I was walking through the old municipal market in Brighton yesterday taking not very inspiring photos of graffiti when I noticed a girl sitting at a desk, encouraging passers-by into a huge dilapidated market hall. Inside were three or four curious red objects like this one, together with a hole the size of a small swimming pool. The inside of the hole - and the two huge piles of earth that had come out of it - had been painted the same vivid red as the weird lumpy sausage objects.
The effect was very striking - all the more so because of the drab greyness of the hall and some strategically placed red spotlights. The scale was impressive too - it's probably hard to tell from this picture but the sausage you're looking at is at least 30 feet long and 6 or 7 feet high, and the hole was at least 6 feet deep. The overall impression was surprisingly peaceful and meditative I thought. I have no idea how this relates to the dismemberment of Jeanne d'Arc, but that's the name of the piece - and it's by Anish Kapoor, the artist who's curating this year's Brighon Festival. There are a few more photos
on my Flickr pages if you're interested.
