Mme Poliakov's Spirit of Christmas

Since the Christmas that we know and love these days is pretty much a Victorian concept, it's fitting that Nuts and Volts Theatre Company's witty festive show has more than a sprinkling of Dickensian magic about it.

Gathering outside The Well House Tavern on Cathedral Yard on Saturday evening - thankfully well warmed by a bracing (purely medicinal) sup of Gluhwein from the market - we were greeted by Mr Grimley-Meagre, Mrs Scrimp and Mr Humbug with the promise of an audience with the 'richest woman in the world' - Madame Poliakov! Hustled down to the cellar of the pub (where you can see the remains of an unfortunate nun and her monk lover, who pitched themselves into the well to seek union in death), we await the great lady's arrival and the revelation of her new concoction - the 'Spirit of Christmas'...

What follows is 20 minutes of festive fun, ghoulish spectacle and as many dropped consonants as you can fit in Oliver Twist's pockets. All three performers (Rachel Vowles, Fin Irwin and Richard Feltham) revel in the grimy melodrama conjured by the setting, the script and the conceit, and there's a piece of classic Victorian trickery that is surprisingly effective and delightfully gruesome (I practically elbowed my way to the front to get a good view!) I defy you not to come skipping out with your heart full of tinsel.

It's a tiny space down in the cellar, so audiences are limited to 12 per show - gather early to avoid disappointment. And it's a 'gift' from the performers - you pay what you think it's worth, donations are collected at the end. Happy Christmas!

You can next see Madame Poliakov's Spirit of Christmas on:

Thursday 12th December -  4pm, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm
Saturday 14th December -  4pm, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm
Thursday 19th December - 4pm, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm

Ariel

Commissioned by Kaleider, this piece was performed at Exeter Central Temporary Library during 19th-26th October...

When Alice Tatton-Brown found four photograph albums in an Exeter junk shop, she was captivated by the lives revealed in the portraits filling its pages. Who was this graceful, theatrical woman, so often captured mid-dance, mid-leap? Who was the man holding her close or – more often – behind the Leica III, intent on preserving her vitality forever? How did this couple, who seemed to embody such passion and intensity, come to be abandoned in this way?

Part audio installation, part performance, Ariel documents Alice’s quest to answer those questions, and poses many more – about the relationship between the public and the private, the attempts we make to counter the impermanence of life, and the nature of curatorial responsibility. Moving and quietly contemplative, it celebrates a life-long romance while tugging mortality gently but insistently into the frame.

Instructed to gather by the enquiries desk, we are greeted by Johnny (Rowden who, with Alice, participates in the piece) and told that we’re no longer required to whisper in the library, but once led into the main reading room, where everyone is engaged in quiet, private study, that comment reinforces the subtle shift in perception associated with taking part in a private performance (the two participants for each 30-minute session wear headphones throughout) in a public space. Surrounded by the evidence of human endeavour, of myriad lives collected between hard covers, preserved on paper, we receive the story of the couple in the photographs, John and Muriel, the when, the where, the how; while we listen, Alice walks around, putting away books, checking spines – her detective work played out before us while her voice draws us deeper into the couple’s life together. In the telling, Alice is seeking to preserve John and Muriel anew, creating fresh markers for them in everyone with whom she shares their story.

The tension caused by the interplay of public and private surfaces repeatedly throughout the piece, in its structure and its narrative: we watch Alice and Johnny move around the library seemingly unnoticed by everyone but us, while the intimate details of two strangers’ lives are poured into our ears; we are led to the ‘special section’ of the library – the ‘private’ within the public – to see digitised versions of the photographs, intensely private moments rising and fading before our eyes. Should I be looking at these images? By accident or neglect or intention – but without the knowledge of or consent from John and Muriel, that is certain – these photographs entered the public realm. At one point we hear Alice discussing her distaste for Facebook, and her fears about handing the albums over to be digitised – so that we can see them – and yet here are these private, intimate photographs now being viewed by two people every half hour, for eight hours a day, over the course of seven days. Having bought the albums, Alice now owns the photographs; she can display them how she chooses. In the telling and retelling of this story, John and Muriel are alive again, in our ears and our hearts, but I can’t shake off the feeling that looking at the images, many of a semi-naked Muriel, is intrusive.

Is it surprising that, as a childless couple, John and Muriel’s joint venture against transience ended up in a junk shop? It certainly seems so, when we hear about their happiness, their achievements and their adventures. But while Ariel celebrates romance – and the piece is as much a paean to the library itself as it is to love – it is also a reminder that mortality is always just at the edge of the picture. In this place where deeds and ideas are catalogued, ponder which aspects of our lives – perhaps those that reveal the most – might end up splayed across the tarmac on a frost-bright, car-boot Sunday.

At the close, we are led down to the stacks, and invited to stand within the monuments of manilla and have our photograph taken with a Leica III, the same model used by John more than 60 years ago to preserve his adoration of Muriel. It neatly bookends this thought-provoking, layered 

Find out more about Ariel here.

This review first appeared on Exeunt.

Mugs Arrows at Bike Shed Theatre

Apologies again for late posting - this play has now finished...

Pat and Ed are in mourning, so they head for a familiar haunt to sink a few more beers and throw some arrows in memory of the fallen, Simon. In the dingy lounge bar of a decrepit pub, where the décor is as out of date as the power ballads on the jukebox, the pair play darts, reminisce and mull over their run-down lives. Gradually, stealthily, and with creeping unease, the rituals of this male-oriented space – the pints, the darts, the hats – are appropriated by newcomer Sarah, who then moves on to the rituals of male friendship and the arena that supports them and shakes them up in ways Pat and Ed could not have believed possible.

Photo: Rhys King & Eddie Elks in Third Man Theatre's Mugs Arrows

To be too explicit about the plot of Mugs Arrows would pepper this review with spoilers, which would be a real shame, because one of the twisted pleasures of this deliciously constructed piece is the reveal early on that pulls the beer-stained rug from under you and forces you to reconsider what’s gone before, while simultaneously going straight to the heart of what makes these characters tick. Just as the opening sequence uses a spotlight to pick out the details of this male space – the pint mugs, the darts, the trilby hanging on a wall peg – so the narrative shines its torch on the motifs of the male relationship, peering into the darkest corners to see what’s lurking there. As Sarah’s presence picks at Pat and Ed’s friendship, and the myriad failures and disappointments begin to stack up like so many dead sheep – “their little black faces in the snow, all dead” – then the real demons come slithering out. A dodgy bladder, a tendency toward panic attacks… these become the least of their worries.

And while the dark humour keeps us laughing, and the steadily unfolding narrative – exquisitely paced by director Ken McClymont – tightens its grip, so we are pulled deeper into the recesses of the psyche, where all those desires, resentments and fears lie hidden, festering, primed to add their stain to the already blackened wallpaper. Well, here is Sarah with her bucket of blue paint to tackle the rot. Who does she think she is?

Exactly who Sarah is builds to a scene of such brilliantly bonkers surreality that you’ll be agog. Just as the grimmest, most effective fairy stories reflect our primal fears, so Sarah becomes Pat and Ed’s worst nightmare. Twisted through the prism of their vulnerability, loneliness and self-denial, what she represents – change, disruption to their routines, progress – turns her into their very own demon.

With a script rich in subtlety and subtext, so the performances draw out the nuances of every glance, every word, with masterly timing. Elks (Ed) and King (Pat) perfectly capture the paradox of male friendship: the unstintingly loyalty undercut by cruel-edged one-upmanship; failed relationships, careers and reputations forgotten until a barbed reminder calls forth the shame. There’s tenderness here, too, and a recognition that each is sanctioning the other’s stagnation. As the harbinger of change, Polly Hughes conjures Sarah as a force of nature, channelling and focussing the sinister undercurrent seeping up from below.

Mugs Arrows began life in Exeter last year, during Third Man’s residency here with the wonderful Botallack O’Clock. During this run, the company will also be starting work on a new piece, Skylark, the early stages of which will be revealed in scratch performances. I can’t wait to see what they come up with next. 

This review appeared on Exeunt

Unexpected Festival

Apologies - a bit late posting this here...

15-22 September 2013

A brand new autumn festival for Exeter, Unexpected presented a programme of outdoor events and performances, taking them out of the usual spaces and thrusting them into the public arena. Funded by the council, it turned the city centre into a sort of multi-ring circus, filling outdoor (and semi-outdoor) spaces usually dominated by commerce with trapeze workshops, acrobatic displays, interventions and performances, most free to access. Three indoor ticketed events – Reckless Sleepers’ The Last Supper, Blind Ditch’s ThisCity’s Centre 3: Here, Now, and Joel Cahen’s Wet Sounds (which I didn’t see) – subverted the spaces they occupied (the historic Guildhall, an empty office space and a swimming pool, respectively) by their form and/or content, and each was enhanced by the knowledge of how we usually interact with and in those spaces, if we are permitted into them at all.

While there seems little doubt that these public spectacles and interventions engaged those who sought them out (there was a sense of excitement and expectation in evidence throughout the city centre, and plenty of spectators gathered, waiting, watching), there was also the fact that you can’t fail to miss a performance when it inserts itself into your daily commute to work, or one man is doing a headstand on the head of another – and both are wearing animal skins – while you’re trying to get to Superdrug. Your routine is inexorably altered, your perception of a familiar journey or place transformed. And is that enough, or is there the expectation that these events will nudge the casual observer towards a ticketed event in a theatre at some point, if not today?

Photo: Benjamin J Borley

Whatever the overarching intention, there is something rather splendid about a bus-full of people applauding their driver just for being their driver, which is just one of the subtle subversions employed by the nostalgia-tinged and nasal-toned Public Transport Appreciation Society (created by new Exeter-based company Nuts & Volts Theatre), who spent the week intervening on city buses, offering tours of specific routes, with local history facts, quizzes, sing-alongs and I Spy. Bemused travellers received a Werther’s Original plus the chance to win a goody bag for correctly knowing what it was Phil Collins – “from the band Genesis, not Barometer World…” – who has never lived in Exeter. The crowd on the H Bus (to and from the hospital) was a tough one, including a semi-aggressive heckler and some resolute eye-rollers, but the return journey had some participants in fine voice and with the enthusiasm to play a game or two. As gentle interventions go, it was sweet and good-natured, although still obviously too challenging for some, but it was a much-needed reminder of how much more pleasant the world is when we talk to each other and interact with those with whom we share the day-to-day mundanities, let alone the big stuff. By the time the PTAS left the bus, there were smiles all around, and no doubt a smile in the retelling later that day.

Interrupting the flow of people’s routines and challenging the notion of where art can and does take place has driven the work of two of the companies presenting ticketed events at Unexpected. The first was Reckless Sleepers’ 2004 piece The Last Supper, which is built around the rituals associated with eating and dying. An immediate thrill in seeing this show was being permitted inside a building not open to the public: the historic Guildhall, parts of which are the oldest still in use in the city. More resonant – and no doubt contributing to the hush all 39 audience members automatically fell into as we filed in to take a number (13 of which correspond to the last meals of death row inmates) and were directed to our seats around a formal dining table – was the knowledge that under the stone flooring is the old city jail (more like a pit, really), where prisoners were held before trial in the space where we were to watch the performance. The walls dripping with the oiled dead, wood panelling like so much coffinware, there was as much ceremony and ritual in the location as that promised by the piece. It’s gratifying to know that The Last Supper’s performance here has led to bookings in other Guildhalls around the country.

With no pretence at characterisation – Mole Wetherall, Tim Ingram and Leen Dewilde play themselves, seated at the top table – The Last Supper invites us to bear witness to the last moments of the famous, the infamous, the factual and the fictional, to partake of last meals and last words, some self-aware, some mundane, all made profound by the finality of the breath that uttered them. We hear Kafka calling for morphine and Monroe calling Kennedy; Che Guevara’s final utterances are manipulated depending on whose objective they serve; and all are eaten by the cast, for they are printed on rice paper. Some of those quoted, we know their lives, their achievements, their failures simply by the nature of the lives they lived or they deaths they endured; others we know only by name, prisoner number and last meal. Death is the great leveller.

Deceptively simple, there are subtle segues that create a narrative of sorts: a prisoner’s last meal of deep-fried everything is placed in front of an audience member to be followed by a list of Elvis Presley’s gargantuan daily diet, and details of his demise atop the toilet, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich clutched in one hand; a slice of cake accompanying another death row repast feeds Marie Antoinette’s walk to the guillotine. Two scenes early on hint at horror  – the entire Romanov family massacred, only a maid remaining to tell the tale; Rasputin’s fierce battle with his assassins and the reaper – but mostly there is a calm delivery, a slipping away, a receding, which makes the executions all the more unsettling. What of their victims, the other deaths that lead to this one? Where are they?

Most satisfying is the piece’s identification of the rituals and ceremony around food and death, inextricably linked – the last meal, the last supper, the Eucharist... When a prisoner’s requested chocolate cake with candles is delivered, the audience member blows them out and we all clap unprompted, this ritual buried deep within us since childhood. How many more of these are there, hidden from awareness until called forth by a specific situation? The calling of numbers, the presentation of meals, the pause before lifting the lid of the silver serving dish, the pouring of water and wine, the toasting of the departed – all combine to create a quietly moving piece.

Occupying a far more prosaic space – an empty office – but producing the most challenging and rewarding experience of the festival was This City’s Centre 3: Here, Now, from Devon-based collective Blind Ditch, who have been presenting genre-busting, digital performance art work in unusual spaces – including touring a multi-screen converted caravan with young people’s films to village fetes in Devon and Ireland, exhibiting supersize storyboards on train station platforms, and performing over the internet from people’s homes across the world – for 12 years. The third part of a multi-layered work in collaboration with local performers/devisors and residents – the other aspects are a video+sound installation called Window in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and an interactive mapped walk of the city called Linger – Here, Now combines live performance, live video feeds, live music and audience interaction to create a genuinely affecting performance event.

Photo: Benjamin J Borley

Engaging directly with the notion of public-private space, Here, Now allowed us into an empty office in the Princesshay retail development (owned by Landmark Securities, Princesshay is one of those unsettling spaces with an almost seamless transition from public highway to private land; tarry too long on one of the benches after the shops have shut and you’ll soon have uniformed guards emerging en masse from different corners to question your intentions). Fitting, then, that Blind Ditch rebuilt its version of Exeter in a room situated on the same floor as the security team.

“Forget everything you know about Exeter,” commands our guide (Phil Smith) as we converge outside the office building, the shops around us all closed, our presence here already anachronistic and a little subversive. Red-coated like the well-known city guides who conduct regular tours of Exeter’s past, he demands that we ignore all associations that spring to mind. It’s a call to open our perception to possibilities, to embrace the next two hours with a willingness to think differently.

He leads us inside, and laid out before us is the city rendered in cardboard – there the cathedral, the streets mapped out in miniature. Two of the cast (Katie Villa and Smith) walk among it like giants, evoking myth and legend, and during the course of the performance we too get to stalk its tiny thoroughfares, committing our hopes and dreams to its walls and roofs while live video feeds stream images from the streets outside the space and spaces within people’s homes onto the insides of two windows; the cast play out scenes from the day to day dynamics of the urban environment, the interactions and engagements that make a living, breathing city. Tales from an imagined past mesh with personal experience, testimony, night-time behaviours and day-time activities – as if every possibility is conjured and allowed to find its own form, slipping away as immediately as it is suggested or finding its way into consciousness, making connections there.

Photo: Benjamin J Borley

Encouraged to walk into the city and write a statement about a regular activity that we engage in, numbering it from 1 to 10, we ponder what it is we actually do. What is worthy of being committed to cardboard? Numbered cards are held aloft and we read out statements in succession or together, our voices merging to create a heteroglossial mash that evokes the stories and voices of the city – a chorus of experiences. Later we write a wish for the city, and again read them out – ‘to hear music everyday… to spend more time with family… to buy a tweed jacket’. Then the city is dismantled, leaving just roads and buildings’ footprints in tape on the carpet, the performers using the space to play out the various changing moods and dramas of everyday life, before the inscribed cardboard is brought into play once more, and rebuilt with the wishes clearly visible on the outside, like monuments to expectation, monoliths of hope for change, for doing it differently, better.

The live feeds are both technically impressive and intriguing, adding to the narrative in the space while also creating separate narratives that feed into each other. We see views onto the street through the windows of city centre homes – through one, performers play in the road, observed by us in the space and by the resident in their home. On another screen sit a couple on a sofa (Jane Mason and Volkhardt Muller), surrounded by the trappings of comfort and yet seemingly discomforted by each other. Later, a figure (Lizzy Humber) seen lying on the pavement through one view appears outside the couple’s window like a wraith, and reaches in to deposit a piece of greenery on the windowsill, unnoticed.

Just as the actual performance space – and the whole Princesshay development – plays with the boundaries between the public and the private, so Here, Now incorporates that negotiation into its structure and its narrative. A screen pulls us inside a home overlooking Cathedral Green, its own night-time personality a backdrop to what’s happening inside, the resident kicking a football around his living room, before throwing it and various items out of the window, where they are gathered up by one of the performers (Jonny Rowden). The feed then switches to his footage of bouncing and kicking the ball through the streets, while inside the performance space Smith recounts his experiences watching Exeter City Football Club, wrapped in a sheet like an ancient statue (ECFC are called the 'Grecians'). As the excitement of the described game builds, we see on screen the familiar outside of this building, the stairs we walked up on our way to see this performance, and hear the bassy bounce-bounce of the ball through the corridor while we see it simultaneously on screen… Here, Now is packed with moments like this; moments in which what we see, what we hear and images evoked by the narrative unfolding before us slip, slide and leak into each other. Public, private, real, imagined, on film but live, recorded but echoed in the live performance – it all combines to create a thrilling and stimulating experience that continues to provoke contemplation long after the performance has ended.

It’s not perfect, certainly. There’s too much going on in a number of places, so that it feels a little baggy at times; on occasion I didn’t know which screen to look at and missed a whole section because I shut down slightly and focussed on what was happening in the performance space. Only in the bar later did I have an aspect of narrative explained to me (which in itself is a nice metaphor for the city experience). Being able to hear the tech team in charge of mixing the live feeds occasionally issuing instructions to the performers operating cameras elsewhere was distracting. A scene in which the whole cast move through a gestural dance of relationships, personalities and behaviours felt a little self-indulgent (I would rather have seen more of performer/choreographer Jane Mason on her own, or with one other cast member).

Despite that, it’s the scope and ambition of this project, the technical adventurousness, the collaborative and participatory ethos embedded in its very being that make it such a success. And just as the digital aspect is intrinsic to its narrative and structure, so is the sense of hope – the potential for change, for us to build the city we want, to be who we want to be. The set and process of the piece – the possibility of remaking the city with new attitudes, the sight of the performers dismantling and rebuilding before our eyes – implies that we can do this too, out there. And perhaps that’s the most challenging aspect of this work, because it encourages the audience to address the notion that the potential for change lies in us, a result of the changes we make within ourselves, our relationships and our behaviours in society. It is our responsibility to shape our idea of the world, a world in which people talk and engage with each other, share their hopes and dreams and try to make them a reality.

Any outdoor festival in the UK is a gamble – we’re always at the mercy of the weather – but Unexpected really seemed to capture a shared sense of fun, and the importance of actually getting on and doing stuff rather than just talking about it, which was embodied in the festival’s finale performance: Weighting, a work commissioned especially for the festival and produced by Extraordinary Bodies, a new company formed from Cirque Bijou and Diverse City. The piece, which saw a company of mixed ability performers create a somewhat narratively opaque but undoubtedly visually spectacular display of aerial acrobatics, with Exeter’s cathedral a suitably impressive backdrop. Cathedral Green was absolutely heaving, packed with families, everyone shaken out of their routines and out of the house into the somewhat unseasonal balminess, embracing the chance to see the city with fresh eyes and enjoy the performance.

Perhaps because I’m so invested in the arts and performance scene in the city, Unexpected seemed to dominate the week, but I overhead and had various conversations during the run about the festival not being very well advertised. Admittedly this was after the rather disappointing turn out on the opening day (it rained throughout the day) but again and again I and others pointed out the flyers in many venues, cafés and meeting places throughout the city, the adshel posters, the coverage in every local newspaper, city magazine and listings guide in the run-up to the launch, radio interviews and features, Facebook, Twitter, as well as a full-page feature in the Exeter Citizen (a free newsletter delivered to practically every home in the city)…  there has to be a certain level of self-determination, a willingness in people to actually explore further the snippet of information they do notice to see where it leads; a willingness to meet experiences half way, rather than expect to be spoonfed, and then reject what’s on the spoon as not being to their taste. Despite this, Unexpected is a welcome addition to the Exeter festival scene, and long may it continue to programme innovative and challenging work.

This review appeared on Exeunt

Corridor by Sissy Lange

TruPrint Store, Guildhall Shopping Centre, Exeter
Until 22 September (a part of Surprise!, the pop-up visual art component of Unexpected 2013)

Simon Hopkinson

Simon Hopkinson
Phoenix Café Gallery
Until 2nd September

This City's Centre 2: Linger

I'm loathe to start another blog post with 'the weather', but ISN'T IT GORGEOUS! I've been quacking about this summer being a re-run of 1976 since February (should have taken my hunch to William Hill, dammit) so I'm making the most of every sun-kissed moment. When the sun's out, it's as if the years fall away and I just want to get outside and play (and chase ice cream vans, natch). So this week I grabbed a couple of friends, some copies of the new interactive Exeter map, Linger – hot off the press! – and hit the streets in search of fun.

Part 2 of the This City's Centre project (Part 1: Window is a video+sound installation at RAMM, which I wrote about earlier), Linger is a beautifully designed manifesto for playful interaction. An artwork in itself, the map encourages you to explore the city centre with an open mind and a willingness to participate, to engage in positive activity and to immerse yourself in the familiar in a way that reveals fresh perspectives. The colour-coded actions under different headings – including Street Dance, Be Neighbourly, and With No Particular Purpose – direct you on a walk around the city, inciting experiences and interactions along the way.

Some of the locations have QR codes attached. Scan them with your smartphone and you are pulled inside someone's life as their experience of that location unfolds in your ears. Standing by the war memorial in Cathedral Green, you hear revelations about the night-time behaviours witnessed by one resident; sitting on a tree-dappled bench on Fore Street, looking down towards Exe Bridges, you hear hopes and dreams for alternative vistas and are asked to imagine what you would do to change the view. I'd like less traffic, personally.

On the steps in front of the Cathedral we performed Green 2 and danced the Twankidillo. Behind Rougemont Gardens we followed the directions for Purple 7 and found a secret spot with spectacular views. On the crossroads of South St and North St we embraced Blue 3 and became monuments that announced our hopes for the city. But mostly we had a huge amount of fun. We tweeted our pictures and thoughts to @thiscityscentre using specific hashtags – you can see the interactions on the website.

It's such a common city-centre sight: people glued to their phones, plugged up with earphones, transported from their present location by the escape afforded by technology. Linger uses the same technology to root you firmly in the here and now. By hearing the voices of your neighbours, of people who have walked the same stretch of pavement over and again, just like you, and having their ideas, opinions and thoughts flow into your ears as you contemplate the exact same view that inspired those thoughts, you just might – as I did – feel increasingly connected to the people around you. It creates an opportunity to meet the city anew, to appreciate its intricacies, to see beyond the perceived mundanity of transitional actions – waiting for a bus, rushing to work – and hear the beating heart of its inhabitants.

Maps are designed to take you from A to B; that is their purpose. In its playful yet insightful subversion of that premise, Linger encourages you to enjoy the journey.

Pick up a copy of Linger for £2 (at that price you can have one to play with and one to frame – it's that lovely) from RAMM, Exeter Phoenix and various other outlets across the city.

This City's Centre 1: Window

When I lived in central London and the weather was so hot that it felt as if the tarmac was trying to consume you from the feet up, I loved to escape into the cavernous cool of the British Library. To stand amid the Ancient Egyptians, for instance, savouring the quiet chill while filling my imagination with stories about lives I’d never know, seemed a wise investment of time.

Our very own RAMM offers similar refuge, and its tagline – Home to a Million Thoughts – is enough, regardless of the temperature outside, to entice me in. There’s little better than picking a room and completely immersing yourself in its treasures; like sitting in a giant pile of gifts and slowly unwrapping them one by one. I could write reams about each room, about each corner of each room – especially enthralled by the taxidermy, of course, particularly the owl hat. Have you SEEN the owl hat?! – because everything comes back to the people, the individuals, at the heart of each exhibit. The person who carved intricacies into that grain of rice, collected and catalogued those beetles, wore THAT HAT… Where was home? How did they live? What did they see as they went about their daily business? These are the questions that keep me lingering for hours beside each exhibit, and it’s what’s lured me for repeated visits to This City’s Centre 1: Window, the video/sound installation currently occupying the Central Courtyard (just by the café).

Projected onto two adjacent walls are the views from Exeter residents’ houses, each one encompassing stories about home, place, and space – both public and private, and privatised public – and how those residents view that space. The screens show identical images – terraced roofs, a church spire, Haldon Hill in the distance – then one pulls back to reveal the frame of the window through which this view is seen; like looking into the distance and at the particular at once. The long-distance view is slowed down, encouraging you to take the time to savour it: the bird dancing with a breeze, the leaves playing with the light, life in careful transit. The second image is in real time, and as your eyes flick between the two, noting the changing pace, the voice of the view’s owner fills the headphones, giving that view substance and context. In the conflation of personal testimony, the view framed by its particular position and the horizon in slow motion, we are positioned between the intimate and the universal. The voices reveal the past and the present, cares and concerns, hopes and dreams; the meaning of ‘home’, and the sense of feeling part of something larger, of feeling connected to the immediate environment and the community that shares it. The stories are funny and moving; generous in their honesty and compelling in their detail. Some of the views I recognise – not in particular, of course, but in a directional sense – but most are completely fresh, offering new insights on the city.

Courtesy of Blind Ditch

Every five minutes or so, the views tessellate, each screen filled with a grid of different windows, the voiceovers merging to create a heteroglossial mash of stories, like the city of which they are a part. Your eyes flash over each, while your ears pick out snippets from the wash of words; a detail, a decorative element, an ornament catches your attention, and you wonder which voice matches which view. Who sees that vista on a daily basis, and what do they think, how do they live? And then the screens pull a view into focus, and once more we are invited into someone’s life for a few minutes.

Courtesy of Blind Ditch

Created by Devon-based art collective Blind Ditch, this installation offers much more than tantalising glimpses into the lives of others; it explores the boundaries between public and private space, concepts of ownership, and community engagement. It reveals the city in new and interesting ways, and encourages us to look more closely at the intricacies of our daily lives – the details and moments that get overlooked through regular exposure – and to appreciate them fully. And to turn to the person next to us, and ask, ‘How are you today?’

This City’s Centre 1: Window is the first part of a ‘digital triptych for Exeter’. Coming soon are an interactive map, called Linger, that invites participants to walk around the city, be active in specific places and listen to sound files via your smartphone, followed by a series of live performances - called Here, Now - in September during the new Unexpected festival. I'm planning to experience all the aspects of this artwork, so will be writing about the map as soon as it's released and booking my ticket (£10/£8 from the Phoenix) for Here, Now...

This City's Centre 1: Window is at RAMM until 22 September.

B

Changing Rooms

At the end of last year, my brother Mike bought a beautiful little cottage, right in the heart of Lympstone. It was perfect: 30 seconds' walk from the beach, right by the pub, very spacious and with very little structural work to be done. However the decor was, how shall we say...? Not to his taste. Maroon and owls featured quite heavily, and that was just the bathroom.

Mike and his girlfriend Lizzie have been working very hard to get the cottage up to scratch over the past few months. Mike works away during the week so they have devoted many weekends to the stripping of wood chip wallpaper, sanding of skirting boards and papering of walls. 

So, when Mike and Lizzie headed off on a well-deserved holiday, we thought it would be fun to lend a hand and transform one of the bedrooms to take the pressure off them. To add to that, we knew Mike was planning to pop the question while they were away, so unbeknownst to Lizzie, it was to be a bit of an engagement present too! (She said yes - hurrah!!)

Here are a few shots (post wood chip stripping) to give you an idea of what we were dealing with.

This little project of ours happened to coincide with the heatwave, which made for rather uncomfortable decorating conditions, but the copious amounts of rollering and sanding in a room of sauna-like temperatures more than made up for the hours I was missing at the gym!

 

It was really great fun, incredibly satisfying and we very much enjoyed our end-of-day pints at The Globe as our reward.

There's still a little way to go - photos on the walls, new carpet, curtains etc - but I think you'll agree that it's now looking one heck of a lot smarter!

   

 

  

 

 

One of my favourite parts of the process was finding this dressing table from The Children's Society shop on Fore Street. It had already been given the Farrow and Ball treatment by the previous owner, so after a little bit of TLC (artful distressing) and the teaming up with this mirror, (which I found in the pile for the tip!), a lovely getting-ready area was finished.

I painted the mirror in Fired Earth's Oak Apple emulsion. The closest stockist to Exeter is Darts Farm. The staff are very friendly, incredibly helpful and - writing from experience - have patience with the most indecisive of customers!

Mike and Lizzie were absolutely delighted when they returned, and rendering my brother speechless made all of the hard work worth it. So, there you have it - that's what I've been up to the past few weeks!

Congratulations to the happy couple!

Ax

Charlie Tweed

(A still from) The Meadow (2013).

At Exeter Phoenix until 31st August.

Sara Stratton

Sara's work can be seen in the Exeter Phoenix cafe bar until 3rd August...

A Tenner in My Pocket - Magdalen Road

Well known for its independent spirit and friendly atmosphere, Magdalen Road can satisfy most needs in one neat little street. Insiders A & B spent a lovely couple of hours there one sunny Friday checking out what £10 will get you. Rather a lot, as it turns out…

Gifts & Homewares

Whether you’re on the hunt for the perfect present or looking for yourself, Magdalen Road will not let you down. For vintage and retro-styled homewares, Bel Green is a gem (it’s also a café, should you need a pit-stop). 

 

Remember those bowls your granny made steamed puddings in? Well, Bel Green stocks those, among many other delights, with lots of lovely stuff for under £10, including a classic hand mirror (£9.50), a pair of TG Green soup pots for £9, handmade pottery mugs for £9.50, tea towels for £6.50. Tonnes of stuff. And although they overstep the funds by 50p, the Rob Ryan mugs are ideal for when you need A REALLY BIG CUP OF TEA.

At Leela, we were rather taken with these glass bud vases for £4.95(and the sweet peas smelled incredible). 

Devon jeweller Ruby Horologie makes these quirky and original pendants and earrings (£10) that have watch parts inside tiny phials. And just in case the weather turns, you can buy two pairs of Bamboo Socks for £9.

Leaf Street specialises in bespoke, local handmade gifts, and is one of those brilliant shops where you are guaranteed – GUARANTEED – to find the perfect present for even the most troublesome person. We love these mugs (£10) and coasters (£7.50) by Exeter-based Giddy Sprite. There are also cute fabric badges (£6.95) by Poppy Treffry. Don’t forget to look downstairs, where there is pre-loved clothing for sale.

And who doesn’t love a bunch of blooms? At St Leonard’sFlowers there were delphiniums for £3.50 and sunflowers for the same price, and a generous mixed bunch with a gloriously vivid gerbera at its centre for £9.50.

 

  

And if those lovely flowers put your walls to shame, check out eco champions Earthborn Paints, which are free from dangerous chemicals and come in a range of gorgeous colours with excellent names like Paw Print, Fruit Salad and Smidgen. You can pick up a tester pot for £4.25 at Duo Interiors.

Food & Drink

Morning coffee never tasted so good as at Café Magdalen, where a perfectly made flat white (£2.20) plus a diet-busting slice of moist lemon Victoria sponge (£2.20) set us up for our shopping challenge. They serve delicious lunches, too (and MASSIVE veggie breakfasts) all of which come in well under budget, but we just had time to stock up on Tea Pig Darjeeling (15 pack from £3.49) before heading off.

 

With a deli, a bakery, a butcher and a fishmonger, as well as a grocer, Magdalen Road really is foodie heaven. Gibson’s Plaice (fish landed daily at Brixham) more than met our challenge to come up with a two-course supper for two for under a tenner: either scallops (75p each) or ½ kilo of mussels (£3) to start, followed by two whole lemon sole for £5.

For ethically produced meat of the highest quality, pop across the road to multi-award-winning Pipers Farm, where you can combine slices of black pudding (£1 each) to your scallop starter – which is a great pairing – or go for chicken dressed with lemon, garlic and thyme for £8.90.

Would you like wine with your dinner, madam? What a daft question… At Smith’s Wines & Spirits, the welcome is as warm as the stock is as varied and budget-friendly. 

Ian stocks more than 50 wines that come in at under £10, and suggested a Chilean Pedro Ximenex (£8.20) as the perfect accompaniment for our fish main course and a L’aristocrate viognier (£9.15) as the ideal match for the chicken. Too tired to cook your own meal? From August, you’ll be able to get a glass of wine and a plate of food for £10, when Ian launches his Cheeky Midweek Suppers at the shop (Tues-Thurs, 6-9pm). What will be on the menu? “Whatever I’ve cooked,” says Ian, who then insisted that we share his BLT lunch, which was delicious, so if that’s anything to go by the Midweek Suppers are going to be a real treat (regardless of the food, you’re in for a great night; Ian is a fantastic host, which you’ll know if you’ve ever been to one of the Magdalen Road Food Safaris, which he runs in conjunction with Pipers Farm, Gibson’s Plaice, Café Magdalen and a visiting chef). Ian’s BLT was on sourdough bread from Oliver's, the new bakery next door. It was so good that we rushed straight round and immediately bought a loaf each (£1.23!).

At E.M. Hills & Sons greengrocers, you can stock up on your five a day for well under a tenner. Look at these redcurrants for £1.79 a punnet – like summer in a box!

At Bon Gout, we found a box of our favourite chocs – salted caramel – for £7.99. And then we had to try the salted caramel ice cream (£2 for a cone); I have to admit that I actually drooled, which says all you need to know about how tasty it is. There’s so much here that fit our criteria – including fruit-packed jams by Waterhouse Fayre for £3.55 – and that’s before we even looked at the deli counter, where there’s anti-pasti, cheese, cured meats… oh, just go in.

Is it time for lunch yet? Oh good, because at The SaltyPigeon you can get two courses – homemade soup of the day or a goat’s cheese salad to start followed by steak and chips or seafood/vegetarian tagliatelle – for £9.95. Bargain. And they have local wines from Sharpham and Kenton on the menu, too.

Beauty

Time for a pampering session? Call in to Visage House to check out Brenda Anvari’s products, which are all paraben-free and animal-friendly. The hand cream (£9.95) is scented with rosemary and grapefruit and fairly zings with frisky freshness. And don’t leave without having a sniff of the new pomegranate, raspberry and patchouli eau de parfum – it’s like summer in a bottle. In fact, the whole shop (there are treatment rooms out back where you can really indulge yourself) is a sensory explosion, with creams and candles, lotions and potions, all in fresh, summery scents.

At Zamora, there are great offers on treatments if you need some pampering (20% discounts for students, 10% for nurses, teachers and senior citizens), and an eyebrow tidy & shape comes in at a very budget-friendly £9 – very handy until the mono-brow comes back into vogue. For a beauty night at home, you can pick up a pot of Nourish face mask for £10.

And the wild card…

With its amazing antique clocks and time-related paraphernalia, not much comes in at under a tenner at Prime Time, but you can get watch straps and some batteries… and it’s worth a visit just for the peaceful ticking.