ingénu/e 37, Autumn 2022

ingénu/e creative talent

The Art of Giving artists with creative gift ideas for the festive season Autumn Festivals plus exhibitions reviews & interviews concerts, gigs, theatre & film creative courses & workshops book reviews; poetry & flash fiction

BOTANICAL PAPER CUTTING

Saturday 29th October, 10:30am

This workshop is ideal for beginners interested in learning the basics of paper Cutting. Paper Cutting is a fast growing trend and a great way of creating designs to brighten up your home, create decorations for special occasions such as Christmas and Weddings, or make personal gifts for friends and family.

ADVANCED CREATIVE PAPER QUILLING

Saturday 5th November, 10am

Tutor Stephanie Smart teaches an advanced quilling class for all those who have learnt the basic technique and would like to see what else is possible. If you’d like to try moving from two-dimensional designs to three-dimensional shapes using this historic rolled paper craft – orignally known as paper filigree – come back and learn how.

MAKE YOUR OWN DORSET BUTTON NECKLACE

Saturday 12th November, 10am

Dorset buttons are fun to make and have infinite uses. This workshop will take you through basic button making skills. designing your own buttons, and turning them into a unique piece of jewellery. Suitable for beginners and advanced crafters alike.

FESTIVE WRAPPING

Thursday 1st December, 6pm

Forget the glitzy wrapping paper and instead create personalised packaging using fabric, paper or card. We will be using low-cost, eco and recycled materials. You will never look back! Finish with ribbons and a garnish! There will be a chance to look at some items from the collection for inspiration.

FESTIVE WREATH MAKING

Saturday 3rd December, 10:30am

Sunday 4th December, 11:15

It’s time to deck your halls so come and join our festive wreath making workshop using an amazing variety of greenery and a wealth of decorations. Learn how to weave a willow base or create a one o eye-catching wreath with unusual materials!

CHRISTMAS TABLE DECORATION

Sunday 10th December, 10am

Get into the festive spirit creating a Christmas table decoration for your home! You will learn how to create a table (or mantle piece) decoration for your Christmas festivities using fresh-cut foliage, decorations and candles.

DRAWING WITH CHARCOAL

Saturday 28th January, 1pm

Get into the festive spirit creating a Christmas table decoration for your home! You will learn how to create a table (or mantle piece) decoration for your Christmas festivities using fresh-cut foliage, decorations and candles.

and Prejudice* (*sort of) at the Chichester Festival Theatre

to 25th February

from its triumph in the West End where it won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Comedy, Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) is a unique and audacious retelling of Jane Austen’s most iconic love story. It’s the 1800s. It’s party time.

the ruthless matchmaking begin!

Venables

Hello dear readers and welcome!

Autumn is now well and truly upon us and our thoughts turn, somewhat reluctantly, from sunny outings and balmy evenings to woodland walks, a nip in the air and wellies swishing through fallen leaves, and cosy evenings – preferably by a log fire – with a warming drink and a good book or a live band down the local with friends. Autumn for me is marked by the steady ingress into the house of daddy long-legs and enormous gangly evil-looking spiders; trying to beat the birds and wasps to the apples ripening on our tree (with limited success); and a fascination for the natural world as it starts to shut down, turning off its lights and spreading its duvet of fallen leaves over the cooling earth. The magic of leaves turning, tinges of amber against a moody sky that signal that the year is on the wane, which never ceases to catch at my heart.

After a busy summer of art trails and open studios events, artists are once again starting to prepare for the next big event on the calendar. Festive art and craft fairs and exhibitions aimed at getting people into the Christmas spirit start to pop up all across the region and our artists and makers take this opportunity to promote and sell their work. It has often occurred to me that if every household bought at least one item from an artist or maker in their area the world would be a better place. The artists, makers, writers, design ers et al would sell more of their work and thus be better equipped to keep on creating, which would also benefit the local economy. The recipient would have something beautifully hand crafted, probably unique, possibly with some link to the area – such as a landscape or seascape painting or a book by a local author set in that area. It could be as little as a delightful Christmas decoration made by a glass artist, or as much as a stunning painting, sculpture or beautiful ceramic piece by a local artist. Either way there would be less tat cluttering up homes or ending up in landfill or the ocean... all in all it would be a win-win situation.

This issue is packed with gift ideas for Christmas – the lead feature's entire focus is 'The Art of Giving' –there are more book reviews than usual, with four volumes of poetry reviewed. I'm a big fan of poetry, the reflection of the writer's view of life, often written in response to some external – and sometimes internal –stimulus and occasionally laying bare the heart and soul of the writer. It resonates. Once poets were the rock stars of their age, but in the last half of the 20th century poetry suffered a waning in popularity. Now, once again, it has claimed its rightful place in the culture and these volumes will make perfect Christmas gifts.

Now with covid a (nearly) distant memory, theatres and venues are packing out again, just in time for panto season. With a plethora of concerts, gigs, shows and plays, tickets also make a great Christmas or pre-Christmas gift. So spurn the chain stores, seek out your local art fairs, support your local venues... and have a fabulous Christmas!

spotlight on... the art of giving

What is art? Well, we might all have our own definition for the word. But I think we could all agree that it is born out of creativity. But doesn’t buying a gift require some creativity? The more one uses one’s creative imagination in buying a gift, the more of an effect one causes, just like an artist.

And so, feast your eyes on this smorgasbord of potential gifts created by local artists and let your imagination and your wallet do the rest!

A Warm Christmas Glow at The Lighthouse!

Awarm Christmas welcome awaits at The Lighthouse Gallery in Eastbourne. Come in from the cold and en ter a wonderland of carefully curated art and unique hand crafted gifts created by twenty-five talented local artists and makers. Featuring paintings, prints, textiles, ceramics, wood, glass, jewellery and more, we have something in store for everyone.

Giving the gift of your support to local artists and independent businesses in these challenging economic times is more valuable than ever and with this in mind we have plenty of affordable small gifts and artworks available.

Plenty to tempt your tastebuds too as you mull over your Christ mas shopping list with warm mulled wine, exceptional coffee, home made soup, freshly made sandwiches and locally baked cakes on the menu.

The gallery will be taking part in the Eastbourne Artists Christ mas Open House Trail taking place on 19/20 and 26/27 November

2022 and will be opening late on Thursdays throughout December to 6pm.

The Lighthouse Gallery, 19 Cornfield Terrace, Eastbourne, BN21 4NS. Open 10-4pm, Tuesday to Saturday. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

from top: Suesie Seedpod, Red Felted Scarf; Jazz Dixon, Glass Christmas Decorations; Jacinta Dalley, Snowflake Earrings and Circular Earrings; Lynda Lindfield, Heart Necklace; Heather Penny, Seven Sisters lino print

Glittery Gallery in Shoreham!

Following a sensational summer we have a glittering season ahead at Shoreham Art Gallery with lots of interesting and diverse work on display by our special guest artists and twentyone gallery members.

David Lilly, talented Sussex jeweller and contestant on BBC2’s 'All That Glitters', will be showing some of his exceptional handcrafted pieces at the gallery in October and November. Meet the Artist on Saturday 29th October from 10am to 1pm.

Inner and Outer Worlds exhibition in the Little BIG Gallery upstairs in October has work by three gallery artists: stunning glass fusion by Sarah Jane Bridgland; paintings of special spaces by Phil Driver; and mysterious drawings in pastel and watercolour pencil by Claudine Péronne. All the artists use colour and light in a very personal way and we’re looking forward to this illuminating show.

Our October Guest Artist is popular 3D textile artist, Joanna Rawlings, whose expertise with raw wool and wire will inspire and bring a smile to your face with her variety of bird and animal sculptures.

We also welcome textile and mixed media artist, Esther Collins, who has recently joined the gallery. Esther combines fabric, paper and stitch, building up beautiful textile collages, embroidered pictures and vessels.

Delving into the minds of artists can be mind boggling at times but considering the works of sculptor Teresa Martin (see p.34) and painter Chris Dawson can twist the brain cells with the concepts and techniques used to create them. In Novem ber they are putting on a sensational show ‘Trick or Treat’. Expect both from these amazing artists.

There are also book signings and other events at the Gallery leading up to Christmas. To find out more about what’s going on visit www.shorehamgallery.co.uk/news or subscribe to our monthly newsletter. Shoreham Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden is open every day with a wide range of original work all very reasonably priced.

from top: David Lilly, Earrings; Esther Collins, Autumn Leaves; Phil Driver, The Old Greenhouse; Sarah Bridgland, Blue Appassionata

The Art of Giving at ArtSpring Gallery, Tonbridge

AtArtSpring we pride ourselves on being a one stop Gallery in the High Street for original presents. All our artists and designers strive to pro duce quality work at affordable prices.

Whether it is stylish jewellery with a modern twist, original prints and drawings or paintings, we pride ourselves on offering a modern range of art to suit all tastes. All our artists work in the Gallery and are avail able to offer advice and information about all the work. Please call in and try on the jewellery, all are welcome.

The glassware and ceramics are especially popular, adding a decorative stylish touch to any interior.

Our inspiration comes from the local landscape and environment in Kent, interpreted in etchings, paintings and even mixed media textile art. Whether it is Herne Bay Harbour, Camber Sands, just the splash of waves on rocks or even time out spent in the garden, all feature in the 2D work.

It’s true that we are all motivated to create and often work tirelessly to create work that inspires us to improve and move forward. Our dedication is our gift to you and we hope it is appreciated.

We offer guest slots and are particularly interested in helping young artists start their journey to pro duce individual ideas and designs. We are motivated to show how to promote and run a gallery and want to give others the opportunity to experience a supportive co-operative, though commercial venture.

More information at www.artspringgallery.co.uk

from top: Painting Print & Textile: Antonia Enthoven; Claire Longley; Nick Hebditch; Gillian Smith. Glass and Ceramics: Jane Bridger; Paul Chave; Marie Pearson; Hilary Shields. Painting & Drawing: Ben Cotterill; Ruth McDonald; Katie Whitbread; Colin Anderson. Jewellery: Alf; Anne McArdle; Camilla West; Sarah Weatherall

Greenfinch unique gift ideas in Ticehurst

Give a handmade gift this Christmas, made locally in Sussex or Kent.

Greenfinch is all about supporting local artists and makers, and what you’ll find here is a carefully chosen quirky mix of artwork, sculpture, ceramics, jewellery, garden items, homeware, cards, books, natural candles and bath & body products, as well as a small range of women’s clothing and accessories. All from artists, makers and small independent companies across Sussex and Kent.

Choose from a wide collection and price range, safe in the knowledge that the vast majority of our goods are lovingly handmade and thus unique. And of course you’re supporting an artist or maker as well as an independent business with a physical presence on the High Street.

There’s always a warm welcome waiting, with a natural candle burning – and the soundtrack to match. And we offer complimen tary gift wrapping!

When I opened in October 2019 my vision was, and remains, to have a relaxed welcoming space, open and accessible for all to feel comfortable wandering in for a browse, or to pick up just a card or a candle. We also hold regular events – please join our mailing list via www.greenfinchshop.co.uk to keep up to date.

Come and visit us to see what all the fuss is about. Greenfinch, Church Street, Ticehurst TN5 7AE Tuesday to Saturday 10.30 to 4.30. Follow us on Insta gram and Facebook @greenfinchticehurst www.greenfinchshop. co.uk

clockwise from top: Anne Barrell, Seaside Fruit Bowl; Julian Warrender, Hare & Moonstone Pendant with Sapphire Eye; Ali All, Pottery Plums Bowl; Lorraine Singer, Stone ware Moon Jar with poured glazes; Stephen Duffy, A Fine Catch Dish; Sussex Willow Hens

All are handmade in Sussex or Kent.

the art of

The Little Art Gallery an abundance of gift ideas

Sitting here in this wonderful summer it is hard to start thinking about the coming autumn and winter and what we will be displaying for the festive season. To be honest we do actually fit the bill all year round for people wanting to find a unique gift. There is nothing nicer than to find a gift for a special person and to see their delight when receiving it.

In our little gallery we pride ourselves in having something to suit all tastes and price brackets. From a £3.50 glass heart to a £200 necklace, a £10 pewter key ring to a £250 Raku Koru or a £1 postcard to a £3,000 oil painting.

We are open Thursday to Sunday and may reduce the days further into the winter but we are always happy to open at other times by appointment. This really works well if you are looking for a special gift or painting for yourself. It gives time to have a good look around and pull out things we have hidden away as our display area is small. Our opening times may vary so please remem ber to check www.thelittleartgallery.online for news.

top: Inside the little art gallery; right: Artists' materials at Midhurst Gallery

The golden glow of Autumn is upon us and the year is heading slowly towards the Christmas season with all its glittering festivity. Light up the faces of your loved ones on Christmas Day with a special gift from The Midhurst Gallery.

In the light and airy Gallery the walls are filled with original paintings by artists from the 1800's to present day that will appeal to many different tastes. The glowing colours of landscapes in oil, pastel and

Hidden Treasures at Midhurst Gallery

watercolour, with local Sussex scenes well repre sented, shine out alongside floral studies, portraits, antique maps and an extensive collection of prints.

For the budding or seasoned artist there are art materials to browse and choose from, and among the Gallery's large selection of art greetings cards will be the perfect card to brighten up that special someone's day.

You can find The Midhurst Gallery tucked away in the outskirts of the old town, at the Mint Market, Grange Road, Midhurst. Contact them on 01730 812177 or visit www.midhurstgallery.co.uk.

Warm fuzzy feelings at Chalk Gallery, Lewes

In the book 'The Gift' Lewis Hyde argues that gift giving can change our lives. He also believes that when an artist makes something they are giving a

gift back to the world.

It can feel a little like that when you wander into Chalk Gallery and find yourself surrounded by colour ful glass, tactile ceramics, and paintings and prints of all sizes. The range of affordable artworks by our fifteen members is varied but united by one thing; the artists’ shared love for making work, investing their time, care and skill liberally with each piece.

Purchasing artwork from artists has a magical quality to it. When an artwork changes hands, the

connection between the cus tomer and the artist creates a warm, fuzzy feeling on both sides. We often see this at Chalk, where visitors to the gallery are delighted to meet the artists working there.

Maybe when you buy an art work as a present, you not only buy a gift for your loved one, but also receive a gift yourself. We hope that you find something which brings you a warm, fuzzy feeling at Chalk Gallery this Christmas.

Open every week, Thursday to Sunday, 11.00am to 4.00pm www.chalkgallerylewes.co.uk/shop

top: 'Cowdray Park, South Downs' by Richard Ashcroft, an example of artworks at The Midhurst Gallery

above: Gina Lelliott, Let it Snow, fused glass; left: Gina Lelliott, Christmas Present, fused glass –both at Chalk Gallery, Lewes

The Sussex Arts Collective at Gallery Uno

UNO22 TWELVE 'A Festive Merriment' Christmas 2022 Exhibition

Having completed their first eventful year at their dedicated exhibition space on Seaford High Street, the Sussex Arts Collective concludes their first series of UNO22 exhibitions with a show for the festive season ‘A Festive Merriment’.

Since its inception Uno has evolved rapidly to become a hugely popular destination for those in the locality and those visiting the town in their growing numbers. It has not only provided Seaford town centre with a much needed commercial venue for art, design and craft but has also added to the portfolio of diverse and appealing independent shops throughout the town centre.

The gallery’s permanence has enabled the group to develop their unique approach, employed in other venues, of juxtaposing fine art alongside design and craft which has captivated visitors and purchasers of their work in the past.

On entering Uno it will quickly become apparent – regardless of whether you are looking for a major piece of fine art, a piece of pottery or glass, something

to enhance your interior décor or a thoughtful and special gift for some one – that you can be assured of acquiring a distinctive piece of artwork conceived and created from scratch.

They look forward to seeing you very soon.

As with all their previous exhibitions the Collective will display a vibrant mix of work gathered from the rich seam of artists and makers from across the county.

The Sussex Arts Collective at Gallery Uno. Opening Times: Thursday 1st to Thursday 22nd December, open daily: 10am – 4pm Monday to Saturdays, Sundays 12pm – 3pm.

top: Lynn Beck, Cuckmere; above: Chris Ford, wood ash on iron glaze vase

Littlehampton Museum

OPEN 2022 'HOPE' until 23rd November

Littlehampton Museum is thrilled to announce that the OPEN art ex hibition is back for 2022! The hugely popular annual exhibition, which has been on hold for the past two years due to covid restrictions, is now returning for its ninth show.

Once again amateur and profes sional artists, of all ages, from the Sussex area were invited to create work on this year’s chosen topic: Hope. As ever, people of all artistic abilities and mediums were wel comed, giving anybody the chance to create artwork which could be included in the final exhibition.

The Museum Team had the hard task of selecting artwork to be displayed from the range of pieces that arrived, aiming to show not only a representation of all mediums,

but also people’s wide-ranging variations on the theme. The result is a diverse medley of creations, promising an interesting and thoughtprovoking display for the viewer.

“It’s great to have the OPEN back for 2022” said Councillor Billy Blanchard-Cooper, Chair of Littlehampton Town Council’s Community Resources Committee. “It’s fascinating to see so many people’s different interpretations of ‘Hope’”

Many of the pieces are also offered for sale and would make charming and unusual gifts for the festive season.

Visit www.littlehamptonmuseum.co.uk for more details about this exhibition and other events at the Museum. For regular updates find them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

above: Maryann Gillett, Sisters left: Peter Betts, Three Deep at the Bar!

the art

Worthing Artists Open Houses is a fantastic opportunity for the local community. In times of mass-production and online shopping, it offers a very special space for visitors to support local creativ ity, meet the artists, and pick up some gorgeous handmade gifts along the way!

Most venues are open 11am to 5pm each Saturday and Sunday, but please check the website for indi vidual details: www.worthingartistsopenhouses.com

left: LINESCAPES, Worthing Pier Amusements; below: Richard Biddle, Something or Nothing; bottom: Alison Tyldesley, Wild Seas

Worthing Artists Open Houses are back!

Perfectly timed for Christmas, 37 venues on the popular Worthing Artists Open Houses trail will be opening their doors and offering visitors a warm wel come this festive season. Venues will be open for two weekends: 26/27th November and 3/4th December.

The WAOH organising team are especially excited as this is the first time the trail will be open since summer 2019, which means there are lots of new venues and artists, in addition to many well-estab lished favourites.

Vee has been making jewellery in her West Sussex studio for fifteen years, having completed a jewellery degree over thirty years ago. She is hugely influenced by the diverse and abundant flora on her doorstep, where she walks daily on the South Downs. Photographing and sketching wild flowers, leaves and seed-heads inspires much of Vee’s work.

Trying to re-create the elegance and delicacy of these plants in silver is a constant challenge, as is making them wearable and functional. She hammers and pierces the surface of the silver, not only to add texture, but

Vee Pease jewellery makes perfect Christmas gifts

also to add shape to each piece. Hammering makes the silver move in an organic way and can often have unexpected and serendipitous results.

Colour is an essential part of Vee’s jewellery and she incorporates semi-precious stones and beads in her work. Although she mainly works in sterling silver, all her pieces can be made in gold.

If you would like something special made as a Christmas present this year, please don’t hesitate to contact Vee to discuss your ideas.

Vee is also holding an exhibition in her home with several other artists on the weekend of November 19th and 20th. There will be ceramics, photography, jewel lery, crocheted pots & baskets and textiles. This is by invitation only, so please contact her on the email below if you’d like to come. peasevm@gmail.com. www.vpjewellery.co.uk

above: Vee Pease, Sterling silver earrings with turquoise; right: Mark MunroePreston, N50.9170 E0.0399

Mark Munroe-Preston two creative gift events

This autumn Mark will be taking part in two fabulous Sussex based creatives gift events. The first being an Artist & Makers Festive Market to raise money for the Victoria Pavilion Arts Project at the recently opened Arts space in the Victoria Pavilion at the Pleasure Ground, Uckfield, TN22 5DJ.

This will take place on Sunday 20th of November and will be open from 10am to 5pm. It will feature an eclectic range of quality and unique gifts from a selec tion of fifteen local independent artists and makers.

The second is his return to the home of @bluebellroebuck (45 Westbourne Gardens, Hove, BN3 5PN) as part of Artists Open Houses and West Hove Arts Trail.

He will be showing a variety of his Treescapes printed on both brushed aluminium and fine art papers along with a collection of greetings cards. The venue will again be full of a wonderfully vibrant collection of works from over twenty other talented Sussex artists and mak ers, featuring everything from jewellery to ceramics and photography to paintings, there is sure to be ideal gift opportunities for everyone at these two events.

www.mpillustration.co.uk

the art of giving

and crafts.

The festival is also a community event, welcom ing artists who may otherwise face barriers to the art world, due to health, disability or social circum stance, alongside established professional artists and makers.

Don’t miss out on this fantastic opportunity to shop away from the High Street and buy unique Christmas gifts in an inspiring environment, whilst supporting local artists. Many Open Houses also offer mince pies and mulled wine to ease you into

Artists Open Houses

Winter Festival

Artists Open Houses are an indis pensable part of Brighton’s winter cultural calendar. With the festive season just around the corner, artists across Brighton, Hove and beyond are opening their front doors.

The Artists Open House Winter Festival creates a special atmosphere, where you can chat to artists and makers in their homes and studios, whilst viewing a spectacular selection of individual, hand-made arts

your Christmas shopping! Kick off the festive season by picking up special and original presents for friends, family – or for yourself!

Visitors to Artists Open Houses say:

“I love getting to see so many different types of art all together. It’s great to be able to speak to the artists and hear about their inspi rations and methods of work.”

“Apart from getting to see lots of beautiful houses… it sets your imagination alight.”

Don’t forget to visit the website www.aoh.org.uk where you can find out more about the Artists Open Houses. You will also find links to many of the artists’ and makers’ own websites.

from top: 92 Montpelier Road (photo: Idil Bozkurt); Northern Lights (photo: Syl Ojalla); Fox, Flowers, Forward and Friends (photot: Idil Bozkurt)

The Horsham Contemporary Art Fair – 22nd & 23rd October

Horsham

Artists are delighted that its major annual exhibition event, the Contemporary Art Fair, will make a return this October after a two-year break.

This promises to be an inspiring and eclectic expression of design and creativity featuring the work of over 30 local artists and makers within a wide variety of artistic disci plines. Work is highly diverse, from detailed depictions of flora and fauna, stunning landscapes through to bold and colourful abstracts. Creative media also include unique precious metal jewellery, stunning designs in textile and knit, figurative sculpture, as well as inventive upcycling of ‘found’ objects into decorative and useful household items.

There will be a unique opportunity to see artists dem onstrate their knowledge and skill in a programme of ‘free to attend’ workshops and talks, giving an insight into how original artwork is produced, what inspires artists and makers, and what specialist tools and materials are used.

Horsham Artists have formed a charity partnership with the Horsham & Crawley branch of the Samaritans who will be fundraising with a raffle at the Art Fair with a chance to win pieces of work by participating artists.

As in past years, the exhibition will be held at Parkside, in Chart Way, RH12 1XH, central Horsham. Download the Art Fair Brochure at www.horshamartists.org and get regu lar updates on Instagram and Facebook: @horshamartists.

from top: Kat Giannini, Toucan; Dominic Simpson, Flower Vase; Andre Westerdijk, Cassette Tape Lamp; Paul Talbot, Crib Goch from the Pyg Track

spotlight on... the art of giving

Lisa Punter Landscape Artist

Idraw

much of my inspiration from the East Sussex landscape. I love living in this part of the world where there are so many beautiful places to explore. I spend a lot of time walking my dogs up on the East Hill here in Hastings and am often awed by the everchanging light and cloud formations that make the same land scape always different and always beautiful. I love the marshland of Rye Harbour with its subtle yet rich earth tones and expansive skies and the wind turbines visible from Pett Level beach which disrupt the horizontal flow of the beach, sea and sky.

My work is rooted in a love of nature and the lines, forms and structure in the world around me. The everchanging relationship between sea, sky and land is something I strive to capture and I hope that my work places the viewer in this unique and atmos pheric environment.

I also run children’s art classes from my home in Hastings. Each term we explore a different art medium cover ing drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, mixed media, and the work of famous artists.

Please contact me for more information, lisa@lisapunter.co.uk, visit www.lisapunter.co.uk or check out @lisa_punter on social media.

Esther Newnham Brown on The Gift of Art

To give with love, to give with thought and to give with the heart. These three elements make up the art of giving a gift and Sussex based artist Esther Newnham Brown, who works from her studio in the garden of her house in Rusper, believes that art is a creation from the soul, which is to be shared.

She enjoys painting seascapes with interesting clouds that come and go, plants and flowers which

fade, but the artwork is permanent. Even the contrails of an aircraft leave in teresting shapes that can be captured in an artist's mind, but quickly disappear from view. Equally the swell of the sea and the lapping of water on the shore line make shapes that disappear, but the artist can capture these and transport them to a canvas. Esther enjoys captur ing these elements that disappear, and make them into something beautiful that can be displayed and enjoyed.

She is a member of Horsham Artists, and some of her work can be found on

Lisa Punter, above right: Sun; above, Reflections 3

Esther Newnham Brown, Waterlily

their website, Artists and Illustrators website and also in Gallery BN5 in Henfield which she runs with another artist. Email estherbrown21@gmail.com or esther@gallerybn5.co.uk for enquiries.

Catriona Millar Beautiful Signed Prints

Catriona Millar’s body of work is very impressive.

Since the Scottish figurative artist’s sell out degree show in 2005 she has produced almost 1000 paintings and studies. You can see most of them on her website: catrionamillar.com.

“I was very lucky that my work was professionally photographed from my first year at art school so I have a high quality record of my paintings and even some of my studies,” said Catriona.

Some of the paintings, like the popular ‘Little Wing’ series, are available as signed limited edition giclee prints, but now Catriona’s entire back catalogue has been released as smaller high quality, stunning A3 signed prints costing £70 including UK delivery.

“I’m really delighted by the quality,” said Catriona, “I felt it was important to have a level of my work that was very afford able and give people the choice they wanted.”

To order one of Catriona’s

signed A3 prints on 350gsm white card simply choose the painting you want from the ‘Paintings’ section of her website www.catrionamillar.com and place your order through the contact section. Delivery normally takes around ten days and each cello wrapped print comes titled and signed by Catriona. A new set of six stunning art cards is also available.

left: Esther Newnham Brown, Cool Shade; below: Catriona Millar, Mimi; and bottom: Flora and Little Wing

Karin Moorhouse Artist and Tutor

With this year’s Arundel Gallery Trail receding into the past, we must not forget that artists’ work is on sale all year round. And what better gift could you give as a Christmas present to a loved one (or even to treat yourself) than a unique work of art by a local artist.

Karin Moorhouse, painter, designer and teacher, has had studios in Chelsea Covent Garden, Battersea and Surrey but has for some time now lived and worked in Arun del, West Sussex. She remains continually inspired by her surroundings there though London specifically and urban scenes gener ally still hold a place in her heart.

Her usual output is of landscapes, still life, portraits, prints and other works on paper, each piece capturing a moment, a glimpse of something that might be passed by unseen by others – a detail that caught her artist's eye, or a likeness – intimate and unguarded.

You can view a selection of her work on the gallery page of her website.

Karin also holds drawing and painting classes for small groups, including personal tuition at The Mill Studio Arundel, with the spring 2023 term beginning very early January. These cover Oil Painting, Elements of Drawing, Drawing to Paint and Life Drawing Workshops.

More details on these can be found on her website under the workshop link for Moorhouse Art @ The Mill. Visit www.karinmoorhouseart.com for further information or email karin@karinmoorhouse.co.uk or telephone 07801 613334.

top: I Can See For Miles and Miles, oil on linen; left: Natalie at the Mill, pencil on paper

Sustainable Giving: Textile Artist Susan D’Souza

Working with natural dyes and materials Susan produces appliqué, batik and stitched textile artwork. The layered, sensitively created pieces feature local Sussex landscapes and details of plants and leaves sometimes used within the works them selves. Transience and seasonal shifts in natural colour are at the heart of Susan’s work.

A new range of limited edition giclee prints of selected works by Susan make great gifts. Priced from £18 to £70 they come in a range of sizes with card mounts and sustainable packaging easy to post. You can purchase prints, cards and original textiles at Susan’s new website launched earlier this year.

Sign up to her newsletter via her website to hear more about the setting up of a natural dye garden in Susan’s role as Textile Design Degree Course Leader at Northbrook College and a personal project creat ing work based on local landscape Sompting Estate.

Susan plans to be at ‘The Fairy Tale Fair’, Char mandean Centre, Forest Road, Worthing, on Saturday 4th December. This award winning Fair showcases a range of selected craft and design and fundraises for local hospice St Barnabas House. www.thefairytalefair.co.uk.

Susan is a member of Pure Arts Group and The

Batik Guild. www.susandsouzatextileartist.com

above: Orange Skies, batik on paper, original available as a print; below: Blue-Green Sea, batik on cotton with embroidery

on... the art of giving

What you see is what you get –a personal impression of artist Gill Bustamante

Many years ago, long before ingénu/e was even conceived of, we first met artist Gill Bustamante in Brighton, where she was completing a fine arts degree in sculpture. At that time she gave us a small clay sculpture she had made of an embracing couple surrounded by wheeling gulls. We're proud to say we still have it. Since then we have become great friends and we have marvelled at her evolution into such a talented artist.

Do you remember an advert that used to be on TV years ago whose tag line was ‘it does exactly what it says on the tin’? Well, that’s what you get with Gill. She wears her heart on her sleeve and is not afraid to voice her opinion about almost anything. She is funny, loves to help others and is fiercely passionate about a number of topics, ranging from the English country side to cake.

She says it was later in life when she finally found what she really wanted to do as an artist. And since then she has flourished.

I suppose it was due to knowing Gill so well that we were so thrilled to see her as one of the three artists on the BBC programme ‘Home Is Where The Art Is’, series 2, episode 12, screened in 2020. Nick Knowles challenged three artists to make something amazing for the home of a newlywed couple they had never met, who then had to choose which of the three artists’ work they wanted to buy and take home with them. We were even more thrilled when the ‘reveal’ came – Gill had won the challenge, creating one of her trademark large colourful semi-abstract landscape paintings, subtly personalised, which was chosen by the couple to grace their home.

Gill's vibrant, sometimes enigmatic work has found its way into homes all around the country and beyond. What a fabulous Christmas present one of her paintings would be!

Visit www.gillbustamante.com where you will find more about Gill and galleries of her work.

Gill Bustamante, The Gamechanger

Felicity Flutter – capturing the sea

The sea has provided ever changing inspiration to artists for centuries. Contemporary artists continue to find fascination and even greater relevance in portraying our fragile oceans.

Felicity Flutter RI has a studio near Rye with a short journey to the coast where she can choose the best moments to capture reference for her seascapes. These are often of stormy weather, rolling waves and dramatic skies. Her work explores

the effects of light on the water’s surface by applying many layers of watercolour paint and pencil drawing to create a depth of colour and mark making.

Felicity says “I break a few rules when working, because I love experi menting and getting lost in creating, this gives me my greatest enjoyment. As long as my process is archival, I will combine mixed media and both translucent and opaque watercolour to create my work. My finished studio pieces are as important to me as my sketchbook work.”

Felicity has been elected this year as a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, where her work can be seen annually at the Mall Galleries in London. She is also a member of the Soci ety of Graphic Fine Art and Wilderness Art Collective.

Follow on Instagram @flicflutter or visit www.felicity-flutter.co.uk

top: Riders on a Storm below: Restless Sea

ArtSpring at The Horsebridge

Littlehampton Museum

Littlehampton Museum

Manor House, Church Street, Littlehampton. West Sussex. BN17 5EW. 01903 738100

E: museum@littlehampton-tc.gov.uk

Manor House, Church Street, Littlehampton. West Sussex. BN17 5EW. 01903 738100

E: museum@littlehampton-tc.gov.uk

Artgenu/e

by Lesley Samms | Pure Fine Art

What’s the Story?

Artists talking about their unique journey

Elaine Almond is a Pure artist and regularly exhibits her artwork with Pure at Beauport House Gallery at Bannatyne Hotel and Spa Hastings.

Elaine has recently been a Pure artist in residence at Bannatyne. The Pure residency commissioning programme offers artists, at any stage in their professional career journey, space and time to focus on developing both their emotional and business skills and art, to ensure they establish a strong and resilient professional art practice that will sustain them going forward.

Elaine tells us a bit about her background and who and what inspires and influences her art practice.

I grew up in southeast London after the war. My parents were poor, they had been bombed out, but were determined to give me what they could. Dad was quite creative, he could do any job in the house. He learned architectural drawing, made furniture and gardened, as well as working in admin/accountancy as he had significant health issues. My mum sewed and cared for the home.

I loved art as a child. Mum kept a couple of clay pieces I made, and I still have them!

I went to grammar school in Westmin ster. I wanted to study art at 'O' level but was stopped by my father who wanted me to go to university, which I didn’t do then, but I later studied up to Master’s level. I can still see the teacher in the art department at grammar school and a big painting I was doing at the time – before I stopped!

Significant influences on my art today are the Dutch Masters and the Impressionists. I am in awe of Vermeer and Rembrandt's portraits showing the emotions in the faces. Turner, Monet, and the Impressionists for colour and light and changing the face of

pictured clockwise from top left: Elaine Almond painting in her studio; Dance for Joy 50 x 50cm acrylic on canvas; Forest Fire 41 x 61cm acrylic on canvas; Free to Roam 50 x 50cm mixed media on canvas

art. Abstract Expressionism –looking at the freedom of form and use of colour. Whilst I find Rothko’s paintings difficult to contemplate, I relate to his com ment about expressing emotion through art rather than illustrat ing it – realising that opened things up for me – I hate doing tight illustration! And I admire Kandinsky for the development of abstraction and his conscious ly spiritual dimension to art.

I worked in Peru years ago and love cultural art from the Inca and Moche dynasties – primitive and yet sophisticated.

Inspiration for my art is nature, life experience and faith.

I truly love being an artist – the joy of working and the freedom to do it.

”

You can read the full interview on the website: www.pureartsgroup.co.uk/interviews

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A N E C O R D E R Y J E R E M Y B E A R J O N A T H A N H A T E L E Y K R I S T I N A A L E X A N D E R

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Deep

It was a perfect day for it. High summer, an azure sky with a gentle breeze. On a whim I'd decided to see the Sculpture Trail at Standen House and Garden in East Grinstead. It was the last day of the trail and I'd been meaning to go for weeks.

Arriving at the start point I picked up a trail map from the organisers, Surrey Sculpture Society, and headed off in the direction of the vegetable garden, intrigued by the title 'Hawk on a Fork'. Sure enough, there was a stunning stainless steel hawk, perching on a garden fork among the marrows. This set the mood for me – beautifully crafted sculptures, sometimes elegant, sometimes with a hint of humour, all striking in their own way, in a tranquil garden setting.

From the vegetable plot the trail wove around the garden along bosky pathways populated by owls, hares and exotic plant forms, opening out onto green lawns

Sculpture Trail at Standen

where sculptures gathered into groups, and mingled among a profusion of flowers extraordinary otherworldly blooms stood tall.

I followed the trail, weaving its way through the beautiful gardens, the sculptures sometimes interacting with the planting, other times standing proudly apart, the extraordinary diversity of style and materials testament to the prodigious talent of this group of sculptors. From the quirky and humorous to the thought-provoking, and from beautiful figura tive sculptures to breathtaking abstract pieces. There was, as the saying goes, something for every taste.

The popular garden was busy with families and couples following the trail. Fragments of conversation reached my ears while moving among my fellow strollers. "What is it Mummy?" "What does it look like to you darling?" I followed their gaze to a huge metal insect hovering over a lily pond. Nearby a small flock of swifts crafted from cutlery danced in the breeze.

The trail led us to the sun-baked terrace at the back of the house where stood yet more sculptures: proud horses, gentle doves, stunning figures and striking abstracts. On a small lawn next to the house hares chased one another, strange convoluted shapes captured the imagination and a wolf lifted its head in an eternal howl.

I'd viewed over 100 sculptures and was ready for a restorative cuppa. At the welcoming rustic café I tuned into the hum of conversation around me. The general consensus was that it had been a perfect way to spend a summer day. And I couldn't agree more.

Visit www.surreysculpture.org.uk for information.

Carol Orwin, Dame Judi; top: Teresa Martin, Helmets for War and Peace

Caragh Thuring at Hastings Contemporary

Hastings Contemporary presents a survey show of the work of Caragh Thuring, her first UK exhibition in six years.

The show of more than twenty works will include paintings, drawings and monotypes created over the last fifteen years. All works are on loan from the artist and public and private UK collections, in order to avoid the environmental impact of international shipping.

Thuring’s unique compositions oscillate between the humorous and the quotidian, juxtaposing signs and imagery from her recurring iconography of volcanoes, bricks, submarines, tartan, human silhouettes, and flora, and exploring where natural and manufactured worlds collide.

Thuring is curious about what lies out of sight. Volcanoes and submarines lurk beneath, intermit tently breaking through to the surface. Brick walls obstruct our view and untreated or woven canvas draw our attention to the surface of the painting itself and what might lie beyond. What is not obscured is often fragmented, disrupting the viewer’s familiarity of what they are looking at.

Hastings Contemporary Director Liz Gilmore says “Hastings Contemporary aims to champion the very best in contemporary art, particularly painting; so the work of the important mid-career artist Caragh Thuring is a perfect fit for our tenth anniversary year. Thuring’s work is fluid, intuitive, instinctual. The consistency of her output is extraordinary. Thuring has explored and returned to many motifs over the years, often in response to the geography/location and nature (including human nature). From volcanoes and their geological structures, nuclear submarines and landscapes, the clash of the natural and the manufac tured… An exhibition of this nature, in our eco sea front gallery, consuming all our ground floor galleries will have dramatic impact yet also a strong resonance in Hastings and indeed nationally.”

For more information about the exhibition and the gallery go to www.hastingscontemporary.org.

below: Caragh Thuring, The Thüringer, 2021. Courtesy the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery. Photo: Richard Ivey

Brewers Towner International Exhibition

15th October to 22nd January 2023

This autumn, Towner Eastbourne will host Brewers Towner International, an exhibition of work by contemporary artists that addresses the theme of SANCTUARY, featuring a number of artists from East Sussex and Kent.

The exhibition, which features a range of artists, local, national and international, has been curated by Noelle Collins, Exhibitions & Offsite Curator, Towner Eastbourne. Following an open call, twenty-three artists were selected by an esteemed panel including Elizabeth Price (Turner Prize winning artist), Sepake Angiama (Artistic Director, Iniva), and Noelle Collins. Nineteen artists will be part of the exhibition and a further four, meanwhile, will present a concurrent public programme.

The artists include a number based on the South Coast: Nigel Caple, Sharon Haward, Kevin Hendley, Benjamin Phillips and Amy Fenton who live and work in East Sussex, as well as Graham Ellard and Stephen

Johnstone, Hicham Gardaf, and Edward Liddle who are based in Kent. Artists based elsewhere in the UK include Maud Haya-Baviera who lives in Sheffield, and Ufuoma Essi, Melanie Jackson, Amanda Kyrit sopoulou, Dene Leigh, Karen Russo, Lara Smithson

and Harald Smykla all based in London. Christo phe Lennox lives and works in Norway, and Steph Goodger lives and works in France. Work presented will include moving image, photography, drawing, painting, installation and live performance.

The open call for Brewers Towner International is an opportunity to recognise and appreciate how artistic communities are reflecting and responding to the economic, political, cultural, and environmen tal changes that are unfolding in the contemporary moment. Artists have studied the places that have become a sanctuary throughout the pandemic –finding solace in the studio, the home and the land scape. The resulting exhibition brings together

banks of the Medway river. Observations of routine and handcrafting, and ideas of the body as archive – a repository of history and site of resistance, will be presented in film and video works. Sculptural installa tions responding to architectural histories and ideas of exposure, vulnerability, light and shadow, will be shown alongside photographs of cinnamon stick structures reflecting childhood memories of Morocco and feelings of homesickness. Locations along the Sussex coast will feature in a series of works on paper, based on local landing points for those seeking asylum.

Visit https://townereastbourne.org.uk for further information about the exhbition and the gallery.

a community of artists, makers and storytellers, examining subjects as varied as pattern, memory, identity and the migratory experience.

In SANCTUARY, paintings and drawings exploring ideas of memory, trauma, healing and collaboration will be exhibited alongside newspaper clippings embel lished with floral patterns – transforming images of fear and violence into imaginary ecosystems. Considerations of the natural environment and its resilience are captured in large scale paintings of a WWII-era pillbox engulfed by tree roots on the

opposite page: Graham Ellard & Stephen Johnstone, Pattern, 2021. 16mm film still (1);

this page from top: Steph Goodger, Motherland, 2020. oil on canvas; Eddie Liddle, Wallpaper Tile Study (detail), 2021 Photo by Holly Jean Crosbie; Nigel Caple, Night Sanctuary (The Pier), 2022. ©Nigel Caple 2022; Melanie Jackson, Spekyng Rybawdy 2022

theatres

CHICHESTER FESTIVAL THEATRE

a marvellous winter season has begun

Chichester

Festival Theatre’s Winter season offers a rich array of some of the best touring productions currently on offer in the UK.

Musicals include the international smash hit SIX, returning after its sell-out run in 2019; the double Olivier and Tony Award-winning Girl From The North Country with legendary songs by Bob Dylan; Local Hero, with music & Lyrics by Mark Knopfler and the first ever professional touring production of the joyous musical comedy Bugsy Malone.

Star-studded dramas and comedies include Caroline Quentin in a revival of Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profes sion; Miles Jupp and Justin Edwards in The Lavender Hill Mob; Hayley Mills, Paul Nicholas and Rula Lenska in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel; and the West End hit Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of). And is pantomime only for Christmas? Mother Goose flies in to persuade you that oh no it isn’t!

The Christmas centrepiece from the ever-popular Chichester Festival Youth Theatre is Alan Bennett’s witty and enchanting adaptation of The Wind in the Willows, while Dear Santa offers an opportunity for young children to experience theatre for the first time and the Christmas Concerts form the traditional fes tive season opener.

A host of concerts, talks, dance and stand-up

comedy include Tim Peake, Stewart Lee, Jen Brister, Pam Ayres, Joe Stilgoe, Chineke! Orchestra, Dotdotdot Dance and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Off-stage events range from Half Term Hangouts for refugees and asylum seekers to Festivall, celebrating the creativ ity and talent of learning disabled and neurodivergent people, a Lightning Bug Dance Workshop and a special Fizz & Feminism with the cast of SIX. CFT are also proud to be hosting a national Youth Conference bringing together young people, alongside organisa tions and individuals who work with them, who are changing and challenging the cultural landscape. Visit www.cft.org.uk for full information of all performances and events.

top: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel; below: Local Hero

arts

A snapshot of what’s on offer at WORTHING THEATRES

autumn

Folk supergroup Show of Hands with Miranda Sykes, come to the Assembly Hall, 17th November.

The band are finally reuniting with formidable folk singer Miranda Sykes to captivate audiences at a long-awaited autumn tour. The trio will perform brand-new tracks, live renditions of their awardwinning hits and festival favourites for the first time in five long years.

The opening half of the show will see them play ing as duos and soloists. Miranda will feature songs from her lockdown album ‘The Farmhouse Sessions’ while Steve and Phil will perform new material gen erated over the last two years. During the second set the trio will play a host of anthemic Show of Hands classics plus one or two hitherto unheard surprises.

Legendary Irish folk music band Dervish, one of Ireland’s best-known traditional bands, come to the Connaught theatre on 27th November. Described by the BBC as “an icon of Irish music”, Dervish received a prestigious lifetime achievement award from the BBC in 2019, a fitting tribute to the band after over 30 years of recording and performing worldwide, playing at festivals from Rio to Glastonbury.

Dervish have a line-up which includes some of Ireland’s finest traditional musicians, fronted by one of the country’s best-known singers, Cathy Jordan. Exceptional musicianship, breath-taking vocals, vibrant sets of tunes and instantly compelling songs all come together to make Dervish as complete a band as are to be found anywhere in the tradition.

Regular visitors to the US, performing sell-out shows from coast to coast, Dervish also has a fan base that stretches across several continents.

Award-winning theatre company Frantic Assembly present a new production of Shakespeare’s Othello on 29th November to 2nd December – an electrifying take on Shakespeare’s tragedy of paranoia, sex and murder at the Connaught Theatre. As relevant today as it ever was, Othello exposes the tension, fear and paranoia buried beneath the veneer of our relation ships and how easily that can be maliciously exploited.

Frantic Assembly takes Shakespeare’s muscular and beautiful text, combines its own bruising physicality, and presents an Othello firmly rooted in a volatile 21st century. Othello’s passionate relationship with Desdemona becomes the catalyst for jealousy, betrayal, revenge and the darkest intents.

And as Jane Austen’s works crop up a few times in this issue, a mention must go to ‘Fashion in Jane Austen’s lifetime’ at Worthing Museum and Gallery on 22nd October. The talk will give an overview of late Georgian and Regency fashion, giving detail to Jane Austen’s world.

Visit https://wtm.uk for all information of what’s on at the theatres.

Show of Hands

Frantic Assembly, Othello

performing arts

Three amazing gigs at ROPETACKLE ARTS CENTRE Shoreham-by-Sea this autumn

P

olly Paulusma, 29th October

Since her debut album in 2003 Polly Paulusma has catapulted around the world, supporting Bob Dylan, Jamie Cullum, Coldplay, The Divine Comedy, Marianne Faithfull, and played Glastonbury, T in the Park and the Cambridge Folk Festival.

She has released seven albums and this year’s ‘Invisible Music: folk songs that influenced Angela Carter’ is her eighth. It presents in musical terms the PhD she’s recently completed on the novelist’s previously unknown folk singing activities, and lays songs and prose passages side by side to show the relationships.

Bird In The Belly and Rangari, 24th November Brighton quartet Bird In The Belly bring an atmos pheric live sound with distinctive, arresting songs of social relevance, rich with their trademark ‘folk noir’ featuring singular vocals, strings and percussion. They will be performing songs from all three of their albums.

Alt-folk band Ranagri combine voices, guitars, flutes, harp and bodhran to create their unique sounds and storytelling. Since forming, Ranagri have recorded three studio albums and are regulars of the folk club and festival circuit. Ranagri bring depth of lyrics to a big sound and get audiences to their feet.

The Trials of Cato, 2nd December

Formed in Beirut, the band returned to the UK in 2016, performing tirelessly up and down the country, leading to BBC Radio 2’s Mark Radcliffe hailing them as “one of the real discoveries on the folk circuit in recent times”.

Following a year of wall-to-wall touring across the UK, Europe, and North America in 2019, the band’s march was halted by the live silence of the global pandemic. Now, they emerge from their chrysalis transformed. As ever, ‘The Trials Continue’ – but this time the multi- talented instrumentalist and singer Polly Bolton joins their ranks.

The band’s hotly anticipated second album is sched uled for release later this year. Entitled Gog Magog, the album is named both after the mythical giant of Arthurian legend and the Cambridgeshire hilltop, where the new album was birthed over lockdown.

Visit https://ropetacklecentre.co.uk for more.

THE HAWTH in Crawley

serves up some diverse performances

On 18th November in the Studio Ensemble Reza presents The Great Romantics, music by Brahms and Tchaikovsky.

They return to the Studio on 16th December to perform a Parisienne Candlelit Soirée. The sextet are joined by Steve Drummer (clarinet) for a magical can dlelit evening as they explore some of the most beauti ful French themed classical music of the 20th century – a programme of infinite imagination with music that was already starting to bridge the sounds of classical and jazz, with some special extras, from the chanson era of Edith Piaf's 1940s and early 1950s Paris.

On 25th & 26th November in the Studio The

Ensemble Reza

Rangari Flautist extraordinaire Eliza Marshall

Pitchy Breath Theatre Company perform Tis Pity She’s a Whore. Giovanni and Annabella are brother and sister. Living apart, but viewing each other through the distorted filters of social media where the rules and morality of society don’t apply. But what happens when the online world collides with cold, hard reality? And what are the consequences when hidden secrets are brought into the light?

14th December in the Studio is Blues Night, with a double bill, for one night only, Spikedrivers & the Elevators. Both bands are synonymous with Crawley Blues Club which sadly is giving up the ghost, so with this final gig they are going out with a bang!

Visit www.parkwoodtheatres.co.uk/The-Hawth.

TWODS presents

Me and My Girl, 15th to 19th November Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells

Hall Theatre in Tunbridge Wells.

Packed full of favourite songs from the golden age of musicals, this uplifting rags-to-riches show will have the whole family doing the 'Lambeth Walk' in the aisles!

When original cockney geezer, Bill Snibson, discovers he is the true heir to the Earl of Hareford, his newlyacquired aristocratic relations try to educate him in the ways of the gentry and separate him from his beloved Lambeth girl Sally. The result is comical mayhem between a host of hilarious characters, with toe-tapping songs including ‘The Sun Has Got His Hat On’, 'Lean ing on a Lamp Post’ and of course ‘Me and My Girl’.

With music by Noel Gay, based on the book by Arthur Rose and Douglas Furber and revised by the sublime Stephen Fry, Me and My Girl is an awardwinning treat of a show for all ages.

For more details, performance times and to book visit www.twods.org/book-now or call 01892 530613.

top: Spikedrivers; above: Tis Pity She's a Whore; below: TWODS Brooke Wells & Mike Knell

Let

TWODS (Tunbridge Wells Operatic & Dramatic Society) whisk you away to the frolicking 1930s with Me and My Girl, taking place at the Assembly

It's Behind You!! Oh No It Isn't...

Four fabulous pantomimes this December

I well recall my extreme excitement and trepidation as a very young boy when pantomime season came around. I’d fall in love with Cinders, be terrified by the Ugly Sisters or be transported to the Middle East on a magic carpet or to a castle with an unfriendly giant. Here are four pantos to excite and delight your family this December.

Cinderella at the Capitol Theatre, Horsham

From the 8th to 31st December the Capitol Theatre brings us a Fairy Godmother of a pantomime, directed by Julie Atherton and starring Siobhan Athwal as the much put upon Cinderella. Boasting a brand new set, spectacular sequences and a few new twists, this year’s traditional pantomime will sweep you off your feet and carry you to the ball!

Visit www.thecapitolhorsham.com for further info.

Aladdin at the Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne

From 9th December to 15th January 2023 the Eastbourne creative team are back to deliver yet more pantomime wonder in this most magical of tales com plete with live music, sensational costumes, colourful sets and so much more.

A traditional tale of good versus evil, heroes and villains, magical genies and a flying carpet, not to mention slapstick mess, song and dance numbers and plenty of surprises, don’t miss this ‘geni-us’ panto mime (sorry, the bad puns have started already)!

Visit www.eastbournetheatres.co.uk for full details.

Jack and the Beanstalk: The Pantomime!

Fe-Fi-Fo-Fun at the Pavilion Theatre, Worthing

From 1st December to 2nd January 2023 the GIANT Panto you’ve BEAN waiting for is here! Jack and the Beanstalk promises to be a fantastic family panto mime full of magic, fun and laughter. Strictly Come Dancing’s Flavia Cacace Mistry will star as the fairy along with a very talented cast.

School and group rates are available. Contact the Box Office for more details.

Visit https://wtm.uk for further information.

All New Adventures of Peter Pan at The Hawth, Crawley

From 9th December to 2nd January 2023 the Hawth hosts the spectacular All New Adventures of Peter Pan pantomime starring EastEnders' Rita Simons as Captain Hook and CBBC and Strictly finalist, Karim Zeroual as Peter Pan.

Don't miss out! The clock is ticking so hook your tickets now!

www.parkwoodtheatres.co.uk/The-Hawth

from top: Cinderella at The Capitol; Aladdin cast out side the theatre, Eastbourne; Jack and the Beanstalk at Worthing; Peter Pan at The Hawth

Worthing Theatres: Jitney

The warm welcoming surroundings of Worthing's excellent Connaught Theatre were the perfect setting for Headlong theatre company's brilliantly staged, taut, compelling, production of August Wilson's 'Jitney' .

The story takes place in Pittsburgh in the 1970's, inside a poor but neatly kept gypsy cab station of five unlicensed drivers, run by wounded strong man Becker. In the struggle to survive, we watch rapt as they grapple with their own needs, loves, hates and pains. We share in Becker's traumatic reunion with his long-estranged son, and the challenge they all face of having to band together if they are to save their station from demolition.

Under Tinuke Craig's inspired direction, actors, set, sounds and music, costume and lighting weave together with a flawless coherence, allowing the story to unfold in all its harsh gritty tenderness.

Each character had a brilliantly sustained, unique persona and the palpable emotion had the crescendos, ebbs and moments of stillness of a post modern sym phony. The dialogue was sharp, flowing seamlessly

from machine gun fire to tenderness and back, the powerful embedded humour, pathos and pains of truth telling making this a deeply human play.

The production was lean, nothing gratuitous to get in the way, where less was truly so much more. The meat of the words was allowed to live and breathe in the bodies and mouths of the actors, supported and held by the inspired staging, technically complex but wonderfully realised. And the great hairstyles were exactly right!

Thank you Connaught Theatre, a brilliant production brought to Worthing. –Reviewed by Liz Longhurst

This Is My Theatre: Pride & Prejudice

This Is My Theatre's production of Pride and Prejudice in The Hawth's woodland amphitheatre was joy to experience.

Despite the evening growing colder in the fading light there was a very good audience turnout and the tiered seating ensured we had a good view of the stage.

This production, adapted by TIMT's Artistic Direc tor Sarah Slator and Associate Artistic Director Ethan Taylor, although stripped back to accommodate a small company, was nevertheless rich in detail, with much of the original text evident. Favourite notable phrases had not been discarded and lovers of the book and the popular tv and film adaptations (you know the ones I mean) would not have been disappointed.

TIMT's stage set and lighting, though minimal, was perfect. While there was no lake for Darcy to emerge from, dripping, to encounter the startled Elizabeth, there were sufficient elements to evoke each scene vividly. I would imagine that the job of condensing a full production down for a small company would be both challenging and thrilling. This cast of just five actors played no less than a dozen parts with ease with the nifty addition of a hat, a shawl or jacket, or some prop.

I loved seeing these familliar characters portrayed. The transition of Ethan Taylor's Darcy from darkly moody to hopelessly in love; Sarafina Doussay as Elizabeth Bennet, defiant and self possessed; Isobelle

Pippin as the outrageous Mrs Bennet and scheming Miss Bingley; Lily Smith's ingenuous Jane and atten tive Mrs Gardiner; Simon Stallard's innocent Mr Bin gley, oily Mr Collins and, hilariously, Lady Catherine – channelling an imperious Maggie Smith I'm sure.

We particularly admired and enjoyed the way the actors linked each scene break with music and song, all composed by Simon Stallard. Not only are they tal ented thespians but the vocal harmonies they created in these moments were melodic and aesthetic. A very versatile bunch of individuals indeed!

The popularity of this and other Jane Austen stories never ceases to amaze me. Written over two hundred years ago, the themes still seem to resonate even today. TIMT is now gearing up for their next production, The Nutcracker & The Mouse King. Keep an eye on their socials or check www.thisismytheatre.com for news.

Solomon Israel Shealy in Jitney. Photo by Sharron Wallace

Sarafina Doussay and Ethan Taylor as Elizabeth and Darcy

Classical Ballet

coming to a theatre near you

Dreams come true this year with a tour of these festive family favourite ballets

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a visit to your local theatre for a dazzling production of the most famous ballet in the world – The Nutcracker. Based on The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, written by E.T.A. Hoffmann, it tells the story of Marie, a rather sad little girl, whose godfather, Drosselmeier, gives her a nutcracker doll as a present on Christmas Eve. The toy magically turns into a prince and mayhem ensues.

Another great ballet classic is Swan Lake. The compel ling legend of a tragic romance in which a princess, Odette, is turned into a swan by an evil curse. Prince Siegfried chances upon a flock of swans while out hunt ing. When one of the swans turns into a beautiful young woman, he is instantly captivated – will his love prove strong enough to break the evil spell that she is under?

Swan Lake captures, like no other ballet, the full range of human emotions – from hope to despair, from terror to tenderness, from melancholy to ecstasy.

A wonderful evening out, the memories of which you will cherish long after the final curtain falls.

For the first time in the UK, The Classical Ballet and Opera House from Moldova bring dancers from many different countries including Ukraine, and features an impressive cast, accompanied by a large live orchestra.

Visit www.amande-concerts.co.uk for full details and to book tickets.

from top: Nutcracker (x2); Swan Lake; Sleeping Beauty

National Theatre Live, The Seagull

Autumn offerings at The Picture House Cinema & Restaurant

Where could you go for a delicious meal and then stroll across the road to enjoy a captivating cinema experience chosen from a potpourri of film genres? The answer? The Picture House Cinema and Restaurant in Uckfield!

There is so much to look forward to this autumn and winter at The Picture House. For starters there is live music in the restaurant on selected evenings. At the cinema, as well as lots of up-to-date film releases, The Royal Opera House and Metropolitan Opera have new seasons of stunning live opera and ballet, plus Birmingham Royal Ballet have a special screening of Carlos Acosta’s Don Quixote. There is Shakespeare and Chekhov live from National Theatre; and a Coldplay performance live from Buenos Aires. Exhibition on Screen has new titles including Hopper, Mary Cassatt and Vermeer, and there are documentaries about Edward Hopper and Leonard Cohen.

Tonbridge Philharmonic Society

VERDI’S REQUIEM

Chapel of St Augustine, Tonbridge School, 19th November

Tonbridge Philharmonic Society will open its 2022/23 season with a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem, written in 1873.

Programmed by the Society a number of times, most nota bly for our 25th Anniversary Concert in May 1971, the operatic setting of the words of the Requiem Mass vies with Mozart’s version to be the most performed of all works in the choral canon. However this Requiem is considered too dramatic for use in a liturgical setting.

From its tense and quiet opening, a plea for eternal peace (and a challenge for any choir and orchestra), the Requiem builds into a muscular Dies Irae, depicting the day of the last judgement.

Anna Patalong, Soprano, led the Society in a choral work shop that we hosted jointly with the Royal Philharmonic Society in May 2022. To our delight, Anna and her husband, Benedict Nelson, Baritone, have agreed to perform with us

arts

For a snapshot of what’s coming up in autumn – for those who love Halloween their Halloween Horrothon includes a special screening of Nosferatu on its 100th Anniversary with live piano accompaniment from composer and conductor Terry Davies.

On 3rd November there are two show ings of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, starring Emilia Clarke making her West End debut in this 21st century retelling of Chekhov’s tale of love and loneliness.

Getting us in the mood for the festive season is Matthew Bourne's delightfully extravagant Nutcracker. Christmas is big at The Picture House with plenty of films; classics like Elf and White Christ mas as well as new releases Matilda the Musical and Avatar The Way of the Water. And on 8th and 11th December the whole family can join Clara at a delightful Christmas Eve party that becomes a magical adventure once everyone else is tucked up in bed, as the Royal Ballet perform the Nutcracker. Peter Wright’s much-loved production, with gorgeous period designs by Julia Trevelyan Oman, keeps true to the spirit of this festive ballet classic, combining the thrill of the fairy tale with spectacu lar classical dancing.

Make it special and book a Christmas lunch or dinner before or after the film. www.picturehouseuckfield.com

again. Anna and Ben both trained at the Guildhall and made their Royal Opera debuts in 2013. Described as “a powerful and dark hued soprano” by Opera Magazine, Anna has recently been appointed as Chief Executive of the British Youth Opera. We have no doubt that the involvement of this highly acclaimed couple will make the 19th November a night to remember. Visit www.tonphil.org.uk

Anna Patalong with Naomi Butcher (TPS Musical Director) at Verdi Requiem Choral workshop

The Mediæval Bæbes MydWynter Tour

20th December St Mary’s Church, Horsham

Weaving their story-telling magic and exalting the true spirit of Christmas with hauntingly joyous music, the Mediæval Bæbes have announced they are performing at St Mary’s Church in Horsham on the 20th December as part of their MydWynter Tour.

Evoking thoughts of the of the winter festival and its pre-Christian origins, the Mediæval Bæbes will be performing Christmas carol classics, traditional folk

songs and showcasing arrangements from their new MydWynter Album. This spirited show of beguiling choral music will also include innovative settings of ancient and romantic poetry, along with captivating storytelling that uncovers the origins and folklore behind the lyrics.

Accompanied by a dazzling array of exotic and period instruments, this unique take on early music, traditional culture and the magic of folklore brings a unique opportunity to be uplifted and enchanted in the stunning and graceful medieval church.

The Mediæval Bæbes are one of the most success ful female-led, early music and folk ensembles in Europe. They have won an Ivor Novella Award for their performance on the BBC serialization ‘The Virgin Queen,’ and have received two Emmy nomi nations, in addition to a Royal Television Society award alongside composer Martin Phipps for their soundtrack to ITV’s hit period drama, ‘Victoria’.

MydWynter is their eleventh studio album and due for release on 25th November, with many of the tracks being performed live for the very first time in this Christmas celebration.

Having witnessed the incredible vocal and musical talents of the Baebes last year at St Mary’s Church, I can heartily recommend this concert. The acoustics of the church conspire with ethereal vocal harmo nies to enrapture the soul. Come join the Mediæval Bæbes and be immersed in glorious merriment.

Tickets now available at www.mediaevalbaebes.com

Three Marvellous Gigs

snapshot of what Melting Vinyl offers us later this year

Kris Drever at Komedia Studio, Brighton 20th November

Kris Drever is a Scottish folk singer-songwriter, who has won multiple awards including an incred ible seven BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, two shortlist nominations for Scottish Album of The Year (with his trio Lau), and much acclaim for his solo recordings and concerts. Drever is a phenomenal and prolific artist, hugely admired as a solo artist and collaborator whose voice and guitar form a part of the backbone of today’s contemporary roots and folk scene.

Eliza Carthy at Komedia, Brighton 29th November

March marked the 30th career anniversary of outstanding English folk musician and President of the English Folk Dance & Song Society, Eliza Carthy MBE.

To mark this milestone, 2022 saw the release of her Queen Of The Whirl EP with her band The Res titution – with some fantastic re-recordings of some of her ‘greatest hits', including music from her three Mercury Award-nominated albums. Queen Of The Whirl is her celebration of silliness and profundity.

Thirty years of music reimagined with a crack team of musicians from Billy Bragg to Peggy Seeger, from The Ratcatchers to Imagined Village, from bloody boots in Trafalgar Square to the moors of North Yorkshire, and everywhere in between.

Modern Studies at The Village, Brighton 8th December

Modern Studies return after a sold-out show in Brighton in 2022. The group of multi-instrumentalists assembled at Harvey’s Pumpkinfield studio in rural Perthshire and adorned Emily Scott’s thoughtful tunes with cello, analogue synths, guitars, double bass, tape loops, drums, and a variety of other tones, emerging with their full-length debut, ‘Swell to Great’.

Modern Studies is an exciting current example of a quartet who operate within the sphere of alternative music, borrowing nuances of folk, indie-pop, dream pop, and psychedelia. This quartet aren't afraid to wear multiple influences on their sleeves, creating a sound that is deep and sophisticated in musicianship. Visit www.meltingvinyl.co.uk for full information of these and other coming performances.

Eliza Carthy

Tue 11 & Wed 12 October 7.30pm

SWAN LAKE (TuE)

SLEEPING BEAUTY (wed)

The Classical Ballet & Opera House with large live orchestra

Thu 13 - Sat 15 October

DINOSAUR WORLD LIVE

A roarsome interactive show for the whole family

Thu 20 - Sat 22 October (Studio)

FRANKENSTEIN

Mary Shelley’s gripping gothic horror in a thrilling new stage adaptation

Thu 27 October 7.30pm

CRIMES ON CENTRE COURT

A hilarious mix of mirth, murder and mayhem performed by New Old Friends’ company of just four actors

Tue 1 & Wed 2 November TALES FROM ACORN WOOD

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s beloved tales brought to life on stage

Wed 2 November 7.45pm (Studio)

NOT ABOUT HEROES

Acclaimed play based on Great War poets Wilfred Owen and Sigfried Sassoon

Wed 9 - Sat 12 November (Studio)

WE’RE GOING ON A BEAR HUNT

Michael Rosen’s thrilling and funny adventure brought to life

Wed 16 November 7.30pm

RHYTHM OF THE DANCE

A special Christmas version of the acclaimed Irish song and dance show

Wed 16 November 7.45pm (Studio)

SARAH KEYWORTH

‘Powerful, poignant and achingly funny’ stand up

Thu 17 November 7.30pm

COMEDY UNLEASHED WITH REGINALD D. HUNTER

with Andrew Doyle, Titania McGrath and host Dominic Frisby

Fri 18 November 7pm (Studio)

ENSEMBLE REZA

Performing an evening of romantic music including Brahms Sextet No.2 and Tchaikovsky Souvenir de Florence

Fri 18 November 7.30pm

GARETH MALONE

Lift your voices and join Gareth, his band and singers for a sing-a-long!

Fri 25 & Sat 26 November (Studio)

‘TIS PITY SHE’S A WHORE

A brother and sister’s descent into hell set in the online world

Thu 1 December 7.30pm

SARA PASCOE

Sara’s latest acclaimed standup show. Show will be BSL interpreted

From Fri 9 December

PETER PAN

Starring Rita Simons (EastEnders) and Karim Zeroual (Strictly and CBBC) in the festive treat

Thu 22 - Sat 24 December (Studio)

MRS SCROOGE

Animation, technology and live theatre combine in a Christmas show ideal for 2-7 year olds

Tue 18 - Sat 22 April

BLOOD BROTHERS

Willy Russell’s legendary multi-awardwinning musical returns

THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA 90th Birthday & Residencies at Brighton and Eastbourne

Great British Bake-Off Semi-Finalist 2021 and London Philharmonic Orchestra fan Jürgen Krauss is baking the Orchestra a 90th birthday cake. The trombone player lives in Brighton and enjoys attending LPO concerts at Brighton Dome. The cake will be presented during the concert at Brighton Dome on Saturday 22nd October, a few days after the Orchestra’s official birthday on 7th October.

As a precursor to the Brighton and Eastbourne series of concerts, ingénu/e interviews Thomas Watmough, the LPO’s Principal E flat clarinet, to get an insight into the life of a professional musician with the LPO.

What were your initial influences that helped you to become a professional musician?

Like the majority of musicians, I felt the singleminded drive to make playing my occupation from an early age. When we were kids my brothers and I had to be silent when our Dad had BBC Radio 3 on, not an easy ask for three boisterous boys: it’s a wonder that I grew up to enjoy classical music at all. I took up the clarinet aged eleven and progressed fairly quickly; I was lucky enough after a while to go to the Purcell School for young musicians. Surrounded by likeminded kids, I felt something akin to how my Harry Potter obsessed ten year old daughter would feel if she were given a place at Hogwarts.

Could you tell us about your musical journey up to joining the LPO?

After music college (Guild hall School of Music & Drama) I freelanced for several years. Much of that time I worked with the LPO, having been taken under the wing of the Principal Clarinet, the muchesteemed Bob Hill. He was kind and patient with me as I made numerous mistakes learning on the job. I owe him a great deal. I joined the Royal Philhar monic Orchestra for nine years before becoming a member of the LPO in 2014. I spent two happy years as Bob’s sidekick before he retired from the band in 2016 after forty-four years in the chair.

What is your most favourite performance with the LPO so far?

There are so many occasions that I’ve come away from an LPO concert with my mind blown and I wake up the next morning to find my head still reeling. One memory that I’ll take to my grave was of a concert performance of Wagner’s Seigfried with

Vladimir Jurowski. After getting to the end of four hours being wrapped in such intensely beautiful music I struggled to contain myself. When I noticed tears roll down a usually calm, reserved and muchrespected stalwart of the violin section, I’m afraid to say that I gave way to some pretty unprofessional blubbing.

What other genres of music do you enjoy listening to?

It seems to me that if you go down any avenue in the myriad world of music there are the most incred ible things happening led by the most creative people. Friends have introduced me to genres that might have passed me by, and so I’ve had so much enjoyment from our own genre to Irish folk-fiddling, from jazz and prog-rock to Mongolian throat-singing.

What do you like best about playing at the Brighton or Eastbourne residencies?

There’s a real sense of appreciation from both the Eastbourne and Brighton audiences. No perform ance should be just run-of-the-mill, but if you can sense the good feeling from the people you are playing to it helps focus your mind on the music

arts

in hand and so makes for a good concert. We tend to mingle with the audience on the way to our cars or to the station with both of those venues, so can see and occasionally overhear the after effects of an orchestral concert.

What’s the most enjoyable/ satisfying aspect of playing with the LPO generally?

Good orchestral playing demands unselfishness and support for your colleagues when on stage or in the pit, and so it attracts many people that are by nature unselfish and supportive. I spend so much time with and many of my friends are drawn from this pool of people. It has to be one of the most satisfying things about doing this slightly absurd job.

With these relatively uncertain times, how do you see the future panning out for yourself and the orchestra?

There’s such a wealth of great music in the orches tral repertoire, and amazing orchestral music is still being written, but we will always need creative people to reimagine what an orchestra can present. Shostakovich symphonies are now being played from memory by every player, there are concerts in car parks, concerts purely of video-game music. It will be interesting to see what’s in store for the future.

As for me, I’m still learning on the job, enjoying the experience of living daily with the sound of live music played by the talented people that surround me. I’m hoping to cling on to this way of life for a little while yet.

Visit www.lpo.org.uk for concert details at both venues and to book tickets.

top left: LPO, photo by Benjamin Ealovega; inset: Thomas Watmough; above: LPO, photo by Benjamin Ealovega; below left: Brighton Dome; below right: Eastbourne Congress Theatre

autumn festivals

As the nights draw in and the weather grows colder, here are four autumn festivals to keep your spirits light and warm you up inside and out.

BRIGHTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL is back with ten events this autumn

After an online offering in 2020 and a limited range of events in 2021, Brighton Early Music Festival returns with a ten event Autumn Season until 23rd October. The south of England’s largest festival of music from the Medieval to the early Romantic periods, the Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and is looking forward to welcoming audi ences back to a wide range of events this autumn, with further events at Christmas.

Audience members wanting to take part can do so on 16th October in a choral workshop with David Allinson exploring Portuguese polyphony from the city of Évora.

The Festival’s Autumn Season culminates in a five day series of concerts 19th to 23rd October as follows: Scottish music inspired by the series Outlander with Ensemble Hesperi (19th Oct); World-class Italian per formers performing airs and laments by Sigismondo D’India (21st Oct); Short sets by emerging early music

ensembles – either afternoon with tea and cake, or evening in the pub (22nd Oct); The glorious sound of trumpets and drums in music which inspired J S Bach, performed by Spiritato and The Marian Consort (22nd Oct); Passionate French baroque opera excerpts from Ensemble Molière and rising star soloists (23rd Oct).

Events take place across the city, with venues including St George’s Church in Kemptown, St Martin’s Church on Lewes Rd, and Ralli Hall in Hove, as well as The Rose Hill off London Rd.

Deborah Roberts, BREMF Artistic Director says:

“For the past 20 years BREMF has been taking a novel approach to the music of the past 1000 years. This has included cross-arts collaborations such as spectacular renaissance music with aerial dance, and the music of Hildegard alongside a contemporary light-show. As Covid hopefully retreats, we’re looking forward to getting back to our trademark unique events, as well as bringing Brighton audiences worldclass early music from the best established and emerging performers.”

See www.bremf.org.uk/whats-on for full pro gramme of the festival (and the coming Christmas events) and to book tickets or call 01273 833746.

Ensemble Hesperi ©Benjamin Ealovega

2004. Catrin's concert at the festival will feature some of the music that has been the most important to her during her distinguished career.

Another leading Welsh harpist – Eira Lynn Jones – is perform ing in the opening concert with the Labyrinth Harp Ensemble as she did in 2020, when it proved very popular. Eira will also be teaching an ensemble workshop during the festival which will also lead to a further concert on the afternoon of October 30th.

Tristan Le Govic from Brittany, Aisling Lyons from Ireland and

HARP ON WIGHT INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL

Ryde, Isle of Wight

28th October to 1st November

The closing concert of the ninth annual Harp on Wight International Festival will be a highlight, as it features Catrin Finch – arguably the UK's most well-known harpist. Catrin was appointed the official harpist to HRH The Prince of Wales when the post was revived in 2000, and she held the position until

Flamenco harpist Ana Crisman from Spain are also among those performing and teaching at the event.

All concerts and workshops are taking place in Ryde Methodist Church in Garfield Road in Ryde where – as in previous years – there will be a free to enter daytime exhibition of harps made by national manufacturers.

Full details of the festival, including how to book tickets, can be found at www.harponwight.co.uk If you require further information please email harponwight@gmail.com or telephone 01983 730930.

Liturina perform at BREMF on 22nd October

Catrin Finch

Tristan Le Govic

Two performances from SHIPLEY ARTS FESTIVAL

Perfect Pitch at Windlesham House School, Pulborough Floating Classical Orchestra at Leonardslee Lakes

Founded by Andrew Bernardi in 2000, the annual Shipley Arts Festival brings world class music to communities in and around Shipley and the county of Sussex.

In this World Cup year, the festival presents ‘Perfect Pitch’, a selection of fun football-themed songs by composer Malcolm Singer on 9th November at 6pm and 7:30pm.

In an effort that would give the folks at FIFA a run for their money, this very special event will bring together a massed children’s choir of over 1600 singers from more than eighteen of the county’s primary and secondary schools to sing alongside an orchestra of strings, piano and percussion, combining the forces of the Yehudi Menuhin School and the String Academy.

The event will be hosted by the Bernardi Music Group in association with the Yehudi Menuhin School and the String Academy, and supported by Arts Council England.

Tickets for the performances can be purchased from the web site below. If you would like to attend both concerts additional tickets will be required, visit https://bernardimusicgroup.com/ and see the box office link on the relevant concert listing.

Also, looking ahead to May 2023, the Bernardi Music Group is in residency at Leonardslee Lakes and Gardens, and brings us a Floating Classical Orchestra staged on the Leonardslee Lakes, with music including Spem In Alium on an electric viola devised by Nic Pendlebury, together with a choreographed

performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending and movements from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

We can also look forward to the Opera Stage with Lola Ganzarolli and Anando Mukerjee. Tickets for these 2023 perform ances will be on sale later this year.

Visit https://bernardimusicgroup.com/ for full information.

Andrew Bernardi has become estab lished as one of the UK’s leading violinists, festival directors, string educationalists and music entrepreneurs. A champion of chari table causes and a dedicated ambassador of music’s power to change lives, he promotes the transformative nature of performance across the world working with consulates, busi nesses and charities.

top: Windlesham House School, Pulborough; above: Composer Malcolm Singer addresses the audi ence from the conductor's podium at the closing concert of the 2019 Shipley Festival; left: Lola Ganzaroll

Prose, poetry and… Parky in PETWORTH FESTIVAL LITERARY WEEK

27th October to 6th November

Michael Parkinson is just one of a raft of stellar names headlining this year’s Petworth Festival Literary Week. With events covering every conceivable subject from politics to pets, baking to biography and novels to the natural world, the ever-expanding high light of Petworth’s cultural calendar once again seems

poised to bring large numbers to the area. The festival is certainly packed with household names; novelists Robert Harris, Kate Mosse and Nicci French; a series of fine historians including Simon SebagMontefiore, Ben Macintyre and Al Murray (yes – THE Al Murray); luminaries from the world of politics, MP Jeremy Hunt, and Boris Johnson biographer Andrew Gimson; and autobiographers actor Hugh Bonnev ille, Antiques Roadshow stalwart Ronnie Archer-Morgan and fashion designer extraordinaire, Theo Fennell. The list just goes on…

In other words, the ever-expanding Pet worth Festival Literary Week is very much back with a bang. "Make no mistake, the last two years have been very difficult for everyone in the world of festivals and live events, but all in all, this represents a lineup that tops any we’ve had in previous years – and I don’t think too many people have been disappointed previously!" says Festival Director Stewart Collins.

top left: St Mary's Church, Petworth top: Kate Mosse, © Ruth Crafer left: Hugh Bonneville, © Gavin Bond

Among some of the events that caught the eye of ingénu/e's editor are Ben Okri talking about his latest novel The Last Gift of the Master Artists, Kate Mosse on her book Warrior Queens & Quiet Revo lutionaries, and Charles Clover on Rewilding the Sea, his book about how to save our oceans – surely more important now than ever.

For further information about all the events and to book tickets visit www.petworthfestival.org.uk

2022

Featuring AL MURRAY HUGH BONNEVILLE KATE MOSSE MICHAEL PARKINSON NICCI FRENCH

ROBERT HARRIS And so much more...

Full programme and tickets on www.petworthfestival.org.uk from 28 September

Join Brighton Early Music Festival this autumn for an exciting season featuring rising stars. Highlights include Scottish baroque with Ensemble Hesperi; stellar performers from Italy; a showcase of the newest emerging talent; music that inspired Bach from Spiritato and The Marian Consort; and passionate French baroque from Ensemble Molière.

Find out more and book tickets (from early Sept) at bremf.org.uk or call 01273 833746 to request a brochure.

brightonearlymusicBREMF brightonemf brightonemf

We were thrilled to welcome the return of Roderick Williams OBE for the world premiére performance of our latest commission, Knepp Piano Trio at Sedgwick Park.

For further events please visit bernardimusicgroup.com. We’d be delighted to see you.

HAVE YOU READ IT?

HAVE YOU READ IT?

HAVE YOU READ IT?

Ord

Ord

Ord

The Secret

The Secret

The Secret Rehearsals for D-Day...

Rehearsals for D-Day...

Rehearsals for D-Day...

Michelle

“A wonderful book...”

Michelle Magorian

‘Goodnight Mr Tom’

“A jewel!...”

Actress

Actress

Actress

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Connections with our Queen

Felicity Fair Thompson, author of The Lights of Leicester Square, reflects on her encounters with our late Queen.

When the Battle of Britain took place over British skies, the girl who was to become Queen Elizabeth II was just fourteen. Even Buckingham Palace was bombed. How lucky Britain was to have her father as King – a King who had not been born to bear the crown, but a man who bravely stepped up to the moment. She must have learned so much from him. The Royal family stayed in London and Windsor during WWII. They stood their ground, staying close to their people

When I was writing my memoir The Lights of Leicester Square, The Golden Years of Cinema 1967 to 1976, it was really important to include the special Royal Gala in 1969 for Battle of Britain in London, and premiered simultaneous ly all over Britain – Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liv erpool, Manchester, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Nottingham and Sheffield. Attending this glittering Royal occasion was the Lord Mayor of London, and three hundred and fifty members of the Battle of Britain Fighter Association from Britain, and from Canada, Jamaica, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and New Zealand. The Air Chief Marshal, Chief of the Defence Staff and Marshal of the RAF, and Lord Hugh Dowding, the man who in 1940 had led ‘The Few’ to victory.

Her Majesty the Queen was there, and young Prince Charles and Princess Anne, the Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke and Duchess of Kent, Princess Alexandra, and Prince Michael and Princess Michael of Kent. The children I helped forward to present the bouquet were wearing Airforce uniform. The Battle of Britain brought the Royals all together. The battle for the skies over Britain had been a pivotal moment in World War II and the Queen could well remember that time. Though there were constant and glittering premieres and Royal Film Performances that I have recorded in my memoir, no film that fol lowed over the next few years could have commanded such royal patronage.

Queen Elizabeth II being presented with a bouquet at the Royal premiere of Battle of Britain, author Felicity Fair Thompson at top right, guiding the youngsters. Photo by Harry Myers

We recently witnessed the pageantry and majesty of Queen Elizabeth’s State Funeral. She lived through nearly a century. We have so much to celebrate in her seventy years of dedicated service.

Princess Elizabeth was just eighteen when secret D-Day rehearsals took place on Slapton Sands. It was Christmas 1943 when three thousand people were forced to leave the Devon coast, but why? Britain was in the grip of war, but it’s hard leaving every thing you know and love, the place you know as home, particularly if you are only twelve. Where will you go? And what if your most treasured possession, the only photo of your father, is left behind?

The Kid on Slapton Beach is set against Exercise Tiger on Devon’s Slapton Sands, secret rehearsals for the D-Day landings that went so tragically wrong. Twelve-year-old Harry goes back to his village by Slapton Sands and he will be on that beach when everything goes wrong. Wars have many secrets. As US President Truman said: “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.”

Visit www.wightdiamondpress.com for more about the author.

book reviews

The Syndicate

by Rosalyn St Pierre

In which 'H' gets more adventure than she bargained for, her friends and neighbours show their true colours and an environmental disaster threatens to destroy the lives of villagers on a remote island in the southern seas.

After the death of her husband, H decides on a whim to quit her dreary suburban life in Sussex and go on the cruise of a lifetime, leaving behind the shad ows of her past. Confiding her plans only to her close friend and her financial advisor she sets off to Aus tralia to join a ship bound for a destination unknown.

Once aboard she finds herself among a disparate collection of fellow passengers and watches with fasci nation the social hierarchy establish itself as the group settles into the rhythm of the cruise. But before long she starts to notice certain things that don't seem right and her suspicions are aroused. Then one day the weather turns and a fierce storm drives the ship onto a reef. The cruise of a lifetime has ended in shipwreck.

Sixteen Souls

by Rosie Talbot

'It's the recently deceased that trouble me the most. Older ghosts aren't so bad. They're always dressed in jerkin and hose or corsets and wide skirts, so they're easily avoided... But the newly dead look just like everybody else, and that's what makes them so dangerous.' What a great opener to a story. The scene and the tone is perfectly set.

Sixteen year old Charlie Frith can see dead people. The trouble with that is it leaves him vulnerable. He lives in York. There are a lot of ghosts in York. If the ghosts knew, they'd be clamouring for him to take messages to their families, settle scores for them. Charlie is already struggling with the devastating effects of a past illness and the anguish of unrequited love, he doesn't need the hassle. He just wants a quiet life. Kids at school think he's weird, and with exams looming he's lagging behind. Apart from his two best friends and constant companions, who happen to be ghosts, he has pushed most others away.

But then he is tracked down by another seer, a lad around his own age who can also see ghosts, and sud denly Charlie's world starts to whirl out of kilter. The ghosts of York are quietly and ominously disappearing and the seer wants Charlie's help to figure out what's

But is her adventure of a lifetime just beginning?

How will she and her fellow survivors fare on this island so far from home and with no means of communication to the outside world? What dangers might they face from the islanders who found them, or from the other inhabitants of the island – the Komodo dragons? And back home, as her house lies empty, will she be missed?

With its cast of well drawn characters, colourful and varied, and with the action alternating between sleepy Sussex with the parochial attitude of its inhab itants and an island off the beaten track dominated by an active volcano and hiding a gruesome secret, The Syndicate rattles along at a good pace.

Published by Bourne to Write bournetowrite.co.uk The Syndicate is available from Amazon.

happening. But there are dark forces at work beyond their understanding, which threaten not only the 'lives' of the ghosts but could have catastrophic repercussions for the world of the living. They can't do this alone, but will the rift between Charlie and his former friends heal in time to help them?

When Charlie's two ghost friends disappear his panic and despair turns into steely determination. He has to up the ante. So, in time-honoured fashion, the two ingénus pit them selves against sinister age-old corruption and greed. The odds are inconceivable. Will they succeed?

For a debut novel Sixteen Souls shows impressive maturity and confidence. Although not gratuitous it does not shy away from gory detail. Its protago nists might see dead people but this is no M. Night Shyamalan. It is a taut, lean story with believable, fal lible young characters. This Young Adult Fiction was thoroughly enjoyed by this old adult, I couldn't put it down! Can't wait to see what Rosie Talbot does next.

Sixteen Souls is available in bookshops and Amazon. Visit www.rosietalbot.co.uk for more info about the author or check out her socials @merrowchild

Duncan of Arran

by Craig Mathieson

Set in thirteenth century Scotland, this is the story of one boy's journey to adulthood, of conspiracy and intrigue, of extreme combat and the supernatural, and of the power of love.

Born on the Isle of Arran, Duncan grew up a shepherd boy, running wild on the hills with his de voted dog Kelty. His life might not have amounted to much more than this rural idyll but one night he was chosen to spy on the Viking fleet moored at a nearby bay. The uneasy relationship between Scotland and her Viking aggressors was at simmering point and Duncan's mission would advance the Scottish cause to win back some of her lands.

As well as being young and fit, Duncan was an accomplished fighter for his age, having been taught the martial arts by his father. These skills would be tested sooner than Duncan had imagined, as his spying expedition had unwittingly stirred up the Vikings' wrath. It would be a short story indeed had Duncan not bested his opponent in an impressive bout of single combat. But best him he did, becom ing the hero of the hour. But not everyone was delighted with this outcome and soon Duncan found himself captured by Vikings, not known for their clemency, with his life hanging in the balance. But the sudden appearance of beautiful and enigmatic Kjerstin changed the odds and together, using wit and skill, they made their bid for freedom.

By now Duncan had come to the attention of the Scottish king who sent him off once again on an errand crucial to the future of the country. But this time he had to go south of the border into England, and further away from the new-found love of his life.

If the Scotland/Viking conflict was a straightfor ward matter of strength of arms and battle strategy, the situation in England, a country at war with itself, was far from simple and left Duncan feeling out of

his depth. Who could be trusted? For the second time in his short life he was undone by betrayal. It would not be the last time.

Written with a keen insight into not only the his torical elements of the time, but also into the emotional landscape of his eponymous hero, the author has captured the sense of time and place so vividly you can almost feel the sea breeze scudding across the Arran hills, smell the stench of the English castle or hear the clamour of the battlefield. He has realised the different characters' dispositions – the honest loyalty of Duncan's friends, Kjerstin's fierce love and protection, the innate su periority of the nobles who can't quite figure out this young upstart, and the covert scheming of Duncan's nemesis, the corrupt friar. It would seem that the po litical machinations of the time are no different from today's politicians, save their weapon of choice is the media rather than cold steel. No less bloody however.

A gripping story that takes you out of your comfort zone, from the glorious heights of success and love to the depths of despair and near death, and back again... and woven into the fabric of the story, like a glint of gold thread in a robust plaid, is a mystical element hanging like a question mark. The story has also brought about in me an affinity for that time and place not previously present. I look forward to Duncan's continuing journey, wherever that may lead.

Available soon from www.lulu.com

Here are four collections of poetry to enjoy: an anthology; a poetry conversation between two poets; a collection of verses and limericks; and a

Pelicans Can't Read

by Patricia Feinberg Stoner

From the pen of the author who brought us the gently witty At Home in the Pays d'Oc and Tales from the Pays d'Oc and the hilarious Paw Prints In The Butter, comes another delightful collec tion of observations and conclusions about life.

If you've ever pondered the true identity of Puss in Boots, been frustrated trying to contact your bank, wondered why grey geese fly south or wanted to know what Santa really thinks about Christmas, you will find the answers in these pages. Pelican's Can't Read is a collection of comic verse and limericks on these and other diverse subjects, such as the vagaries of the English language or how to tell dragons apart.

Catching the Shards

Celebrating 10 years of Roundel

A decade ago, a group of poets got together to form Roundel, Poetry in Tonbridge. Roundel quickly grew, became a Poetry Society Stanza and continues to meet monthly. Catching the Shards marks ten years of Roundel with work from seventeen poets.

An anthology of verse is, by its very nature, a thing of variety; each poet with their own individual voice touching on different aspects of life. As many and varied as there are things to notice or feel or remem ber. Yet there is a consistency, a particular quality running through this volume. It is the gift of evoking

collection of poetry in response to other art forms – altogether representing a wide scope of poetry across the four volumes. Perfect for Christmas...

Light-hearted and clever – ‘Cave Canem: a response to John Keats' ode 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer'’ had me reaching for my volume of Keats – but with hints of darkness –‘Ermintrude: A Cautionary Tale’ is a poem worthy of Roald Dahl or Spike Mil ligan – and peppered with limericks that make you groan out loud, Pelicans Can't Read provides a welcome moment of levity in today's somewhat serious world.

Available from Amazon.

in the reader something of the emotion inherent in the poem, bringing home the experience or observation of the writer and mak ing it live. Transporting the reader to some place, time or happening. Age, youth, memories, love, life experiences, philosophical questions, simple moments in every day life – all these and more are fair game for the poet's pen. Catching the Shards is available through www.roundelpoetrytonbridge.wordpress.com

Van Gogh and the Colours of Love

by Tony Frisby

In this collection Tony examines works of art through the prism of his own perspective. The result is an astonishing body of work.

Each poem is a response to a specific painting or sculpture, some well-known, others less so. He decon structs and reassembles with the acuity and insight of one accustomed to looking beneath the surface.

The Van Gogh painting depicted on the book's cov er, for example, after time began to reveal an intimate scene charged with emotion, rather than the bleak meal in a mean hovel that it appears to be. “I began to see new meanings in old favourites; to truly see their

'colours'” says Tony.

Being familiar with many of these artworks myself I was fascinated, transported and occasionally amused by Tony's poems. When I read 'Churnings' (see p.67 of this issue) I found myself in a sort of three-dimensional whirl – blending the original Ravilious artwork and Tony's poem about it with my own experience of walking those very chalk paths.

Achingly evocative, this is a must-read for all lovers of art and poetry. Available from Waterloo Press.

Symbiosis

by Patricia M Osborne & Brian McManus

Symbiosis is a poetry conversation; a relatively new way of presenting poetry, in which poets collaborate to respond to each other's work within a pre-defined theme – the general idea being that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Such a conversation is wonderfully tangible in this collection, the communication lines between the two poets almost visible and ideas sparking off each other.

The overall theme of Symbiosis interprets the natural world – with a bit of a twist. There are beautifully ingenuous poems such as ‘Bridge with a View’ and ‘Earth's Twin’, encapsulating an exquisite moment of minute observation and communica tion with the natural world. Going deeper into the folklore of nature are ‘Rejuvenation’ and ‘King of the Forest’. Many of the poems, such as ‘Partnership’, ‘The Intellectual Nomad’, ‘The Hermit Monk and the Scholar Gypsy’ and ‘3.14’ explore the connection

between us and the natural world in a more metaphysi cal sense, engaging with Earth and the cosmos. A vein of myth and legend runs through the collection, with ‘Sacred Messenger’, ‘Koori’ and ‘River Styx’, and bringing it bang up to date, that moment of global madness, the pandemic, is acknowledged with ‘Status Quo’ and ‘Poiesis’.

Symbiosis is a small volume but packed with imagery to transport the reader not only further into our own natural world, but to other realms and possibilities.

Published by www.hedgehogpress.co.uk, more information and signed limited edition copies are available from www.whitewingsbooks.com/shop.

Two poems from CATCHING THE SHARDS by Roundel

Alfriston November 2017

On the deepest autumn eve, in the narrow ancient street, under the creosote sky come all who believe in the nightancestors of dragons, children of fire, legend bearers. Come the Bonfire Men to light the way. Come the stench of burning tar come the torch bearers crackling and showering sparks enough to set the night on fire. Come the musicians strobe-lit by flame and flicker, come the Morris, jingle and crack hop and skip in eerie trance. Come the villagers, faces black dressed in stripes and woolly hats. Come the ghosts of owlers and the Revenue. Come all, come deep, shake off the dark Come to Ye Olde Smugglers, sing, dance, lark and drink it dry. The forces of misrule must come awry.

–Charlie Bell

The door opens out to the moor spread wide as sight, rising to grey mist and silence.

The sun hidden, damp drizzle coats spiders' webs, hedgerows, transformed, glisten. The stepping-stone path stretches to the gate, half open as if waiting for Charlie to come back, end the long wait.

The house bustles with noise. Children decorate the Christmas tree, squabble over tinsel, boast about socks search for chocolate. The clatter of dishes, pans, water running in the sink, the sweet smell of apples, sultanas slowly stewing, cinnamon and allspice, pastry baking its golden crust and beef roasting. Leaving the bustle, wiping floured hands on a paisley housecoat, she calls Is there any sign?

–Rennie Halstead

poetry Liminal

Two poems from SYMBIOSIS

by Patricia M Oborne & Brian McManus

King of the Forest

Nature's heartbeat pounds as seedlings spring up in soil around the majestic oak.

I wrap my arms around the tree's wide girth, place an ear to its bark.

My pulse pumps in tune to the gurgle of the oak's rhythm.

I kneel under its canopy, look up as the sky burns fire, close my eyes, move into deep meditation. My spirit roams past druids in white robes, chanting as they perform a solstice ritual.

The sun god shines down.

–Patricia M Osborne

3.14

Standing sentinel. Upright infinity. Stretches, caresses the fiery sky as it acknowledges, welcomes the pantheon. Softly, murmurs an invocation, an eternal language of synergy, of cosmic love.

We recognise our sadly depleted earth. Our joy, and our burden. Fundamental ground of being. Comfortably numb no longer, we shake ourselves free of heaviness, dullness and inertia.

Turn towards a withdrawal from the modern dilemma. Instead, the forging of a consociation. Life groups. Immediacy of purpose, argot of tranquillity, movement. The circumference becomes our norm.

–Brian McManus

Two poems from PELICANS CAN'T READ by Patricia Feinberg Stoner

Forbidden Love

Of all my loves I love you more

Than any I have loved before.

Your salt is sweeter far than honey

Your worth cannot be prized in money.

When I unwrap your golden form

A strange desire in me is born.

When I but taste your fragrant flesh

My senses are at once refreshed.

Although I know our love is wrong I’m helpless: its’s for you I long.

Although I know it’s wrong to yearn

I can’t resist, for you I burn.

Though you pile pounds on waist and hips

Oh, how I love you, fish and chips!

–Patricia Feinberg Stoner

A Poem For Our Time

I tried to phone my bank today, I needed some advice: My account was nearly overdrawn

Which wasn’t very nice.

A charming young man answered me: ‘Good morning, I’m Sanjay.

I’m at your service, ma’am,’ he said, ‘How may I help today?’

I told him what the problem was. ‘Just let me check,’ he said.

I waited for a quarter hour

And then the phone went dead.

I tried to get my bank online But when I pressed the key ‘This website can’t be shown’ is what

The damn thing said to me. I tried to go and see my bank, I had to take a train,

But when I got there, it was closed

So I’d struck out – again! And now I’m badly overdrawn I know just who to thank.

For that, my friends, is what you get

When you try to phone the bank.

–Patricia Feinberg Stoner

Two poems from VAN GOGH AND THE COLOURS OF LOVE by Tony Frisby

That Lamp

(after Van Gogh's 'De Aardappeleters''The Potato Eaters' - 1885)

No flannelled strollers here, no luncheon rendezvous on the Seine; no fatted gourmets gorge at this thin table.

No medalled generals these; no haughty, horse-borne heroes captured in bright prismatic colour to please posterity's eye.

No sun-flowered field in sun-drenched Arles;

but the crows are here, those black and terrifying nightmares, destined soon to swoop and squawk

the southern cornfields of his mind, stalking now the future, in the cobwebbed corners of this cramped hut in the flat cold north.

But there is light; that sturdy oil-lamp, confines his crows to benign invisibility within the room's dark shadows, shining brightest upon those who dine in this, his soft intrusion

into the world of poverty. So, there is love too; in every glance, every gesture and smile, in each and every shaft of light, in all those sad, knowing brushstrokes.

–Tony Frisby

N.B. All poems shown are subject to copyright

Churnings

(after Eric Ravilious's 'Chalk Paths', 1935)

In the middle distance, a clump of hawthorn offers shelter from the wind; in its ragged lee, a mess of churned mud reminding itself of those

who took refuge from the gales. Cows had been; their huge soft turds glistening in the shadows, hoofs sunk deep into the sod of memory.

Now my own feet scuff and stamp among the long-gone beasts, each paltry step etched in quickly fading hieroglyphics on the muddy, rain-drenched soil.

But for a moment, I too was recorded among the saved; those, my tenuous markings, naming the place where I found a kind of refuge, a sort of peace. Later, on the breast of a hill, I looked back

to where I'd sunk my presence beneath the hawthorn's flailing branches. Someone else was standing now in the drowned soil

and I wondered if that mud ever knew, or cared, who came, who stood and shivered, or hoped to leave an indelible mark upon the pages of eternity.

–Tony Frisby

And talking of chalk paths here's a wee gem from writer Jeni Bell

Magic in a chalk track

There's magic in a chalk track. I've lost entire afternoons to them, 'just a little bit further' they whisper, 'there's something I want to show you.'

Sometimes in the summer stillness I swear I can hear shuffling feet and sheep bells. All still travelling along the old ways.

–Jeni Bell

@Jeni_Wild_Bell

flash fiction

intelligence, she seemed the perfect subject. Wait till I show you what she can do.”

–by Bronwen Griffiths August 21, 2021

‘Those shoes she wears. They’re stained and grubby and the laces aren’t tied right.’

‘She’s always been messy.’

‘Shows an untidy mind.’

‘Lazy, more like.’

‘I have more important things to do in my life. Did you hear her say that?’

‘Yes, I did. She should sort out her priorities.’

A soft pair of shoes, colour of sand. Like the faded highlights in her hair. Flecks of dried mud on the soles, a few stalks of grass. Spots of grease on the fabric. The laces loose and uneven, the zips at the side of the shoes half-undone. The shoes abandoned in the hall. One talking to the other.

At primary school the class teacher droned on and on. Let me show you. Oh for goodness sake, try a little harder, it’s not rocket science. And she did try. She tried and tried and then she gave up and she still can’t tie laces all these years later. Give her a map to read, a mountain range to navigate – not those knots, the complications of unders and overs.

Comfortable shoes, walking shoes, well-worn shoes, travelling shoes, colour of the desert shoes, take-meplaces shoes, loved shoes.

She dreams of the shadows on the dunes, how they resemble the ocean waves. The shoes will take her there. One day soon. When all this is over.

They are just like us

–by Garf Collins

“It was love at first sight,” said Henry as he stroked Heidi’s head fondly. Not an unusual scene, except that Heidi is a chimpanzee.

“Bit of a strange girlfriend,” I replied, trying not to show any sign that I thought my old friend’s behav iour odd.

“I can see that it seems strange. Heidi was pen sioned off at the end of a research project. As I always wanted to carry out personal research into chimpanzee

At the end of a brilliant career, Henry was now Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford University. We had kept in touch since becoming close friends as undergraduates in the ’60s. As we had both retired to Sussex, we had started meeting more often. Unfortunately, my previously madcap friend now displayed a rather humourless intensity.

Certainly, Heidi was clever. She was adept at using tools of all sorts and had a sign-language vocabu lary of scores of words. Henry claimed she could construct simple sentences and laughed loudly when she signed two words and pointed at me.

“What did she say?” I asked, mystified.

“She said you are ‘large man’. You must admit you’ve put on a bit over the years.” He then insisted I played a number-pairing game against her, which I lost badly. Henry told me not to be upset as chim panzees have a much better memory for patterns than humans.

His continual boasting about his charge was get ting on my nerves. I also harboured resentment for Henry’s success in academia. My career had been successful but didn’t have the cachet of a professor ship. I found myself looking for a way to poke fun at their triumphant partnership.

“Try her with the monkey-with-a-nut-in-a-bottle trick.”

“She’ll have no problem with that,” Henry replied as he put one of her favourite sweets into a wide necked bottle and handed it to her. Heidi put her hand in the bottle, grasped the sweet and then real ised she couldn’t extricate her closed fist. Eventually, she gave up and withdrew her hand. Henry showed her how tipping the bottle was the obvious solution, but Heidi repeatedly fell into the trap. He got very angry, and she was also extremely frustrated. In the end, he said I should return the next day. He was sure she would have mastered it by then.

This little tableau cheered me up no end, and the next morning I went back, hoping that the paragon had failed again. As I entered his garden, I heard a heavy thud, as if the chimp had fallen from her favourite perch onto the hard floor.

I rushed through the door of his laboratory, and, to my horror, saw Henry lying on the floor amongst broken glass with blood seeping from a wound in his head. Heidi sat calmly eating a sweet, with the jagged neck of the bottle forming a macabre bracelet.

flash Shoes, Colour of Sand

The Festival

–by Bronwen Griffiths

It’s so long ago now, the last time we attended the festival. It’s hard to explain what it was like back then, the craziness of it. Fire-eaters, jugglers, bikers, drug-dealers, fortune-tellers and snake-charmers. The young and beautiful, the barefoot and the booted, the old and grey and everyone in between. We never imagined that last mad year we’d never return. We thought the festival would remain what it was. But everything moves on. We move on. The fences came in, the rules and regulations and some how we just didn’t go back. For us now, it’s just a distant memory and a few faded photographs where we hardly recognise ourselves.

Home Thoughts

–by Angela Petch

The bird lived in a cage for a couple of weeks: a flash of scarlet and yellow in the forever-winter chill of this country. I taught him Swahili phrases and I laughed when he greeted me: “Jambo mama! Habari?” It reminded me of home in Zanzibar and the love-birds, flitting around the frangipani trees in rainbow mists by the hotel where I worked. I used to massage milky-skinned European holiday-makers for ten dollars an hour. It was much easier than my sisters’ work: gutting and scaling fish until their fingers were red-raw.

That dawn morning I found him dead, I cried too much. I’d returned to my bed-sitter, bone-weary and ashamed of my night work and I’d howled. When I think of it now, I was really mourning the death of my old self: the girl who’d walked barefoot across the hot sand each work-day, kanga clinging to her warm skin. I would stride straight-backed and proud, never once spilling the basket from my head, even when I felt the eyes of Juma on me. He’d lean against the palm, shirt unbuttoned to the sun, cap jaunty on tight curls. I’d turned him down so often because I’d dreamt of being more than a fisherman’s wife. I had no wish to bend double, gathering sea-weed to dry on posts above the shore. I wanted more than a pallet-bed on a dirt floor and a baby every year slung in a shawl upon my back. But that was then.

The customer with tattoos talked to me of his business in Europe. He wore expensive jewellery and

strong cologne.

“You’re wasted here doll,” and his gold teeth glinted as he smiled, “there’s a better world out there you know.”

The air-line ticket and his promises were hard to refuse and so I took his bait. I swallowed it like a fish in the turquoise sea and I was landed here.

Last month I took a bus to the Sussex coast. I sat by the grey-green surf, listening to the roll-roll-rolling of the water onto pebbles. I waited for the voices of my family to tumble across the ocean to me for I wanted to share my sadness. They never reached me and now, instead, I weave them lies on mean, air-mail paper. I let my folks believe I work in a warm office for a kindly manager who wants only the best for me.

How to tell them of my real work on the streets? How I hand over each night’s takings to Tattoo Man; how it will be years before I feel the beat of an African sun once more upon my skin?

My dream is the one thing of beauty left to me: a dream of a home-coming to my village by the ocean; of well-loved faces in the light of a flickering fire and the sound of lace-edged waves smoothing the sands, lulling me to sleep.

One day I shall return.

One day.

© Angela Petch

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

–by Derek McMillan

flash

Four horsemen rode forth heralding the end of time. Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death were the names they called themselves. They thought them selves fine fellows. For a day they raged across the face of the earth, slaughtering millions and bringing untold suffering. Then they rested for the night in a woodland glade.

In the morning when they woke from their wellearned rest they found that the horses had all died in the night. What were they supposed to do now? Would they become the four pedestrians of the apocalypse? For one thing, they would never let Death feed the horses again.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is from 'More Brevity' a collection of short stories by Derek McMillan.

ingénu/e chats to debut novelist Rosie Talbot

Rosie is a graduate of Curtis Brown Creative and Write Mentor. A lover of dark and tightly woven stories, she is inspired by creepy things in junk shops, haunted houses and strange magic.

Rosie currently resides in the leafy wilds of Sussex where, by day, she works as a bookseller. By night, she spends time sewing big skirts with even bigger pock ets and wondering why her family has a suspiciously large collection of cauldrons. Rosie writes stories that are like her hair: dark, twisted, and certainly not straight. When not writing, she can be found obsess ing about books on BookTok, or curled up with tea and her two cats Tinkerfluff and Captain Haddock, reading through her endless TBR.

ingénu/e recently caught up with Rosie to quiz her about all things literary, including her debut novel, Sixteen Souls.

What is the first story you remember hearing?

It was probably an Egyptian, Norse or Greek myth read out loud as a bedtime story by my parents. Books and stories were a big part of my childhood. My favourites were either really gory or really sweet: Beowulf or Brambly Hedge. If I can convince the mon ster to wear a bonnet and stay for tea, I absolutely will.

When did you first start writing?

I dabbled as a teenager but never got very far, I’m easily distracted. About five years ago I came back to writing and actually stuck to it. Much of that time was spent working on a big fantasy novel with multiple points of view and a complex plot. The laborious proc ess of crafting it taught me how to write, but I quickly realised it wasn’t an ideal first book to publish and so I began work on Sixteen Souls.

Do you have any literary influences, favourite authors?

So many! I owe a debt of immense gratitude to the author of every book I have ever read because I learnt something from all of them. I think it was reading Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials that gave me my ‘I want to be an author’ moment. More recently David Mogo: Godhunter by Suyi Davis Okungbowa, House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland, and The Last Sun by K.D Edwards are all books that, despite my writing style being nothing like theirs, have nevertheless had a profound effect on me, as incredible stories always will.

Sixteen Souls is a spooky dark fantasy, what draws you to this genre?

I’m a huge fan of contemporary fantasy in general. I love the challenge of integrating unusual goings on into a modern setting. I think a unique kind of magic happens when the mundane and the peculiar meet. As for the darkness, I think that comes down to the complexity of humanity. As people, we are never just one thing and chasing us is death – a strange, unknowable but inevitable fate. Reckoning with humanity and our deaths often means taking on heavier storytelling themes. I always try to lighten them with humour and heart though. Anyway, it’s fun to be scared when I know I’m safe because, after all, it’s just a book … or is it?

Where do you find inspiration?

Everywhere! I know that probably sounds vague, but inspiration can sneak up when you’re not expecting it. I eavesdrop on trains and in cafés a lot. Fragments of overheard conversation often lead to interesting seeds that, in time, grow into a much bigger idea that is often very different from the source spark.

What next?

I’m currently working on a sequel to Sixteen Souls, which is a true pleasure to write. There’s nothing quite like returning to a world and characters that I love, even if I do then have to put them through hell. When that’s written I have plans for a brand-new young adult novel, which I hope to write next year. I also create artworks, short stories and other fun extras every month for my wonderful newsletter sub scribers on www.rosietalbot.com and also chat about books and writing on tiktok as @merrowchild.

debut novelist Rosalyn St Pierre chats to ingénu/e

Author Rosalyn St Pierre was born in Tipperary, Ireland, and grew up in Surrey. She graduated in politics from the University of Liverpool and has an MA from the Institute of Education, University of London.

Her career involved working in international education and travelling extensively throughout Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Under the wing of Bourne to Write she has published her debut novel The Syndicate. ingénu/e was curious to know more.

What was the inspiration for The Syndicate?

The impact of the plastic waste generated in Britain is known to have been washed up on distant shores, and having seen plastic on beaches, I con sidered what a remote community would have to do to get some help to defeat the seething monster that engulfed their seas. I visited the incinerator in Newhaven and watched with horror and fascination, the huge furnaces burning the continual stream of plastic, but that only deals with household waste, a fraction of what is found in our rivers and seas.

There are references to the central character ‘H’ and her time in the care system. It is a subject close to my heart and I have seen young people thrive in loving foster care, in facilities which offer the mental and physical support they need to overcome the trauma they have suffered.

I have lived in East Sussex since the 1970s. I have been very fortunate to have travelled widely as part of my working life which has taken me to some remote areas and islands around the world, where I have come across intrepid ‘senior’ tourists from the south coast of England

The title of the novel and the yacht is based on the ‘Syndicate’ which has its foundations in a reference to a group of women in the later Nineteenth Century who banded together to kill each other’s husbands, and so the widow could have a perfect alibi for the time of her spouse’s demise. Although the death of the victims may have been at the hands of their wives, the women form a band of silence and shared whatever benefits had come their way on the death of the men. The authorities were alerted to the number of victims that occurred in one neighbourhood.

The inspiration of the island communities is loosely based on Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa. I was privileged to meet her and listen to her analysis of communities and how proximity does not

mean a uniformity of ideas and cus toms. But love and understanding can overcome differ ences and, in the challenge faced by the venture, the survivors return having become very different people to those at the start of their journey.

How much of yourself appears in The Syndicate?

I really do not know! I tried to keep myself out, but authors are not the best judge of this.

Have you been published prior to The Syndicate?

I have been writing since 1979, but not fiction. I wrote teacher guides for a Kernel series of English language textbooks by Robert O’Neil for overseas stu dents, then was co-writer for Grammar and Practice. I was author of New Progressive Primary English, a series of textbooks published by Oxford University Press for state schools in Kenya, and with specialised editions for East and Central Africa. I wrote a series of primary readers aimed at primary level students in south east Asia.

My short stories appear in anthologies published by Bourne to Write. The Syndicate is my first novel aimed at adult readers.

Do you have a writing routine?

In a word, no. Once I start on a section I do write for at least four hours. I regret longer leads to back ache and yes I know about posture, desk height etc. However, a break and a walk with the dog clears the plot in my head and gives me ideas, thoughts, words and phrases to work on.

What are you working on at the moment?

A study of a village community where a skeleton is discovered. It uncovers tensions between the estab lished families of the village and those who have second homes in the area.

The Syndicate is reviewed on page 62.

Weekend Creative Escapes at WEST DEAN COLLEGE

Make more of your weekend on a creative short course surrounded by stunning South Downs scenery.

This range of short courses, new for 2022, at West Dean College of Arts and Conservation near Chichester mean you can do a two-day course, starting on Saturday morning and finishing on the Sunday afternoon. If you have been in the office all week and want to do something different with your weekend to escape the everyday then paint, print, carve and more while you stay on-site for the full weekend escape experience. Learn something new and meet like-minded students, returning home feeling refreshed and ready to take on the week ahead.

Courses include:

• Sustainable screenprints with natural dyes with Lara Mantell, 22-23 October 2022

• Jewellery making for beginners with Laila Smith, 12-13 November 2022

• Introduction to stained glass with Sasha Ward, 3-4 December 2022

• Printmaking with collage with Vicky Oldfield, 28-29 January 2023

• Woodcarving a butterfly in limewood with Alex Jones, 4-5 February 2023

• Colourful aluminium jewellery with Lindsey Mann, 11-12 February 2023

• Medieval ironwork with Joe Tyler, 18-19 February 2023

• Oil painting landscapes with Hester Berry, 4-5 March 2023

• Bookbinding a set of notebooks with Rachel Ward-Sale, 11-12 March 2023

Find out more and see all of the many courses at www.westdean.org.uk/creative-escapes.

top: Printmaking course with Vicky Oldfield above: Stained glass course with Sasha Ward

Art Junction Sculpture and Art Classes

After the hustle of summer, chilly autumn and winter days can provide the perfect time to slow down a little, to reflect on life and pursue your favourite interests whatever they may be.

If you have an artistic bent, Art Junction may have just what you are looking for with our range of sculp ture, art courses, and workshop facilities. Come to the studio to exchange ideas with like minded people, find help with sticky technical problems, or just talk through how a project might be executed. It’s a space to have the freedom to explore, discover, and even make the neces sary mess that often accompanies the creative process! From practising sculptors and painters to those who are picking up a drawing pencil or sculpture tool for the first time in years or just simply for the first time, we provide a warm welcome to all.

Structured courses can be found on our website, as well as weekly sessions called Free Form. These are de signed to see you through your own project ideas from early concept to finished piece.

Depending on your choice, you’ll be able to make your own armature, model or hand build sculptures in clay for

firing or casting, experiment with resin, Jesmonite, and plaster for casting or direct modelling work. Weekly life drawing is also on offer. Why not come along? We can kickstart your winter project or even help you discover it! For more information go to www.artjunction.uk.

below: Sculpting the Figure in Clay tutor Mark Longworth helps a student; bottom: Free Form Session in progress

Moorhouse Art @ The Mill

Inspire your child to CREATE MUSIC this autumn

Transforming lives by giving children, young people, and adults the lifelong gift of music

The new school year is here again, bringing the opportunity for your child to expand their skills and try something new.

Create Music, Sussex’s leading provider of highquality, inclusive music education, believes in the power of music to transform lives. With locations in Brighton, Eastbourne, Lewes, Hastings and Wealden teaching everything from strings to samba, there’s sure to be something to interest every mem ber of the family.

Research shows that a musical educa tion improves wellbeing, mental health and social skills. Create Music aims to inspire young people of all backgrounds to develop a passion for music. From lessons at school to online music groups, classes are open to all. For those keen to develop their skills and meet new friends, Create Music has nearly fifty youth bands, orchestras and ensembles around East Sussex.

Create Music also runs two inclusive mu sic groups, Orchestra 360, in Brighton and Eastbourne. Anyone is welcome to join and parents and carers are invited to come and

learn alongside their children.

As one happy parent said: “My daughter absolutely loves her lessons. We really appreciate everyone at Create Music!”

For the latest news find them on social media, and to explore the full range of opportunities, visit https://createmusic.org.uk.

is

Greater Brighton Metropolitan College

Having merged in August this year, Brighton MET and Northbrook College are proud to be part of the Chichester College Group.

Brighton MET operates two campuses in Brighton, while Northbrook College has three campuses across Worthing and Shoreham.

In addition to the comprehensive range of qualifications for 16-19 year olds, university degrees, apprenticeships and professional quali fications, they offer full and part time courses for adults, with 7,500 adult learners furthering their education across these campuses.

More than 1,000 expert staff work with our students, to equip them with the knowledge and skills they need, to prepare them for the world of work, to encourage support and inspire them.

There is a huge range of courses for adults, scheduled to accommodate busy lives, with vari ous daytime and evening options available. They run a variety of part-time daytime and evening courses throughout the year. These courses are just for fun, they are a great way to learn new skills, develop existing talents and meet people with similar interests.

Find out more about the Chichester College Group by visiting www.chigroup.ac.uk.

Animation course

SCULPTURE AND ART MASTERCLASSES

in making

Roz

Coda

End of an era?

After the country was shut down for nearly two years we now have the sad news of the Queen passing, a new Prime Minister, the economy in turmoil, a war being fought and nuclear weapons being mentioned by certain leaders. What the hell is going on? Her Majesty passing certainly does herald a new era, but what’s in store for us?

Perhaps on a more microcosmic note, yet somehow indicative of the current times, comes news that a northern university is suspending English Literature degrees and a northern Contemporary Dance School is dropping ballet.

In the north? I’m from Yorkshire and I would think that it would be London and the south leading the way on ‘reforming’ our culture. If it’s spread to the north we might as well accept that life as we know it is over.

The University’s reasons? Apparently English Litera ture is seen as a so-called ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree. But isn’t Disney as much a part of our wonderful culture as William Blake, Geoffrey Chaucer, George Orwell, Jane Austen et al? Removing the chance to study our literary giants is one sure fire way to ensure the dumbing down of generations, whose basic education may well come to rest solely upon ‘reality TV’ and, ironically, cartoons.

And ballet? What has it done wrong? Apparently the reason for removing it from the school’s auditions is due to its ‘contentious nature’ and issues surrounding ‘money, language and movement vocabulary’ – what ever that means. There must be thousands of young girls and boys who love ballet and who would want to

become more proficient, if not professional. Perhaps these two educational institutions should introduce The Beano and twerking respectively as new cultural alternatives, and thus be more transpar ent about their actual motives and objectives.

Out and about

Zooming about delivering the summer issue is always a fun experience – the weather is fabulous, we get to see the sea at a number of locations, meet vari ous clients and friends of ingénu/e, find new outlets, all the while getting a tan!

A few highlights… one warm sultry evening in late July we had a very pleasant time at Chalk Gallery in Lewes for their summer event – their first such event since before covid – where we mingled and chatted with the artists over a glass of fizz and admired their work; we met up with sculptor Guy Portelli at the Escape Arts Centre in Tonbridge, where he kindly showed us his partially completed work inspired by the life and music of David Bowie, which features mosaic hand prints of the many and varied people connected with the man, and which Guy hopes to tour through Europe when completed; we took a peek at the new Amelia cultural centre in Tunbridge Wells and partook of our usual custom of a coffee and cake break there at the Fine Grind café; and we had a delightful time wandering around the Oxmar ket Gallery in Chichester.

As the nights drew in we were privileged to see

image by Seven Shooter

This Is My Theatre perform their own adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice at the outdoor woodland amphitheatre at The Hawth in Crawley (see review on page 43). We also discovered The Dirty Old Gallery in Hastings for the first time, which became a new outlet for the magazine. Despite its name, it is a charming space tucked down the very narrow, olde worlde West Street and has workshop space opposite the gallery where Life Drawing classes, a Kids Art Club and various other classes are held. A real find!

Great news!

New website coming soon! If all goes according to plan it should be live by the time this issue is out.

2022 – The 40th anniversary of Blade Runner

Ridley Scott’s influential film was released in 1982 and, for reasons that may become clear, I have never forgotten seeing it for the first time.

As some may know, I am a Science Fiction fan, of both literature and film. I must add however that I’m mostly interested in the more cerebral aspects of the genre while also having a fondness for what is known as the Golden Age of Science Fiction, when authors such as Isaac Asimov, Robert Hein lein, Alfred Bester, Ray Bradbury, L. Ron Hubbard, E.E.‘Doc’ Smith, A.E. van Vogt, Phillip K Dick, Arthur C Clarke et al were honing their skills. I’m less interested in the comic book blockbusters that have become de rigueur in modern film.

Blade Runner, based loosely on Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, is an incred ible film, which didn’t do too well at the box office

originally, but has since become hugely popular and arguably one of the most influential films ever. When my wife and I watch an SF film, many is the time we glance at each other, saying "Blade Runner!", the visu als so obviously inspired by that film.

Well after its initial theatre release, popular screen ings of the workprint in repertory were shown and DVD sales rocketed, which would eventually lead to a Director’s Cut and later a Final Cut.

The original theatrical release had a voice-over by

An event at The Dirty Old Gallery in Hastings

Our editor chats with some of the This Is My Theatre cast after the show. l-r: editor, Sarafina Doussay, Ethan Taylor, Simon Stallard top: admiring the exhibition at Oxmarket Gallery; middle: the editor and artist Janice Thurston at Chalk Gallery event

the main star Harrison Ford, which was added appar ently at Warner Bros' insistence, the later cuts remov ing this and adding some extra scenes, and director Ridley Scott even re-shot some scenes for the final cut, apparently the only version over which he had total creative control.

I’m a fan of all the versions of the film including, of course, the extraordinary musical score by Vangelis. Although straying from Dick’s original plot, the film does stay true to the core concepts of the novel, such as its dystopian setting and the questions it posed: does Man (universal man) have a soul? Aren’t we all just trying to survive as long as possible?

I first saw Blade Runner in a cinema in Brighton when it was first released in 1982, taking with me the then love of my life. (In retrospect we were not suited at all really, but I was young, impressionable and was sure I had found my soulmate.) And so while watching the movie, I was cocooned in the warm glow of new-found love.

I don’t know whether or not this had a bearing on why, during a pivotal scene in the movie (replicant Roy Batty’s death scene for those in the know), I broke down in floods of tears. In retrospect I think not. I

think it was the touching and aesthetic poetry of the soliloquy itself that did the trick. (The speech was apparently added by the actor Rutger Hauer himself, just prior to filming the scene and Scott went with his idea). As he dies he lets loose a dove he’s been holding. It soars into the sky in slow motion against a stark post-industrial backdrop, with Vangelis's ethereal music haunting the scene. Analogous of the soul leaving the body, this scene above all takes the audience to the heart of the fundamental philosophi cal question posed by the book and story. What does it really mean to be human?

2017 saw the release of the sequel Blade Run ner 2049 which had mixed critical and audience response. I enjoyed it, although to my mind it didn’t quite have the emotional depth of the original, but was a good attempt. I can’t imagine a third attempt to prolong the story, but you never know. But to me seeing the original film is forever etched warmly on my soul. It’s just one of those moments in my life, if you know what I mean.

Will l lose that memory when it’s my time to die, like tears in rain?

A still from Blade Runner

Ryan Gosling, Blade Runner