Toiuring Territories East Anglian U.F.O Archive

We have finally delivered the East Anglian UFO research that Nicola Naismith and I undertook on behalf of Dave Evans, Co-Director of The Royal Standard, Liverpool. We journeyed up to Liverpool to give a talk about the project to the fabulously welcoming Royal Standard and had an interesting discussion about disparate UFO matters.  Part two of the evening was a snapshot of our interest in parts of Liverpool such as The Clarion Cycling Club (Nicola) and the Sugar Silo on Huskisson Dock. 
Coincidentally, we also displayed the Satellite Portfolio that our artist's group collated for Aid & Abet, Cambridge last year.
Nicola and I stayed with Dave and Fran overnight, but missed out on the Special Edition of Close Encounters, in favour of the local watering hole.
This is a polaroid of the archive table as laid out for Dave, and as we left it for him. The next day we returned to the docks, where my Polaroid camera decided to have a melt down.

http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/1329759

Rendelsham Forest Traces Poster

As part of Satellite's Touring Territories Project for the Space Exchange exhibition at Aid & Abet, Nicola Naismith and I have produced this double-sided limited edition poster. It is in a pile at the gallery and free to take a copy away, until they're all gone. It's part of our East Anglian UFO Archive in Space Exchange. 

We journeyed on a day-tour around Suffolk, re-visiting Orford Ness, interviewing a witness to a UFO sighting  and  ending up in the woods. Stumbling around the dark interior of Rendlesham Forest is quite an enclosing, verging on claustrophobic, experience with rows of trees leading off in all directions. As we came out of the wooded area at twilight, with 5 minutes to spare before the gates were locked, we found the well-populated  and barbecue-smokey camp-site, which felt rather surreal.

RAF Neatishead Radar Museum

Whilst investigating Operation Charlie's 1947 sightings of unexplained lights or Ghost Planes across East Anglia, but tracked at different points by the radar at RAF Neatshead, I became somewhat transfixed by the flashing, pulsating lights and whirring, turning machines in the Radar Museum. Some good examples of aerial surveillance cameras as well as fascinating radar equipment.  I was reminded of Stephanie Douet's sculpture, entitled 'Radar' of course, commissioned for the Air Field show I curated in Norfolk. I 'm eager to return to the museum for an in-depth visit.


Photo credits: Top - Type 84 Radar at RAF Neatishead.  Once used to detect Soviet aircraft during the Cold War. 2011 Chris Morshead, RAF Air Defence Radar Museum.
Bottom - A Type 7 MK Radar at Bishops Court, Northern Ireland in 1972.  Spanning 1942-1989, the Type 7 was the longest-serving Air Defence Radar. RAF Defence Radar Museum.

Rendlesham Forest

I've been away from Cyrus' Garden for a while as I'm caught up in the Satellite Touring Territories project  with Nicola Naismith - the blog, putting the Satellite Portfolio together, researching the  East Anglian UFO sightings for the Royal Standard, Liverpool, sending in the research documents to Aid & Abet, putting our talk together for the gallery on the 22nd October,  designing our poster for distribution and so on.  The Satellite Portfolio is currently on show and for sale at Aid & Abet, Cambridge: http://aidandabet.co.uk

I'm enjoying using some of the research images we took in Rendlesham Forest (whilst investigating the 1980 sightings) and literally highlighting some of the fluorescent paint markings we spotted on some of the trees.  I've ordered some fly-posters of the trees - black and white and flimsy paper. Perhaps we can take some on our next Tour, investigating Operation Charlie.

Satellite Portfolio

As Satellite Nicola & I are putting together a portfolio of 4 or 5 editioned prints from several Satellite members, but chosen by Aid & Abet.  The logistics of putting together such a seemingly simple task are proving problematic, particularly finding the suitable continer for the prints given our teeny budget and the size of the print. We've gone through several options and rejected as many, and time is ticking away. The turn around time for the printing is only a few days.  Luckily, Nicola is giving a logical and organised perspective to the proceedings, so we will get the task done and it will look great.
These are two photographic prints I am considering, both East Anglian bunker-types.  The top is one of several interior shots that I plan to experiment with at a later date as light boxes.

Busy with a project for Aid & Abet Gallery, Cambridge with an imminent deadline as part of our Satellite Collective. It's all about exchanging artist's spaces and exchanging ideas and dialogue. For Satellite, one of the interesting things is our lack of physical space but our borrowing of space and use of East Anglia as our cultural landscape. http://aidandabet.co.uk.  We've had a couple of trips to Cambridge for meetings and are now getting down to the busy bit.
I've started a group blog that between us will document the project and our plans and schemes developing from it.

The blog is on the a.n magazine website, http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/1329759.

Satellite studio visit

Studio mind-map 2009, still of relevance. Not shown is map on the cupboard door, and on the front door.  Use of yesterday's mind-map or interest-map as a possible template for the artists' book that will be produced. Thoughts of an Encyclopaedia-type structure.

Satellite studio visit

Satellite studio visit to Jo Chapman's temporary studio in Downham Market. Jo's done some beautiful drawings of personality-filled apple trees. Four of the Satellite group visited and we discussed ancient orchards. It reminded me of the Garden of Cyrus line about trees in rows and grids, Cyrus, " disposing his trees like his armies in regular ordination ..... brought the treasures of the field into rule and circumspection". I visited a gnarly old orchard in Alfriston some days ago, all propped up branches and rapidly ripening fruit. I had black mulberries off a tree there - the first time since being horribly sick after eating mulberries in a Chaikhaneh / teahouse in the mountains outside Tehran. These ones were explosively juicy and I had some more a couple of days later off the grand tree at Great Dixter.