Way back in the mists of time, during Art Week Exeter 2017, I had a conversation with Veronica Gosling of Studio 36. From time to time, she puts together a group of people together to throw a theme around and come up with a performance. The previous one was “Why not? What if?” in March 2017. I managed to get myself involved in “Patterns“.
My interest in patterns pervades a lot of my art (and indeed much of my life), and we talked about Particulart, Green|Blue and Little colouring books. The process turned out to be a series of inspiring meet-ups with a group of inspiring folk from all sorts of different areas; lots of bouncing ideas off each other; and a the gradual coming together of a proto-programme. Then anyone who’d expressed an interest in the music got together to jam our ideas, and the programme crystallised further. Others worked on the patter, pictures, and publicity.
So we seemed to have a show, and a date: 21 October at St Sidwell’s. A mighty fine evening was had by all, by turns beautiful, informative, silly, and profound, with a fantastic menu whipped up by Sid’s chefs from food that would otherwise have gone to waste. But instead of doing anything with flooding or climate change, I spent much of the performance on stage knitting, when I wasn’t at the mic singing some 20th century classics. I’m still not sure how that happened!