Clare Hamilton 'Weather the Storm Together' 25 January to 14 February 2021

 

'WEATHER THE STORM TOGETHER'

Clare Hamilton

In these lockdown days, some of us are coping better than others. We really are all in this together and need to look out for each other now more than ever.

If you are struggling to weather the storm - financially, practically or emotionally - there are local organisations who can help, including:

Kent Together 

can help you with:

- making sure you have enough food and supplies

- picking up prescriptions (except in Tunbridge Wells)

- making sure you have someone to talk to by phone, Skype or Facetime.

Kent Support and Assistance

can provide short term assistance to households facing financial hardship as a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Money Advice Service

can give you advice about how to manage your money and what support is available from your account providers.

Live Well Kent

can offer free, confidential support when mental health is impacting your life, work, money, relationships, housing or physical health.

Wellbeing advice

Here you'll find suggestions that can help your wellbeing as well as children and young people's wellbeing.

The pandemic has created uncertainty and anxiety and the constant news can feel overwhelming. This anxiety is natural, and we are all feeling it. Fortunately, there are things we can do to protect our mental health and to support the wellbeing of our friends and family.

'Weather The Storm Together'

Clare Hamilton

Driftwood boat and ceramic wave sculpture.

2021.

You'll find out more about Clare's work using the links below:

Instagram @clare_hamilton_design and 

The Woodshed Gallery Folkestone 

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Upcoming Exhibitions:

Ethan Sheppard 'Get Some Compassion' 4 - 24 January

‘GET SOME COMPASSION'

Ethan Sheppard

                       

In the year 2015, I got a tattoo. It read, ‘get some compassion’, bordering an image of a syringe. This would forever be a reminder that others, and sometimes myself, lack(ed) compassion when it is most needed. 

The Calais jungle closed the following year, in 2016. A camp on the borderline between two rich and powerful countries, overflowing with migrants and refugees; 10,000 people at its peak. All individual lives, many fleeing persecution and terror and wanting nothing more than a safer life. I opened my eyes to it and wanted to learn why this was happening. The world’s eyes stayed closed? The enduring negative reactions. The enduring apathy. Questions haven’t been asked, let alone answered, yet prejudice prevails... Why are they coming here? Why can’t they stay in the first safe place they come to? They’re in a safe country already! Why are we helping them and not our own? Unfortunately, it appears these questions are rarely asked with any genuine desire for an answer.

A growing number of people seem to view refugees and migrants as the problem, rather than understanding the causes that drive families and individuals to risk their own lives crossing borders; or the government's failure to address the underlying issues. 

A person who needs help, whoever they are and wherever they come from, is still a person who in need of help.

First and foremost, we surely need, above all, a caring response to those who need help? And we can care, in both big and small ways.

 

This sculpture is intended for a set group of people who need help; those without compassion. Those who need an additional dose to help confront their own fears, insecurities and absence of understanding. Perhaps by injecting some compassion it could bring the ability to understand someone else's situation, or enhance the desire to take action to improve lives.

'Get Some Compassion'

Ethan Sheppard

Syringe sculpture / spray paint.

2021

The colour gold is associated with illumination, love, compassion, courage, passion, magic, and wisdom.

Find out more about the refugee crisis and Ethan's work using the links below:

https://care4calais.org/the-refugee-crisis/

https://ethanwshep.wixsite.com/mysite

https://www.instagram.com/_ethanarthouse_

Beth Hart aka Sutured Specimens 'The Great Extinction Exhibition' 21st September to 4th October 2020

The Western Black Rhinoceros 

(Diceros bicornis longipes) or West African black rhinoceros was declared extinct in 2011. It was heavily hunted in the beginning of the 20th century, the population rose in the 1930s after preservation actions were taken, protection efforts declined over the years, poaching continued and by 2000 only an estimated 10 survived. In 2001 there were only five. Although It was believed that around thirty still existed in 2004, this was later found to be based upon falsified data.

The Guam Flying Fox

 (Pteropus tokudae), also known as the little Marianas fruit bat. The last specimen was a female found roosting in 1967, but it escaped capture. When it was more plentiful it was hunted by humans for food, which may have contributed to its extinction. Another factor may have been the introduction into the island of the predatory Brown Tree Snake. 

The Bubal Hartebeest 

This antelope subspecies declined sharply during the course of the 19th century, when entire herds were massacred at once by the colonial military. The last known herd, numbering only 15 animals, was located in 1917; all but 3 of them were killed by the same hunter. The last animal in Morocco was shot in Missour in 1925. It probably disappeared around the same time in Algeria. One last specimen is mentioned as having been 'collected' in the 1920s.

Neanderthal

(Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) are an extinct species of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. They probably went extinct due to competition with or extermination by immigrating Eeuropean early modern humans or due to great climatic change, disease, or a combination of these factors.

The Dodo

(Raphus cucullatus) is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Mauritius. The first recorded mention of the Dodo was in 1598. In the following years, the bird was hunted by sailors and invasive species, while its habitat was being destroyed. The last accepted sighting of a dodo was in 1662. The extinction of the dodo within less than a century of its discovery called attention to the previously unrecognised problem of human involvement in the disappearance of entire species. 

The Titicaca Orestias

(Orestias cuvieri, native name amanto) A survey in 1962 failed to find any Titicaca orestias but in the hope that an undiscovered population remains, it is listed as “Data deficient” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The extinction is due to the water becoming contaminated by metals, such as zinc and copper, and also agricultural fertilizers and pesticides, alongside human consumption of the basins in the Altiplano depleting the Orestias' habitats.

The Cry Violet

(Viola cryana) grew on limestone outcrops in the region of Cry, southeast of Tonnerre in Yonne. It is thought to have been extinct in the wild by 1930 due to habitat destruction because of the limestone quarrying and also overexploitation by plant collectors. This plant might have survived in cultivation until 1950.

Human

(Homo Sapiens) are a species of highly intelligent primates that have become the dominant species on earth. Part of the Great Ape family (along with chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans), this sub-species is characterised by its upright, bipedal locomotion, manual dexterity and heavy tool use, plus complex communication and its highly organised societies. Having diverged from other Homonid species around 300,000 years ago, it spread around the world in waves of migration. The spread of large and ever increasing populations of this species has profoundly affected the biosphere and the other species that inhabit it.

Scientists believe the current population of over seven billion to be unsustainable, with finite resources, climate warming and the species own poisoning of their habitat to be contributing factors.

The Great Extinction Exhibition

Beth Hart

Mixed media

Various dimensions (1:12 scale)

2020

To find out more about Beth and her work please visit 

www.suturedspecimens.co.uk

or visit her Instagram @suturedspecimens

Exhibits are being sold via Instagram auction.

Please visit @suturedspecimens to see current bids and to make your own via direct message.

All proceeds will be donated to Kent Refugee Action Network

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Exhibitions Coming Soon:

 

The Great Extinction Exhibition 

(1:12 Scale)

Rosa Parks. 27th June to 12th July 2020

'Rosa Parks' by Phoebe Hubbard. Mixed media. Price - £25 including charity contribution to The Rainbow Centre.

Created for The Dolly Project in 2019, this customised Ddung doll is a recreation of the arrest of American Civil Rights activist & Feminist Icon Rosa Parks.

Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist who refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. On 1st December, 1955, she rejected the bus drivers demand that she give up her seat in the 'coloured' section of the bus so that a white passenger could sit down as the 'whites-only' section was full. She was subsequently arrested for 'civil disobedience' under Alabama law. Having been humiliated and mistreated by bus drivers, including the driver of that vehicle james F. Blake, before (Blake had taken her fare payment, then driven off and left her standing in the rain before she had a chance to re-enter the bus through the 'coloured' door in a previous incident) Parks decided that she had had enough. She said "My resisting being mistreated on the bus did not begin with that particular arrest. I did a lot of walking in Montgomery."

In her Biography she wrote of the incident:

 'People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in'.

Although not the first person to resist bus segregation, she made a court challenge against the segregation laws (with support from the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People). Her actions inspired the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the first major direct action campaign in the American Civil Rights Movement, during which coloured people boycotted the Montgomery busses for over a year. Its success launched nationwide efforts to end racial segregation of public facilities.

Despite the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, activists like Rosa and Martin Luther King suffered severe penalties for their actions. parks lost her job due to her activism, and received death threats for the rest of her life. Celebrated as the 'First lady of Civil Rights' and 'Mother of the Freedom Movement', she continued to organise for Civil Rights and education for the rest of her life, including supporting the Selma-To-Montgomery marches, the Freedom Now Party, the Black Power Movement and the Black Panthers. She also worked on freeing the Wilmington 10, the RNA 11 & Gary Tyler, all wrongfully accused of crimes against white people.

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The Pocket Gallery supports

#BLACKLIVESMATTER

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Exhibitions Coming Soon:

Charlotte Chapman - 13th July to 26th July

Threadbare Woman - 27th July to 9th August

Katie Bradley - 10th August to 23rd August

Shane Record - 24th August to 6th September

Constance MacQueen - 7th September to 20th September

Sutured Specimens - 21st September to 4th October