Tuesday 31 July 2012

AugTember Newsletter!

Have you been enjoying the sunshine? The third member of SHOP has been... 




That's right: AugTember.  We created this new month last year to conveniently create a gap in time that allows us to go on holiday and whadoyaknow - it's back again this year!  More on our hours whilst we're away in the newsletter below.
Lots happened in July, you can check out our blog roll for all the news and of course our Monday Stock Blogs continue apace (well, weekly).  Brett got inspired by his exhibition to create some electrical tape art (it's the next big thing, look it up) all around shop, some is displayed below:

There's also lots happening this month, with continuing diversity in the Arts Space and plenty more between now and Christmas (sorry to mention Christmas).


EXHIBITIONS!

Secret and Ciphers

July 30th – August 4th

Artworks And Objects By Stella Man and Jay Blackwood

STELLA MAN
Stella’s pen and ink drawings are a series of images and random thoughts embedded in the handmade paper.
They reveal themselves creating their own meaning.
Her photographs focus in on everyday scenes, transforming them into something else.
Come and discover what they convey to you.
JAY BLACKWOOD
Jay’s work is inspired by Surrealism and Outsider Art.
Using found objects, toys, images and text his pieces are influenced by artists as diverse as Magritte, Duchamp and Cornell. Dark humour, the mining of repressed material, word-play, and the operations of objective chance come together in an enchanted, humorous and sometimes sinister world of assemblages and objects.
Exhibition website

***

Robros

August 10th – August 16th

Jim Billy Wheeler

The Robros are the best of pals in all the galaxy!
For more information and a special animation visit the website below…
Jim Billy Wheeler’s website

***
Olivia Tripp

September 24th - September 29th

Olivia has taken a photo every day throughout the summer, come along to see the results!

More info on the SHOP website soon


 

HOLEEHOLEEDAY!


27th August - 12th September

We’re off a wee holeeday (yay!) and have a very wonderful volunteer helping us out at SHOP during that time (double yay!) Our volunteer will be opening as and when they can, as much as possible, this means from Monday 27th August to Wednesday 12th September, SHOP’s hours will be totally randon.
They will return to 11am – 6pm on our return, on Thursday 13th September.

Monday 30 July 2012

Monday Stock Blog: Women's Tux and Accessories

Monday, or as it's now known round these parts, MonStockBlogDay!

We have extended the Travel Souvenir Department with some national and international vintage travel sounvenirs and also gotten our mucky little paws on an amazing 80s Women's Tuxedo.  We've also thrown in a few accessories and bits and bobs of homeware:

Hornsea Condiment Set

Slyvester! Attached to a little cup/candle holder type ting

TRAVEL DEPARTMENT!!!

Women's Tux! With detachable collar and tails!

70s Gola vest!

Lovely necklace, what more can we say?

Right, you actually attach these shades to your existing glasses, can you believe that technology?!

Sunday 29 July 2012

SHOP's Guide to Modern Life

Life can be a bit of slog sometimes can't it?  Especially in these dark days of capitalism, narcissism and lack of community.  There are days when you are at a loss to describe how you feel, or why you think like you do. Well SHOP knows how you feel and that's why we've created* this handy 'SHOP Guide to Life'

*we've actually just found some excellent passages from A. C. Grayling's 'Thinking of Answers' and written them out below

Schopenhauer - he had a point


1.  LIFE: MAKE THE MOST OF IT

*We're all gonna die*
Schopenhauer - alone of all philosophers, indeed almost alone among humankind, was able to stare the truth about the human condition in the face.  This, to be brief. is: you get older, and sicker, and then you die.  In the process you lose everything of value: first the broad range of possibilities that were open to you when young; the love you so passionately felt, also when young; then your slender waistline; then your sense of humour.

*So, waste not*
One of the more typically dour of Scottish Calvinist sayings is, 'Wilful waste makes woeful want.'  This certainly has the taste of last weeks porridge about it, all the sourer for missing a great point: that the true waste in life is the waste of life itself: in war, anger, wasted human opportunities through timidity, fear, ignorance, discrimination, unjust social arrangements, economic recession, repressive moralities, distorting belief systems, and all other mental and social wastages that we impose on ourselves or allow others to impose on us.

I would like to know who said the following : 'Every day I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well.'  This is one lesson about waste we should never waste the opportunity to apply.

*And remember not to be afraid*
Life is change, stasis is its negation. And, as Emerson said about any difficult circumstances rightly faced. 'They are opportunities no good learner would wish to lose.'

Money alone is valueless


MONEY: ITS REAL VALUE

The rational attitude to money is of course to wish for lots of it, but only because of what spending it provides.  Consider: a person who has ten million dollars in the bank and never spends a cent is a very poor person indeed.  A person who has a hundred dollars in their pocket and spends it on a good time is a rich person indeed.  Accordingly, one should estimate an individual's wealth by what they spend, not by what they have; for in this short life of ours - one should never tire of pointing out that the average human lifespan is less than one thousand months - wealth is experience, endeavour, enjoyment, energy.  It is emphatically not a bank balance, a sheaf of investments, a pile of bricks and mortar, for none of this goes into the grave with its owner, and while it exists in that illiquid form it is of little real use, except as a promissory of what it can be turned into: travel, laughter, learning, expansion of spirit through the acquisition of delights and memories.

The meaning of life: very similar to a Kinder Egg


THE MEANING OF LIFE

Something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for.

Saturday 28 July 2012

Exhibition: Currency

This week in the Arts Space, was another familiar SHOP-face indeed ... Jayne Marshall, one half of SHOP and a Director of the CIC.  You may have read in the last newsletter, that Brett and Jayne both decided to put their money where their mouths were, when saying art and creativity should be a universal pursuit ... so, they're trying things on the 'other side' of SHOP by having an exhibition each in the Arts Space this July.
Jayne followed Brett's 'By a Click of Paint' last week with her exhibition, 'Currency: A Novel on Five Walls'.  Here's what she had to say about it, on her own website, Bookyish

After going to see Alain de Botton talk about Religion for Atheists, and being struck by what he said about art, I decided – as I run a vintage clothing shop and arts space which preaches ‘art-for-all’ – I should challenge myself by having an exhibition of my own there, something I have never done before, or ever considered doing.

I did, however, immediately have a clear idea of what I would like to do.  All the exhibitions we have had in the arts space over the past two years have been visual, and my thing is words, so I thought I would have an exhibition based on the art of literature.



Bit of background: when I was twenty-one and freshly graduated, I wrote a list of all of the things I wanted to achieve before I died (I actually put ‘and/or thirty’, as obviously at that point I assumed there is no life after thirty) and one of the entries was, ‘write a novel’.  Although this compulsion has always been present in some dark corner of my mind, I didn’t act upon it until about four months before my thirtieth birthday, finally finishing it exactly one week before my thirty-second birthday this year.

The full novel is of a normal novel length and I toyed with the idea of recreating it exactly over the walls of the art space.  However, I then became shy and began to prefer the idea of having five extracts printed up and pasted onto each wall.  The extracts make a collective story of their own (as well as each extract individually), whilst also giving a brief glimpse into the main preoccupations of the full novel.  Accompanying the extracts are a synopsis of the novel and a bit of info about me, which I’m told is called an Artist Statement.

Here is the Artist Statement and synopsis, followed by some pictures of the exhibition and the extracts in full:

ARTIST STATEMENT


I’m Jayne.  I have an MA in Literature, but rarely put it to any use as I run a vintage clothing shop (the one next door).

Before there was the shop, books were my first love and I’ve always wanted to write my own novel.  I promised myself, aged twenty-one, that I would do it by the time I reached thirty.  However, the right time never presented itself and I didn’t end up revisiting the idea until four months before my thirtieth birthday.  I finally managed to finish Currency one week before turning thirty two in April this year.

The complete novel is standard length, but for this exhibition I have chosen to exhibit five chronological extracts.  The extracts make a collective story of their own (as well as each extract individually), whilst also giving a brief glimpse into the main preoccupations of the full novel.

The story gathers around the disappearance of, and subsequent search for, a father.  It is dually narrated, through the voices of the father and his daughter.  It is primarily concerned with power and identity, but also family and loss.

SYNOPSIS

The three central themes of Currency are: Power, Identity and Time – and the fluid nature of each.  The main motifs employed to illustrate these themes are: money (lack of, causing powerlessness), sex (use of, to gain power), the family (crisis of identity) and aging (time passing).  The story is told through a dual narrative, using the first-person voices of the protagonist, Rose, and her father, David.  The novel is set in the present day and uses the back drop of The City as the main location.

The story begins a few days before the protagonist’s thirtieth birthday.  The first three chapters are concerned with illustrating how dislocated she has become, as a result of a combination of the three main themes.  At chapter four, all the main characters are gathered for the protagonist’s birthday party, the narrative then switches to the father for chapter five.  He introduces himself and his story, which is essentially the same as his daughter’s – though they stand at the opposite ends of life, and both feel utterly alone, yet they unknowingly mirror each other and each other’s crises.  The father looks back at his own life and sees only its losses and missed opportunities, he feels life has only happened to him and around him.

The party is the central crisis point of the novel.  As the protagonist is reaching the depth of her own personal crisis, at the same time, the novel is reaching its also – which is the point at which David makes the decision, unknown at the time to the other characters, to disappear.  During the party, we also meet Rose’s aged Uncle Pete, who asks her to assist him in finishing a book he has been writing for over fifty years, called On Being Conscious.  She promises to do so, even though she is annoyed with him for burdening her further with it.

From here, once the main characters discover that David is missing, the novel centres on the search for him by the protagonist, her mother (Gwen) and her sister (Lizzy).  As Rose searches for her father, so she is forced to take responsibility for her life and her own issues of identity, powerlessness and loss. A sub-plot develops in which she begins a relationship with a person (Neil) whom she has continually rejected previously, and in doing so has to come to terms with abandoning her use of sex as a tool for power.

Throughout the search, the reader is privy to what David is doing and going through, although of course the protagonist, her mother and sister, are not – remaining unable to fathom what has happened to him, and subsequently to their family.  David has taken off across Europe, hoping that taking freedom will allow him to feel empowered.  However, finding that this is not the case and not being able to find a way to reconcile himself to what he has done and the issues he was running from, finally, the reader witnesses David’s suicide (the ultimate taking back of power) and the end of his narrative role.

The final three chapters are narrated by the protagonist.  We see her and her family attempting to come to terms with the heartbreaking realisation that they know very little about their father/husband and as a result are failing/have failed to find him.  They decide they must ‘let go’ and we witness a kind of funeral, before the protagonist, in a subversion of the usual happy ending, commits somewhat apathetically to marry Neil.  The final scene sees Rose discovering that her Uncle Pete has died (after the wedding), without ever having finished his book, and so without ever having found any wider meaning to life.












EXTRACT 1
PARIS
At the bar, I ask the waiter to pay.  I pretend to myself that Lizzy’s overstuffed purse, full of receipts and credit cards and cash, is mine.  It feels good. 
 Page 8
EXTRACT 2
CURRENCIES
As I walk through the city, the spring weather is warm and light.  I notice for the first time how green the trees have become and everywhere seems to be teeming with animals and children.  The fresh, warm air hits my body, making it flash with heat in patches.   I try and remember a time when I didn’t feel so unhinged.  A mechanical street sweeper keeps pace with me.  If I speed up, it catches me, and if I fall back, it falls back too.  It seems to have a malicious intent towards me, not wanting to give me moment free from its monotonous whirring and grinding that is pounding through my head, making it throb painfully.  I really need a sweet drink.
Page 26
EXTRACT 3
DAD
I suddenly just had to get out of there: that party, those people – my family.
 Page 60
EXTRACT 4
DAVID
I run my hands over the book shelves, dotted here and there with items that are so familiar as to have become completely invisible to me.  The ornaments, the pictures, and the Russian dolls my granddad bought for my mum when she was a little girl, they must have been sitting there all my life.  The crack over the smallest doll’s eye, where the paint is flaking off around it, so recognisable I may as well be looking at my own reflection.  But, when did I stop noticing that they were there?
 Page 76
EXTRACT 5
GIVING UP, LETTING GO
We stop and hug.  I think how strange we probably look, two grown women embracing in a suburban street, for a few long minutes, under the moonlight.  When we break off, we smile at each other and turn back towards the house in silence.  After a while I find the courage to ask,
“What do you think happened?  To dad?”
Page 130

Monday 23 July 2012

Monday Stock Blog: Summer Travel Themed Clothes and Accessories!

The sun is out and it feels like we're all on holiday!  To match the mood, this Monday's Stock Blog has a travel theme*!  Satisfy your vintage travel wanderlust NOW!

*disclaimer: not all items featured on blog may be travel related, unless you pack them into a suitcase, perhaps. If you wanted.

Men's Safari Shirt

Unisex Travel Cardie, for those cool evenings

Men's Safari Coat, for those cool evenings when you're on safari

Travel Chewits Tee Shirt

Travel Suitacaes, to put things in when you're going on your travels.

SHOP's Sounvenir Department: NEW IN: a matador outfit for your vino tinto - travel without leaving your lounge

Travel skirt-it compresses to the size of a genome.

Unisex Travel Vest (you must provide your own knotted hankie)


Saturday 21 July 2012

Exhibition: By a Click of Paint

This week in the Arts Space, was a very familiar SHOP-face indeed ... Brett Atkinson, one half of SHOP and a Director of the CIC.  You may have read in the last newsletter, that Brett and Jayne both decided to put their money where their mouths were, when saying art and creativity should be a universal pursuit ... so, they're trying things on the 'other side' of SHOP by having an exhibition each in the Arts Space this July.

Brett was first up with 'By a Click of Paint' and here's what he had to say about it, on his own website, Bifurcated:



“That’s not art!” You might be screaming at the computer screen. “That’s just stuff done on Paint – really badly!” Or “They look more like terrible football parodies that everyone who thinks they’re funny does?!” All of which are valid observations.


My art work, in all its incarnations (it hasn’t always looked like this) has always been about questioning the way art communicates via its “own” verbal and non-verbal language; about its context, and about its inherent snobbery. The central theme being our relatedness. I’m very interested in how people don’t want to share things; they want things all to themselves. When they do choose to share, it’s with those who already share the same narrow viewpoint.


The parallels between art and football, with regards to language, context, snobbery and relatedness, are why I’m interested in combining the two. Although that’s not to say these parallels are specific to these particular institutions. I have been a student of both for a long time, so feel qualified to express a legitimate opinion on both; that’s my start point.


It’s about football, but it’s not about football. The subject matter could be anything, but the subject matter couldn’t be anything else either. My favourite fable is, The Emporer’s New Clothes. I also believe the pursuit of perceived perfection to be, in general, a narcissistic one.


I can’t guarantee any of the above won’t be sacrificed for the sake of a pun or punchline. What? I’m an Artist – your rules don’t apply.

Below is how the show looked through the medium of Paint and then in reality.


He then added to it…

Monday 16 July 2012

Monday Stock Blog: Women's and Random Curios!

We hereby submit to you SHOP's Monday Stock Blog, replete with vintageness to compete with those Monday blues and complete your feelings of joy at the world. Or something. It all went a bit rhyme-y there.

Women's, Stationery, Jewellery and randomness!