OBSERVATIONSHervé Van De Meulebroeke

aSpace Gallery, Sussex Coast College Hastings6-27 January 2015

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a selection of texts from the creative writing workshop led by Ian Monk at aSpace Gallery on Friday 23 January 2015

Haikus by Sandra Burdett, Ségolène Gabriel, Bronwen Griffiths, Sam Griffiths, Louise Kenward, Silvia King, Ian Monk, Caoimhe Ntull, Judith Shaw, Nicole Zaaroura

printed byl’Atelier des VenterniersSaint-Omer (France)

OBSERVATIONS is the inaugural exhibition of ‘+15’, a year long programme of exhibitions to celebrate the fif teenth anniversary of the arts association and exhibition programme of Espace 36 in Saint-Omer. During 2015 twelve arts and cultural venues in France, Belgium and the UK will show artists’ work produced through previous residencies and exhibitions at Espace 36. OBSERVATIONS is a selection of photographs created during Van De Meulebroeke’s 2004 residency with Espace 36 which was informed by his on-site research in the Audomarois Marshes of Saint-Omer. Other works include those from the Northern France (2009) and South East (2014) coastal series.

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OBSERVATIONS is a cross-border collaboration between Espace 36, Saint-Omer and Tempo Arts, Hastings.

Espace 36 is both an association and a place for the creation and dissemination of contem-porary art. Its primary objective is to support artists’ practice in their research and production of new peojects and to develop an audience for artists’ work.

Tempo Arts is a non for profit organisation which works across the visual arts, film and sound. They commission artists’ temporary interven-tions in the public realm and alternative spaces outside a gallery context in Hastings and St Leonards-on-Sea. They aim to bring high quality and innovative contemporary art to local communities and an arts audience.

ht tp://espace36.free.fr www.tempoarts.org.uk

Hervé Van De Meulebroeke is based in Lambersart, a suburb of Lille (Fr) and has exhibited widelt in northern France. Accor-ding to the artist, he uses photography to ‘un-realise’ the real world. Thanks to the photographic process Van De Meulebroeke transforms a plant, a landscape or a cof fee cup into a starnge and poetic object. However, these images are not an abstrac-tion but inform about reality in an alternative way. Keeping a distance from the subject, through the use of various technical and aesthetic devices, entails a further reading that Van De Meulebroeke hopes is dif ferent from the real world. For him, photography cannot be objective.

ht tp://hvdm.fr

Ian Monk is an English writer and translator based in Lille. He is a member of Oulipo and Zazie Mode d’Emploi

The Oulipo is a group of (mostly French) wri-ters which has been around for 55 years. Its aim is to analyse how the forms and structure of qwritng can be bet ter unders-tood, mastererd and then expanded, with a view to helping anyne who so desires to find the tools they need to write. Its most famous (and most translated) members have been Georges Perec and Italo Calvino.

Zazie Mode d’Emploi is a group, based in the North of France, of people who feel influenced and interested in the work of the Oulipo, and who seek to promulgate this way of going creation in numerous ways, in particular by organising workshops with varied publics, ranging from school children, people with learning difficultiesto regulars of the workshop circuit.

ht tp://oulipo.net/fr/oulipiens/im ht tp://zazipo.net/

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t Waterline

The sea’s unstill edgesparks and dazzles in sunlight

Like silver fireworks.

Jetsam

A miniature poolconstrained within slate-grey stonesand sea-slicked pebbles

reflects a twist of barbed wireits purpose long forgot ten.

Beached Exposed at low tidewater streams from an outflow’s monstrous, steel-barred jaw

like a stranded concrete whaledisgorging its final meal

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5: Lying Ophelia7: Wakes slowly opens her eyes5: In this bed dying7: She observes the colours5: The clif f and the sky7: Many lines across the nature5: Blue and green mix7: The seaweed breaks the stream5: A painting appears7: The line between the pictures

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Truly this be soWherein this strange land In green watered space Lie mysterious deepenAnd four poles white sky Maybe the long strut ted pierIs sunken in grassAnd only imaginesOne solitary peace

But where the foam hits metalSome pebbles lie thereAnd all is moving shore-wardTo what there might be

A tale for the beginning Maybe this is notHow I can see in the dark A twist of barbed wireBetween falling dust-binsIs now disputed By the cats and mice of night A small fight breaking

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I see horizonSky melting with ocean Burning copper disc Smelting the seas to gold Water rushing inBreaking against rusty stonesFoaming dragon breathLapping against my toesInstead of searingCold and wet against my skin

Rolling and sandyTumbling, splashing and roilingI can’t help but think

Lines short and sharpA mysterious passingFrom flesh we are bornAnd from water we are madeAnd in that momentWaves, still black crystals formThe end of somethingTwilight passing winter nightIn the clouded cold-black air

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rdLengthening my stepsEntering dark cold watersVision deceives meSubmerged beneath current swirlStepping in closerShapes merge and shif t, movement suchThere is no focusWhat I thought might be unrealBecomes possibleWhat I had believed to beIs now disputedImmersion beckonsWeight dissolves and cold sets inSurface fractured planeBelow a reflecting calmNew life inhabitsUnforgiving pebble floorCramped pressure befallsGrasping gasping on to lifeThrust under againCrashing pounding walls of chillRoof of light belowEverything is upended Merciless weatherDevoid of humanityUnder sky of milkFall pools of stillness to earth Subduing ef fortsOf survival cast adrif tDearth of flotsam swells

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gMid flight

Under milky skiesWashed white by rain and gales

A Lonely seagull flies.

Mount Rushmore in the clif fs

Three pale faces stareFrom craggy hollow sockets

Out to sea.

Air bubbles

Like keepsakes found ashoreThe sea carries wet buckets

Trapped in crystal balls.

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after the massage and drinkssun lotion and funaf ter splashing madly aboutfrom water we come

and from water we are madeand in that momentthe sun-lounger hits your leglike a slap of thoughtwhile the crazy-paving eatsstraight through your toesbehind the closed garden shedplant life mumbles onperched on the sludge of a dreamfermenting itselfinto life’s smell on your clothesinto life’s strong words and loving and let ting gothe door that has slammed shutyou stop phoning and listenas cats scream and scrapbetween the falling dustbinsthe drunken housesseem to watch you as they gofor another drinkwhere the smoke whirls in the nightwindows stare opaqueacross the silent alleyinto the blue voidof someone else’s nightmare

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liThrough the water glimpsedA young figure in freeze-frame :Is the Boy broken ?His red spectacles crumbleBeneath the grey sky.Grey sand sucks his bucket handWhich flops and pulls with itShoulders heavy with dull.

Wandering figureForty days’ journey towardSt Leonard’s and EasterMiserable humour notCorrect nor incorrect,Just wrong in every way.

Before we entered wilderness, Change came easy to beginThe kissed and tear-stained part Flinging ourselves, we went blindTrust taughtened wingspansAcross the silent alleyInto the blue void of someone else’s nightmareWhere, bearing all,Believing all, with tremblingWe build the future Seen in dreams and prayed for.

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w What you see...

The sulphur wind, will it change ?Perception commands

what you see and what you don’t :cold fish waving arms thin in places - yellow-greenlight orange and browncurls and corkscrews, dark in the centre.Wire reflected sof t - round boulders mound and topple. The screams of hot earthreaching under smooth and stillair and glass surprise,the mud pools slobber and squirt. through rippling waterprehistoric gasleaks into everyday sky.

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a yellow bleedingnot sun nor light more plasmaflat tened seed beneath

a slip or shif t beyond soiland the wing slicesair and moves the memory

cells and dust that riseopening for the first timea gif t of unknowns

casting with a new fortunelet ting you acrossI press too firmly again

revealing a breathand the sky suggests wideness when vision deceives

the horizon leaves me blindwith just the warm skin against sharp edges and hope

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with the support of Hastings and St Leonards Foreshore Charitable Trust, Grassroots Flow-Through Fund

through Sussex Community Foundation and Sussex Coast College Hastings.

The writing workshop and publication are supported using public funding

by The National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Observations was realised

avec le soutien de l’Institut Français et la Région Nord-Pas de Calais