on Grand Parade, 1823 © Royal Pavilion Brighton
SECRETS OF THE ROYAL PAVILION ARCHIVES:
THE BRIGHTON PICTURE GALLERY: ‘A BEAUTIFUL
AND SPLENDID CABINET OF THE ARTS’
With the Constable in Brighton exhibition opening
this month, to be followed in June by a display on
Jane Austen and the seaside, I have been interested
in the various forms of entertainment available in
our city in the early 19th century. Apart from events
at assembly rooms, horse races, theatres and libraries,
Brighton also had at least one significant picture
gallery in the 1820s, long before art exhibitions
were held in the Royal Pavilion (from 1850) and
Brighton Museum was built (1873).
This image from 1823 shows the interior of the
much-praised picture gallery that Constable is
likely to have visited during his time in Brighton.
It stood at what is now roughly the area between
Circus Street and Grand Parade. This plot of land
was developed between 1806 and 1808. The works
included the building of a riding school known as
the Royal Circus, which was opened by Messrs I
Kendall and Co in August 1808. An engraving from
the same year shows an impressive nine-bay, threestorey
structure, with a large Pegasus sculpture
placed on top. Wings to the north and south housed
a coffee house, billiard rooms and a confectionary.
By the early 1820s, the building had become a
picture gallery and social meeting place where
visitors, having paid a shilling admission, could
also read newspapers, magazines and reviews.
The engraving showing the interior appeared in
Richard Sickelmore’s popular book The History
of Brighton (1823). He describes the gallery as a
‘beautiful and splendid cabinet of the arts… As a
public exhibition, the Dulwich gallery excepted,
....18....
BITS AND BOBS
...............................
The Bazaar, 1826, courtesy of Alexandra Loske
it is decidedly unrivalled, provincially, and may be
fairly classed with those of the first consequence
in London.’ The gallery looks impressive indeed:
fashionably dressed visitors can be seen flocking in,
and the paintings arranged in a style reminiscent
of the Royal Academy summer exhibitions - hung
closely and all the way to the top of each wall of
the top-lit, 95-foot-high room. Pictures on levels
above the coveted eye-line (referred to as ‘on the
line’) are slightly tilted, for better visibility. In the
early years after its opening, Brighton Museum
displayed paintings in the same way.
The list of artists shown at the Grand Parade
gallery was surprisingly international, comprising
Dutch, Flemish, Italian, German, Spanish
and French masters, among them Parmigiano,
Veronese, Caravaggio, Poussin, Ryusdael, Mengs,
Hogarth, Gainsborough and others, as well as
‘the finest collection of De Loutherbourg’s work
extant’. There are no records that confirm that
Constable visited the gallery, but it seems highly
unlikely that during his extended stays in Brighton
in the 1820s he would not have dropped in to see
the impressive display of high-quality art.
By 1826 the gallery had been turned into a ‘Bazaar’.
J Whittemore notes in one of his Brighton
guides that ‘although we lament the alterations it
has undergone, we are gratified to perceive that
in its present state, it affords an hour’s amusement
to the numerous fashionable visitors, who honour
it with their presence.’ The author also mentions
that some paintings by foreign artists are still displayed
in the building. A tiny engraving in Whittemore’s
books shows a building that appears to have
been refaced completely, with the additional wings
gone. Sadly, no trace of it remains today.
Alexandra Loske, Curator, Royal Pavilion Archives
Constable in Brighton is on at Brighton Museum
from the 8th and forms part of Royal Pavilion &
Museums’ Regency Summer season which will
include Jane Austen by the Sea at the Royal Pavilion
from the 17th June
....19....
BITS AND BOBS
...............................
ON YOUR BIKE, MR MAYOR
You’re invited to join our tandemriding
Mayor, Councillor Pete West,
as he rounds off his year in office
with three charity events. Or, if that
sounds a bit too much like hard work,
you can sponsor him to complete
the triple and support upwards of 20
good causes.
Bike the Biosphere Boundary: On
the 23rd, Cllr West will lead a cycle
ride around the Brighton & Lewes
Downs Biosphere boundary: 50 miles
which, he assures us, won’t be too
arduous. Heading out from Hove Lawns at 9am, he’ll head along the coast to Newhaven, up the
Ouse valley to Lewes, on to Cooksbridge, over to Ditchling, on to Shoreham via Bramber and back
to Hove. Get yourself sponsored to join him and register at Eventbrite. (Registration £20)
Walk the ‘Brighton & Hove Way’: On the 30th, join Pete on an 18-mile path around the
boundary of the city. Starting at Saltdean Oval at 9am, the walk is broken down into six stages so
you can join for a shorter stretch. The route takes in Castle Hill, Stanmer Park, and Waterhall Golf
Course before ending at Emmaus in Portslade around 4pm. (Registration £5)
Sponsor the triple: To round things off - and launch the Brighton Fringe - Cllr West will ride the
Mayoral tandem back from Paris (having launched the Fringe fireworks via a live satellite link-up
from the Eiffel Tower and carried out a few ambassadorial duties on the way), arriving back for the
Fringe City Community Day on the 8th of May. Then he’ll take a well-deserved rest. LL
To find out how to join in, or to sponsor Pete, visit facebook.com/BHMayor
Photo by Nick Ford, nickfordphotography.co.uk
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...............................
....21....
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BITS AND BOGS
...............................
MAGAZINE OF THE MONTH: DUMBO FEATHER
Habits are things we do
repeatedly without thinking;
rituals are ways of behaving
that we deliberately create
and regularly observe.
Wherever I am, I always have
a coffee each day. When I am
working in the shop I have
created a ritual of starting
my day at coffee@33, just up
from us in Trafalgar Street.
Their balance of simplicity,
calm and devotion to great
coffee (and food) always puts
me in the right place for a
day with people who love magazines. It also helps
me find the right mindset for doing things as well
as I can in our own shop.
Many of our customers tweet or post pictures
of themselves with a drink and one of our mags.
They often do this on a Sunday; it’s part of their
ritual of finding downtime in their busy lives. For
them and me, these gorgeous
magazines become part of a
ritual of self-care.
Our magazine choice this
month is Dumbo Feather. The
new issue, just in, is its 50th,
and each comes from a good
place, trying to understand
people rather than throw
snarky comments the whole
time. It’s challenging, in its
own way, but it is hopeful, too.
So much of its subject matter
is about ritual. About the need
to do things consciously and
regularly in order to make good things happen.
In the new issue, you can read about the healing
power of music, cultivating compassion, building
homes with heart, and business with a purpose.
All good, all achievable, all dependent, to one
degree or another, on ritual.
Martin Skelton, MagazineBrighton
TOILET GRAFFITO #27
Damascene conversion can strike in the
unlikeliest of places. This month’s sitter
found faith in the lowliest of stalls.
But where is this confessional?
Last month’s answer:
Presuming Ed’s
....23....
Photo by Adam Bronkhorst, adambronkhorst.com
....24....
INTERVIEW
..........................................
MYbrighton: Joe Decie
Cartoonist and worrier
Are you local? No. In the I-Spy in Brighton
book you get 50 points if you can spot an actual
local. I’ve been here 15 years. I came for love,
from Leeds, and before that, Kent. I met my
wife Steph at university. She’s from here, so we
had a choice of Brighton or Leeds, and we chose
Brighton. Because there’s no place like it. It’s
so unaware of the rest of the country. It’s the
only place I know where people wouldn’t bat an
eyelid at spending £3.50 on a Scotch egg.
Do you balk at that price, or have you been
here long enough not to? I do. But I’m acclimatised
to it. I wouldn’t actually buy one, but
I don’t get angry looking at them in the shop
window anymore.
What are your favourite things about the
city? I like how daft it is. The other day I saw
a sign for craft beer for dogs. I think in every
other town in this country dogs are satisfied
with water. Or least a big-brand dog beer. It’s
quite silly. I do make fun of Brighton; it’s very
easy to make fun of the organic-small-batchness
of everything, but sometimes I feel I’m being
priced out of the market because I can’t afford to
buy a £4.50 artisan loaf on my high street.
But you’re getting the community bakery
in your neighbourhood… I already bake my
own. That’s the thing. I laugh and joke about
the Brighton folk, but I’m very much one of
them. This is my place. I wouldn’t want to live
anywhere else.
You worry quite a bit, it seems. What worries
you most about Brighton lately? I don’t
really worry about anything in Brighton. I
mean, I worry about everything in real life, but
not Brighton specific. I worry that I worry too
much. That is my main thing.
Does Brighton give you lots of inspiration
for your work? Constantly. Take a 37b bus and
you’ll get a dozen stories.
What’s a perfect Decie family outing? The
charity shops of Blatchington Road are fun. A
walk down London Road. We like our secret
spots. The Secret Woods…
Are we allowed to know where they are? No,
they’re secret. Brighton’s great for finding your
own special places. Going back to the 37b bus,
that takes you to the best views of Brighton - up
by the racecourse - and nobody goes there, just
a few dog walkers. Pack yourself some £3.50
Scotch eggs and have a picnic.
Have you got a favourite restaurant? I have
several. You don’t get a better salt-beef bagel
than at Fourth & Church. And there’s a pizza
place on Waterloo Street. I don’t remember
the name. It’s family run and a bit tatty around
the edges. The menu seems very basic, and you
could easily walk past it but they are the best
pizzas in Brighton. The best you’ll get outside of
Naples. I’d rather people didn’t know about it.
Do you swim in the sea? I will roll my trousers
up to my knees and paddle and the waves will
come in and I’ll get completely soaked but
no, I don’t swim in the sea. We’re fair weather
seafront goers… around about now we go down
beachcombing. I’m sure that my son Sam found
a big bit of ambergris once.
Interview by Lizzie Lower
Collecting Sticks, Joe’s first graphic novel, is published
by Jonathan Cape. Available from the 13th
....25....
PHOTOGRAPHY
..........................................
Lee Miller
Carole Callow, Archive Curator
“Most people see her from
the outside, as a model, a
fashion and portrait photographer,
a war correspondent,
a gourmet cook and hostess,”
says Carole Callow, of Lee
Miller, who was, indeed, all of
those things.
Miller worked either side of
the camera for Vogue in the
20s, experimented with surrealism
with her lover Man Ray
in the 30s, became Vogue’s war
photographer and correspondent in Europe in the
40s, and ended up hosting a number of celebrity
artist friends in Farleys House, Chiddingly, where
she lived with her husband, the surrealist painter
Roland Penrose, until her death in 1977.
“But because I’ve got to know her more intimately,
through her photographs, I feel I know her from
the inside, through her eyes,” she continues. “Like
a friend I never met.”
For 35 years Carole has been responsible for the
Lee Miller archive, a collection of 60,000 negatives
which she has had sole responsibility for printing,
in a period in which Miller’s star has risen dramatically.
When Carole started the job, in 1982, the
American was a largely forgotten figure; now
her work regularly features in major exhibitions
around the world.
Carole’s involvement with the project was serendipitous.
“I got a job as a home help at Antony and
Susanna Penrose’s house in Chiddingly. On my
first day I found some black and white photographic
prints hung on the line to dry. Later that
morning over coffee, I revealed to Susanna that in
previous years I worked in a photographer’s studio,
and was familiar with darkroom techniques. This
came at a point when Antony was overwhelmed
with trying to document
and archive the photos.”
Since then, every official
modern print of a Lee
Miller photograph has
been created by Carole’s
hand, utilizing the original
wet process in the darkroom
or, more recently,
created digitally with
Carole’s guidance.
“My favourite period in
Lee’s career was when
she lived in Egypt between 1933 and 1939 with
her first husband. For the first time she wasn’t
shooting for commercial purposes. My favourite?
Portrait of Space, the only print on my wall at
home, gifted to me after 25 years in the job.”
Seeing Lee Miller’s world through Lee Miller’s
eyes hasn’t always been easy for Carole, who
retires in June. The photographer was extremely
damaged by the experiences she went through
during and after the war. Particularly traumatic
was the liberation of Dachau in April 1945. “It
was only after a camp survivor came to Farleys
House some years ago, that the emotional reality
hit home,” says Carole. “He told us how he met
Lee, and showed us a packet of cigarettes she had
signed for him. Suddenly I thought, ‘this is real,
it’s not just photos’. It hit me that they were depictions
of events that Lee had witnessed, and been
tremendously moved by. They started affecting
me even more profoundly, just as Lee had seen
through her lens.”
Alex Leith
Lee Miller Archives Print Room Sale, Friends Meeting
House. Part of Artists’ Open Houses festival,
weekends only, May 13th-21st, free entry.
Collectors evening, May 19th. leemiller.co.uk
....27....
PHOTOGRAPHY
..........................................
Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington, St Matin d’Ardeche, France 1939
© Courtesy Lee Miller Archives, England 2017. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk
....28....
PHOTOGRAPHY
..........................................
Roland Penrose and Picasso in Roland’s studio, Farley Farm, East Sussex, England, 1950
© Courtesy Lee Miller Archives, England 2017. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk
....29....
PHOTOGRAPHY
..........................................
Saul Steinberg, Long Man of Wilmington, Sussex, England, 1952
© Courtesy Lee Miller Archives, England 2017. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk
....30....
PHOTOGRAPHY
..........................................
Lee Miller and Antony Penrose, London, England 1947
© Courtesy Lee Miller Archives, England 2017. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk
....31....
COME ALIVE AT
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BOOK NOW AT GLYNDEBOURNE.COM
COLUMN
...........................................
Lizzie Enfield
Notes from North Village
“The man in the moon came tumbling down and
asked the way to Norwich… Da da da. No. That’s
porridge.”
I’m having tea and cake with a couple of friends
and am trying to remember which nursery rhyme
features groats.
I’m just back from Poland, where we were served
groats for dinner. They were new on me. A kind of
puy-lentil-coloured quinoa, if you want to be really
North Village about it. A grain of some description,
if not.
But I think they feature in a rhyme, so I’m going
through all the ones I know.
“Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye…
Nope.”
“This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house
that Jack built. Malt!”
My companions are surprised by my knowledge of
nursery rhymes.
“Didn’t your parents test you on them over
dinner?” I ask, casually, expecting the answer to be a
murmured “oh yes,” not a bemused “no, did yours?”
Yes.
I now realise nursery-rhyme tests were not part
of everybody’s mealtime rituals and that not
everybody’s father sat at the head of the table asking,
“Who worried the cat that chased the rat that ate the
malt? Quick. First to answer can have another roast
potato!”
“The Dog.” The potato went to my brother.
“And who popped its head into the shop and said
‘What! No soap?’”
“I know! I know! The great she-bear.”
A potato would be mine if there were any left.
Instead, a lifetime of thinking and sometimes saying
“What! No Soap? So he died…” out loud, whenever
someone in a public toilet remarks that the soap in
the dispenser has run out, was what I ended up with.
Cue strange looks. Were the people around this
washbasin not tested on the words of The Grand
Panjandrum over dinner? Clearly not.
Nor the friends of my children who question my
pronunciation of forehead to rhyme with florid or
torrid or, definitively, horrid because that’s how the
nursery rhyme goes.
“It’s fore to rhyme with score - head,” the kids insist.
“There was a little girl, who had a little curl, Right in
the middle of her forehead…” I counter.
“And when she was good, she was very, very good,
but when she was bad, she was horrid!”
This proves that my pronunciation is right.
Otherwise the little girl is not “horrid” but “whore
head,” and it’s a children’s nursery rhyme after all.
Not that they’re all suitable for children.
The groat one comes to me.
“There was an old man in a velvet coat,
He kissed a maid, And gave her a groat” I begin
reciting.
“The groat it was cracked and would not go. Ah, old
man, do you serve me so?”
“Wow, I’m strangely impressed,” says one of my
friends. “More cake?”
So, years down the line, ritualistic mealtime rhyme
testing at dinner has finally come into its own. I’ve
strangely impressed someone and earned more cake.
Illustration by Joda, jonydaga.weebly.com
....33....
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COLUMN
...........................................
John Helmer
11 o’clock
Illustration by Joda, jonydaga.weebly.com
“Is that a coffee cup?”
I’m at the computer in my study, skyping with
my eldest child Grace. She’s laughing at me.
“What?”
Poppy, at my side, smirks - in that unpleasant
way she does all the time now that she’s nearly
fourteen and a proper teenager.
“What?!” I’m getting exasperated. “Let me in
on the joke, someone.”
“Every morning at eleven…”
I look at the cup on my desk, slightly stained
at the rim; adorable little almond cantuccini
biscuit nestling in its saucer...
“You’re so predictable, Dad!”
They’re on to me. Coffee at eleven.
Lunch at one. Tea at four... How
did I become this OCD robot?
Blame a Catholic upbringing,
perhaps. I remember a game I
used to play with my brothers,
nibbling the corners off After
Eights and administering them
like hosts to each in turn, with
a blasphemous sign of the
cross - the body of Christ...
Or perhaps it’s genetic. I am
the son of an engineer, a group
of people who, I was reading
the other day, are significantly
more likely to be on the
spectrum.
A picture comes to mind of Dad,
standing in the porch of our old
house, cleaning his ears out with
a front-door key. Was he
a bit autistic maybe?
Did he have
rituals? I struggle to think of any. But then I
struggle to know anything much about him. He
was a taciturn man, without much small talk.
And without much big talk either.
There was, of course, the tea-time ritual. Tea at
home was served strong, with up to four sugars.
Mum would bring it in and we would all sit
around in the front room nursing our mugs.
After one sip all three of the adults - Mum,
my father and my grandfather - would fall
deeply asleep and silence would reign until the
moment when the heat of the tea caused my
grandfather’s dentures to expand, and they fell
into his cup with a loud splash.
But that was a family thing, and had no allotted
time. My father, my father, though: did he do
particular things at particular times of day? I
rifle through my memories of him - happy face,
cross face - and come back with not much. The
truth is, he was always away on some foreign
airfield, fixing planes (he was an aeronautical
engineer). Long dead, there’s not enough of him
remaining in my memory from which to divine
any sort of pattern to his behaviour. It’s like
looking for the shape of mist.
“…Predictability is not a bad thing,” says Grace,
smiling sweetly through the screen; “Wherever
I am in the world, whoever I’m with, I always
know what you’re doing at eleven o’clock every
morning. It’s reassuring.”
I think about this for a moment, wondering
what it must be like to have a parent whose
presence in your life makes you feel reassured
(rather than mystified and freaked out).
“…It’s a good thing,” says Poppy, patting me
softly, like a dog.
I sip my coffee. A good thing.
....35....
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COLUMN
...........................................
Amy Holtz
And her ten-finger orchestra
I’m in the middle of telling
a story and drinking a pint
when one of my friend’s
bejewelled hands reaches
out and slaps across mine.
“Stop it!” she thunders,
appalled.
“Stop what?” I ask,
bewildered. “Ow.”
She points to my fingers with
the wide, all-seeing eyes of
a former teacher, and huffs.
“You know.”
It takes a minute, but of
course I do know. I just forget
I’m doing it - cracking my
knuckles. And over the years, I’ve come to realise
there are only two kinds of people in the world;
the innocent, misunderstood air-bubble poppers
who just want to be left alone, and the people who
shame them.
“I’m just thinking of your future,” she continues,
calmer, sifting through our pub booty of dryroasted
peanuts, the eating of which, in my opinion,
is a far bigger public-health risk. “My sister got
arthritis early on and she used to do that.”
“But how do you know it was the knucklecracking?
Instead of say, I don’t know, genetics?” I
say this defiantly, with not a smidgen of sensibility,
but I can feel what can only be described politely
as an urge - building. In my fingers. I didn’t finish,
and now I’m going to have to wait until she turns
her back or risk another slapping.
I used to get regular knuckle raps from my
gramma. As an often-annoying do-gooder, it was
the only thing that gave me a frisson of devilry
throughout my youth. The feeling was as close
as I had come to bank robbery or face tattooing -
and likely ever will. And
my piano teacher spent
many a lesson lecturing
me on my thoughtless
habit, as though a
career as a concert
pianist was somehow
hanging in the balance.
It wasn’t. Sighing, a
noise so charged with
disappointment, she
used to tap at my hands
with her marking pencil,
which, looking back,
smacks of counterproductiveness.
But it isn’t just the well-intentioned - the folk who
rightly profess to be looking out for you, no matter
how obnoxiously persistent they are. People look
at you when you do this in the library, one knuckle
at a time, using your other fingers to get at the
thumbs, like a little ten-finger orchestra. Or say,
“ouch”, and wince in your general direction, as
if experiencing some sort of knuckle-cracking
stigmata on their person.
It does make you wonder - just where do these
old wives’ tales come from? And how come they
live on, even now we have Google?
I posit this to my friend - fishing for my rational
voice but coming up with shrill. “I’m not going to
get arthritis! There’s simply no evidence!”
She looks at me with mild pity and passes me the
peanuts. I’m desperate to finish my forefinger and
thumb, which are patiently waiting, but I’m too
scared of her.
Ok, so maybe I do have a problem. In the end, it
doesn’t really matter how these things start. All I
know is that they don’t seem to stop.
....37....
MUSIC
..........................
Gigs In Brighton...
cHarLie sTraW
Monday 17th April
The Prince Albert, Brighton
Haus
Friday 21st April
Komedia, Brighton
WiLLiaM MccarTHy
Friday 21st April
The Haunt, Brighton
JoHnny LLoyD
Friday 21st April
Sticky Mike’s, Brighton
VaLerie June
Saturday 22nd April
Concorde 2, Brighton
Dan oWen
Tuesday 25th April
Komedia, Brighton
counTerFeiT
Saturday 29th April
The Haunt, Brighton
ProToJe
Thursday 11th May
Concorde 2, Brighton
Marianas TrencH
Saturday 13th May
The Haunt, Brighton
Foy Vance
Monday 22nd May
Concorde 2, Brighton
exoDus
Wednesday 7th June
Concorde 2, Brighton
Minus THe Bear
Saturday 10th June
The Haunt, Brighton
LoutPromotions.co.uk
Ben Bailey rounds up
HATERS
Fri 7, Green Door Store, 7pm, £5/4/3
Perhaps pre-empting detractors with their choice
of band name, Haters make the kind of lo-fi
indie-pop that’s often associated with groups from
the late 80s and early 90s. However, the combination
of jangly guitar and pop-punk drumming is a
format that never really went away, and with good
reason. It still works, especially as Haters’ lyrics
have a straightforward honesty which ensures
indie kids of a certain hue will find something to
relate to here. This show, put on by local DIY
promoters FemRock, is the band’s last UK date
before a short European tour. They’re back again
at the end of the month, playing the ‘Fallopian
Tunes Fest’ at the same venue on the 30th.
HOLLY ISOBELLE
Mon 10, Prince Albert, 8pm, £2
Not to be confused
with Bath’s Isobel
Holly, Brighton’s
Holly Isobelle is a
singer-songwriter who
sometimes transforms
into the frontwoman of a pop band, trading her
acoustic guitar for a sparkly synth. It’ll be in that
incarnation that she takes to the stage of the Prince
Albert for the launch show of her first single, Remains
of Our Love. Influences range from contemporary
alt-pop acts like Two Door Cinema Club
and Lucy Rose, to original shimmering-synthpop
exponents Simple Minds. Support comes from folk
songstress Hayley Chillcott and local indie rockers
Codename Aquarius. To mark the occasion Holly’s
promising special décor, cupcakes and a free drink.
....38....
MUSIC
..........................
the local music scene
DIRTY WHITE FEVER
Sat 8, Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, 7pm, £5
Marking the anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death, this
tribute night sees four local grunge acts paying homage
to the tragic hero of 90s rock. Nirvana covers are
inevitable, the only question is: who gets to play Teen
Spirit? Fuoco, DITZ, and PLUNGE fill out the bill,
while Dirty White Fever take the headline slot, mixing
the sludgy blues rock of The White Stripes with
the speed riffing of Queens of the Stone Age. The
Brighton duo, one half of which was briefly in The
Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, will go down well
with anyone who likes their rock raw and unpretentious.
The WÜF DJs round off the night playing all
the big grunge hits - which seems like an oxymoron,
but you know what we mean.
FIRST WORLD PROS
Thu 13, Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, 8pm, £5/3
Promoting the launch of
their debut album, First
World Pros are a new Brighton
seven-piece comprised
of former members of The
Leisure Society and Django Spears. If you ever caught
the latter, you’ll remember that their klezmer/skiffle
pop covers were musically much better than they
needed to be for the humour to work. Likewise, the
comical lyrics that First World Pros have hewn out of
everyday petty problems (you know the sort) are set
to a diverse and impressively executed form of festival
music. The band’s Afrobeat, highlife and alt-rock
influences leaves them sounding like a frenetic version
of Vampire Weekend mixed perhaps with some of
The Clash’s weirder later stuff. If you’re not dancing,
you’ll be laughing.
________________________________________
Sammy and the Snow Leopard
Wed 19 - Thu 20 Apr
________________________________________
KIN
Wed 19 Apr
________________________________________
Banff Mountain Film Festival
Thu 20 Apr
________________________________________
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Sat 22 Apr
________________________________________
Naomi’s Wild & Scary
Sun 23 Apr
________________________________________
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Sat 29 Apr
________________________________________
Brighton Festival
Sat 6 - Sun 28 May
________________________________________
brightondome.org
01273 709709
....39....
Brighton Fringe Award
Winners 2014 . 2015 . 2016
What the critics say about Pretty Villain:
‘Brilliant’- Plays International ✶✶✶✶✶ ‘High quality’ The Argus
‘Thoroughly professional’ – Fringe Review
‘Tragedy and comedy intertwine magically’ - Broadway Baby
Blue/Orange
by Joe Penhall
NE-YO
Sat 1 Apr
THE HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS
Sat 15 Apr
CARO EMERALD
Fri 14 Apr
DIVERSITY
Tue 18 Apr
Award-winning comedy and modern
masterpiece - one day before release
from psychiatric hospital, an enigmatic
patient claims to be the love child of
an African dictator.
27th - 28th May | 30th May - 3rd June
New York Stories
by Damon Runyon
Two wise-crackin’, fast-talkin’ 1930s
short stories brought to life by ‘the
nest actors I have seen on the Fringe’.
‘A masterclass in direct storytelling
and character comedy’.
16th - 21st May
box office 0844 847 1515 *
www.brightoncentre.co.uk
*calls cost 7p per minute plus your phone company’s access charge
What did I miss?
The Missing Special
by Richard Hearn
Winner of The Rialto’s 2016 new
writing competition by acclaimed
Brighton author. This comedy/drama
replays key events from Rufus’ life -
but does he have a second chance ?
21st, 23rd - 26th May
11 Dyke Road, Brighton BN1 3FE
(50 yards from Churchill Square)
Box Office: 01273 725230
www.rialtotheatre.co.uk
whatdidimiss.co.uk
MUSIC
....................................
Ghost
Agnostic shock rock
All things considered, I guess we’re a shockrock
band. I don’t put a lot of effort into thinking
about what we are in terms of genre, but I perfectly
understand that if you’re a little bit anal and you’re
a protector of your genre, then you might not buy
into us.
I come from a very mixed-up musical background;
we listened to everything from doo-wop
and pop to extreme black metal. But the spark that
started Ghost was the fact that I found a way to
combine death-metal riffing with AOR choruses.
Papa Emeritus is our mascot. Like Eddie is for
Iron Maiden; but he just happens to be the singer
as well. I think what you’ll get in Brighton is what
we call ‘the full thing’. A few new songs, and maybe
some pyro that we haven’t really done before in the
UK. It’s a bigger show; it just looks grander.
Religions claim to be for the greater good,
whereas anyone who knows a little bit about history
knows they are made up in order to control people.
And that has led to an enormous amount of grief
and suffering, all in vain. Ghost is an emulation of
that, symbolic of that suffering. But as opposed to
traditional worship, we are trying to make people
euphoric by taking part in a mass, in a ritual. We
leave people with the idea of wanting to
live and wanting to live freely, rather
than going away feeling that they
need to repent or that their lives
suck. That is
not to say we
dismiss religion
per se, or a
belief in
something
greater. We
respect the
fact that we
have no f**king idea.
You get used to playing in a mask. Obviously it’s
strange at first, but the upsides are definitely greater.
You find yourself transforming into a slightly different
character, and that in turn gives you an extra
boost on stage. In the beginning there wasn’t an issue
with being recognised, because I never thought
it would be propelled to this size.
If there’s one person screwing up the anonymity,
it’s probably my mum. She’s very proud. Ever
since I was a kid I’ve always been a fan of musicals
and theatre; she dragged me along to a lot of different
cultural events. The first time we went to
London we saw The Phantom of the Opera and Cats.
I was absolutely blown away. I knew it was a format
I wanted to work within. Will there be a Ghost
musical? I really hope so. The point has always been
to be theatrical. With the aid of masks you can more
freely let your mind ease into the idea that this is
‘real’.
I knew nothing about the bands I loved when
I was a kid; I had to invest so much imagination
into the posters on my wall. Even in 2008, when
we started, I was extremely annoyed by hysteria on
Facebook and Twitter. A lot of the new bands have
to profile themselves as individuals and photograph
everything they eat. I guess Ghost was a counterreaction
to that. This is not
the rock ’n’ roll that I love.
I wanted Ghost to be
something completely different.
We do things that
make other people
talk. As told to Ben
Bailey
Brighton Dome,
Sun 2nd Apr,
7pm, £27
....41....
MUSIC
....................................
Billy Ocean
Tailor’s-apprentice-turned-megastar
“I was told I was singing before I could talk,” says
Billy Ocean. “I used to sing along to the radio; I
always did it.” He heard calypso tunes at his musician
father’s shows; he listened to American popular
music on the radio; he sang in a church choir. He
was given his first instrument at the age of four - a
toy ukulele. The authoritative AllMusic website says
that ‘by his teenage years [he] was singing regularly
in London clubs’.
All this - the keen interest, the early start, and
the useful mix of influences - might seem to have
been leading him towards inevitable success as a
musician. His mother, though, got him to learn a
trade, as a fall-back. So he started work as a tailor’s
apprentice. The Telegraph later noted that ‘he got
the sack when Annie Nightingale played his first
single on Radio One’.
That was in 1974; he signed with the GTO label
the following year, and went on to sell 30 million
records. It’s tempting to say something like ‘…and
he never looked back’. But Ocean evidently retained
an interest in tailoring; he told the Guardian that ‘in
the 80s, I made all my suits myself’.
“I still have a few of the old suits,” he tells Viva. “But
they don’t get worn these days. I like to feel good on
stage, so I always wear a suit and tie; it’s just me.”
Mon 24th, Brighton Dome Concert Hall, doors 7pm,
tickets from £24.50
2-4
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COMEDY
....................................
Ed Patrick
Real life isn’t like med school
“One of the main things about being a doctor,
actually, is managing uncertainty,” says Ed Patrick, a
comedian and junior doctor. “Everything’s laid out
for you on a plate in medical school, but actually in
real life you have to deal with uncertainty” - with
situations that are messier and more complex than
the ones you tend to encounter as a student.
In medical school, for example, “you learn a theory,
and you learn how things happen if there’s only one
thing wrong.” But in real life, patients often have
multiple issues, whose symptoms you have to try to
disentangle and make sense of.
In medical school “you have practical exams: you’ll
be called together, examine the patient, take histories,
and all that stuff you need to do. But whether
you actually have the time, and the space, to do that
in the hospital setting, when it gets really busy, is
difficult. Because you’re juggling a lot of priorities.
“That’s one of the key things as a doctor; you have
to prioritise. You have people coming at you from
left, right and centre. If you’re a junior doctor, like
me, you have a list, and have to assess each thing
that comes to you, and decide which is most important,
and prioritise that accordingly.
“You’ve seen what’s happened in A&E over the last
couple of months; it’s not like everyone’s got their
own room, where you can go and comfortably do
everything you need to do in that time. It’s more
hectic. You’re having to work in corridors and
things like that. That’s not what you’re taught in
medical school.
“The show is about how you’re kind of thrown
into this world that you didn’t know about, and
it’s not quite as set up as you thought it was… You
go from a medical-school situation, a university
situation, to suddenly being in a very responsible
position. And it’s a baptism of fire, for the first few
years of doing that.”
I gather that a theme of the show is that doctors
aren’t ‘demi-gods’, as people might like to imagine -
they’re just well-trained people doing their best. Ed
says: “I think society’s always sort of seen doctors
on a pedestal. There are good reasons for that, but I
think sometimes you need to remember that they’re
human as well.
“Actually, what makes a good doctor is someone
who’s aware of their limitations and gets help when
they need it. And that’s why you have teams of
people that you work with. It’s not actually a solo
thing… You have different specialists; you wouldn’t
attempt to do something that wasn’t your specialism,
or where you felt out of your depth, your level.
“But what happens is that people come to see you
and might not realise that you’re not the specialist
in that area. Because you are a doctor you’ve got
that general sort of, ‘you are a man in a white coat;
you must know everything.’” Steve Ramsey
Ed Patrick: Junior Optimist, Komedia, Sun 30th,
8pm, £10, komedia.co.uk
....43....
Omid Djalili Tracy-Ann Oberman
FIDDLER ON
THE ROOF
This celebrated and much loved
musical directed by Daniel Evans is
packed with show-stopping songs
including If I Were A Rich Man,
Tradition and Matchmaker
#FiddlerOnTheRoof
10 July – 26 August
01243 781312 cft.org.uk
THEATRE
....................................
The Crucible
‘A perfect post-truth play’
‘I have laid seven babies
unbaptised in the earth,’
Ann Putnam says in The
Crucible, Arthur Miller’s
play about the Salem
Witch Trials. This is
early in Act One; the
suspicion of witchcraft
has been raised; Mrs
Putnam connects it with
the deaths of her babies.
“That’s the hardship of that time; many women lost
their children,” says Douglas Rintoul, the director
of a current touring production of the play. “I find
the character incredibly moving, because she’s desperately,
desperately looking for a reason why those
children didn’t live, and she cannot [accept] that her
body was not strong enough to produce those seven
children. There has to be another reason…
“That’s really the beginning of where the seed of
the hysteria starts. That’s to do with somebody who
was so deeply unhappy in her life that she had to
find a reason outside of herself to explain it away.
And certainly we can find lots of analogies with that
in a contemporary society, as well. We often look
for something outside of ourselves to make up a
narrative of why things haven’t worked out the way
that we were told that they should have done.
“For such a long time, as individuals in the western
world, we’ve been told that we can have anything
and everything, as long as we fight for it and we
work hard… It’s kind of the American dream. And
then, when we don’t attain those things… because
the structure of capitalist society has kind of let us
down - I mean, it is an anti-capitalist play - but then
we don’t question the structure of that society.
“In the same way, in
the play they’re…
[generally] not
questioning the
structure of their
theocracy, which is
really to blame for
all of the events in
the play. They’re
looking to blame
other individuals for
why their lives have not turned out the way that
they were told that they should. And I think that’s
the great parallel, is that we are in a time where our
structures are falling apart, and we’re not blaming
the structures; we’re looking to blame individuals,
which will be the minorities or the outsiders. In
the play, the weakest members of that community
are the ones who are first attacked. Which is Sarah
Good and Goody Osburn, who are old women who
live in ditches and probably have dementia. They’re
a really easy, easy target. And the hysteria picks
them out first…
“There are lots of examples in contemporary
society… Look at Islamic extremism, or the way
that we scapegoat immigrants for all the ills of our
societies; we read enough Daily Mail headlines and
then we believe… I mean, the play is a perfect posttruth
play. I’m not sure that Arthur Miller would
have ever believed that we would find ourselves in
this situation in the 21st century, where his play is
probably more pertinent now than it was when he
wrote it in the 1950s. It’s… the whole play is about
believing a lie, believing the lies.”
Steve Ramsey
Theatre Royal, Mon 24th – Sat 29th
....45....
MUSIC
....................................
King Ayisoba
Ghanaian kologo prodigy
Photo by Paul Bergen
King Ayisoba is a musician
and singer from
Kalaga, in the Upper
East region of Ghana.
His grandfather was
a traditional healer
who taught him how
to play the kologo (a
two-stringed guitar),
and King Ayisoba
became something
of child prodigy in
the area. Having
played with hip-life artist Terry Bonchaka, King
Ayisoba went on to win the Ghana Music Award
in 2007. He’s been touring the world more or less
ever since. This month he comes to Brighton,
supported by his unlikely ally Arnold de Boer, who
performs with his lo-fi electro-punk project Zea.
How would you describe your music? Is it a
traditional style? It is kologo music from Ghana,
played with my own personal style.
What is kologo? How did you start playing it?
Kologo is a mystical instrument, and it’s a gift. My
grandfather was a kologo player, so the kologo
spirit caught me when I was born.
Who else are you bringing to the Komedia this
month? Ayuune Sulley (kologo player and singer),
Francis Ayamga (drummer and sound engineer),
Aboba Azure (talking drum) and my brother Adortanga
Abbadongo Aporee, who is a dancer and
horn player. We are all from the same area, Bongo
Soe and Bolgatanga.
What other influences have shaped your style
of music? I listened to reggae music, and I started
promoting kologo through the hip-life and hiphop
scene, with the support of Terry Bonchaka and
Panji Anoff.
What is your connection
with Dutch
punk band The Ex?
Arnold De Boer, a
member of The Ex
and also of Zea, invited
me on tour with
him and produced my
albums in Europe, so
I started touring with
him and we shared a
stage together. Later
he invited me again
with my full band for a European tour.
Have you toured around here before? Do audiences
in different parts of the world react differently
to your music? I’ve been touring all over
Europe and beyond for six years now... including
China. Even Chinese people enjoy my music and
dance like crazy.
What does ‘King Ayisoba’ mean? Why did you
choose it as a name? King Ayisoba means “Land
Lord”; people call me that.
How did you celebrate the 60th anniversary
of Ghanaian independence last month? What
are the biggest problems facing the country at
the moment? In the north of Ghana, we have a
big problem about water access and electricity. I
created my own water foundation to support my
people and my region.
What inspired your song Wicked Leaders?
I wrote this song to talk to all the leaders who
are not helping their own people and just make
promises when an election comes. I always want
to remind them that their “power” come from
their people!
Interview Ben Bailey
Komedia, Monday 3rd April, 7.30pm, £9
....46....
COMEDY
....................................
Marcel Lucont
Trop drôle pour l’Anglais
French ‘raconteur, bon-viveur
and flâneur extraordinaire’
Marcel Lucont is the winequaffing
alter-ego of awardwinning
British comedian
Alexis Dubois. He shares his
Gallic wisdom…
What does being French
mean to you? In these times,
a discerning man chooses to
wear his nationalism lightly,
like a billowing cravat. Yet it
is difficult not to appreciate
the many positives that come
with being French - like a
billowing cravat. There is a
style, a way of life, an insouciance
that only the French can truly live.
French style is lauded all over the world; can
you talk us through your own look? My level
of style deceptively hides its functionality. Each
jacket pocket contains at least one book of notes;
the deft roll of the pullover conceals at least one
reminder of the night before; the neat trouser
contains at least one mystery.
Which French stereotype is furthest from the
truth? We are said to be aloof, I believe. If this
is the case, perhaps you should ask yourself why
are we not immediately engaging in conversation
with you? Perhaps we first need convincing that
an interaction will be worthwhile, or everybody’s
time is wasted.
You’ve written a memoir, Moi. What do you
think readers will be most surprised to learn?
My role in France’s space programme.
What are you reading at the moment? My
memoir.
Your new show is described as ‘a kind of group
therapy’; have you ever
attended such a thing yourself?
No. Having to interact
with a group of strangers in
this way would merely drive
me to further therapy. Perhaps
this is a misleading précis
of the show, as it implies
that I will alleviate audience
members’ gripes, grievances
or failings. I can assure you
this is not the case. It is highly
likely everyone will leave feeling
more depressed.
Do you rate any other
comedians? Comedy is, in
general, such a low art form. I
find it so bewildering that other practitioners refuse
to write even one poem or chanson. Observational
comedy, in particular, seems wasted on the
British, whose observations often reveal lives so
mundane that Socrates may instead have decided
the unexamined life to be perfect left as it is.
What do you think of English wine? It is about
time we had a joke question. I believe this is part
of your mythical folklore, along with Robin Hood,
King Arthur and Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction.
A good attempt, but it will take more than
this to fool me.
Are you a fan of Brighton? ‘Fan’ is a strong
word. Despite its unusually large grains of sand
and suspiciously cheery nature I have spent some
memorable afternoons staring across the sea at
civilisation. Often such moments can last up to
three minutes without the interruption of a skateboarder,
a child or a festival.
Interview by Nione Meakin
Marcel Lucont’s Whine List, Komedia, April 12th
....47....
eathe deeply
close your eyes
think beautiful thoughts
about how your
home could look
do something about it
call Nutshell:spaces
01903 217900
CIRCUS
....................................
KIN
Narrative acrobatics
Dance and theatre director Ben Duke
has collaborated with acrobatic heroes
Barely Methodical Troupe
on their new show, KIN.
In a general sense, dance
is introverted where
circus seems extroverted
- needing the audience
to feed it. A few years
back, I made a dance piece
called It Needs Horses, about
two circus performers. It
explored the concept of having
no skills or talent and the increasingly
desperate lengths the performers
would go to to entertain - very direct in terms of
contact with the audience. It made me think about
how dance deals with a fourth wall; the performers
aren’t necessarily pretending to be someone else
and it isn’t like theatre, where you’re developing a
separate world, but dance tends to have an inward
focus. I was curious about how these disciplines,
dance and circus, could meet - if an emotional narrative
could find its way into this extreme physical
language of the circus.
KIN is Barely Methodical Troupe’s second
show after Bromance - the story of founding
members Charlie, Louis and Beren’s relationship.
Bromance was a huge hit and they built a kind
of reputation and aesthetic; but we’re trying to do
something different with KIN, which explores ideas
of hierarchy and power struggles. KIN is about
people who become close because of the situations
they are put in - the families that form outside
‘blood families’; the circus is interesting in that
way because of the physical and mental closeness,
the trust and danger involved and how that builds
connections. This show looks at contemporary
ideas of those power
and gender roles.
This is an exciting time
for the circus - it’s got an
openness and curiosity
about what’s going on
and it’s learning how to
borrow and steal from
other things. There’s
something about the idea
of entertainment that circus
embraces very consciously,
which is a great thing. I’m a big
fan of dance, but it can have a feeling
of inaccessibility or, like with conceptual art, that
you need some kind of key to understand it. I don’t
think that’s the case, but I think that’s how a lot of
people feel. But circus is overtly fun and inclusive,
less formal for the performers and the audience. If a
trick goes wrong, you can do it again; there’s a kind
of humanity in that - we can acknowledge the fact
that it didn’t succeed and that gives the circus a kind
of relatability.
KIN is a kind of experiment in sustaining a
narrative in circus. For me it shifts between these
moments where there are tricks, while feeling like
you’re lost in an amazing world; there’s an atmosphere
that carries you through, which creates an
emotional and theatrical landscape. It’s interesting
to notice the kind of audience that comes to KIN as
opposed to a dance performance. It’s got a more relaxed
kind of vibe; beer and popcorn, not high-arts
stuff. They want to clap and cheer for tricks, and I
think that’s how it should be; but that doesn’t mean
it can’t be intelligent. As told to Amy Holtz
Brighton Dome, Wed 19th April, 3pm and 7.30pm
....49....
Your wedding is
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ART
....................................
Constable in Brighton
Exhibition curator Peter Harrap
When artists Peter Harrap
and Natasha Kissell bought
a run-down house in Sillwood
Road back in 2010,
no-one could have predicted
that it would one day
display an English Heritage
blue plaque. “It looked kind
of bombed-out. The building
had been divided into
three flats, none of them
very salubrious, and some of the windows were
missing. But there was something about it that we
liked, particularly the light in the upstairs studio.”
It was a journalist neighbour, Shan Lancaster, who
first hinted that the house might have an impressive
pedigree. “She had been doing some digging,
and was convinced that it had been the painter
John Constable’s Brighton studio. The deeds of
her house were listed as Sober’s Gardens and
there’s a letter from 1824 where Constable says
he’s living at 9, Sober’s Gardens. Obviously that
address doesn’t exist today, so up until that point,
no one had made the connection. We discovered
that both the street name and numeration had
changed twice, but through a process of deduction
- including an uncatalogued, unarchived letter we
found at the Tate - we were able to establish that
the house had indeed been Constable’s studio.”
Fired up by the discovery, Harrap then worked out
that the painter had made some 150 works over
the period he spent in Brighton during the 1820s,
many inspired by a series of walks he took from his
studio towards Shoreham, Devil’s Dyke and along
the seafront in the direction of the chain pier.
“1824 was a particularly good year. The Hay Wain
had been selected for the Paris Salon, and Constable
later won a gold medal
for it. But he never went
to France. Instead, he was
at the top of Devil’s Dyke
having a revelation about
painting. He decided it was
not the job of the painter
just to depict a beautiful
view, but instead, to make
something out of nothing.
He then began taking off
on these systematic walks across Brighton, stopping
every few yards to make a little painting. To
my delight, I realised that I walk my kids to their
school in St Nicholas Road overlooked by the
windmills Constable painted in 1824.”
Although Constable only came to the city in the
(dashed) hope that the sea air would revive his
sick wife Maria, the years he spent here were to
change his work quite profoundly. “He gains a
lot of confidence over the Brighton period. His
paintings were a little stuffy, a little brown, and
during this time they became more energetic,
almost wild. There’s a very clear transition from
these quite staid pictures of Salisbury Cathedral to
his big, bold storm clouds.” The house has become
a popular draw for tourists since it received official
English Heritage recognition in 2013, but not,
Harrap has learned, for the reasons one might
expect. “We’ve had five years of people standing
outside taking snaps on their phones. I thought
it was fantastic that there was so much interest in
Constable. But I’ve just learned that it’s probably
because our address is a Pokemon Go destination…”
Nione Meakin
Constable in Brighton, at Brighton Museum from
April 8th
‘A Windmill near Brighton, 1824’ by John Constable © Tate
....51....
ART
....................................
Victor Pasmore
Il était peintre
There is a story that is
often told about Victor
Pasmore meeting
Picasso. It’s November
1950, and Picasso is
in England to address
the second International
Peace Congress
in Sheffield. Accounts
differ wildly. Sometimes
Pasmore is meeting Picasso
off the boat train at
Victoria. Or maybe he’s
at St Pancras to greet Picasso on his return from
Sheffield. Sometimes he’s deputising for a poorly
Roland Penrose as Picasso’s chauffeur. Unless, that
is, he’s bundling Picasso into a taxi to take him
from Victoria to St Pancras. Or was it from St Pancras
to Victoria? Occasionally, fellow-artist Rodrigo
Moynihan is in the taxi as well. Anyway, whichever
the version, whichever the terminus, there’s a problem.
Unable to conduct a conversation with the
great man in either Spanish or English, Pasmore
has to fall back on his schoolboy French. After a
lengthy silence he essays: “Moi, je suis peintre”.
Picasso replies: “Moi, aussi”.
Victor Pasmore was born in 1908 and took to being
a peintre at an early age. His brother Stephen
recalled him determinedly drawing battleships and
aeroplanes in the nursery during World War One.
He showed great promise at Harrow, pulling off
a very creditable copy of Landseer’s Dignity and
Impudence. Unfortunately, the sudden death of his
father meant that the proposed art-school education
was no longer financially viable. Instead, he
worked as a clerk in the Public Health department
of the London County Council for ten years. Two
factors were crucial in his eventually becoming an
artist. The first was that dogged determination first
revealed in the nursery.
According to Pasmore’s
entry in the Dictionary
of National Biography,
he refused all promotions
at work to have as
much time as possible
to devote himself to art.
For years he attended
evening classes at the
Central School of Arts
and Crafts. The second
factor is the patronage
of Kenneth Clark. In 1935 he bought, from the
annual London Group Show, Victor Pasmore’s The
Café (Tea Gardens). He went on to provide a stipend
for Pasmore in exchange for paintings, that eventually
allowed him to give up his job at the LCC.
Nonetheless, their first meeting was not propitious.
As recounted in his autobiography, Clark was
rehanging a Turner at the National Gallery in a
silvery new frame: ‘A young man with bright black
eyes came up to me and said “I don’t know who you
are, but whoever you are you’ve no taste”. I agreed
and the frame was hastily removed’.
Clark was unable to follow Pasmore into the pure
abstraction which he embraced from the late 40s
onwards. The transition from his earlier figurative
style to abstraction provides the main focus of the
splendid Pasmore exhibition at Pallant House Gallery,
Chichester (until 11th June).
Pasmore is one of the great twentieth century British
Artists, able to paint both figurative and abstract
masterpieces. Take the exquisitely beautiful The
Quiet River: The Thames at Chiswick (1943-4); probably
my favourite painting on teenage visits to the
Tate. And turn round from the last room at Pallant
to look back at Yellow Abstract (1960-61). To me, it’s
just breathtaking. David Jarman
'Spiral Motif Green, Violet, Blue, Gold...' by Victor Pasmore © TATE
....53....
ART
....................................
Keith Tyson
‘It’s just a simple process that I repeat’
Portrait of Keith Tyson © Scott Douglas
“I would like to do them
every day, but I have three children
and a complicated life, so
I don’t really have that routine,”
says Keith Tyson, the 2002 Turner
Prize winner, on his series of
Studio Wall Drawings. Since
the project began in 1997, he’s
produced “about 900” of them.
“It sounds a lot, but over 20
years it’s about one a fortnight.
Not that regular, really.”
The series began when he was
one of five artists sharing a
small studio in South London
and wall space was especially scarce. His part of
the studio had ‘one solitary wall for painting and a
small area between the windows where I could pin
a sheet of watercolour paper to a board and scribble
down notes, ideas and sketches.’
Reflecting on the beginnings of this ongoing opus,
Tyson says: “All these nebulous ideas that hadn’t
quite formed just went on to it. And when it got
full I would take it off and put another piece up.
So they would pile up in the corner like carpets.
But then I noticed that they all had different styles
as my mood changed through
them. A curator came in about
98 or 99 and he thought they
were really interesting, and he
was doing the Venice biennale
and asked if I would do a room
of them. So I started to think of
them as works, and they began
to evolve, and I started putting
more imagery in, and eventually
they became more like poems,
or paintings, or a diary.
“They are the way that I process
things as well. I might be going
through a particularly black
phase in my life and be very depressed, and then
it’s very therapeutic. At other times it’s difficult.
To sum it up, it’s just life. You have good days,
you have bad days, you’re inspired, you’re jaded.
It’s not meant to be anything grand. It hasn’t got
any message. It’s just a simple process that I repeat.
“But as I do it for longer and longer periods of
time it becomes imbued with some of the beauty
and pathos of what it’s like to be a human being.
Anyone who did this regularly would see a similar
effect - maybe not as ambitious in scale, but I
....54....
ART
....................................
Photo by Lizzie Lower
think that’s what it’s supposed to be. It’s always
been a longer project, and I kind of see it as one
big work. When I’m gone, that’s what I’ll leave
behind. Some kind of trace of my activity on earth,
or the things that I experienced.
“Everything in there happened. The things that
are favourites of mine are moments that just
happened - that catch you unawares. I remember
after the Paris attacks I was in New York eating
breakfast, and the New York Times had this headline
about all this suffering and sending bombers
into Syria, and in the corner was the weather
forecast. So on that drawing, there’s a touch of
the news in the corner, but I focused on reproducing
the weather forecast. There’s this thing
that the weather is always going on against our
affairs, our individual lives. There’s something
kind of Buddhist about this relationship between
the clouds and the events. Those are the [drawings]
that are most successful to me, that point to
something transcendental. Even though they’re
about specific events, there is something that draws
you out of yourself. If there weren’t moments like
that then I wouldn’t keep doing it. These are the
moments that make you want to carry on. That
I’ve just managed to grab something that’s bigger
than me.”
Lizzie Lower
Turn Back Now, a show of 365 of Tyson’s Studio
Wall Drawings, continues at Jerwood Gallery until
4th June. jerwoodgallery.org
‘Of Course I Know that you Don’t Exist’ 2015 © Keith Tyson
‘Somewhere Near the Edge of the Visible Universe’ 2001 © Keith Tyson
....55....
䠀 䄀 倀 倀 夀 䔀 䄀 匀 吀 䔀 刀
昀 爀 漀 洀 愀 氀 氀 愀 琀 嘀 椀 瘀 愀 䈀 爀 椀 最 栀 琀 漀 渀
瘀 椀 瘀 愀 洀 愀 最 愀 稀 椀 渀 攀 猀 ⸀ 挀 漀 洀
ART & ABOUT
....................................
ART & ABOUT
In town this month...
‘Hove Beach c1824’ by John Constable © V&A Museum
‘There is not a healthy man in London, such is the state
of the atmosphere and the mode of life,’ the painter John
Constable once said. His wife Maria had tuberculosis,
and the Constables spent quite some time, between 1824
and Maria’s death in 1828, taking in the sea air at Brighton.
During these stays, he must have worked prolifically,
as he apparently produced around 150 works in the
town. From the 8th, Brighton Museum shows upwards
of 60 of these: paintings, drawings and sketches (more on
pg 51). [brightonmuseums.org.uk]
Ipek Duben has long been preoccupied with perceptions
of her native Turkey, both from within and without.
THEY / ONLAR, her latest work on the theme,
has its UK debut at Fabrica from the 8th as part of the
Brighton Festival. In the multi-screen video installation,
the personal stories of several individuals allow
us an insight into the interweaving strands of Turkish
society, revealing a diversity of ethnic, religious and gender positions and how they perceive, define and tolerate
one another. Dupek has said the work ‘sets out to define the Other’s Other. Prescribed identities marginalize
people within their own ‘victimhood’, in turn breeding prejudice, even violence and denying some people’s right
to life. In such a divided situation, how can ‘togetherness’ be realised?’ Continues until 29th May. [fabrica.org.uk]
Ipek Duben at Fabrica
Photo by Sergi Gorselleri
‘Sway’ by Solange Leon and Dirk Engels
From the 10th until the 23rd, ONCA Gallery hosts a two-week interactive community
art project exploring themes of identity, migration and borders. Sway is the brainchild of
Solange Leon, and is a response to the environmental and political challenges of recent
times. Visitors are invited to add to a flock, or
sway, of paper swallows suspended in the gallery,
and also to add their voice to a new dawn
chorus arranged by John Warburton. The
fortnight includes workshops, performances, films and talks.
[onca.org.uk] Cameron Contemporary has Menagerie until the 23rd;
a group exhibition inspired by all creatures furry, feathered and finned.
Featured artists include newcomers to the gallery Alice McMurrough,
Clare Mackie and Andrew Squire. [cameroncontemporaryart.com]
‘Oui, Oui, Oui’ by Alice McMurrough
....57....
ART & ABOUT
....................................
In town this month... (cont)
The DIY Art Market comes to The Old Market on Sunday the 30th.
It’s a curated selection of works from upwards of 60 artists working in all
sorts of media and from a wide range of artistic backgrounds. Go along
for a rummage and find prints, ceramics, zines, illustration, risograph
prints, photography, jewellery, comics, custom tees, homemade cassettes,
records, artist books and all manner of creative knick-knackery.
[diyartmarket.com]
Methodology of the Edition: 50x50=75 is at 154–155 Edward Street until the
20th. 75 members of staff and students from The University of Brighton, Nagoya
University of Art and King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology in Thailand
have collaborated on this international printmaking project, each making
a 50x50cm print using a variety of traditional and digital techniques. The exhibition
marks 20 years of exchange and communication between Brighton and
Nagoya universities.
Intimidated by art galleries? Bemused by art-speak? Too broke for Brâncusi?
Fear not. The Vending Machine Art Gallery comes to Patterns
in time for the Bank Holiday Weekend. Dispensing works from upwards
of 35 artists - including Brighton’s Sophie Abbott - from just £20 a
pop. Curators Tom and Hannah chose Brighton as their latest landing
spot for its individuality and positivity and - no doubt - its love of a slot
machine. From the 13th of April until the 26th of May.
‘Sunny Beach’ by Sophie Abbott
Out of town...
Photo by JJ Waller
Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft is seeking Brightonians to take part in an installation
as part of their Festival programme. They need six colourful individuals who represent
the city’s vibrant personality to model (clothed) for their Lunchtime Life Club; a series
of lively life-drawing classes using an eclectic array of models. The drawing classes will
take place at University of Brighton’s Grand Parade gallery, in Cathie Pilkington’s The
Life Rooms installation. If you want to volunteer yourself to model, email a photo of yourself
to lucy@ditchlingmuseumartcraft.org.uk, and tell her what makes your unique individuality
worth capturing. You’ll also need to be available for three lunchtime sessions,
either Tuesday 9th, 16th, 23rd, or Thursday 11th, 18th, and 25th of May from 12.30-
2pm. All classes will be led by experienced drawing tutors. Go on, join in. [ditchlingmuseumartcraft.org.uk]
....58....
ART & ABOUT
....................................
Susie Monnington at Pelham House
From the 12th, at Pelham House in Lewes, there’s an exhibition by painter
Susie Monnington, who has a technique that she calls ‘drift and draw’: making
sketches while afloat in a canoe. Her field drawings - not exclusively made
in canoes - are later used to create paintings. In them, Monnington tries to
capture the shifts in mood which come with the changing seasons: ‘the stillness
of winter, the chaos of spring and the intensity of high summer,’ as she has
described it. [pelhamhouse.com]
Turn Back Now, the epic show of 365 of Keith Tyson’s
long-running series of studio wall drawings, continues
at Jerwood Gallery (see pg 54). The venue also hosts
Bride of the Sea, a one-room exhibition of works by Eileen
Agar. Affiliated with the British surrealists, and a
regular visitor to Farleys House, when pressed to define
herself, she wrote: ‘If anything, I would like to call myself
a humanist. Whatever you are going to do, you should
do it here, on this planet, now. You must listen to your spiritual side and develop it. Listen to the things
that whisper to you.’ [jerwoodgallery.org] Speaking of Farleys House, the former home of Lee Miller
and Roland Penrose, it’s open again for the summer, with guided tours every Sunday. Admission is £12
per person (tickets from reception; there is no advance booking). They also have a selling exhibition of
Lee Miller’s prints coming up, at the Friends Meeting House in Brighton, as part of the Artists’ Open
Houses festival in May (more on pg 27). [leemiller.co.uk]
' Pigeon Post' by Eileen Agar
© The Estate of Eileen Agar
The Museum of Art at Towner
Photo by Rohan Van Twest
What was it like being an art collector before the globalised
mass-media age? How would you go about finding out how
many works survived by a particular artist, and where they
all were? You may find yourself pondering such questions
after visiting The Museum of Art, a show inspired by the eclectic
collections amassed by 19th-century art enthusiasts.
It continues at Towner Gallery
until the 17th. If you’re
very quick, there is still time to
enter the gallery’s Sussex Open 2017. Entries must be submitted by 4pm on
the 2nd of April. [townereastbourne.org.uk] Finally, our congratulations to
Simon Martin, whose appointment as Director of Pallant House Gallery
was recently announced. Simon joined the gallery as Assistant Curator in
2003, working his way up to the position of Co-director in November 2013.
During his time at the gallery, he has overseen an acclaimed programme of
exhibitions, which this spring includes Sidney Nolan in Britain and Victor
Pasmore: Towards a New Reality (see pg 53). We very much look forward to
seeing what plans he has for the gallery’s future. [pallant.org.uk]
Photo of Simon Martin by Alun Callender
....59....
April Lambing
at MIDDLE FARM
Witness lambs being born, and
even help bottle feed some of them
WE TRY...
....................................
Hot-wax painting
‘Aggressive is ok...’
“It looks a bit…
aggressive” I think
aloud, taking a step
back from the canvas
I’m working on. “Aggressive
is ok. Here,
take the heat gun.”
I’m learning the art of
encaustic painting at
Tony Owers’ studio
in Hove. Sometimes
called ‘hot-wax painting’,
the art form was
used by the ancient
Egyptians to paint portraits of the deceased,
Tony tells me. However, he became interested in
encaustic painting while studying the far more
contemporary work of Jasper Johns.
“Hot wax has all sorts of appeals,” he explains.
“It’s fast, immediate, spontaneous. It comes under
a genre called ‘process painting’, in which the
painter has less interest in the outcome and more
interest in the process. You allow the material to
do its own thing, so when you start painting you
won’t have any set idea of what’s coming out.” The
wax we’re using is a mixture of beeswax, paraffin
wax and a setting agent, which is kept hot over a
camping-sized electric hob while I’m painting.
I started by gluing down a piece of dyed fabric
onto my empty board. Then Tony dotted some
ink around, and told me to move it about using
the heat gun until it dried (the heat gun is a sort
of industrial-looking high-power hairdryer).
After that, I covered the board in clear wax, using
a broad, coarse brush, painting it on in random
strokes to create texture. Then Tony told me to
pick a coloured wax,
so I went for a garish
red, and painted
two thick, diagonal
strokes across the
board. And this is
the part where I start
to understand the
‘process’ bit.
Until now I’ve been
doing what I’m
told, to an extent,
and trying to make
something - if not
particularly artistic - at least pretty. But the red
has taken away any prettiness from my canvas, so
I feel more free to just mess around with it. “Take
the heat gun again, and you’re going to heat the
coloured wax so that it blends into the clear wax
underneath,” he guides. The heat has a much
stronger effect than I expected, and the brush
strokes in the red wax completely melt away. It
pools in some areas and creates rippling waves in
others. We experiment with dropping pigment
on top of the wax, and blowing it around with the
heat gun. Tony suggests looking in closely at the
way it moves and bubbles and dries onto the wax,
and it’s kind of captivating.
I spend probably an hour on my piece, and it feels
a bit like meditation; I’ve become so focused on
each step that I stop feeling the time pass. And
while the end result isn’t necessarily something
I’d hang on my wall, it was a lovely way to spend a
morning. Rebecca Cunningham
Workshops for beginner level up to practising artists,
call 07970613288. encausticworkshop.co.uk
....61....
DESIGN
....................................
Yinka Ilori
How do you turn a parable into a chair?
Photo above by Veerle Evens
Artist and designer Yinka Ilori is achieving great
things with his enigmatic furniture, which is
inspired by Nigerian words of wisdom. He may still
be in his twenties, but Yinka is already preparing for
his eighth solo show, in South Korea, and his chair
A Trapped Star was recently acquired for the permanent
collection at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery.
Yinka says it’s an honour to have his work exhibited
alongside personal favourites such as Salvador
Dali’s Mae West Lips Sofa. “To be around designers
and artists who I’ve looked up to a lot, to have my
work around theirs, is amazing.”
Yinka’s work found its way to Brighton after
Fashion Cities Africa co-curator Helen Mears asked
him to create chairs for their reading room. The
team visited Yinka’s East London studio and were
taken by his series If Chairs Could Talk, so they
snapped up his favourite piece.
Photo by Dan Weill
....62....
DESIGN
....................................
The series is based on a Nigerian parable: ‘No
matter how long the neck of a giraffe, it still
can’t see the future’. “It’s quite a funny parable,”
Yinka tells me, “but with a strong message… We
shouldn’t judge people. We should always believe
that people can change.”
Yinka was born and raised in London to Nigerian
parents, and many of his peers were also from
immigrant families. “That was quite powerful,”
says Yinka. “We shared this automatic love and this
bond based on our parents’ backgrounds.”
Having parents that are busy creating a sense
of belonging creates a particular sense of being.
Says Yinka, “I always respected [my parents], and
thought I can’t ever say anything is hard enough
because they’ve done one of the hardest things
anyone can ever do: to start again... I struggled
with the idea of fitting in, because I love being
British, I love being born in London, but I always
felt there was a lot more to me.”
The subject of A Trapped Star is a boy Yinka was
close to in year seven. His friend was brilliant at
music but was also falling over: dealing drugs and
bunking school. “He was trapped in this body of
two people,” says Yinka. “He was trying to find this
inner person, find out who he is.”
The piece, constructed from a child’s and an
adult’s chair bonded together, says Yinka, ‘is quite
sentimental’. The larger, captain’s chair, represents
the boy’s unfulfilled potential. “I really liked this
person, he was intelligent. I just felt the system
could have done a lot more for him, and for a lot
of people.”
While the stories Yinka tells can be touched with
sadness, the works themselves are almost overwhelmingly
joyous, playful, celebratory. Readymade
furniture items, repurposed and reinterpreted,
upholstered in allegorical wax print fabrics
and sprayed vivid colours.
“What I love about doing exhibitions,” says Yinka,
“is seeing how people react to my work. Some
people, their first contact is to smile… You don’t
always walk up to a chair and smile. Well I don’t...
actually, that’s a lie. I love chairs, so I’m always
smiling!” Interview by Chloë King
yinkailori.com
Photo by Andy Stagg
Photo by Dan Weill
....63....
let
with us
We’d love to talk to you
about how we can maximise
income on your property.
Best of Brighton
@bestof_brighton
best.of.brighton
www.bestofbrighton.co.uk
enquiries@bestofbrighton.co.uk
01273 308779
TRADE SECRETS
....................................
David Jones
Watch repairer
I’ve been in this business for about 70 years.
I’d been working as a mechanic for the National
Cash Register Company, but then I put my back
out. I was off work for a year, and while I was
recovering I started doing watch and clock repairs
from my home in Portslade.
It started as a hobby, but then a man called Mr
Scrace came knocking on my door, as he’d heard I
was keen. He trained me and gave me most of my
early jobs - mainly cleaning watches for seven and
sixpence.
I had a lucky break. My father worked for Remploy,
which organised factory work for disabled
people, and he was asked to move to Sussex to
oversee a new watchmaking factory. It fell through,
and the company had to sell off the tools and machinery.
My dad bought me a lot of the equipment
I needed to start out.
I took my first shop in Sackville Road in 1952,
in the building now occupied by Countryman
Improvements. I’ve been in this shop since 1970.
The business went through a tough time in the
’70s. Customers wanted everything brand new
and would just replace their watches when they
broke. Now it’s picked up again, because a lot of
people have taken a shine to traditional mechanical
watches.
My son Martin has worked with me since
he was about 13. He wanted to buy a radiocontrolled
speedboat and I said: “Well, if you want
one, you’ll have to come and earn some money.”
I started him on watches, but he always preferred
working on clocks, so that’s his speciality.
Watches are seen as a prestige item. Me, I’m
not particularly interested in that. I wear a secondhand
Tissot that I’ve had for about ten years. Tissot
is a subsidiary of Omega and good quality. But
as long as it keeps time, any watch is okay by me.
Some of the most unusual watches we get in
are by Verge and date from the 1700s. I have to
say, my heart sinks a bit when someone puts a
Verge on the counter. They’re hard to make any
money from because you have to spend so much
time on them.
It’s an inventive job; you have to think out of the
box to find solutions to problems. A lot of shops
now just tell customers they can’t do the work or
they send it back to the makers. I always try and
fix it.
You need good eyesight. Mr Scrace taught me
how to drill balancestaffs, which are as thin as a
hair. My eyesight is not as good as it was, but it’s
good enough.
I’m kept very busy. I didn’t used to open the shop
til 11am. Now I come in at 8.30am and rarely go
home before 10pm. It would be nice to have a
little more time to myself, but I’d be a fish out of
water if I gave this up. As told to Nione Meakin
DL Jones & Son, 64 Blatchington Rd, Hove
dljonesandson.co.uk
Photo by Adam Bronkhorst, adambronkhorst.com
....65....
Feed your body & soul
- eat seasonally
Select your
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from our
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farm produce.
You order
online and
we deliver
to your door.
browse our sussex produce:
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THE WAY WE WORSHIP
This month, Adam Bronkhorst’s portrait series took him to a church, a mosque,
a meeting house, a synagogue and a meditation room, all in one morning.
We asked each of the religious figures he photographed:
‘What’s your morning ritual?’
adambronkhorst.com | 07879 401333
Rabbi Hershel Rader at West Hove Synagogue
“Every morning before I get out of bed, I say, not a prayer, but an affirmation:
‘I thank you, living and eternal king, for giving me back my soul in mercy. Great is your faithfulness.”
THE WAY WE WORSHIP
Deacon Julie Newson at St Luke’s
“I get up, get dressed, take the dog for a walk, and then have porridge - always porridge.”
THE WAY WE WORSHIP
Imam Uthman Jeewa at Almedinah Mosque
“First prayers are at 5am so I have to wake up at half four.”
THE WAY WE WORSHIP
Rachel Ramaker, Elder at Friends Meeting House
“I’ve got two big windows in my bedroom, which I open up to say hello to the world.”
THE WAY WE WORSHIP
Gen Kelsang Chodor at Bodhisattva Meditation Centre
“We start the day with a group meditation at 7.30am.”
Food & Drink directory
ADVERTORIAL
Terre à Terre
It’s spring! Visit Terre à Terre, the go-to for the most creative vegetarian food in Brighton,
always delivered with a cheeky little pun. Open all day offering lunch and dinner options
from small plates to three-course set meals, not forgetting their magnificent afternoon
tea: multi-tiered savoury, sweet and traditional delights available from 3 till 5pm daily and
lots of chocolate goodies! 71 East Street, 01273 729051, terreaterre.co.uk
The Set Café
The café is situated next to the The Set restaurant and offers laid-back snacks and small
plates in a relaxed atmosphere. Eating off tables made from the old West Pier and overlooking
Regency Square and the sea makes it an ideal place to have a quick lunch or night
out with friends. Cocktails and craft beers are on hand as well as a wine list shared with the
restaurant. 33 Regency Square, 01273 855572, thesetrestaurant.com
The Better Half
The Better Half pub has put the heart and soul back into one of the oldest public houses in
the city, just off Hove seafront. There’s a superb wine and spirits list and some great ales and
ciders on offer, as well as a hearty and wholesome menu to enjoy, making the best of local
ingredients. The Better Half is relaxed, friendly and easy-going, making all feel welcome and
comfortable when you visit. 1 Hove Place, Hove, 01273 737869, thebetterhalfpub.co.uk
FOOD REVIEW
...........................................
Holy Phok
Casual street food with a two-week waiting list
It is very probably easier to book
a seat on a flight to Hanoi than
it is to get one at Holy Phok, the
22-seat, super-hip, Vietnamese
eatery on Lansdowne Place. Four
months after opening the place
is still packed, and I’ve waited a
fortnight for this table for two at
six o’clock on a Wednesday night.
Try as I might to get a third person
added closer to the day (I thought
you might appreciate me taking
a meat-eater along, as I hear the
chicken pho is truly life enhancing),
they take a hard line on not
overcrowding their diners, and
fellow Viva vegetarian Rebecca
had already called dibs. The menu
might be casual street-food dining
but the protocol, if you want to
avoid disappointment, is strictly call
ahead. Two weeks ahead.
We start our meal sharing an order
of ‘vesto’ - a pesto-style dip made
with coriander instead of basil and
peanuts in the place of pinenuts,
with a good kick of garlic and
chilli. It’s served with vast sesame
rice crackers - all the better to
shovel it in. Rebecca is the office
bao bun expert and orders the (vegan) ‘bao wow
tofu’ - two springy steamed buns stuffed with
crispy marinated tofu, pickled carrots, cucumber,
beansprouts and both peanuts and chilli sauce.
Tofu can be underwhelming but, in this case, the
wow of the bao is justified. Even the side of Vietnamese
herb slaw is packed with zesty flavours
and, whilst I know it’s rude to repeatedly help
yourself to another person’s food,
I have decided that she who writes
the review gets to graze all plates.
And I do.
It is, in my experience, very hard
to clear your plate when using
chopsticks but I doggedly chase the
last few peanuts around my ‘mockthe-squid’
noodle bowl. It’s one of
those clever dishes where a thing is
masquerading as another thing. In
this instance it’s oyster mushrooms,
dredged in a turmeric-and-five-spice
mixture, and fried until crispy. They
turn out to be an upgrade on calamari
which, in my memory, was so often
like rubbery washers. The ‘mock
squid’ is piled on cool vermicelli noodles,
pickled vegetables, mint, basil
(the aniseed Thai variety), coriander
and lime dressing. The mixture of
tastes, textures and temperatures is
mouth-watering. The flavours are as
bright on the tastebuds as the neon
lights are against the dark teal walls.
For dessert we share a salty fudge
brownie - pleasingly more salt than
sweet - and chilli chocolate ice cream.
As we’ve been eating, 40 golden
fortune cats have been waving
down from the wall, neatly regimented around
cerulean neon letters spelling ‘YOU LUCKY
CATS’. Now I get what all the fuss is about. But
it’s not luck you’ll need to eat at Holy Phok.
It’s patience.
Lizzie Lower
52 Lansdowne Place (entrance on Western Road)
01273 911551 holyphok.com
Photos by Lizzie Lower
....73....
RITUAL
..........................................
Photos by Horseshoe Photography
....74....
RITUAL
..........................................
Tea Ceremony
Brighton tea mistress Jennifer Maksymetz
explains all...
Tea ceremony stems from the Song Dynasty,
an era that ran from 960 to 1279. The monks
of southern China found that drinking
steeped tea leaves made them more alert and
able to meditate for longer periods of time.
What began as an everyday practice in mindfulness
developed over the centuries into the
ritual we know today.
I first learned about tea ceremony in 2000
when I was living in Taiwan. My Taiwanese
‘family’ didn’t drink alcohol so all our
social occasions revolved around tea. When
I moved back to Canada two years later I
met Olivia Chan, a second-generation tea
master whose dad opened the first teashop in
Vancouver. She taught me how to perform
formal gongfu tea ceremony. Gongfu means
‘with skill’.
The first thing one does when hosting tea
ceremony is to prepare the space or chaxi,
which translates as ‘tea stage’. You might light
a candle or some incense, put out a cloth to
place your tea set on, and add some favourite
items - a beautiful flower, perhaps, or a poem.
You would warm the cups and teapot and
prepare the tea. In the spring, it’s traditional
to drink green tea and other light teas as
they are thought to be cooling to the body.
In the winter, you might choose black tea or
fermented pu-erh.
Fill the teapot with water and let it overflow
a little as a sign of abundance and gratitude.
Pour into the cups immediately and as you
do, focus on your wishes and hopes for each
guest. Offer the tea to each person by placing
the cup in front of them, either on a coaster, a
piece of fabric or just on the table.
There will usually be three to five infusions
in total. The first and last are given in silence.
In between, the host will lead the conversation;
it’s part of their training. Don’t expect
general chit-chat. It’s usual to talk about how
the tea tastes, or to comment on the teaware
or the flower the host has placed on the table.
The whole process should be approached
with reverence. Sitting down to tea ceremony
is like stepping into a church, temple or
mosque. When everyone has finished, it’s
important to take a moment to appreciate the
time you have spent together.
Tea ceremony is a ritual that’s accessible to
us all. You don’t have to have the fancy yixing
teapot with the precise temperature of water
and the ornate tea tray. It can be done over a
mug of classic English breakfast tea in your
kitchen. The point is to focus on the moment.
You don’t look at your phone, or read the
paper; you just sit, drink your tea and reflect.
As told to Nione Meakin
jadespringteas.com
....75....
FOOD
............................
Edible updates
Illustration by Chloë King
Fair to say, as Edible Updates columnist, I don’t quite have Jay Rayner’s level of
experience. But even so, I wholeheartedly agree with his recent (glowing) review
of The Salt Room. The restaurant has just celebrated its 2nd birthday, and their fab
new menu features delights like monkfish tiger’s milk and gurnard, romesco and octopus.
A real star. Another delight is Edendum on East St, who are celebrating their newly revamped interior and menu.
Look out for their new pizzettes and extended selection of sharing plates.
Now, you must admit our city’s bloggers and journos do much to boost Brighton & Hove’s place on the food
map, but too many critics can be... pesky. The Set get their own back with Too Many Critics on Apr 9th, in aid of
Action Against Hunger. The likes of Andy Lynes (food writer and co-founder of Brighton’s Best Restaurants) and
Fran Villani (Graphic Foodie) will take to the kitchen and it’s bound to be fun (tickets via Eventbrite).
In other news, all eyes are on Brighton fave chef Tom Griffiths, of Flank fame, opening new restaurant Pascere
with Amanda Menahem this spring. The Manor on Gardner St has been given a fresh new start as The
Common - still serving ‘proper food, made with love’. Fatto a Mano have just launched a new gluten-free pizza
option. Foodies Festival returns to Hove Lawns from Apr 29th - 1st May. Top of the pop-ups goes to Lizzie Bett
of Yolk Catering at Café Rust on Sat 8th (contact: lizziebett@live.com). And last but not least, on April 28th,
Conversations on Sugar at One Church promises an essential debate on one of the hottest topics in food (more
on pg 77). Chloë King
.................................................................................................
FOOD
...........................................
Conversations on Sugar
A dangerous weapon?
“In 1971, when we had a macrobiotic restaurant and the first naturalfood
store, I wrote a book called About Macrobiotics, and in it I said,
rather simplistically, ‘if sugar was discovered today it would be banned immediately and handed over to the
military for weapons research’.” So says health-food activist Craig Sams. He’s since moderated his views, cofounding
the Green & Black’s chocolate company with his wife in 1991. “But, ultimately,” he adds, “our energy
comes from sugar - without it we’d be dead - so it’s good stuff in principle. It’s how we approach it that matters.”
In Conversations On Sugar later this month, Craig will be discussing that approach with Jo Rallings of the Jamie
Oliver Food Foundation, and Dan Parker from Sugar Smart Brighton & Hove - organisations both dedicated
to increasing awareness of, and reducing consumption of, sugar nationwide. They’ve been making inroads with
their pilot phase in Brighton & Hove.
Obesity is rising; experts are telling us to drastically reduce sugar consumption, while advertisers are telling us
otherwise. Slow Food Sussex have convened the panel to examine the evidence, navigate the conflicting advice
and help to bring about a very necessary change. “It’s about everything in moderation,” Craig concludes. “You
get more pleasure out of the things that you don’t overdo.” Lizzie Lower
Friday 28th, 6.30-9pm, One Church Brighton, Gloucester Place. Tickets are available from eventbrite.co.uk
....77....
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THE LOWDOWN ON...
....................................
Sunday Assembly
A sort of church, ‘without the god bit’
It’s a non-religious
or secular community
that, in
Brighton, meets on
the 4th Sunday of
every month. There
are about 50 Sunday
Assembly groups
around the world
now. It’s a community
of people who come
together without
having to have a
common belief in anything. They just want to
come together to celebrate life.
The London one was the first to be set up
by Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans, two
comedians. They came together with the thought
that ‘wouldn’t it be great to have a church without
having to have the god bit’. Initially it was
nicknamed ‘the atheist church’, but very quickly
they abandoned that headline, as it wasn’t just a
place for atheists.
I was brought up as a Christian, but realised
in my early teens that I didn’t believe in the God
I’d been brought up with. I used to think I’d love
to go to the church at the end of my road and
be among other people, be part of a welcoming
community, but I didn’t feel comfortable saying
or singing words in church that I didn’t mean.
When I heard Sanderson speaking about Sunday
Assembly on the radio, I thought ‘that’s exactly
what I want’. So I expressed my interest, met
with Sanderson and some interested local people,
and eventually formed a committee of eight. We
launched in September 2013.
We were given a very loose template. There
should be an interesting
talk; something
like a TED
talk, something
positive. There
should be songs -
that’s a big part of
it. There should
be a moment of
silence and reflection.
And, one of
the most important
bits, tea and cake
at the end. That’s one of my favourite things, to
hear people chatting who didn’t know each other
an hour before.
Everyone is welcome. Some people believe in
God, some people don’t. We don’t promote one
belief over another and we don’t discuss religion...
we just focus on our common traits as humans.
Our lowest turnout has been 75, and the highest
250. There are always new faces, and I’m still
staggered by how many new people come. We
have an assembly every May in the Speigeltent as
part of Brighton Fringe. They keep asking us back,
so we’ll have our fourth this year, on 7th May. It
gives us the capacity to have more people along.
It’s really opened my eyes to lots of different
things. Different values. Other people’s perspectives
on life and faith and all sorts of things. One
person told me that he thinks it saved his life. He
was in a place that was dark and lonely when he
came along; it just lifted him enough to see a way
out of a really dark time.
Lizzie Lower interviewed Brighton founding member
Jo Wright
sundayassemblybrighton.com
....79....
RITUAL
....................................
Modern Pilgrims
What’s your wholesome destination?
When we made our first pilgrimage together,
the ritualising of the walk that we did
made it into a pilgrimage. We were walking
a song that had been written by gypsies
about a tragedy where 37 hop-pickers were killed
on a bridge over the River Medway. When we
got to the monument in the churchyard where
they were buried, there was this couple there, and
we asked, ‘Why are you here?’ They said, ‘We
tried to find this monument ten years ago, but we
couldn’t - we had three ancestors who died in the
tragedy’. They hadn’t heard the song, and so we
got to return it, not only to the land where the
tragedy actually happened, but to the bloodline.
It was amazing, the power of ritualising something,
of having clear intention, and the very
specific destination of the source of the song; the
whole thing worked so well. What we realised
was that this was pilgrimage: a journey on foot
to a holy place - ‘holy’ being from the Old
English word ‘halled’, which just means holistic,
or wholesome. But having that focus changed
everything, and thus was our quest for pilgrimage
was born.
There’s no description in Britain that says you
have to go barefoot or not shave or brush your
hair; what binds it all together is walking: pilgrimage
is an unbroken journey on foot. There
are four principles which we call the ‘SONG’ of
pilgrimage: ‘S’ is for ‘self’, which means connecting
with your physical self. We talk a lot about the
spirituality of pilgrimage, but it’s a physical
journey; it puts you in your body in a way
that modern life often doesn’t allow. We’re of-
....80....
RITUAL
....................................
ten so hemmed in by walls and deadlines and
emails and mortgage repayments - all this stuff
that fills our minds in modern life – but all of
that kind of drifts away, and you find yourself
thinking about things in a totally different
way.
The ‘O’ is for ‘other’: connecting with the other
people you’re walking with. They become
your mirror, showing you the ugliest and the
best parts of yourself. The ‘N’ is ‘nature’; connecting
with more than just the human world
that we’ve created in cities, but everything. We
are just one animal amongst the whole wave of
life forms on earth, and it’s quite easy to forget
that in our anthropocentric, human-built lives.
Pilgrimage really strips that away.
The final one is connecting with your sense
of gratitude. Which obviously leads to the question:
what, or who, are you grateful to? And we
leave that up to people to decide.
There are lots of groups today which will take
you to places all over the country, but what we
really try and tell people is that if you want to
make a pilgrimage, you don’t have to take three
weeks or follow a signposted track. You can simply
work out for yourself where your wholesome
destination is, the one that calls to you - it might
be the grave of an ancestor, or a place where you
first experienced something significant. Choose
somewhere that feels like the right place, look
it up on Ordnance Survey maps, make sure you
plot a route that is away from the road, follow
footpaths as much as possible, and simply make
your own pilgrimage. You take a holiday, but you
make a pilgrimage - it’s a creative act - so there’s
a freedom within it to stretch to your own ritual
needs. As told to Rebecca Cunningham by Guy
Hayward and Will Parsons, founders of the British
Pilgrimage Trust.
They will be leading a two-night pilgrimage from
Lewes to Eastbourne, leaving on April 7th, see
britishpilgrimage.org
....81....
MY SPACE
....................................
Pete West
Mayor of Brighton
I’ve got two months to go. This is day 307 and
my 724th engagement. My spreadsheet calculates
that I might just get to 900 by the end of the year,
if I keep this up.
I’ve got a very long list of highlights. The first
was abseiling off Peacehaven cliffs for the Martlets.
That was properly scary. I won’t forget that in a
hurry. Then there was a special moment at Pride.
They were remembering all the victims of the
Orlando massacre and it was very powerful to
be invited to walk at the front of the procession.
Tandeming down to Lewes bonfire, with 100 other
people in the cycle train, was fun. And I love putting
medals on runners when they come in. The mayor
gets invited to start lots of things, but I like to be
there at the end to celebrate the achievement.
I’ve enjoyed meeting so many of what I call
our newer communities. I’ve met people from
the Filipino community who have been here for
around 20 years and who mostly work in the
health service. Many of these groups identify
through their faith, so I’ve been to Coptic Christian
celebrations and visited a Sudanese Muslim
women’s group.
One of the amazing things has been realising
how diverse the city is and what a beacon
of hope we project into the world. It’s not just
our ethnic diversity, but our massive LGBTQ
community too. People have come here because
they feel a sense of sanctuary. They feel welcome,
....82....
MY SPACE
....................................
Photos by Lizzie Lower
at home, and not judged. All that diversity leads to
all sorts of amazing things happening. The good
thing about being the mayor is that you get a year
to focus on that. Such positive news. I feel very
humbled by that. I thought I knew the city well,
but I’m still finding out new things every day.
The mayor would usually have three of four
charities, but I was faced with 16 or 17 applicants,
so I’ve created a family of charities - some
big, some small - and they’re learning from one
another and working together. There is so much
to embrace and support. People are motivated by
charitable giving and volunteering. Capturing all
that positive energy and getting people involved
is so important. I started my year with a theme,
‘active life’, and my first interpretation was from a
public-health point of view. But it’s not just physical
wellbeing that’s important, it’s mental health
too, so my reinterpretation is to be as active as you
can and involved.
I’m often invited to thank volunteers, and I’ve
had loads of receptions here at the town hall. It’s
a great place to invite people. We’ve had lots of
kids in too. Politicians are not highly regarded,
but the mayor seems to be immune from that.
Thankfully. Everyone seems to be well disposed
to the mayor. Kids see you as something between
a pirate and Santa Claus when you’re wearing all
the gear. When I’ve captured their interest, I’ll
take the group into the council chamber and ask
them to imagine all the decisions that have been
made there. I think that’s an important role for the
mayor to perform - to strengthen an interest in
democracy. As told to Lizzie Lower
....83....
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Viva Lewes half page March 17 b.indd 1 13/03/2017 15:12
RITUAL
....................................
Prof Jon Mitchell
Why do we have rituals?
“I don’t think society can
exist without rituals,” says
Jon Mitchell, Professor
of Social Anthropology at
Sussex University. “The
idea of human beings without
ritual is a non-starter.”
There is a caveat, though.
Ritual is a very broad term.
As well as the religious
kind, there are secular rituals
- which can be anything
from a stag do to the State
Opening of Parliament. Then there are personal
rituals: superstitious habits, for example. Anything
which is done partly for symbolic reasons can be
called ritual - and even that broad definition doesn’t
cover everything, apparently.
Ritual, in this wider sense, is “absolutely central”
to what it is to be human, Mitchell says. So why
are we a ritualistic species? Is it a social thing, to
do with bonding?
“That’s an argument that comes from Emile Durkheim,
a 19th-century sociologist-anthropologist
who was interested in religion. He argued that
at the core of religion is ritual activity, and ritual
activity is about social bonding. It’s about bringing
people together in the worship of something bigger.
And that something bigger, he said, is simultaneously
god and society. That when people come
together to celebrate what they think is god, they’re
actually celebrating the social bond that brings
them together. A very influential view.
“In some contexts, ritual is helping us to understand
that we’re part of something bigger, and what the
dynamics of that are. In the classic religious ‘rites of
collectivity’, it’s about recognising that we’re all a
part of a group, worshipping the same god.
“I think that translates into
[secular] ‘rituals of state’ as
well, which are about recognising
that we are part of
something bigger: the state
which is presiding over us...
For example, the ritualization
which goes into legal
proceedings is about recognising
that we’re subject to
a legal framework which is
shared and collective.
“More recently, people have
tweaked Durkheim’s idea, and started to recognise
that ritual can be about challenging social cohesion,
as well as constructing it. Ritual activity can
be about protesting; it can be about going against
the established social order. The kind of ways in
which some of the alter-globalisation movement
has started protesting in the last, say, 20-30 years, is
often highly ritualistic.
“And things like the Orange parades in Northern
Ireland; to what extent are they about creating a
cohesive group of unionists, and to what extent are
they actually about communicating with the Catholics,
and creating antagonism in relation to the
Catholics? So it [can be] as much about out-groups
as about in-groups.
“Ritual is partly, I’d say, a search for an understanding
of the social bonds in which we are located... It
goes back to the basic Durkheimian idea that ritual
is about constructing an idea of what ‘the social’ is,
and how are we are placed as individuals within it.
“We assume that, as humans, we are individual,
separated, psychological beings. And so ‘the social’
then becomes a problem. Actually ritual is about,
precisely, dealing with that issue.”
Steve Ramsey
....85....
INTERVIEW
....................................
The whip system
Recent Labour rebel Peter Kyle tells all
Peter Kyle walked into the Labour whips’ office,
accidentally interrupting a meeting. This was
a few months ago, before he defied the party’s
three-line whip over the Brexit bill. Perhaps the
whips guessed what he’d come to talk about.
“They all stopped and looked at me,” the MP for
Hove and Portslade recalls.
“The deputy chief whip walked over, walked past
me, and opened the door to his office, without
saying a word. I knew what I was supposed to do.
I walked in... He slammed the door shut and said
something quite frank and unrepeatable, along
the lines of ‘what are you doing here, Kyle’, but
using other words. I said to him ‘I’m intending to
break the whip.’”
If Kyle was nervous at this point, it would have
been understandable. Years earlier, he had read
Jeremy Paxman’s 2002 book The Political Animal.
It portrays whips as pretty fearsome people -
scheming, bullying, Machiavellian types. It says
that, ‘for the average backbencher, the whip is the
street-corner thug they need to get past on their
way home from school’. It’s got some worrying
stories about things whips have done to ensure
MPs’ obedience.
However, Kyle had also worked for Hilary
Armstrong, a former chief whip, and “had a lot of
conversations with her about how it changed…
I think what [Paxman] was describing was an era
that ended, pretty much, pretty soon into the
Blair period…
“I don’t think, in this day and age, the whips’
main job is actually discipline anymore. I think
the whips’ job is a much more sophisticated one
now… ninety percent of what I’ve experienced
from whips has been supportive. It’s much more
akin to the role of an HR department in any
other business.
“So, for example, I will get a phonecall from my
whip saying, ‘there’s a piece of legislation coming
in in two weeks’ time; we think this is something
that you’re really interested in and would have
an interesting perspective on - would you want
to speak on it? Would you like to go on the bill
committee for it? Is there any information we can
provide for you?’
“There’ll be other times when my whip will call
me and say, ‘we know that you are very, very busy
at the moment, you’re under a lot of stress; is
everything ok? Can we help you with anything?
Is there any additional support that you need – in
terms of information, lightening the load, that
kind of thing?’
“Whipping is far more about understanding the
challenges and problems that MPs have, than just
trying to squeeze them into one voting lobby in
one division… It’s a much more sophisticated
job than people realise; it’s a lot more supportive
than people realise. As an MP, I’ve always
been really grateful for it, although I’ve been
at the receiving end of some pretty challenging
conversations.”
For example, that Brexit-bill encounter in the
deputy chief whip’s office. “He tore into my argument...
We had a conversation that lasted about
half an hour. It ranged from quiet, deliberate,
detailed, calm conversation, to the other extreme,
where there were raised voices and… It was very,
....86....
INTERVIEW
....................................
very challenging. Probably the
single most challenging conversation
I’d had since I’d become an
MP. And I left slightly shaken, and
physically pretty much sweating.
“But the next day I went and did
some interviews when I went
against Tories on TV and the radio
about what I was doing. And at that
instant I was grateful for what I’d
been through the day before, because
my argument was sharper, I
had a much deeper clarity of vision
and clarity of purpose, and I felt
like I’d been given a real challenge
as to why I was doing it… I came
away from that experience with
more respect for the whips and
what they do than I had before.
“And at no point - I’m really keen
to stress this - at no point did I
ever feel that any of the whips, including
the deputy chief whip, was
disrespectful to me, or disrespectful
to the people who elected me,
or compromised my ability to act
in the best interests of my community.”
Which is not what one
might have expected, if whips still
behaved in the way that Paxman
described in The Political Animal.
“I think there has been a shift in
the way that whipping has been
done,” Kyle says. Though the
whips, I gather, still carry a certain
aura of intrigue. “The mythology,
I think, around whipping is
understandable… [Imagine] you’ve
told people who work for you, who
are friends with you, that you’re
thinking of rebelling on a piece of
legislation. Then you go into the whips’ office, they take you
apart on the argument and it doesn’t stand up, and you cave in.
If you leave and say, ‘they put the argument to me, and they’re
right and I’m wrong’, you’re going to look like a right idiot.
“But if you come out and say, ‘oh my god, they threatened me
with this, that and the other; they threatened to take my office
away, to bury me in committees, and not put money into my
campaign in the next election’, and all that stuff, then people
will understand it. So I think there is a… some people allow
the reputation of whips to grow because it kind of suits their
interests.” Steve Ramsey
....87....
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THE LOWDOWN ON...
....................................
Search-engine optimisation
With brightonSEO founder Kelvin Newman
Apparently there are
‘white-hat’ SEO techniques,
which involve
making a website
better, and ‘black-hat’
methods, which involve
tricking Google into
thinking a website’s better
when it isn’t. Is that
right? That’s a good way
of approaching that… But
there are lots of shades of grey between white and
black hat. Often it’s about what your motivation is,
and whether you can justify the approach you’re
using if it wasn’t for search reasons.
Google often updates its algorithms, possibly
to make SEO harder. Is it like an arms race between
Google and SEOs? I think a better way of
thinking of Google’s role is like a referee. They’re
refereeing between the different websites and saying
‘we prefer this type of approach’. They’re trying
to penalise the people who are diving, and reward
the people who are playing the game in the right
way. And Google do quite a lot to help people play
in the right way; they clarify the rules, they toughen
up the bans [for using black-hat techniques].
Is Google a good referee? To continue that
analogy, diving does sometimes work. But it comes
with risks. You can get a situation - and this has
happened in the past - where a major florist found
themselves banned by Google for Mother’s Day.
Does SEO involve creativity, or just applying
standard techniques? There’s fundamental rules,
changes you might want to make to your website
based on keywords that people are searching for.
So for a company that provides insurance for
expensive bicycles, on one level, you go, ‘ok, we
just need to reflect what people search for’. The
obvious one might
be ‘bike insurance’.
But some people
who are making
those queries might
be after motorbike
insurance. So, do we
optimise for ‘bike
insurance’? Because
you’re also then
going up against
the people who sell motorbike insurance - there’s
a lot more competition, it’s a lot harder to rank
for ‘bike insurance’ than for ‘bicycle insurance’.
But are more people searching for it? Does it have
a bigger value? Nitty-gritty decisions like that
become the challenges, before you start to get
into… For example, you might find that people
search for ‘cheap weekend breaks’, but the people
selling the weekend breaks don’t want to describe
themselves as cheap. So how do you navigate that as
well, before you then start to get into the technical
challenges, where it’s like, I would like to make
this change because this is what the search engines
want, but the content-management system you’re
on doesn’t allow you to make that change… There’s
some fundamental principles, but the devil’s in the
detail. Often it’s easy to come up with ideas that
help search, but it’s much harder to actually make
them happen.
So SEOs aren’t pure coding nerds? You also
need to understand psychology? Definitely; the
best people sit between those two disciplines. It’s a
technical creative discipline, so… it’s not an IT-type
role, if you see what I mean. Steve Ramsey
The brightonSEO conference is held every six
months. The next one is on April 7th, Brighton
Centre. brightonseo.com
....89....
Photos by Chloë King
....90....
HISTORY
....................................
The Chattri
‘Spiritual and physical protection’
The Chattri memorial, situated
high on the Downs near Patcham, is
usually accessible only on foot. In the
company of the Chair of the Chattri
Memorial Group Davinder Dhillon,
however, I am permitted to drive
here over open farmland, and as the
white dome appears modestly in the
distance, I’m moved by the view.
This unique memorial, named for
the Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi word
for ‘umbrella’, was unveiled by the
Prince of Wales, Edward VIII, in
1921. Today, it is adorned with saffron
and blue cloths, representing the Hindu and
Sikh soldiers cremated here. Three raised slabs,
bordered by weathered poppy wreaths, mark the
cremation sites. “Looking at it,” says Davinder, “the
Chattri represents shelter from the elements. It offers
spiritual and physical protection.”
Some 12,000 soldiers from India were treated in
Brighton during the First World War, and in many
ways, the Chattri is a partner to the Gateway to the
Royal Pavilion, erected the same year as a gift from
India in gratitude for the work of ‘Doctor Brighton’.
On this remote hill off Standean Lane, 53 Indian
soldiers were cremated in traditional ceremonies.
“They would have been sad but practical affairs,”
Davinder tells me.
The mourners had responsibility for gathering wood
and building a pyre on which they laid the body, covered
with clean white sheets. Prayers would be given
and then the pyre would be set alight. Afterwards, the
ashes would be gathered, taken to the sea, and scattered
over moving water.
The 1902 Cremation Act made it illegal to hold
funerals to these rites, but it is thought that the King
made an exception in respect of these soldiers. The
inscription on the Chattri acknowledges
it as the site where soldiers
“passed through the fire”, in poetic
reference to their reincarnation.
The inscription, however, may be
open to different interpretations,
says Davinder. “It’s a creative
phrase, and a good phrase, in my
view, but sadly, you can interpret
it as referring to all Indians, or
just the Sikhs and the Hindus.”
India at the time was pre-partition,
and 19 Muslim soldiers, who
also died in Brighton and were
buried near Woking, should also be considered. The
Chattri honours all the Indian soldiers, and also the
Nepalese Gurkhas.
Each year, on the second Sunday in June, a pilgrimage
is made to the Chattri to honour them. Davinder
took responsibility for this commemoration quite
by accident. In 2000, he saw an article saying that
the Royal British Legion was struggling to continue
the service they had performed there since 1950. He
offered to help make the teas, only to find himself
tasked with the whole event.
Davinder has since grown what was a dwindling
gathering, to a meeting of over 500. People from
across the UK come for a wreath-laying service
and an exhibition, and each year, Davinder grows
our connection to the Chattri, meeting people and
learning new aspects of its story. It’s important and
gratifying work.
“It’s conceivable that the First World War, the Western
Front at least, would have been lost without the
Indians,” he says, “and yet it’s just a footnote in history.
Part of my motivation, if you like, is to correct
that imbalance.” Chloë King
chattri.org
....91....
SPORT
....................................
Lewes Ladies FC
At the top of their game
Photo by James Boyes
We speak to Ash
Head, media and PR
manager of Lewes
Ladies FC.
Who are the
Rookettes? Members
of Lewes FC Ladies.
The nickname for
the men is the Rooks,
so the women are affectionately
called the
Rookettes. Both teams
play at the Dripping
Pan in Lewes and share training facilities. Lewes
Ladies play in the FA Women’s Premier League,
alongside Tottenham, West Ham, Cardiff. We’re
a small-town team playing against big-city clubs.
We’re currently mid-table. The Rookettes recently
beat the Women’s side of Leicester City, which
means we’re through to the FAWPL Plate Final,
at Brackley Town FC’s stadium on the 23rd of
April. That’s St George’s Day, which works for us
because our goal scorer was Georgia Bridges.
How did you come to be involved? I used to
watch the men and thought nothing of women’s
football. One day, I was persuaded to watch Lewes
Ladies, and I’ve never looked back. If push comes
to shove, I’d watch the women over the men.
Why is that? The men are a little faster, but both
teams are equally skillful. I find the women’s game
easier to follow, and you don’t get the petulance
and aggression from players, or negativity from
opposing fans. The women’s game is hard but fair.
There’s a great camaraderie after the game. Plus,
we get fantastic supporters.
You’ve got some special events coming up...
Yes, to highlight an immense injustice in women’s
football. In 1921, the FA banned women from
playing on men’s pitches, effectively killing off
ladies’ football. The
best-known team of
that time, Dick Kerr
Ladies, was formed in
1917, during WWI,
from workers at a
Preston munitions
factory. One Christmas
Day match they drew
a crowd of 10,000, and
donated the whole
gate (£38,000 in
today’s money) to the
war wounded. So Lewes Ladies are donating their
entire gate for the last four matches of this season
to local women’s charities, in their honour.
Where do Lewes Ladies get their players? The
pathway starts with the Newman Lewes Academy
for girls, followed by the Foundation Squad, then
the Development Squad. All are managed by John
Donoghue and Jacquie Agnew, who is a Lewes FC
director. (Four of the ten members of the Lewes
FC board are women).
How is the team funded? As well as gate receipts,
both the men’s and women’s teams are funded
from income from community ownership of Lewes
FC (£30 buys a year’s membership, which offers
members discounts in many Lewes businesses).
Plus sponsorship of players by local businesses.
What's different about Lewes FC? It’s an extension
of Lewes, so it’s open and friendly. Beautiful
views, great food, Harvey’s bitter, plus things like
fantastic posters and hospitality beach huts. We’re
family friendly, and visiting supporters always say
they love the place. Interview by Emma Chaplin
Home matches this month: Lewes Ladies v Charlton,
Sun 9th, 2pm, Lewes Ladies v Coventry, tbc.
The Dripping Pan, Mountfield Road, Lewes BN7
2XA. £3/kids go free. lewesfc.com / @Rookmeister
....92....
HEALTH
....................................
OCD
Clawing back control
Obsessive Compulsive
Disorder (OCD) is
essentially an anxietydriven
condition, but like
all repetitive behaviours,
the compulsion may start
to function like any other
addiction. The OCD
sufferer may feel they have
to do increasingly more
of their compulsive behaviour just to feel ‘normal’
- just as the addict may need to take increasingly
more of a substance to get the same hit.
I see OCD as particularly ritualized: ‘If I do
this, I’ll avert some disaster; I won’t be powerless’.
There’s often a superstitious element to it, doing
whatever it is - checking, cleaning, counting - a
certain number of times.
One very important, basic emotional need is
the need to feel some control over one’s life
and environment. You see that need come out
in all sorts of ways, sometimes maladaptively
- perhaps as perfectionism. Someone with an
under-quenched need for feeling control and
autonomy in their life might try to get it through
unrealistic, unreasonable means. You could say that
religions are society’s attempt to control capricious
nature, to give a sense of control. There’s a lot of
uncertainty about the world, and in such times we
try to claw back some certainty: at least I know
how many times I’m doing this activity, at least I
can control how long I’m showering for.
We could say that with OCD, as with any
problem, there’s a need trying to get through,
but the ‘solution’ can become a problem. An
analogy would be someone drinking engine oil in
the desert because they’ve no water and they’re
desperate to hydrate.
There’s a lot of
research that actually
suggests that the more
you check, the less
reliable your memory
of what you’ve done
becomes. Once the
imagination is involved,
there’s almost a falsememory
effect: you become less sure whether
you’ve checked. It’s a good idea to check once or
twice whether you’ve turned the gas off or locked
the door, but spending four hours doing it isn’t
great. I teach people to trust their perceptions
more. One exercise I do is I clap my hands, and
then get them to close their eyes and tell them
to imagine me clapping my hands. Then I really
clap my hands, and I get them to tell me which
one was real. They always identify the real clap.
That would be the beginning of trusting their
perceptions rather than imagining.
People often understand that it’s irrational,
but that can make it worse - the knowing. It’s the
arousal that’s the problem: it’s the emotion driving
the thinking rather than the other way round, and
you can only appeal to the rational, cognitive part
of the brain once the emotions are calmed down. I
think that a therapeutic skill that’s necessary across
all models is the ability to sit calmly with someone,
so that the emotional temperature can drop.
You can’t clear the back garden until the wind’s
dropped, otherwise the leaves will keep getting
whipped up. An emotionally heightened state
makes extremists of us all. As told to Andy Darling
by Mark Tyrrell, psychology trainer and psychotherapist
uncommonknowledge.co.uk
....93....
Illustration by Mark Greco
WILDLIFE
....................................
Ghost Moths
Spectral dancers of the South Downs
Last summer, as the sun set over the South Downs,
I was wandering through a wood on a twilight hike.
Through the trees I noticed about a dozen figures
decked out in brilliant white gathering in a small
clearing. I hit the floor and, buried amongst the
bracken, watched as other white figures joined them.
Each individual slowly started swaying, swinging
hypnotically like a pendulum suspended on an
invisible wire. The whole silent scene felt eerie,
otherworldly, ancient. I was spellbound and barely
breathing, scared I would be discovered and this
mesmerising performance would end. As some of
the figures swung fixed to their stations, others oscillated
wildly, whirling and crashing into each other.
The light was fading fast, and as my surroundings
dissolved into shadow, the swaying white figures
seemed luminous against the gloom. Then, as the
full moon rose and illuminated the glade, the action
slowed, the figures retreated and I was left alone in
the gloaming.
The ritual I had witnessed was not the sinister
secret ceremony of some part-time pagans. This
was the dance of the ghost moths: elaborate
courtship behaviour performed by the male moths
on warm summer evenings across Sussex. That
moonlit glade had been temporarily transformed
into a miniature moth disco where these incredible
insects pirouetted, pranced, swaggered and strutted
in an attempt to attract a female. More Saturday
Night Fever than The Wicker Man.
And, like tiny Travoltas, the male ghost moths
know that to stand out on a crowded dancefloor,
you need a flashy white suit. Their wings are whiter
than white and look as though they have been
hand-painted with Tipp-Ex. The female ghost
moth has a more subdued wardrobe and wears pale
yellow wings with elegant orange swirls. Males also
have another trick up their sleeve (or in this case
their trouserlegs). Their hind legs contain furry
scent-brushes which release pheromones into the
air which act as an overpowering aphrodisiac. Once
the ladies are lured it’s the individual moth’s dancing
which seals the deal. It can be murder on the dancefloor
and scuffles start as the males try to assert their
positions. It’s a behaviour known as lekking and the
dominant dancers will lead a lucky lady of the lek
into the surrounding shadows.
In days gone by the moth’s mysterious, ethereal
waltz was interpreted as something supernatural and
it has been suggested that the dance of the ghost
moth gave rise to local legends of fairies and will-o’-
the-wisp.
For many years I believed that an empty dancefloor,
Stevie Wonder’s Superstition and a splash of Brut 33
was all that was needed for the ladies to fall under
my spell. Yet the ghost moths seemed to have more
success. I knew I should have gone for the white suit.
Michael Blencowe, Sussex Wildlife Trust
....95....
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T E L : 0 1 2 7 3 4 7 9 9 9 8
E M A I L : I N F O @ M O D P O D S . C O . U K
W W W . M O D P O D S . C O . U K
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䌀 漀 瘀 攀 爀 椀 洀 愀 最 攀 戀 礀 匀 椀 洀 漀 渀 攀 刀 椀 氀 攀 礀
猀 椀 洀 漀 渀 攀 爀 椀 氀 攀 礀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀
吀 爀 愀 渀 猀 昀 漀 爀 洀 礀 漀 甀 爀 栀 漀 洀 攀 眀 椀 琀 栀 漀 甀 爀 昀 椀 渀 攀 猀 琀 焀 甀 愀 氀 椀 琀 礀
匀 㨀 䌀 刀 䄀 䘀 吀 洀 愀 搀 攀 ⴀ 琀 漀 ⴀ 洀 攀 愀 猀 甀 爀 攀 椀 渀 琀 攀 爀 椀 漀 爀 猀 栀 甀 琀 琀 攀 爀 猀 ⸀
琀 ⸀ ㈀ 㜀 アパート アパート アパート 㠀 㐀 ㈀
攀 ⸀ 挀 漀 渀 琀 愀 挀 琀 䀀 戀 攀 氀 氀 愀 瘀 椀 猀 琀 愀 猀 栀 甀 琀 琀 攀 爀 猀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀
眀 ⸀ 眀 眀 眀 ⸀ 戀 攀 氀 氀 愀 瘀 椀 猀 琀 愀 猀 栀 甀 琀 琀 攀 爀 猀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀
RITUAL
....................................
Street Festivals
Identity parades
Rituals don’t just take
place in buildings associated
with faith or religion.
Brighton and Hove has
created many rituals on its
streets to mark the passing
of the year. On the
seafront alone there will
be some 19 events, from
the marathon to speed
trials and the somewhat
slower Classic Car Run.
They sit in an annual
calendar of public parades
and happenings held each
year to celebrate who and
where we are.
During its long history, our annual Pride day has
transformed from a political march to a ritual celebration
of our gay community that is intrinsic to
the city’s culture. Brighton and Hove also held the
first Trans Pride in the UK, now in its fourth year.
We’re coming up to two of the biggest of our
calendar rituals - the Brighton Festival and Fringe.
This year’s Festival guest director, Kate Tempest,
has urged that some of the programme be delivered
out in the community, and this year we’ll see
events in Whitehawk and Hangleton, with Your
Place creative hubs alongside a range of outdoor
events. Festival season starts with one of the most
joyous of our annual street marches, that of the
Children’s Parade, this year on the 6th of May.
The Fringe can be found on the streets all month
long, particularly on New Road, with its weekend
smorgasbord of performances.
Where the Children’s Parade marks the beginning
of springtime and the fairer conditions that
make outdoor ritual
more pleasant, Same
Sky’s Burning the Clocks
marks our mid-winter
celebration. Brighton’s
White Night events
marked the ritual turning
of the seasonal clock with
a city-wide programme
of events late into the
night on the last day of
British Summertime.
Donna Close, Arts Officer
at the Council at the
time of White Night, and
one of the driving forces
behind it, comments:
‘The best festivals always have an association with
ritual, not least in the way they mark key points in
the year and the passing of the years. White Night
was conceived as a modern-day ritual.’ With ritual
comes myth and a quick affection, and Donna
recalls, ‘You have to give space for the audience
to bring themselves to the experience in order for
it to be meaningful. Just after the fourth and last
White Night event, someone was saying that they
had gone to the first ever White Night in the mid-
1990s… success!’
None of these festivals can take place without the
people of the place, and they take a huge amount
of volunteer hours and enthusiasm. Much loved
rituals, such as Kemptown Carnival, operate in a
precarious setting and are reliant on community
support. Brighton’s Trans Pride is also in need of
help this year - find them on Facebook to see if
you can help.
Cara Courage
Photo by Lizzie Lower
....97....
INSIDE LEFT: CHURCHILL SQUARE, 1973
.....................................................................................
This photo of the old Churchill Square Shopping Centre was taken in 1973, a year when young men were uncomfortable
if their hair didn’t cover their ears (or their flares their toes); when Brighton buses were stripy and
colour coded; when the Albion were languishing in the old Third Division; when Brighton & Hove was still
more than a quarter-century away from becoming a city. We reckon it was taken from a flat in Sussex Heights.
Churchill Square was built in 1967 in the place of a neighbourhood which incorporated a number of highstreet
shops, lots of terraced houses, several pubs and an underground church, all demolished in the cause of
progress. At the time it was the height of modernity, but it very soon became dated, after indoor shopping malls
became all the rage, and within just 31 years the complex itself was razed to the ground, with the new covered
centre built in its place.
It’s worth pointing out a few details you can see in this picture. The sculpture in the back (south) open space
was called Spirit of Brighton, and was designed as a water feature by the experimental artist Bill Mitchell, who
pioneered the use of recycled materials in his work. The water soon stopped running, and the statue became
a folly-like feature that a lot of townspeople loved to hate, its base filled with crisp packets and empty cans:
few mourned it when it was demolished in 1998 along with the rest of the Centre. The space around it
was poorly designed and became something of a wind-tunnel, though it was a popular area for the first
generation of skateboarders.
The round building at the other side of the complex was, when the photo was taken, a wedding-dress shop
called Solitaire: white-clad mannequin-brides looked out from each of the rectangular first-floor windows.
Other businesses located in the complex (and thanks here to members of the Brighton Past Facebook page
for the information) included British Home Stores (one of the ‘anchor’ stores at the front), Tesco, The Green
Shield Stamps shop, Slims Café, Orange Hand, Hall of Cards, Cox’s Hi-fi, Savory & Moore Chemists, Habitat
and Bejam. At the top of the picture, just left of centre, you can see the Union Church, as featured in VB#49.
When the Square was rebuilt in 1998, the Council decided it would keep the name given to it in 1967:
Winston, of course, was partly schooled down the seafront in Hove. Alex Leith
Thanks to the Royal Pavilion and Museums for the use of this picture. brightonmuseums.org.uk
....98....
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