flea-circus.org Volume 01. Little Victories 2 3 Contents Page 04: Letter from the Editors Page 16: Catrin Menai (Part 01) Page 38: Catrin Menai (Part 02) Page 80: List of Contributors Our goal is to provide a platform to promote and support up and coming artists, designers and photographers; giving them a space to share their work and build invaluable connections. Mission Statement. 14 28 26 49 44 15 30 52 21 32 54 22 34 58 06 23 36 60 10 24 42 78 12 4 5 letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors letter from the editors from the Letter Editors Editors Letter Little Victories Volume 01. For me, and I suppose a fair few other people, 2020 began in much the same way as any other year. Which is to say very hungover and somewhat regretting the night before. Whilst I was feeling sorry for myself with the previous night’s alcohol slowly pickling my liver, if you’d have sat me down and explained the way the year would play out, I’m not sure I would have believed you. I’ll be the first to admit that talking about New Years Eve in August seems a little strange, but that’s probably testament to just how strange life under lockdown has been. Regardless of your local restrictions life has changed, the days have blurred into months and somehow we get to here. During this time of turmoil and boredom we decided we should really be doing something and from this we created Flea Circus. It would be a lie to say it has been smooth sailing to get to this point, but somehow you’ve ended up with a printed copy in your hands and for that we wanted to say a massive thank you. Flea Circus started out as an idea and it is only because of every single contributor that we have been able to make it a reality. The quality of your entries has really blown us away, and we’ve loved seeing all of these images flooding in from around the world. We’ve been humbled by the way in which the theme has resonated with so many of you and how keen you’ve been to get involved. We’d like to take this final opportunity to thank every single person who has supported us along the way. We hope you enjoy reading your copy of Flea Circus: Volume one and we can’t wait to see where Volume two will take us. Leanne & Rob Just a few words from us... “I have always been obsessed with colour, light and movement and since my graduation in 1994 have used these stimuli to paint traditionally with oil on canvas from rapid sketches I make in ink. I have always painted the human form but now I am engaging with landscapes and am absorbed by them!” Glenn Badham 6 7 8 9 “I am a photographic visual artist and Educator from Leicester. My image making generally evolves from the study of belongings, objects and memorabilia that surround us every day. As an avid collector and self confessed hoarder of mundane and quirky items, I assemble my treasures into still life photographs and engage the public through an alternative visual dialogue. Simplistic lighting and balance are fundamental with my work, I enjoy that the viewer can be challenged on many levels - personal connection, nostalgia, the aesthetic qualities or simply the element of being a touch unconventional in my approach.” Clair Robins 11 Jennifer Woolnough Rai Leanne Davies 10 12 13 Olga Fedorova 14 15 Lucy Garland Alexa Barboza - Iris Koffijberg “It reminds me, that I've got to keep moving forward and that there is beauty in struggle.” “For the last year my health hasn’t been good and every day is a struggle to keep going forward. It’s like wading against the stream. With every two steps forward, I take one step back. I didn’t realize it before, but in the last year I’ve made a whole series of fast flowing water pieces.“ 16 Part 01. Thunderstones, collaborative project with Patrick Farmer a series of pinholes and texts 2019 In your own words could you tell us a little about yourself & your practice. I’m from Bethesda, North Wales. When I left school I went to study literature in Glasgow but I didn’t finish this degree. I travelled in Canada, then returned to Wales and studied on an Art Foundation, mainly because it was free and for a year only, no strings attached! Or so I thought. My tutor lent me a copy of Derek Jarman’s journals and introduced me to artists like Susan Hiller and Rebecca Horn. Everything changed then. I got hold of an old piano that someone was chopping up for firewood. I salvaged the harp , drilled it onto a wall and hung battery powered fans against it so that they hit the strings to create this kind of trilling dissonance. It was fun to discover the opening up of language, and to hack away at it like this, in a physical way. A decade later I am back in Glasgow studying an MFA at the Art School. I have returned to the very place that I began, and strangely am working with instruments again. When I look back at the piano and think about my early work, it is naive and romantic Erasure and invisibility are certainly big themes in my work which perhaps stems from the experience of losing my parents at a young age. I don’t consciously deal with this ‘loss’ in my work but it’s undoubtedly part of my landscape, and has influenced my relationship with photography and objects because this is how I have come to know my parents and my immediate world- through the vast archives I have inherited. but the development is sequential, themes repeat and re fall with reverberation. The porous border of the visual and the verbal, between sight and sound, this is what I’m exploring with the help of great writers such as Susan Howe, Barbara Guest and Mei Mei Berssenbrugge. I’m interested in images in themselves and images as they are to us. Because there’s a difference isn’t there. An image may recall another, and another, and when you open up this kind of enquiry it holds a continuity that feels fun and mysterious because you realise everything is connected. That nothing is fixed, not even the past. Questioning my role within this resounding is my starting point. What is the difference between a sentence and a picture? Gertrude Stein says that a sentence is drawers and drawers full of drawings. That’s it then, isn’t it , the porous border - opening up the drawers and lining them up in the broad daylight. I’ve always worked with found objects and words. Sometimes a simple object will reveal itself and I’ll write about it. Other times I use language to sustain an invisible object. in conversation with: We had the pleasure of sitting down (virtually) with Catrin Menai and asking her some questions about her art career. Thank you once again to Catrin for taking the time to talk to us and share some words of wisdom with our readers. Whether you are an up and coming artist or already well established we hope you can find some value in the following interview. Catrin Menai Swimming in Llyn Silyn photography by Natasha Brooks 17 19 Tell us a little about your most recent projects? It’s clear that you have a great appreciation for your surroundings, incorporating the welsh language in your work, how do you feel your location affects the work that you produce? I am usually working on many projects at the same time. This isn’t to say that I’m efficient or a good multi-tasker, I’m not, there are many silences. I prefer to move between things though and let the parts influence each other as they travel. During the first year of the MFA, I was building imaginary instruments. Some were physical - made with steel string and lead weights, pendulums and hair. Often they were silent. Other objects were impossible to make, partly due to my lack of technical skill. I spoke about the instruments a lot, so much so that after some time I realised I’d let go of the physical aspect, I didn’t feel they needed to be made anymore because they already existed. They were sustained by the language I was carrying them with. People really assumed I knew much more than I did about sound holes and the tension of strings etc which made me smile. I like this approach to language, hearing or seeing things out of context, retracting meaning from reference and vice versa. These musical explorations connect with larger pieces of writing I’m working on that relate to sound and memory. I consider research as something that is always excitedly unformed and in flux. When I’m writing, I collage together fragments of observation and let research and image oscillate between inspiration and scholarship. What I mean by the reference to scholarship, is that I select found texts or biographies that in some way ‘support my memory’. Virginia Woolf once said that a woman writes back through her Mothers. As part of my research , I take my own photographs, assembling information together in the form of ‘presentations’, using physical narration and the slide projector. When I am placing everything together, it feels like fortune telling. By default I’m quite shy, so using the voice as an instrument and an editing tool is liberating and terrifying. The landscape is everything. It’s always beginning. It’s autonomy is my frame structure, where strips of experience are recollected and re-lived through some kind of boundless horizon. I don’t mean for that to sound romantic, it isn’t - it’s actually very straight-forward. I grew up with the sound of the quarry siren and the subsequent boom of slate being exploded in my fore-ground. Kind of operatic when I think about it. When I was little I remember thinking how weird and great it was, to see an inside-out mountain. I’m still fascinated by quarries, or quarrying , the compression of a silence, blasted. The Welsh language is so bound to the landscape, neither exists without the other. If I’m feeling homesick or ‘hiraeth’, speaking Welsh takes me straight back to my home places. ‘Llechi’ , the word for slate, is its colour, purple and palpable. Where the ground originates and how it falls apart is a bit like a memory. Blue sand and its narration,slide projection with voice, 2020 ‘If you can, from your head, imagine a bridge’, Slide Projection 2015 Continues on page 38 18 21 Ollie Bentley “This series is titled ‘Pen Y Fan’. Shot in January, the initial aim of this project was to display the various weather systems that play a role in the landscape surrounding Pen Y Fan in the Brecon Beacons. However, during lockdown, the series has become a source of hope for me, displaying a sense of freedom and travel that we as a society have become deprived of, and one that myself and others hope to return to in due course. I feel that the images evoke feelings of our connection to the natural world, a connection that we will hopefully appreciate on a greater level after we return to a somewhat more normal life.” 20 22 23 Noah Wing Karina Puuffin Benjamin Jones “The collective title of my submitted works is ‘Even Small Victories are Few and Far Between’. The games of noughts and crosses were played on sheets of fogged 5x4 film which had either been developed or stripped of it’s emulsion. Enlargements of the games were made in the darkroom. The little victory encompassed in these works is very simply that of the everyday game, a trivial passing and slightly competitive interaction. “ 25 Ismail Odetola - “Even in this time of distancing ourselves socially, the memories of our loves keeps us alive, knowing they are keeping themselves safe and sound for us to meet again. The work was created to show a connection that is not visible but present in all of us in the coronavirus pandemic time. The colours and probes are intended and projected to give a sense of intimacy and distance at the same time.” 24 26 27 Jihane Mossalim “I’m looking for a place where the viewer comes face to face with strangers’ memories through intimate paintings. Sometimes dark and often melancholic, these works I hope, will shed light on some of our own forgotten memories. We all have stories from our past, hidden deep within us.” Bohdana Korohod My skin was peeled off, bit by bit. It resembled undressing that probably has gone too far, That hasn’t though reached its original destination. I watched myself falling into the pit. Into the pits, two pupils of your hungry eyes. It bites. I was standing aside Absorbing the warmth of your body Produced by my own one being swallowed by you. I was warned that the winters are harsh here. I was feeding on promises, Feeding on memories, Feeding on lies, Getting laid’s, Going down’s, Coming back’s, Feeling used, Feeling useless, Feeding on caress. What kind of animal asks to be torn into pieces? My skin was peeled off, bit by bit. I watched myself falling into the pit. I was standing aside. I was feeding on promises. I asked to be torn into pieces. Too bad I’m too good at it Even Without you. 28 29 “My take on the theme ‘Little Victories’ is inspired by that little challenge we all set ourselves whenever we unload the car after a supermarket trip. Challenging ourselves to take everything in one go, because we’re too lazy to make a second trip is one of the most illogical and fun little victories you can achieve day to day.” Wenhui Zheng Dilum Coppens 30 31 Annie Randall “My submissions details the little victories that help renew our relationship with nature. I try and go for a walk everyday, and on these walks I love looking at the detail on leaves, flowers and how incredibly clever they are. Part of renewing our relationship with nature is enjoying the small everyday interactions and recognising that its part of a much larger living system - seeing the decaying leaves on the ground, watching tiny insects, mushrooms popping up from the soil, and weeds slowly growing around other plants. These small interactions are the little victories. It’s all beautiful, if we decide to look. The blue pieces submitted are all cyanotype prints, and the rest pencil drawings.” 32 33 Rhea Gupte “In this project, I photograph weekly still life portraits of frozen installations of the wet waste produced in my home before tossing it into the compost pit. I aim to continue with this series for the rest of this year, so I have a long way to go, but being in Week 16 already feels like a little victory” 34 35 Daniela Lucato “This video was made during lockdown and finished on 25th April 2020. It is a reflection about domestic violence, human rights and woman’s condition in all countries. I was inspired by a personal involvement: an old friend I met by chance after a long time told me of the abuse she was victim of from her husband. She thought it was painful but she accepted it as a normal condition. I was shocked and I told her she needed to contact the police. I thought about this short talk we had for a long time. I really think about the way she accepted this abuse, thinking it was normal, is a huge issue for many women. This is something that needs to be changed. This topic is for me really important and the work “My name is Sami” is a studio for a bigger project. I feel a responsibility as a woman artist to make people think about it, to confront themselves with this item. I don’t know if it will help to resolve the problem, but this is a start to fight it. This is a work for social change. To start reflecting about this uncomfortable topic, how we can prevent domestic violence, how we can change the perception of women in the society, how we can deconstruct wrong models, it is already a little victory.” https://youtu.be/7oGJW8DjBJo Richard Shipley Sokoloff Ji Eun Lim 36 37 Cecilia Di Paolo Stephane Vereecken 38 39 Part 02. in conversation with: Catrin Menai I am learning and unlearning things all the time. But one thing that has taken me a long time to grasp is the fragmentary nature of my work. For a long time I considered it a weakness, the inability to commit? There is an interesting tension in resisting the need to ‘finish something’, and at this point in time I am reflecting a lot on how to construct a work that allows for something to breathe and remain unfinished, yet be presented, contradictingly, in a precise or clear manner. The poem is fragile, but not weak. So yes - I would wish for confidence in the unknown...as a generative form of practise. What a sensible wish! What do you know about your work now that you wish you’d known when you first started? Oh I like these two words together. Professional. Failure. Great! Things often go wrong, or rather; things don’t go to plan. I get things wrong, and then on careful reconsideration, I get them wrong again. I suppose this is how we know we are alive, because we get things wrong. What did your biggest professional failure teach you? What ways have you found to stay creative during lockdown? I am asking lots of questions. Not necessarily answering them. I think this is a time to question the role of art , and challenge liberal notions of universality. Using art as a platform to educate one another. The creation is the discussion. Bhanu Kapil wrote that the home is ‘a ledge/ Above a narrow canyon’. We can learn a lot from our homes, as long as we are ledging. Can you tell us a little about your collaboration with Omar Shammah? Tracing Dynamite, Archive material, 2016 ‘By our doors great victory stays’, said the great poet Anna Akhmatova What does Little Victories mean to you? The collaboration was with Omar Shammah, an artist from Damascus. We were commissioned to create a digital work to be projected large scale onto the wall of Pontio Arts Centre. Omar was living in Germany and I was living in London at the time. It was challenging to produce something remotely, and also stylistically we were quite different. The beauty of the project for me, wasn’t the outcome of the film, but the process of corresponding with Omar and bridging a gap between two cultures. Language was translated in a cyclical motion - from Welsh to Arabic to English and back round again. Our narratives felt interchangeable and we used the ocean as a metaphor for this feeling. When I look at a foreign alphabet I see waves, the linguistic storm ! ‘If you can, from your head, imagine a bridge’ , Archived Slide, projected , 2015