Waltham Forest Arts Club Pop Up Gallery
Wood St Indoor Market (photo: Julie Caves)
Waltham Forest Arts Club
Turnaround Programme (design: Julie Caves)
A while I go I saw a very old man with enormous wings. I did. I did. Ok so he wasn't a real very old man with enormous wings but rather he or it was a puppet in a play courtesy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kneehigh Theatre and the magical Little Angel Theatre. I know the difference between suspended disbelief and reality; how sad is that? Get lost and maintain your grip on fantasy is my current dictum for the purposes of psycho well being. However I am not sure I am managing to get my five full wholesome fantasies a day and perhaps the recent infrequency of posts on Lost and Found in E17 is a symptom of this. Psycho geographer's constipation (PGC) is, some might say, a condition that is of some benefit to the well being of others - if not the host. I hope you will excuse me for letting a little go. What, for nowhere's sake, brought about this miraculous shift?
In the play, the very old winged man descends on a run down fishing village and brings, initially, the benefits of certain healing powers. All in the village are briefly well and better until various entrepreneurial opportunities are seized upon and the poor old man is incarcerated, fed on a meagre diet of potato peelings and his healing powers exploited.
So was it a winged man who cured me of PGC? No. Wood St, as one of the islands in the Archipelago, has instead been visited by a very pink bear, with ever so slightly enormous bunches of flowers, who kisses unsuspecting ladies. It is a creature with similar healing powers to that of the very old man with enormous wings. I rubbed my eyes and blinked, turned around a full 360 degrees and feasted my psycho gaze on the big pink one. With a tell tale rumble and the inklings of a tall tale I just knew I had been magically cured of my PGC.
If Marquez gave us a cautionary tale rendered in magical realist style then we must not repeat the mistakes of the villagers in feeding our magical friend potato peelings nor confine it to the whimsy above. Yes, if this bear doesn't get a balanced diet of wholesome fantasies, it's magic can create some peculiar side effects. I have not dared look at myself in the mirror since feasting my eyes upon the considerable pinkness. Look at this photographic evidence of pink bear malnutrition.
The lady there appears totally transfixed by the pink. Little does she realise some joker has just offered the pink a bowl of potato peelings. Just a few minutes later I discovered the pretty gruesome effects of malnourished pink bear magic
Is this another person afflicted by potato peeling fed pink bear magic? These faces may look pretty however closer inspection reveals some disturbing features you might wish to confine to an odd bad dream time on a cold winter's night.
Masks - Marie Louise Plum (photos: J Beere)
As a co-curator of Waltham Forest Arts Club pop up gallery I have a shared duty of care to our artists and gallery visitors. I have had cause to advise, in no uncertain terms, participating arts club members not to feed vegetable peelings to the pink bear. No scraps. We are talking about a spirit of fellowship and neighbourliness in here you know.
Oh dear. An email has just arrived in my inbox that sheds a different sort of fluorescence on the pink beary fluffiness. Field Study Art archaeologists or field artaeologists have been scraping away at the layers of Julian Beere's everyday ignorance, indifference and familiarity to expose this modernist extra mural apparition
Surely not? The email states there is studied field intelligence to indicate the pink bear is a scout for a Mayan inspired alien invasion of planet Walthamstow - and the uplit trees and cool Dan Flavinesque lights recently installed by Creatmosphere have unwittingly (?) created a guided and lit landing strip of Wood St for an alien spacecraft. Heck.
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