Focal Point Gallery

FPG Sounds: Nastassja Simensky and Rebecca Lee, ’Monday Morning’

Focal Point Gallery is pleased to announce the tenth commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea.

For their contribution to Focal Point Gallery’s experimental sound programme artist’s Nastassja Simensky and Rebecca Lee present Rings on Water. The commission for Focal Point Gallery continues Nastassja and Rebecca’s previous collaborations and draws on their shared interest in time, listening, material culture and land-use. The new audio work takes the form of a collection of sonic fieldnotes and includes field recordings, amateur radio and writing from Leaky Transmissions, Nastassja’s ongoing research and work in Bradwell and the Blackwater Estuary.

Many types of human transmission comingle and leave their mark on the Estuary, which is itself an increasingly regulated and privatised space. Cellular networks coalesce with wireless connections, electrical substations with Bluetooth signal, slow-scan television with ham radio transmissions. High-frequency short wavelengths of irradiated graphite within Bradwell A Power Station occupy the opposite end of radio spectrum to the long wavelengths of amateur radio and VLF signals generated by thunderstorms and solar weather. Non-human forces persist, from the Estuary's conductive geology, to sputtering background radiation, to the Earth's vast and sweeping electromagnetic fields.

Rings on Water uses a variety of recording and transmission technologies, from FM radio, magnetic tape, coil receivers, hydrophones and contact mics to traverse the protected saltmarshes and shale banks of the Dengie Peninsular and industrial arable land. Slow Scan Television (SSTV) and the politics of ‘radio’ as a means of transmission, collision, translation and interference are used to consider the material legacies of changing land-use and energy production in the Blackwater Estuary. SSTV is a picture transmission method, used mainly by amateur radio operators, to transmit and receive static pictures over the radio spectrum.

About the artists: 

Nastassja Simensky often works collaboratively to make writing, place-specific performances, events, sound work and films as a form of ongoing fieldwork. Leaky Transmissions is a body of artwork and research Nastassja is developing through a PhD at the Slade exploring changing land-use and the potential of collaborative fieldwork involving artists and archaeologists. Works from this commission will inform Simensky's inclusion in the group exhibition 'Receiver' at Focal Point Gallery from 2nd October to 23rd December 2022.

Rebecca Lee is a musician, composer, and sound practitioner producing performance, sound works, projects, and publications, with a particular focus on narrative, time and collaborative methods. She often works long term with place, draws on written forms, and uses improvisation, scores, and DIY approaches to combine musical materials, forms, or skills.

https://www.fpg.org.uk/exhibition/rings-on-water/

FPG Sounds: The Repeat Beat Poet, ’Resurvival’

Focal Point Gallery is pleased to announce the ninth commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea.

For this commission, The Repeat Beat Poet (Peter deGraft-Johnson) has produced audio recordings from his debut pamphlet, A Testament To Life & Death. The poems exhibited as part of this commission are constructed narratives which illustrate the impact of British imperial and colonial legacies on the body politic of the UK.

These poems were written as acts of resistance, reclamation, and reportage. While Tommy Builds A Cocktail takes aim at historical British military and mercenary atrocities and activity during the 50s-70s during an era of formal independence for colonies and a shrinking of the army, poems like Once I Get Out Of Bed and Black View communicate the contemporary and ever-present threats of white supremacist violence, including police and border violence. A Step By Step Guide To Saving The British Dream pokes fun at the absurdity of racial purity before the duo of One Black Lotus and Resurvival suggest alternative freeing ways of being, by using the example of the Jamaican-Scottish 18thC radical and union activist William Davidson, and by retracing the steps back from an imagined future where the horrors of racism are a distant memory.

Peter deGraft-Johnson is an Essex-born Ghanaian poet, broadcaster, and Hip Hop artist known by The Repeat Beat Poet. His debut pamphlet, ‘A Testament To Life And Death’ was published in February 2022 by Verve Poetry Press, he is the producer and host of the Rap & Poetry open mic Pen-Ting and the multi-award nominated Lunar Poetry Podcast, which is archived in the British Library. Peter is a graduate of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, BBC 1xtra Words First, and Obsidian Foundation programmes, and in 2021 was a writer-in-residence at the Library of Africa & The African Diaspora in Accra, Ghana.

Peter is a regular on Soho Radio, with Hip Hop label and jam collective Imaginary Millions, and his solo show show #TheRepeatBeatBroadcast. He has toured across the UK and internationally, performing at venues such as The Royal Albert Hall, the Southbank Centre, Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, at multiple festivals incl Glastonbury, Love Supreme, and WOMAD, at jam nights, and on picket lines. His debut single This That was released in 2020.

PJ has been commissioned by Amnesty International, selected for the BBC 1Xtra Words First and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective programmes, and was nominated for a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2019. He is published by Bad Betty Press, Magma Poetry, and #PoetryOnThePicketLine, and regularly works with leading UK Poetry organisation Apples & Snakes, and appears on  independent radio.

FPG Sounds: The Repeat Beat Poet, ’One Black Lotus’

Focal Point Gallery is pleased to announce the ninth commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea.

For this commission, The Repeat Beat Poet (Peter deGraft-Johnson) has produced audio recordings from his debut pamphlet, A Testament To Life & Death. The poems exhibited as part of this commission are constructed narratives which illustrate the impact of British imperial and colonial legacies on the body politic of the UK.

These poems were written as acts of resistance, reclamation, and reportage. While Tommy Builds A Cocktail takes aim at historical British military and mercenary atrocities and activity during the 50s-70s during an era of formal independence for colonies and a shrinking of the army, poems like Once I Get Out Of Bed and Black View communicate the contemporary and ever-present threats of white supremacist violence, including police and border violence. A Step By Step Guide To Saving The British Dream pokes fun at the absurdity of racial purity before the duo of One Black Lotus and Resurvival suggest alternative freeing ways of being, by using the example of the Jamaican-Scottish 18thC radical and union activist William Davidson, and by retracing the steps back from an imagined future where the horrors of racism are a distant memory.

Peter deGraft-Johnson is an Essex-born Ghanaian poet, broadcaster, and Hip Hop artist known by The Repeat Beat Poet. His debut pamphlet, ‘A Testament To Life And Death’ was published in February 2022 by Verve Poetry Press, he is the producer and host of the Rap & Poetry open mic Pen-Ting and the multi-award nominated Lunar Poetry Podcast, which is archived in the British Library. Peter is a graduate of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, BBC 1xtra Words First, and Obsidian Foundation programmes, and in 2021 was a writer-in-residence at the Library of Africa & The African Diaspora in Accra, Ghana.

Peter is a regular on Soho Radio, with Hip Hop label and jam collective Imaginary Millions, and his solo show show #TheRepeatBeatBroadcast. He has toured across the UK and internationally, performing at venues such as The Royal Albert Hall, the Southbank Centre, Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, at multiple festivals incl Glastonbury, Love Supreme, and WOMAD, at jam nights, and on picket lines. His debut single This That was released in 2020.

PJ has been commissioned by Amnesty International, selected for the BBC 1Xtra Words First and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective programmes, and was nominated for a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2019. He is published by Bad Betty Press, Magma Poetry, and #PoetryOnThePicketLine, and regularly works with leading UK Poetry organisation Apples & Snakes, and appears on  independent radio.

FPG Sounds: The Repeat Beat Poet, ’A Step By Step Guide To Saving The British Dream’

Focal Point Gallery is pleased to announce the ninth commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea.

For this commission, The Repeat Beat Poet (Peter deGraft-Johnson) has produced audio recordings from his debut pamphlet, A Testament To Life & Death. The poems exhibited as part of this commission are constructed narratives which illustrate the impact of British imperial and colonial legacies on the body politic of the UK.

These poems were written as acts of resistance, reclamation, and reportage. While Tommy Builds A Cocktail takes aim at historical British military and mercenary atrocities and activity during the 50s-70s during an era of formal independence for colonies and a shrinking of the army, poems like Once I Get Out Of Bed and Black View communicate the contemporary and ever-present threats of white supremacist violence, including police and border violence. A Step By Step Guide To Saving The British Dream pokes fun at the absurdity of racial purity before the duo of One Black Lotus and Resurvival suggest alternative freeing ways of being, by using the example of the Jamaican-Scottish 18thC radical and union activist William Davidson, and by retracing the steps back from an imagined future where the horrors of racism are a distant memory.

Peter deGraft-Johnson is an Essex-born Ghanaian poet, broadcaster, and Hip Hop artist known by The Repeat Beat Poet. His debut pamphlet, ‘A Testament To Life And Death’ was published in February 2022 by Verve Poetry Press, he is the producer and host of the Rap & Poetry open mic Pen-Ting and the multi-award nominated Lunar Poetry Podcast, which is archived in the British Library. Peter is a graduate of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, BBC 1xtra Words First, and Obsidian Foundation programmes, and in 2021 was a writer-in-residence at the Library of Africa & The African Diaspora in Accra, Ghana.

Peter is a regular on Soho Radio, with Hip Hop label and jam collective Imaginary Millions, and his solo show show #TheRepeatBeatBroadcast. He has toured across the UK and internationally, performing at venues such as The Royal Albert Hall, the Southbank Centre, Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, at multiple festivals incl Glastonbury, Love Supreme, and WOMAD, at jam nights, and on picket lines. His debut single This That was released in 2020.

PJ has been commissioned by Amnesty International, selected for the BBC 1Xtra Words First and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective programmes, and was nominated for a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2019. He is published by Bad Betty Press, Magma Poetry, and #PoetryOnThePicketLine, and regularly works with leading UK Poetry organisation Apples & Snakes, and appears on  independent radio.

FPG Sounds: The Repeat Beat Poet, ’Black View’

Focal Point Gallery is pleased to announce the ninth commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea.

For this commission, The Repeat Beat Poet (Peter deGraft-Johnson) has produced audio recordings from his debut pamphlet, A Testament To Life & Death. The poems exhibited as part of this commission are constructed narratives which illustrate the impact of British imperial and colonial legacies on the body politic of the UK.

These poems were written as acts of resistance, reclamation, and reportage. While Tommy Builds A Cocktail takes aim at historical British military and mercenary atrocities and activity during the 50s-70s during an era of formal independence for colonies and a shrinking of the army, poems like Once I Get Out Of Bed and Black View communicate the contemporary and ever-present threats of white supremacist violence, including police and border violence. A Step By Step Guide To Saving The British Dream pokes fun at the absurdity of racial purity before the duo of One Black Lotus and Resurvival suggest alternative freeing ways of being, by using the example of the Jamaican-Scottish 18thC radical and union activist William Davidson, and by retracing the steps back from an imagined future where the horrors of racism are a distant memory.

Peter deGraft-Johnson is an Essex-born Ghanaian poet, broadcaster, and Hip Hop artist known by The Repeat Beat Poet. His debut pamphlet, ‘A Testament To Life And Death’ was published in February 2022 by Verve Poetry Press, he is the producer and host of the Rap & Poetry open mic Pen-Ting and the multi-award nominated Lunar Poetry Podcast, which is archived in the British Library. Peter is a graduate of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, BBC 1xtra Words First, and Obsidian Foundation programmes, and in 2021 was a writer-in-residence at the Library of Africa & The African Diaspora in Accra, Ghana.

Peter is a regular on Soho Radio, with Hip Hop label and jam collective Imaginary Millions, and his solo show show #TheRepeatBeatBroadcast. He has toured across the UK and internationally, performing at venues such as The Royal Albert Hall, the Southbank Centre, Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, at multiple festivals incl Glastonbury, Love Supreme, and WOMAD, at jam nights, and on picket lines. His debut single This That was released in 2020.

PJ has been commissioned by Amnesty International, selected for the BBC 1Xtra Words First and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective programmes, and was nominated for a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2019. He is published by Bad Betty Press, Magma Poetry, and #PoetryOnThePicketLine, and regularly works with leading UK Poetry organisation Apples & Snakes, and appears on  independent radio.

FPG Sounds: The Repeat Beat Poet, ’Once I Get Out Of Bed’

Focal Point Gallery is pleased to announce the ninth commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea.

For this commission, The Repeat Beat Poet (Peter deGraft-Johnson) has produced audio recordings from his debut pamphlet, A Testament To Life & Death. The poems exhibited as part of this commission are constructed narratives which illustrate the impact of British imperial and colonial legacies on the body politic of the UK.

These poems were written as acts of resistance, reclamation, and reportage. While Tommy Builds A Cocktail takes aim at historical British military and mercenary atrocities and activity during the 50s-70s during an era of formal independence for colonies and a shrinking of the army, poems like Once I Get Out Of Bed and Black View communicate the contemporary and ever-present threats of white supremacist violence, including police and border violence. A Step By Step Guide To Saving The British Dream pokes fun at the absurdity of racial purity before the duo of One Black Lotus and Resurvival suggest alternative freeing ways of being, by using the example of the Jamaican-Scottish 18thC radical and union activist William Davidson, and by retracing the steps back from an imagined future where the horrors of racism are a distant memory.

Peter deGraft-Johnson is an Essex-born Ghanaian poet, broadcaster, and Hip Hop artist known by The Repeat Beat Poet. His debut pamphlet, 'A Testament To Life And Death' was published in February 2022 by Verve Poetry Press, he is the producer and host of the Rap & Poetry open mic Pen-Ting and the multi-award nominated Lunar Poetry Podcast, which is archived in the British Library. Peter is a graduate of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, BBC 1xtra Words First, and Obsidian Foundation programmes, and in 2021 was a writer-in-residence at the Library of Africa & The African Diaspora in Accra, Ghana.

Peter is a regular on Soho Radio, with Hip Hop label and jam collective Imaginary Millions, and his solo show show #TheRepeatBeatBroadcast. He has toured across the UK and internationally, performing at venues such as The Royal Albert Hall, the Southbank Centre, Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, at multiple festivals incl Glastonbury, Love Supreme, and WOMAD, at jam nights, and on picket lines. His debut single This That was released in 2020.

PJ has been commissioned by Amnesty International, selected for the BBC 1Xtra Words First and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective programmes, and was nominated for a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2019. He is published by Bad Betty Press, Magma Poetry, and #PoetryOnThePicketLine, and regularly works with leading UK Poetry organisation Apples & Snakes, and appears on  independent radio.

https://www.fpg.org.uk/exhibition/a-testament-to-life-death/ 

FPG SOUNDS: The Repeat Beat Poet, ’While Tommy Builds A Cocktail’

Focal Point Gallery is pleased to announce the ninth commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea.

For this commission, The Repeat Beat Poet (Peter deGraft-Johnson) has produced audio recordings from his debut pamphlet, A Testament To Life & Death. The poems exhibited as part of this commission are constructed narratives which illustrate the impact of British imperial and colonial legacies on the body politic of the UK.

These poems were written as acts of resistance, reclamation, and reportage. While Tommy Builds A Cocktail takes aim at historical British military and mercenary atrocities and activity during the 50s-70s during an era of formal independence for colonies and a shrinking of the army, poems like Once I Get Out Of Bed and Black View communicate the contemporary and ever-present threats of white supremacist violence, including police and border violence. A Step By Step Guide To Saving The British Dream pokes fun at the absurdity of racial purity before the duo of One Black Lotus and Resurvival suggest alternative freeing ways of being, by using the example of the Jamaican-Scottish 18thC radical and union activist William Davidson, and by retracing the steps back from an imagined future where the horrors of racism are a distant memory.

Peter deGraft-Johnson is an Essex-born Ghanaian poet, broadcaster, and Hip Hop artist known by The Repeat Beat Poet. His debut pamphlet, 'A Testament To Life And Death' was published in February 2022 by Verve Poetry Press, he is the producer and host of the Rap & Poetry open mic Pen-Ting and the multi-award nominated Lunar Poetry Podcast, which is archived in the British Library. Peter is a graduate of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, BBC 1xtra Words First, and Obsidian Foundation programmes, and in 2021 was a writer-in-residence at the Library of Africa & The African Diaspora in Accra, Ghana.

Peter is a regular on Soho Radio, with Hip Hop label and jam collective Imaginary Millions, and his solo show show #TheRepeatBeatBroadcast. He has toured across the UK and internationally, performing at venues such as The Royal Albert Hall, the Southbank Centre, Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, at multiple festivals incl Glastonbury, Love Supreme, and WOMAD, at jam nights, and on picket lines. His debut single This That was released in 2020.

PJ has been commissioned by Amnesty International, selected for the BBC 1Xtra Words First and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective programmes, and was nominated for a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2019. He is published by Bad Betty Press, Magma Poetry, and #PoetryOnThePicketLine, and regularly works with leading UK Poetry organisation Apples & Snakes, and appears on  independent radio.

https://www.fpg.org.uk/exhibition/a-testament-to-life-death/ 

FPG Sounds: Lucia Dove, ’The eel’

Focal Point Gallery is pleased to announce the eighth commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea.

For this commission, writer Lucia Dove has created a new poem which explores the shared cultural histories between fishing communities of South Essex and the Netherlands. ‘The eel’ focuses on the migration and life cycle of the glass eel, a common delicacy with a shared cultural history between the mudflats of South Essex and the Frisian Islands of the Netherlands. Explored through sound and memory, the commission follows a dedicated period of research, with Dove spending time with an eel fisherman in Friesland, the Netherlands, as well as on location in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, including Osborne Brother’s and the Leigh Heritage Centre.

Click here for a full transcript of the commission. 

Lucia Dove is a writer from Southend-on-Sea living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She is interested in heritage, landscape and food studies and their connection to ideas about home and homesickness. Her latest book VLOED (Dunlin Press, 2021), a work of creative nonfiction, explores the shared cultural memory and landscape between Essex and the Netherlands in relation to the North Sea Flood of 1953. More information about her work can be found at www.luciadove.co.uk or find her on Twitter @LuciaDove.

FPG Sounds: ’The Owl Service’, ’Bushes & Briars’

Focal Point Gallery is pleased to announce the seventh commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea.

For this commission, Essex-based alternative folk music collective The Owl Service have composed and recorded five new tracks, which present a contemporary exploration of traditional Essex folk songs. To mark the launch of the commission, The Owl Service will be performing 'English Country Music' at the 30^th annual Leigh Folk Festival, taking place at the Fisherman's Chapel in Leigh-on-Sea at 2.30pm on Sunday 26th June.

Since its inception in 2006, The Owl Service has worked consistently within the realm of traditional British folk song, but with varying degrees of faithfulness. In their own words, the band are 'perennial folk outsiders', always striving and struggling to find their own place and their own voice in a musical landscape that they're forever at odds with.

After reviving the collective in March 2021 after a five year hiatus, The Owl Service founder Steven Collins decided it was time to fully embrace their outsider stance with new projects that unapologetically marry traditional folk song to a decidedly non-traditional musical backing. With 'English Country Music', Collins fuses traditional folk songs collected in his native Essex with the music that has shaped him the most over the previous three decades. With the desire to explore this musical heritage, lyrics are taken from the book 'Bushes & Briars: An Anthology of Essex Folk Songs' (1979). With musical cues inextricably linked to urban life, Collins' also draws upon inspiration from his upbringing in a concrete modernist new town with no sense of tradition.

'English Country Music' includes an assemble of musicians from or based in Essex. Performed, recorded, mixed & mastered at home in Leigh-on-sea by Steven Collins with Diana Collier, Kate Waterfield, Daniel Forbes and Bryan Styles. 

English Country Music | Focal Point Gallery (fpg.org.uk)

FPG Sounds: The Owl Service, ’A Sailor’s Wife’

Focal Point Gallery is pleased to announce the seventh commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea.

For this commission, Essex-based alternative folk music collective The Owl Service have composed and recorded five new tracks, which present a contemporary exploration of traditional Essex folk songs. To mark the launch of the commission, The Owl Service will be performing 'English Country Music' at the 30^th annual Leigh Folk Festival, taking place at the Fisherman's Chapel in Leigh-on-Sea at 2.30pm on Sunday 26th June.

Since its inception in 2006, The Owl Service has worked consistently within the realm of traditional British folk song, but with varying degrees of faithfulness. In their own words, the band are 'perennial folk outsiders', always striving and struggling to find their own place and their own voice in a musical landscape that they're forever at odds with.

After reviving the collective in March 2021 after a five year hiatus, The Owl Service founder Steven Collins decided it was time to fully embrace their outsider stance with new projects that unapologetically marry traditional folk song to a decidedly non-traditional musical backing. With 'English Country Music', Collins fuses traditional folk songs collected in his native Essex with the music that has shaped him the most over the previous three decades. With the desire to explore this musical heritage, lyrics are taken from the book 'Bushes & Briars: An Anthology of Essex Folk Songs' (1979). With musical cues inextricably linked to urban life, Collins' also draws upon inspiration from his upbringing in a concrete modernist new town with no sense of tradition.

'English Country Music' includes an assemble of musicians from or based in Essex. Performed, recorded, mixed & mastered at home in Leigh-on-sea by Steven Collins with Diana Collier, Kate Waterfield, Daniel Forbes and Bryan Styles. 

English Country Music | Focal Point Gallery (fpg.org.uk)