The Zen Bruiser

“Our figurehead is not what she seems”

“someday some boy will make you cry”
Riding For A Fall - Delroy Wilson

Barefoot Blindfold

The Station Hotel - Loughborough
Paul Conneally 2012

The Great Wall - Loughborough UK

Graffiti Cocktail Shaker

FRUIT ROUTES - Barefoot Blindfold
Anne-Marie Culhane & Paul Conneally
MAY 18th 5am - 8am Loughborough University

Conneally says of the Daybreak event Barefoot Blindfold (at Artists Talking):

“I see this as another strand of my ongoing Memory Foam series in that within the immersive experience we hope to create, emotions, memories and stories will arise from the sounds and silences weaved through the piece.

‘Barefoof Blindfold’ is part of Anne-Marie’s ongoing work FRUIT ROUTES for at Loughborough University a work that I’ve been happy to be a part of over the last six months or so.

Barefoot Blindfold will take place on Friday the 18th of May in and amongst the fruit trees planted in and across the Loughborough University campus during Fruit Routes. It’s a daybreak exxperience starting at 5am in the morning - dawn.

Exact happenings are not yet finalised but meeting at the Pilkington Library participants (it could be you!) are ‘slow walked’ to a Fruit Route orchard area. Here each person chooses and sits with their back against a tree and is blindolded for 30 minutes. It will be dawn and the blindfolding aims to focus our senses on sounds and sensations other than visual. It will we hope be a new way to experience the birdsong of the dawn chorus for instance but all other sounds too.

We thought of how one might ‘draw’ the sound sounds, sensations and emotions in real time while blindfold. The impermanence of dawn, of birdsong, saw us seeking for parallel ways of ‘drawing’ them as we sit blinfold and barefoot backs against our trees. We think we have it now - to draw in air - to move our hands and arms in response to the sounds and the emotions, memories, srories that arise in us. Let the sounds of dawn choreograph the movement.

I can see it in my mind’s eye now a grove of fruit trees each tree with a barefoot blinfold person sat against it, listening and moving their arms arms and hands to the sound of dawn and all it brings.

The second half-hour will be a shift - this time involving the blocking out of sound perhaps - from blind to deaf somehow.

After we have breakfast and share our stories, emotions through the mediation of feedback on the birdsong heard and birds on the campus in general from an RSPB expert on birds.

Any and all of the above is subject to change”.

Yummy Mummy

Train 595
Paul Conneally 2012
Apprpriated Oasis Wet Foam and Pearl Headed Pins

Train 595 is in from the Memory Foam series and was recovered by Paul Conneally and Maurice Maguire from a rubbish skip in a church graveyard.

Train 595 - some have already railed against the use of this train in presenting it as a new work of art or in fact presenting it at all. Conneally has been called “ghoulish” and others have opined that it’s disrespectful.

Conneally says: “Its neither - it’s memory foam and pearl headed pins from a rubbish skip”

A nother worries: “What if the family of the dead person it was originally made for see it? Won’t they be upset?”

The truth is these trains are, according to florists, a standard pattern, a popular shape to temporarily memorialise children and men that love trains.

Conneally says:

“It’s not important which church yard it came from - it’s the one in your head right now.”

‘sneakers trainers destroy trash kill abuse fun’
Anna Conneally 2012

Teacher - leave them kids alone!

Baby in a Bag
Paul Conneally 2012

DAD - Paul Conneally 2012 an Oasis Frame from the series Memory Foam