A look inside Tunbridge Wells Museum & Art Gallery

Sharing the story of the Borough of Tunbridge Wells through fantastic collections of art, natural history, archaeology, craft, toys and so much more!

[alecstevens]

Work It!

Ive got a very busy month ahead of me making for the tunbridge wells exhibition.

Watch this space for making updates, drawings, and samples of hair that I’ve pulled out from stress.

www.alecstevens.co.uk

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Alec is working hard for our upcoming exhibition!

[alecstevens]

Post Eight: Royal Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery - Commission

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This post is about doors, since deciding to use reclaimed doors as the based sheet material to make the bulk of the houses, we have struggled to find 5 identical ones that are in good nick, stripped of all paint and most importantly, are pretty.

Jo and I spent the morning travelling to far flung sections of bristol to check out door strippers lots, the city dump to see if we could grab a door before it got flung into the tip.

Then… we found them.

By chance we looked to our left whilst driving back to my neck of the bristol woods.  A small salvage yard caught our eye.

The shop front was a narrow fronted space. We walked through and past a thin door.  We were now entering a space selling protein powder and frozen steamed salmon. This is in fact the business next door, a shop for muscle men. You have to go through a separate door that is to the back of this shop. There was a sudden temperature drop as we entered the space dedicated to the stripping of doors. The further we went into this space the colder it got.

Then there they were, 5 near identical reclaimed doors just waiting for us, found by chance. but there was no-one to help us buy them. The lady who runs the South West Architectural Salvage Shop was evading the traffic warden on the street by moving her car around the block. She was a very kind lady but was also firm in the way she dealt with us.  We said what we were interested in and she told us the first price. Over £300 over our budget. Jo said a few hours before that my dictation indicated that we had money so I kept my clamp shut and she did all the talking. We managed to get the doors on budget.  We arranged to come in the following day to collect, so now had to organise a man with a van. ——————

~the next day~

—————— I had to get up to go get the money from the bank, being the man with the budget means I have the purse strings, I’m actually very good at this. I take down notes of how much I spent and I keep all the receipts.

Jo organised for Constance, a man with a van to pick the doors up at 11am. Constance is a lovely man and his van is very clean inside and he wore nice clothes. I was surprise that he was willing to help me move these dusty doors. To get the ladies attention I had to ring a large bell. she was upstairs, I imagined her watching a eastern european soap opera. She was happy to see me. I made the exchange for the money and she said to me that I should tell all my friends that now is a very good time to buy salvaged objects from her shop.  her info is here.

South West Architectural Salvage Shop

Constance told me that he liked to practice his English with people in the van, he also said that he does not look at your personal objects when he transports them. He hopes one day to own a fleet of moving men with vans. Then he could be within a warm office, but he would have to join a gym as moving objects is currently his gym. He was interested in the project so I told him all about it and I showed him my studio. He liked my wooden beer cans, wooden manhole covers and the wooden apollo rockets I made for a previous residency.

Constance - Man with a van

The doors were now in my studio.  I dusted them down and removed all the metal parts and marked them up for cutting up tomorrow.

Me and Jo had arranged to meet Clare Reddington, Co-producer of the Pervasive media Studio within the Watershed.  We told her our progress so far and she gave us advice about working with museums and some technology that could be interesting to use within our work. This was a very productive meeting. It’s good to chat.

Video >> Clare Reddington talking about the pervasive media studio.

Check out my website here. www.alecstevens.co.uk

[alecstevens]

Post Seven: Royal Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery - Commission

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We set off for another trip to tunbridge. After a day shift at the cinema, Jo has the glorious job of being my chauffeur for 3.5 hours. My contribution to the journey consists of a new gadget for the car so that we can listen to our music players through the Radio.  A part of me is relieved as we had exhausted our collection of CD’s that are in the car from our previous journey. 

Now it has become tradition to go to the EXTRA,  the largest and clearly the most impressive service station that is on the circular road surrounding London. I had a dirty KFC and jo had a curry. All of your dietary requirements and dreams can be satisfied at the EXTRA.

We arrived into Tunbridge Well at about 10pm to where we were staying. Our lodgings were with Jasmine and Bridget, university buddies that have a flat in tunbridge.. It was very comfortable. The flat had hot water, fluffy blankets and most importantly wifi. Cheers Ladies.

The day began and we set off to the Museum. Tunbridge’s carpark is nasty, but I kind of love it. It’s big and it’s a series of ramps that you park on, meaning that all cards are on a slight incline, its fun to imagine them on an icy day.  We met Jasmine on the museum front Desk and Rob in the office where he was busy. I asked him about his resent trip to the north of Italy where he skied. He introduced Jo and I to the reference library where we could do research into the pub and the surrounding area and also with the photocopy machine, which is very futuristic.

Whilst within the local history section we bumped into Keith, The author of a book charting the history of Tunbridge Wells pubs. This was very lucky. Jo exchanged numbers with him. He has since contacted Jo, He likes to wake her up at 8am.

Suzie arrived and we chatted about the project and our progress over a cup of coffee. Suzie had arranged to meet with Jason, the Pub owner so our day was scheduled around this rendezvous.  Ian was in today, so we chatted and he unearthed a document containing an excavation report from a dig within the sussex arms from 1989. It listed a number of objects that are still within the museum archive that we could use as props for story telling.

The meeting with Jason was also with his entourage that consisted of a drummer, and two men that worked within the many venues that are co run by Jason within Tunbridge. The meeting was the fist contact we had with he inside depths of the building. Jason took Jo and I on a tour of the building. Into its hidden depths and into the normal parts too. Jason is a punk, he told us about all the shady happening from within the building over the years. The sussex arms was known for many years as the place to buy drugs. No longer. It is now the place for a cool night out and to listen to live music, watch cool films and to have a local beer.

The Sussex Arms Website / Gig listings

After the meeting we headed back up to the gallery / museum and checked out the exhibition space. We walked through the space as if we were walking through our exhibition.  It felt exciting doing this. Suzie told us that visitors rarely go the designated way of viewing the space, so we would need to think about the visitor experience and their route. Jo went back into the paper achieve and i worked on the exhibition poster. A sneak peek is within the images above.

I had been working on a scale model that I then displayed to suzie. She identified problems in regard to children snapping off their fingers and strangulation issues to using cords etc. I will do everything in my power to no do any harm to any living things within the exhibition.

The day ended with us chatting though issues and past stories and the next set of deadlines.  We drove back to bristol while the sun was setting.

Check out my website here. www.alecstevens.co.uk

[alecstevens]

Post Five: Royal Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery - Commission

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Jo and I are working together in parallel, tandem, and independently on this complex project. We both have money jobs that distract us from our true love of making and writing and we are very good friends to many people.  All of this adds up to not having huge amounts of time for long periods of intense shared work time. This could be seen as a huge positive as we both have time away doing tasks that inform our creative work and being social allows us to verbally work through our ideas with a range of audiences that are sometimes not creative at all. If we are able to convince them of our ideas, we are on to a winner.

This week we met up to chat through deadlines, money, travel and research as well as talk about our individual progress. Managing expectations of each other is important, and conversation is key.

This week we also met up with Tarim. Working within the Watershed Pervasive Media Studio, we set up an appointment with studio technologist Tarim, who helped us by demonstrating what bits of technology we might want to use within the dolls houses we are planning to make. We have decided to use WAV boards. These little guys allow you to play music when a trigger is activated. In our example we will place time based music within each of the time specific scale model taverns/ dolls house pubs that will be activated when you open the front door, Creating an immersive experience and to encourage the public to engage further with the works.

Here is a webpage that describes Tarim’s past work within a talk he did in Bristol.

In other news, I was in my studio this week making models of the pub, the photos show the facade of the Tavern to the scale we intend to make them. Whilst in my studio my uncle came to visit me who does old houses up to rent. We chatted and he said he might have some doors to use as the base material for the project. Cheers Uncle John.

Jo on the other hand was writing the script for the silent movie we intend to show at the start of the exhibition. The script describes a character that owes a lot of money to the pub because he is a drunk. The script is still is working progress so I’m not going to let any more out.  

We also talked about the name of the exhibition that we feel is really good and some ideas related to poster design. 

Watch this space for more updates.

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February’s Object Of The Month, written by Heather Evernden of The Southborough Society.

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Post Two: Royal Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery - Commission

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The past week has been a mixture of signing contracts, site visits and having meetings within the museum in Tunbridge Wells.

After changing a flat tire and a three and half hour journey, Jo Kimber and I arrived in Brighton at around 10pm Tuesday night last week. Brighton was our base for this visit so that we could we rendezvous with Suzie Plumb the following morning.

To our surprise Suzie was joined by Polly Hackett a fellow Hoodwink curator and a person I know very well from numerous commissions and exhibitions within the National Trust. Polly is involved with many projects in the South East that push contemporary ‘making’ practise into new and unusual places. The trip from Brighton to RTW took about an hour. We arrived in good time to meet museum staff and to see the gallery space in full swing, hosting a group of 30 primary school children.

Together with Suzie, Jo and I met up with Liz Douglas, the collections assistant, where we discussed progress so far with the project since the confirmation of our involvement. We then had a look at the exhibition space.

The exhibition space is a large white cube room. As someone who is there to fill the space it was a little daunting, but I was convinced that our project is strong and engaging. The space and facilities convinced us that we could make a video installation to accompany the sculptures we plan to make for the project.

Next stop was the archive. Liz took us down into the depths of the building. Not quite a labyrinth, it still had doors that I did not know where they went and lots of creepy looking ghost like forms in the corner of my eye.

Liz took us to the many archive boxes that contain their collection of dolls house furniture, props and mini dolls. Each item has a number hidden on it. Each tiny piece had been wrapped in acid free paper and within each of these archive boxes there are at least 50 of these items to individually unwrap and discover what was inside.

The unwrapping part of the process quickly looses its charm as each tiny objects seems to blur into the same object. Either an ugly looking poof, or a set of tiny cutlery. Our eyes and minds were quickly trained to notice the gems and to disregard the ordinary. The main objective for this activity within this trip was to realise what was in the collection as before this point nothing was disclosed as to the nature and quality of the collection.

Lunch arrived, and not a moment too soon. Working in a basement is as sexy as you can imagine it to be. We walked down with Suzie to the Pantiles district of RTW to see the 3 possible pubs that could form the focus of our project.

The Duke of Yorks The Sussex Arms The Ragged Trousers

We viewed all three and decided upon having lunch in The Ragged Trousers. We discussed Past exhibitions that Suzie had down. One involving Dolls within brighton museum. We were talking about sex dolls and robots for a while. The exhibition sounded very interesting. Link to write up Here.

After lunch we headed back to the archive and found these gems. (images)

A quick break in Brighton for the night then up to the museum for a half day looking through the archive and a meeting with Ian Beavis. Ian works with the museum as research curator. We feel Ian will be of great help with all things historical and RTW related. Which is rather lucky as the project is about RTW and its history. We have found the right man.

Key: RTW- Royal Tunbridge Wells

[alecstevens]

Working drawings for upcoming exhibition within @twmag Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery.

Since drawing these building, that are landmarks within Tunbridge Wells, Jo Kimber and I have decided on the Sussex Arms to focus our research on. 

Watch this space.

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Artist Alec Stevens and Writer Jo Kimber are busy at work for our upcoming commission for ‘Small Tales’. 

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New merchandise in the shop!

Rob Ryan cards just £2.00! The Crafters Guide to Paper cutting £12.99

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Wycinanki: The Art of Polish Paper Cuts is now open. 

Free admission

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Fan, around 1750

Lace, hand painted silk and diamond. 

Just one of the beautiful fans in our collection. 

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January’s object of the month has been written by Nia Lewis, who took part in a work experience placement in the summer.

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A view from the ‘Living & Working in Tunbridge Wells’ Gallery. 

These cases are filled with rural bygones and curiosities. 

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Just a small selection from our fantastic Tunbridge Ware collection. 

The largest in the world!

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December’s Object of the Month, written by 7 year old Isabel. 

Would you be interested in writing the museum an ‘ Object of the Month’. We publish these articles on our social media platforms and share them with our mailing list. If you have a favourite object you would like to research and write about simply email [email protected] to take part. 

For more information call the museum on 01892 554171 

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Sir David Lionel Salomons driving certificate. 

From ‘The Salomons of Tunbridge Wells’. 

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Iguanodon fossils in the Fur, Feather and Flint room. 

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David Lionel Salomons x-ray