Ilfracombe doesn’t do irony
For the first time in many years I’m not
working and it’s early Spring Bank Holiday weekend. If my memory serves me
right (and as you know if you read my blog it might not) it was as a result of
falling out with Llandudno Victorian Extravaganza that perhaps fifteen years
ago resulted in the same thing.
This time I don’t mind really. It’s wet and cold and Llandudno in the wet is
not nice. I really need a good three day
event I can snuggle up with over the next few years. I went through Upton on Severn in
Worcestershire on Saturday with a lovely event in full swing. It looked very busy and seemed to be a folk
festival if the number of Morris dancers I saw is anything to go by. And very
close to the Three Counties Showground the home of the Malvern Spring Garden
Festival where I am next week. So a nice
gentle fifteen minute drive from one to the next. Sounds my sort of plan. They have a website
and some contacts so Marketing Letter One on its way… Isn’t it so great we can
just find out these things and make contact with the right people so quickly?
Here I am sitting in a lorry park in
Ilfracombe and I can post this blog and send emails to potential customers and
all before I’ve even got dressed. I love my life.
So yes I’m in Ilfracombe drumming up
support for the Kickstarter project which ends next week and still has a way to
go. There’s still time to give if you
haven’t yet.
Even a small pledge would be very welcome and the event is going to be superb
and needs supporting. It’s a strange parochial little place rather stuck in
Victorian ways and still refusing to believe it’s in the twentieth let alone
the twenty-first century. One of the
twenty-first century icons of the place has become Damien Hurst’s controversial
and dominating bronze of a pregnant woman holding a vast sword aloft over the
harbour. Half her bulging belly is cut
away to reveal the growing baby as is half her face, but from some angles she
looks whole. It is a very impressive statement and has been given the name
Verity. I think there may be some theme
emerging from it, truth maybe? Many local people hate her and the apparent ease
with which she found her way to the location. (Damien lives locally and invests
in local projects. Not yet, sadly, ours)
So overall she stirs up opinions. Maybe that’s what art should do. I wanted to
tie the idea into the Victorian Celebration in some way and the event needs a
logo. Hence the emergence of the brief
for the logo for my Victorian Verity and the result below above a photo of the
original. Although I think because ours
is Victorian she is actually the original inspiration for Damien’s version. In my dreams anyway.
The reaction from the committee was
interesting. The Chairman said that
Ilfracombe ‘doesn’t do irony’. Several disapproved
because they thought that a pregnant young Victorian woman in a bathing costume
would never have been seen in Victorian times. Ah well perhaps he’s right about the irony, certainly
amongst members of the committee. I don’t
really mind. I like being on the
edge. As well you know.
Listening to the wonderful Grayson Perry on
Radio 4’s ‘Start the Week’ talking about gender. Great stuff.
I might just change my mind again about Mr Alexander stepping out in a
frock. If I am going to be damned for
irony I might as well go the whole hog and be thoroughly damned. Ilfracombe would definitely be the place to
do it.
All the best from a road near you,
Mr Alexander
