Bogner Birdman

I'm going to apply to take part in this year's Bogner Birdman.

Dressing as the Cyptic bird 'the Mawnan Owlman'.

Keep August 4th & 5th Free.

The Bognor Birdman event first started on the South coast of Britain in Selsey in 1971, where a prize was given for anyone who could fly the grand distance of 50 yards. Nobody managed it! After a few years the event started to attract quite a crowd and in 1978 the term Bognor Birdman was coined when the event moved to its present location in Bognor Regis. Why Bognor Regis is open to debate - perhaps it was some forward thinking person at the local council - perhaps it's because the sea has a strong incoming tide to help bring people back to the beach, perhaps it is because one of the original competitors came from Bognor, it certainly isn't because it is an easy place to get to. Anyway, the event has evolved and gets ever more popular. Every year a collection of brave daring men and women dress up in bizarre outfits and become Bognor Birdmen. They compete against one another by trying to fly through the air the furthest. Some people would say that they are just a bunch of adventurous nutters who jump off the end of a pier and end up getting cold and wet when they land in the sea. Either way, it's a fun event which benefits a number of good causes.

www.birdman.org.uk/





Talk at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology

I went to a very good talk at the little Petrie Museum around the corner from Gower Street on the 19th January.
'HARN member, Amara Thornton (Institute of Archaeology, UCL) explores the connections between sites and seances in early twentieth century archaeology. Concentrating on the archaeologists George Horsfield and Agnes Conway but with reference to Petrie’s assistant and lecturer at UCL Margaret Murray, Dr Thornton considers how the use of mediums and psychical research was a larger phenomenon in archaeology than has generally been admitted.'

The Petrie Museum is an excellent Egyptian museum, it opened in the 1930's - it looks if its straight out of the pages of the Tintin book 'Seven Crystal Balls' or the Boris Karloff  film 'The Mummy' .


www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/petrie

Brion Gysin at Work - featuring adapted roller.

Brion Gysin Making Roller Painting

The adapted roller in use.

Brion Gysin, ' Adapted Paint Roller ' 1961

This adapted roller was used by Gysin whilst collaborating with William Boroughs 'on collaged scrapbooks that featured snippets from newspapers,his own (Borough's) photos,photo-collages,as well as bits of his own texts,printed and written.This body of work,to which Gysin also contributed,supplying drawings and rollergrid backgrounds to lend order to the individual pages,pages would amount to at least ten notebooks of varying lengths created over a period of a decade.'

Taking this tool as inspiration I'm considering pasting soft-kut rubber sheets on to large paint rollers to create large continuous prints.