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The foreshore is coated in many colours, both woven by nature and created by people. Number 1. RED

Saved from under the rising tide and beside the charred carbonised hulk of a fishing boat not far from the Jerwood Gallery, I picked up ‘Born to Die’ a worthy addition to the Found Sounds collection of the Exbury Egg as she nears the end of her tour. Is there eventually a time to burn all our boats?

A floating temporary home found adrift in Hastings yesterday, that after tumbling along the shingle beach on a north westerly wind, found the sea just west of the pier in squally weather. The Exbury Egg is a more stable all weather vessel.

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I made a small ‘peep hole’ in the shell wall of the Egg in order to quietly observe life on the outside. One time lapse film captured an Egret coming in to land, as well as the hermit / beadle / eggman in the water swimming. A photographic still of the Egret is reproduced as a cyanotype print in exhibition at the Jerwood Gallery.

The National tour of the Exbury Egg is reaching its conclusion with a final showing in Hastings at the Jerwood Gallery and posts will follow that explore its new situation and relationship to this intriguing shoreline situation so far only seen on the twitter feed.

The Egg has arrived in Portsmouth after a happy few weeks in Milton Keynes, but with little time to fully report on all the various happenings and so please look out for retrospective posts into the blog. Nicole Ris from Solent TV found me at the Quayside yesterday, before I went to talk at ASPEX Gallery a little later in the day…

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The Egg will be leaving Milton Kenyes on Sunday after a fabulous few weeks on the Grand Union Canal at Stanton Low Park and now at Great Linford.

 

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Time is like a river made up of events  which happen and its current is strong

No sooner does a thing appear than it is carried away and another comes in its place

And this will be carried away too

Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)

But these currents sometimes cycle around like the daily pulse of a tide, and one thing, much later, can be found echoed at the heart of another. Well down river from Trinity Buoy Wharf in 2006, I lived for six weeks on the derelict Shivering Sands Forts, six miles off shore at The Nore. At the time I admired the buoy there that marked the western approaches. In January this year when my large sculptural egg was exhibited in the Chainstore at Trinity Buoy Wharf, I discovered this deep channel marker was made there.

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Cynthia was thrown out of home when her ‘mum’ had a clear out. “I don’t know what I had done wrong. Suddenly I was cast away with a mattress, a new mop from the kitchen that had never been used and all sorts of other things. But I’m worried about my friend Ted over there. He nearly drowned, but a kind samaritan put him on the wall”. Ted told a similar story. He feels we live in a city of neglect and waste and that this canalised river is its refuse channel. Shoved into a bin bag, he’d been taken out after dark and heard someone say ‘just chuck ‘im in’t cut.’ He floated all night in the airtight bag and then somehow found himself on the barge with Cynthia.. “I don’t know what will happen to me now” he told me, hopelessly exhausted and slumped against the graffitied concrete wall. This was on January 28th. When I returned this week to see how they were doing, both had drifted on…