down counting the days

Russia had four heads of state in the space of a year. We’ve had three prime ministers and two monarchs in the last 12 months

Matthew Jameson, BolshEpic

trial action and it feels like we’re getting close to a general strike now. They had four heads of state in the space of a year. We’ve had three prime ministers and two monarchs. I don’t know whether that’s a cause for optimism that things can change, or a cause for worry that things could get worse.

“I think that in Russia in 1917 they really didn’t expect a revolution and that was one of the fundamental things that caught everyone by surprise.

“It’s not something that tallies with the Soviet version of history – a planned uprising of the people – or the rightist take – a wellcalculated palace coup.

“The revolution was something in between, which was messier and muckier and, as a result, far more real and funny.

“What we’ve found is people don’t necessarily know that in the period between the Tsar and the Bolsheviks there was an elected government, where Russia could have turned into a European-style

Ten Days, we take things chronologically with a Sergei Eisenstein-style short film sequence showing the story as you think you know it – Lenin comes in and chucks the Tsar out, resulting in freedom for the people. That isn’t what happened but you need to see it as a

“There’s something about the truth of history that fiction never quite matches up to. As a writer you can aspire to be as absurd and ridiculous as you like, but as soon as you write something as silly as the truth people often won’t

“Hopefully, people will see our posters and think: ‘Lenin – OK, let’s see what this is about,’ but they may not know the other figures so it’s a way of introducing them to the audience.”

Matthew has been working at The Space since 2019 in various roles and is currently deputy director and interim bar manager

Ten Days start at £5 and are sold on a pay-what-youGo to space.org.uk for more

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how Alice GurArie turns her photographs into artworks by painting them digitally

by Jon Massey

Alice Gur-Arie has always been creative. “I’ve been writing since I could first hold a pencil and dabbled in various things when I was a teenager in school,” said the artist, currently based at Art Hub Studios in Creekside, Deptford.

A career as an advertising creative and then manager of agencies saw her work first in her native Canada, then North America, Europe and India.

“I’d done what I set out to do – to work internationally in a multi-country environment and I was successful,” she said.

“I wanted to go back to my creative roots – that was 10 years ago – and so I got myself a little studio in Deptford and started to take pictures.

“I also had a lot of photographs from my travels – but I didn’t want to be a straight photographer.”

Instead, Alice taught herself to paint her photographs digitally with the aim of creating something new. The body of work she has created is varied and extensive, with images that are colourful, monochrome, three dimensional, two dimensional, photographic and almost entirely abstract.

“I never change the composition of the original photograph – it is what it is, it’s like a canvas,” she said. “When choosing the ones to paint, I have a vision in my head – sometimes I achieve that and sometimes I can’t. Sometimes I can do it in several different ways – it’s always possible to repaint images. Each time I create an image, it goes back to being a writer, because I’m telling a story. There’s no absolute point where they’re finished. I just have to ask whether I’m satisfied with it and whether it says what I want it to say.”

The word, perhaps, for Alice’s creativity is “instinctive”. She looks at a photograph or a collection of objects and imagines what they could become.

“I have a series called Love On The Rocks,” she said. “I took the images in Iceland – it was cold and raining while I was taking photos and my husband said he was going for a walk.

“There was a volcanic hill behind us and I took pictures of him as he walked along the ridge. He couldn’t see it, but I could see the outline of a woman in the shape of the hill.

“For another series, I’d always wanted to do something with layered hills. In ortugal I got to a summit and just saw this amazing vista in front of me. So I started snapping away and, after I’d painted them digitally, I realised there was a romantic story in there, so I called the series The King’s Lodging

“Each piece within it has its own title and the idea was to tell a story by displaying them together so the viewer could create the narrative in their head.”

Alice’s latest project has been to create a second digital book of her work, based on the Chinese Zodiac.

“I have a friend – John Vollmer – who is an Asian scholar,” she said. “He sent me a picture of a snake from some archive in celebration of the year of the snake and I thought we could do a better job.

“We started collaborating for the year of the horse – I painted a photograph of the animal and he wrote the text. I wrote a story to go with it and once I’d done that I knew I wanted to do all 12 animals. It took a number of years, but the result was my first book Twelve: Shengxiao Zodiac Creatures In Art and Words featuring 2 images and 12 short stories.

“Then John told me about five, which is an important number in Chinese philosophy. That led me to create Five: Wuxing Elements In Art And Words with a foreword by him.”

Alice’s latest digital book features 81 artworks, about 25% of which were made specifically for the project.

“While there are no stories in the book, I have written a poem for each of the elements. I want readers to really respond to the

. I love landscapes and seascapes and ‘seeing’ is important to me. I want people to see things in a different way – familiar, but

“It’s fantastic to have people look at and talk about your work because they see things in it that you don’t. For example, I made a piece from a photograph of the tailpiece of a stringed instrument and people saw a boat in the final work.”

While the majority of Alice’s work is created digitally, she also creates sculptures, including recent pieces using found objects.

“I don’t like sitting at a computer all day long, but my paintings don’t get made if I don’t do some of that,” she said. “I’ve always loved working with my hands and I have an idea that I will also make collages from my finished digital paintings.

“With the wall hangings, I had some different kinds of rope and just started to play.

“The fairy stones – ones you find that have natural holes – are from the Mediterranean and Ramsgate. I’d had them for years, having collected them, and I thought I’d do something with them that has different textures.

“I’m fascinated by texture in all my work. I try to make a big thing of that in my paintings because we live in a world that’s anything but at.

“First, it’s about the photography. I have to go out and take the image. If I didn’t do that, you wouldn’t have the picture. Then the paintings sit within a range – a set of dimensions. That means I can achieve results that are more photographic while others are more in the middle or much more abstract.

“I often strive for the sweet spot between those two things that combines them both, but sometimes the painting won’t let me go there.

“They take varying amounts of time – it really depends on the picture and on me. I have a painting from India that took me 10 years because I kept going back to it.

“It wasn’t saying to me what I wanted it to say, so I put it away and would bring it out every couple of years and try again until it was finally complete.”

Alice’s works are available for sale online.

Go to alicegur-arie.com

Scan this code to nd out more about Alice’s work what’s on things to do, places to go, people to see

Where?

Canada Water Theatre Canada Water

EVENT | Reconnecting With The Body

This creative writing workshop with theatre maker Kat Lyons invites participants to focus on bodily experiences. Inspired by Kat’s work Dry Season. Mar 1, 6pm, donations, canadawatertheatre.org.uk

Where?

Canada Water Theatre Canada Water

STAGE

| O The Chest

This evening of poetry and spoken word o ers open mic slots to all those keen to get something said in front of an audience. Everybody is welcome. Feb 23, 7pm, £5, canadawatertheatre.org.uk

Where? Buster Mantis Deptford

EAT | Thursday £6 Plates

Hit this fabulous little hang-out underneath the railway arches on a Thursday for £6 small plates and a trio of cocktails. Booking is essential. Thursdays, £6, bustermantis.com ash back

This is artist Nicola Rae, co-curator of Space Lab – a set of some seven collaborative experiments between artists and scientists that is set to go on show at APT Gallery from February 16-March 5 thealbany.org.uk

Scan this code to read our interview with Nicola about Space Lab online at wharf-life.com want more? @whar ifelive take a breath

by David Lefebvre Sell

Savour each and every one – David recommends slowing down to appreciate the crisps

Ever since the start of the pandemic I’ve thought that someone needs to do a study on the therapeutic potential of crisps. I’m being serious here. Have you ever noticed that crisps taste like the world isn’t falling apart?

Obviously, they’re terrible for you in many ways, but that brief respite from existential dread is really moreish. Maybe crisps aren’t your thing though. Maybe, for you, it’s spending time with a loved one or being in nature. I mean, it takes all sorts to make a world. My point is that it’s often little things that help us to keep our balance, little things that are too easily forgotten.

This is the thing people often get wrong about mindfulness as a practice – you probably already know how to do it. The little rituals and pleasures that make you feel calmer and more centred are mindfulness practices, the problem is partly that we forget to prioritise them and partly that modern life is ruining our ability to focus.

Have you noticed this in yourself? Do you never seem to just do one thing at a time?

Are you always listening to a podcast when you walk (guilty)?

David Lefebvre

Do you pull out your phone the instant you have to wait for something? There are any number of di erent ways you might compromise your ability to enjoy the little things.

The great shame is how we come to shovel back our experiences without ever really tasting them at all. We just take a photo, post it to social media and continue on as if nothing has happened.

This is one of the positive things about the lockdowns. According to many people I’ve spoken to, they enforced a slower pace on everyone. They certainly made me appreciate my crisps more.

So, just in case you need the reminder, slow down occasionally. Put your phone away. Do one thing at a time, leave the headphones at home, watch a sunset on a walk. Savour those crisps.

David Lefebvre Sell is a Greenwich-based psychotherapist and Yoga instructor who teaches at Third Space in Canary Wharf

Follow @davetheyogi on Twitter and Instagram and @DavidLefebvreSellYogaAndPsychotherapy on FB

Scan this code for information about David’s work as a transpersonal counsellor and psychotherapist

by Jon Massey

Scenes of epic maritime drama and royal pomp are set to go on show at the Queen’s House in Greenwich. The Royal Museums Greenwich venue is set to host The Van De Veldes: Greenwich, Art And The Sea from March 2 until January 14 2024.

The exhibition will showcase pieces from the National Maritime Museum’s collection of work by both Willem Van De Velde and his son of the same name.

Billed as the most important marine painters of the 17th century – attracting attention from the likes of Cosimo De Medici who visited the elder’s studio alongside Rembrandt’s, on a trip to the Netherlands.

The pair relocated to England at the invitation of Charles II, following the invasion of the Dutch Republic by France in 1672.

Awarded a salary on a par with his principal painter, Sir Peter Lely, and a studio at the Queen’s House in Greenwich, they promptly set about founding the English school of marine painting.

The elder Van De Velde was a self-taught draughtsman who used a technique called “pen painting” to capture the vivid appearance of ships in great detail. His work includes pieces sketched from life as he worked to record naval actions such as the Battle Of Solebay.

His son worked extensively in oils, often using his father’s sketches as source material to create more dramatic, atmospheric pieces that appealed to the English market and inspired the likes of JMW Turner.

“The Van De Velde collection at Greenwich is remarkable, not only for its sheer size, but for what it reveals about how a 17th-century artist’s studio functioned,” said Allison Goudie, curator of art pre 1800 at Royal Museums Greenwich.

“This exhibition celebrates this extraordinary aspect of the Van De Velde collection here, and the unique connection it now has with the Queen’s House – the location of the Van De Veldes’ studio for more than 20 years.”

The Van De Velde collection at Greenwich is remarkable, only for its sheer size but also for what it reveals Allison Goudie, RMG

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One of the highlights will be the younger Van De Velde’s newly conserved painting, A Royal Visit To The Fleet. At nearly four metres across, it was the largest seascape the artist had produced at the time of its creation, and was worked on during the 1670s at the Queen’s House.

Also on show will be the freshly restored tapestry The Burning Of The Royal James At The Battle Of Solebay, 28 May 1672 – a vast work based on designs by the elder Van De Velde.

The exhibition is free to visit with entry to the Queen’s House. Slots can be booked online. Go to rmg.co.uk for more information

In addition to paintings and tapestries by the Van De Veldes, a selection of works from an archive of more than 1,400 drawings will also go on show.

Recently, Royal Museums Greenwich – which comprises the Queen’s House, the National Maritime Museum, Cutty Sark and the Royal Observatory –announced it would host multiple events creating a Season Of Drawing from March to June to celebrate the discipline across its collection. You can find full listings via the QR code below.

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Greenwich - Peninsula - Woolwich what’s on things to do, places to go, people to see

Where?

The O2 Arena Greenwich Peninsula

SHOW | The Graham Norton Variety Show

The TV presenter and comedian hosts a line-up that includes drag queens Bianca Del Rio and Danny Beard and Strictly Come Dancing star Jayde Adams. Mar 3, 5.30pm, from £53, theo2.co.uk

Where? Greenwich Theatre Greenwich

STAGE | Fox

This brutally honest exploration of motherhood in an isolating society is inspired by real events. Expect sharply observed drama and sensitive subjects. Mar 1-2, times vary, £12.50, greenwichtheatre.org.uk

Where? Woolwich Works Woolwich

CHARITY | Pass It On Quiz Night Fundraiser

Teams of up to six are invited to compete at this charity fundraising event that will allow the venue to o er locals £1 tickets for future events. Mar 1, 7.30pm, £200 per table, woolwich.works panto readings

Storied dame Mama G returns to Greenwich to tell tales to youngsters at local libraries. Performed by Robert Pearce, the free sessions (until Feb 17) are part of the borough’s LGBTQIA+ history month celebrations royalgreenwich.gov.uk

Scan this code to nd out more about Mama G’s performances and other events to mark the month want more? @whar ifelive