And the second piece here somehow encapsulates much of where he was in earlier life.  He moved in some rather dark circles in his youth and, from what he has told me over the years, one could imagine him on the periphery of London gangland, -- more likely on the outside looking in but knuckle dusters in pocket, just in case -- violence often never more than a wrong word or look away for this East End boy.

I see this true story of picking up timber being, on another level, a bit like an out-of-body experience, Guy seeing the alter ego of his youth in this rather bizarre situation.  He could have been the young Achilles or, indeed, he could have stepped out of the Mercedes.  Whatever, the darkness is there and may well always be so.

I've read the same old stuff about Guy so many times that I thought it time that his public had a slightly different insight into this complex and sensitive man.  As I said to him, people will read this and think, "what was that about?!"  But they will have found it interesting, I'm sure.  The work, of course, speaks for itself and I know that Guy feels that the 40-odd pieces in this show are as good as he gets.

He could have been a folk poet, I feel, and the quotation that precedes his first piece is typical of his intuitive nature.  It may have been written by someone but I can't Google it.  It doesn't matter because it perfectly captures the sentiment of what Guy Taplin's work is all about.  And yes, Easy Jet really does let him bring back bits of boat at no extra cost!!

Ian Courcoux

'On Some Far Distant Shore One Grain of Sand Salutes My Memory'

Many people ask me where I collect the materials for my work.  Apart from impromptu finds in skips and on waste ground, there are two main areas which prove highly fruitful. 

The Essex Tendring Peninsula beaches, which my old dad called "the salesman's graveyard" -- although today could be compared to the film "Deliverance" -- provide me with fairly large amounts of driftwood.

One day I'm with my son, Sam, behind the town of Walton-on-the-Naze.  There is a long defunct tidal boating lake with two open sheds full of timber boats and paraphernalia.  I get the rudder for the kingfisher and fish here and the boat panel for the 20 flying sanderling.  At a fresh water inlet we disturb a kingfisher and find a blue painted oar.

While we rest on the grass, a man walks by with his dog and starts a conversation about his soldiering experiences in Rendlesham Forest and the UFO that landed there, the dead being brought to life.  His wife's neighbour, it turns out, has had sex with an alien.  He ends, rather disturbingly, on his daughter's association with a local boy and how he was going to 'lose' him on the marsh.  Fortunately, the chap had moved to Brightlingsea!  Now nothing remains in this lagoon swept only by the tides and humanity.

Further down the coast at Joywick all manner of things are found.  The local inhabitants dispose of stuff over the sea wall and they drift up and down the coast -- old doors in blue paint, painted sidings from chalets built in the '20s.  At Seawick the beach was heavily fortified after the '53 floods and now, through erosion, it looks like a wartime Nash painting -- bits of cars and metal boats exposed.  I found the boat panel for the terns washed high on to the saltings here.  Further up, there is an all male nudist colony where I found a piece of wood that someone had written a long story on how, to their pleasure, they had been kidnapped and held captive in Clacton.

The best place is my workshop, an old holiday chalet, at Point Clear.  Wood in all shapes and sizes is washed to my door from four estuaries -- the Thames, Crouch, Blackwater and Colne.  I met a diddycoy (traveller) here who had a tear-drop tattoo under one eye. He held up his hands to show me the handcuff marks.  He had broken into an off-licence and got drunk on the booze there.

The second area is off the Portuguese coast -- a string of barrier islands 20 miles long to the Spanish border.  Some have fishing villages while others are completely deserted.  I leave my hotel that, in a previous life, was a brothel -- after all, this town is the biggest seaport on the Algarve!  I load up with wine, salami and bread at the pingo doce (Spanish co-op), catch a ferry or taxi mar -- or, in this case, hire a fisherman to take me to Isla Deserta.  There used to be a community here on the back side of the island but only the foundations of the fishermen's huts and the concrete jetty remain.  Nobody has ever beachcombed here.  The tide is out and I head up a sandy-bottomed creek where hundreds of small silver fish stream before me.  Several old derelict fishing boats line the inlet, their blue planking sprouting green bronze nails, the decks cracked from exposure and the wheelhouses lined with blue panels.  Four of the pieces in the show come from here.

Further on, bleached deck wood piles up.  It has been here for years, alongside whales' vertebrae.  Amongst all this will be Barbie dolls, lighters, mobile phones and lots of plastic fishing floats.  I have been going here for 25 years and it never fails.  When I get back to the town, the bars are full of Angolan fishermen and eastern bloc immigrants.  My hotel room fills up with my finds but they say nothing.  As evening comes on, swifts and bats soar over the roofs.

I pack my stuff and Easy Jet flies us back to Stansted with no fuss.  Then begins the transformation for this show -- dross into gold.  A fling of sanderling fly over the very piece of blue boat that their wooden counterparts now inhabit.  This blue piece of wood from a long-forgotten fishing boat laying many years on a sun-bleached beach on a forgotten island finds its final resting place at Courcoux & Courcoux -- and then where?

Notes on a Recent Visit to Collect Artistic Materials

Travel down 'the river of souls' (the A12) to south Essex.  Arrive at old brickmaking buildings -- long rows of mostly deserted single storey red brick sheds in the middle of nowhere.

A young Essex Achilles -- blond, athletic body, mid-twenties -- stands by a Jack Russell tied to a drainpipe with string.  Have to pass both and am told that he came out of one of the sheds after making a delivery (muck lorry nearby) to see a man kicking the dog.  The man is severely beaten and there are drops of blood on the ground -- but no man.  See a black Mercedes pull up outside the next shed.  Four men get out, wearing dark overcoats, gloves and bouncers' boots.  They stand looking at us.

Go into the shed to buy sacrificial timber (i.e. timber 48"x18"x12" used to protect wharfs from big merchant boats, etc).  There is a six foot circular saw on a long ramp -- serious stuff.  The man operating the saw has a bloody rag tied to one foot and wears no sock.  He says that he cut the front part of his toe off an hour earlier.  Offer to take him to hospital but he says that he's too busy.

Look outside -- it's now deserted except for the Jack Russell on his bit of string.  Leave the 'heart of darkness' and return to Wivenhoe.

Getting too old for this!

Guy Taplin

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