Alsop Gallery, Bridport Arts Centre, 9 South St. Bridport DT6 3NR – Private View Tursday 26th March 6-9pm – Exhibition Continues until 2nd May. Tuesday – Saturday, 10am-4pm
Exile is a place so many of us have entered or lived within, those who are excluded, those who are without homes and have fled war and conflict, those whose gender or disability exiles them from society and those who just live in that empty mental space of aloneness.
An exhibition of the work by Ricky Romain Robert Golden, Cedoux Kadima. You are invited to the Private View and opening of the exhibition at 6pm on Thursday 26th March 2020.
From 7pm – 9.00 there will be film, conversation and live music in the the theatre. RVSP to reserve a seat and make sure there is enough food and wine.
Please also make a note of a world music and human rights concert as part of Exile at BAC on April 30th. Guest musicians tbc. Tickets from BAC box office. Look forward to welcoming you to BAC.
Unfortunately due to the global pandemic the exhibition was postponed. We now have a provisional date for the exhibition to open which is 1st December 2020 – 2nd January 2021. With the musical performance on Human Rights Day on the 10th December.
EXILE – A Mind in Winter
Robert Golden on his contribution to the Exile project:
One day I was invited to the studio of a good friend and soul mate, the painter Ricky Romain. I wanted to see his new work: a large painting composed of 72 panels. Impressive yes, but much more.
I stood in front of his large work, my eyes darting from frame to frame and back. I encountered the Bauhaus, ancient Egyptian and Greek shards of mystery and culture.
There were dark clowns, dancing woman, wraiths and old people lamenting loss; there were elegant, sinister, murderous old men and a terrified child or two; there were ancient songs and cries and even moments of mirth.
Music and city sounds of late 20th century crowded night-time urban streets, with people begging to be allowed to live, with birds of prey and birds of hope winging through frames as if all the stories of humanity and all the suffering of humanity were swarming in constricted places, in railroad stations on the tracks to the camps, worker’s halls – dingy and forlorn with labourer’s fractured dreams, and there was alienation, broken promises, isolation and more alienation.
It told me there was a film asking to be freed from this painting.
Now, this morning, 36 months later, I was thinking about EXILE,
the project (exhibition, film, theatre performance) which has emerged from his painting.It’s a departure for me in that it’s a piece of cinema drawn together as a work of imagination. Even the interviews were imagined as part of a reflection about Exile.
Early on I came across music I was certain would become cornerstones of particular scenes, only to discover those pieces would become stepping stones in the progression of the film’s atmosphere and sensibilities
and were in the end, surpassed by other music, songs and noises.What does this say except ‘trust the long emotion filled process’,
a process that should be introduced to aspiring artists.In the meantime both Ricky and I had begun to work occasionally
with Cedoux Kadima, a Congolese photographer, film-maker, painter, writer and teacher in a pan European youth the arts program.As the Exile ideas began to evolve we realised we wished to invite Cedoux into the project. To our delight he accepted and though all of the planning trust and mutual understanding developed.
I recently heard a quote by a Hungarian composer/Contessa from the late 1920’s. She had written that to be fully human one must encounter suffering. Whether self-imposed through one’s own sensibilities
or imposed by others on individuals or groups, they are the toxins that nurture social and personal resistance. They act as homeopathic provocations – providing a little of what kills you to heal your wounds.EXILE – is a whole, and I am for the moment at peace with it,
knowing that I have managed to resist most of my didactic-ism,
eroded by working with and listening to my two partners.
I hope the exhibition will leave people in turmoil,
a turmoil which may force them to ask themselves
“what the hell am I signed up to in this economy?
What am I allowing this state to do in my name?”