OUT of the BLUE by MEOW. Curated by Soraya Smithson
OUT of the BLUE – my letter arrives with an invitation to you, my friends and relations who are scattered around the world: please send me a picture postcard of your place with a message on the theme of ‘The lands of the Free?’
OUT of the BLUE – your cards arrive in UFFINGTON and Kate Genever sends them on to me.
OUT of the BLUE – your cards are higgledy-piggledy on the Noticeboard, showing your dreams of sea and sky and spires, and your messages are flying from the flagpole, glinting and shimmering in the wind and the sun, celebrating the freedom through the air of your trickster words.
LONG LIVE the POSTAL SERVICES!
One of those people I invited to send a postcard would not be contained, as well as her card she wrote me this letter.
β . . . . . Sometimes you see something so miraculous you want to tell everyone . . . . . I was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka which was for much of my life ravaged by civil war . . . . {one of the towns} is Batticaloa on the north east coast, surrounded by beaches, a lagoon, it is a magical place, home to mermaids and singing fish.
Every morning at 9am in Batticaloa a group of women walk the same route through the city centre. The walk begins at the Catholic Church, winds through the main roads of the town and ends at the Gandhi Memorial Park. The women walk single file, in silence, with signs around their necks.
The walk began on 12th of May 2022, following the brutal crackdown on protests that happened when the previous prime minister was ousted. . . . . A state of emergency was declared and a curfew imposed. The women walked in silence with signs protesting the new government and the oppressive policies.
I joined the walk, known locally as the Justice Walk, in February. By then it had been running for over 650 days. Every morning for a week I walked the route, many days with the sign about Palestine around my neck . . . .When you asked me about βThe lands of the Free?β, I thought about the Justice Walk. How protest is both a vigil mourning the state of the world but also a distant billboard on which we paint our hopes for a better one. And that even in the most unfree of lands, every morning at 9am, a group of women walk silently through a magical town, not quite destroyed by war.”
Elspeth Owen works as a potter near Cambridge and under the name material woman she makes long distance journeys to deliver special messages and significant objects. www.imaginedcorners.net
This installation is their combined work – MaterialElspethOwenWoman – MEOW. They are currently involved in the Defend Our Juries campaign www.defendourjuries.org