AGD in Preston Park, Brighton, this May. Exhibition, Public Discussions, Events and Presentations

A Graceful Death exhibition and project is part of Dying Matters Awareness Week.

Steve, in Worthing Hospital.  The first face I saw as I walked into the room was afraid, vulnerable.  The second face was seconds later, when he had composed his expression so that he was in control for all the people that would be coming and going for the day.

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The A Graceful Death exhibition is coming to Brighton.

 St Peter's Church, next to Preston Manor, Preston Park, Brighton BN1 6SD.

Opening Tuesday 20 May and closing Friday 23 May.  

10am to 10pm.   Entrance Free, donations and contributions accepted (and encouraged)

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The A Graceful Death exhibition in Preston Park, Brighton, is part of Dying Matters Awareness Week, and part of the Brighton Fringe Festival. 

You are invited to take part in the events planned for the week, each day covers a different aspect of end of life.

2 - 4pm daily and 6 - 8 in the evenings.   

Suggested Donation for these public debates and discussions - £5

Wednesday 21  May "Planning Dying"
Thursday 22 May "Supporting the Dying"
Friday 23 May "Communicating with the Dying"

Discussions chaired by 

 Bobbie Farsides, Professor of Clinical & Biomedical Ethics, Brighton and Sussex Medical School

Alan Bedford, Non Exec Director Martlets Hospice, child protection consultant & former NHS CEO.

Speakers include palliative care consultants and nurses, end of life care staff, hospital chaplains, consultants in care of the elderly, soul midwife Mandy Preece, and me, talking about telling the stories of the dying through art and words.

Plus Dementia Information Sessions by Dementia Friends Champion Nigel Spencer.

Check back on this site soon for the names of the speakers

The A Graceful Death exhibition is an experience, not just an exhibition.  Fifty two paintings, portraits of people who have agreed to tell their story, paintings representing the process of grief, and poetry sent in by visitors to the exhibition moved to express their own stories and thoughts.  Music, composed for the exhibition by musician Lizzie Hornby, will be playing plus filmed interviews of sitters talking about their dying by photographer Eileen Rafferty.   A film about the work of A Graceful Death made by Neill Blume will also be showing

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The A Graceful Death experience is made up of your response.  The paintings are powerful, raw, honest, loving, uplifting and real.  The words from each sitter accompanying the portraits are unsentimental and profound, it will be hard not to be moved and hard not to want to question this process of dying, of the end of life. This is what I want.  I want to know what you are thinking, what the end of life means to you, and how you respond to these stories and images.  I ask my sitters two main questions - Who are you? and What do you want to say?  This is very important during all of our lives, but most important at the very end.  My sitters want to be seen and heard, they want their images and what they say to help people face the subject of dying.  None of them expected it, it was always a shock.  By taking part in this important exhibition, they are saying that you still have the time to prepare.  Use the time, so that unlike them, you are ready.

Claire Rudland, the latest sitter for the A Graceful Death Exhibition.  Claire's words for this painting are below

"A landmark the consultant said is the two years coming up since the end of my treatment as the end of this year. The longer I'm OK, the better my chances. This is what spurs me on, to do these things while I can, and for as long as I can. It doesn't mean that I don't 'brick it' sometimes but that is part of the excitement of pushing myself out of my comfort zone. I may have said I didn't travel for ten years because I was afraid of flying and what happened? I got a life threatening disease anyway. I realised that when my time is up, it's up, whatever I will be doing, wherever I am. So now, the gift of cancer, conversely, has given me the gift of life, the gift of living. I'm no longer afraid of death as I've 'been there'. No way do I want to die, and it would be lovely to go slowly in the safe haven of the Hospice, say, when my time comes, but who knows? None of us know. It would be nice if it's not a violent death, none of us want that. I couldn't sleep this morning, so decided to message you."

Grateful thanks to Team AGD Brighton for all the hard work and dedication -

Nigel Spencer, palliative care nurse at St Catherine's Hospice and hypnotherapist for cancer sufferers, Revd Canon Peter Wells, senior chaplain Royal Sussex County Hospital and
Rachel Reed George, lecturer in palliative care St Barnabas Hospice.

If you want to know more, email me on antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com.  Updates on this site as they happen.  See you at the exhibition.

New Blog Up And Running

I couldn't wait for the website to be ready, I have created the new blog today and this is up and running.  There will be work news in the next posting, this first posting was a reflection of today.  A true reflection of an artist at home!  Follow me on this one and I very much look forward to seeing you there http://antoniarollsartistextraordinaire.blogspot.co.uk/.  Much love to you all

A Graceful Death has been the best thing that I have ever done (apart from having my children).  It has opened my eyes, it has opened my heart and it has made me look into what I take for granted in my life.  I have lost a belief in the Divine, and found it again.  A part of me died and because of that, a new path became clear.  I have found the way I want to go and the kind of work that I want to do.  And so the part of me that died, perhaps, had to go anyway.  Something new was born, and that is the work I do with end of life issues both as a painter and artist, and as a Soul Midwife.

This blog has been so important in the journey I have taken with A Graceful Death so far.  I have logged onto it all my news and thoughts, and have put up the paintings as I have been doing them, since 2009 when I held my first exhibition in my house.  I have used it to express myself and I have used it to inform you all of what I am doing and when.

Very soon, I will be using a new website which will incorporate all the work I do.  Linked to this new website will be a new blog where I will post all my news and paintings and events.  Some of you may have followed the other blog that I write, where I tell of my life and times as and Artist and Mother in Bognor Regis.  I want to combine both blogs and to write only one.  In this new blog I will put all my news, my A Graceful Death news, my Soul Midwife news, my other artistic news (for example, I have just finished illustrating a new book on the life of Jesus, due for publication in July next month.  Totally different work from the end of life work, and just as wonderful).  I will tell you all of the exhibitions as they come up, and the things that I am doing that you may be interested in visiting.  I will also tell you of the amazing people that come into my world and go out again, and the amazing people that are stuck with me (eg my children.  All grown up but still astonishingly unregulated.)  I will tell you about the discussions I have with people who inspire me, like last night talking with my dear friend and writer (and eccentric) Olivia Fane.  She told me of her thought crimes and went over what she was going to say at a literary festival next month.  She told me of the Ego and the I, and how she began to write her books and plan them after a strange event during the night in her house in Cambridge (something nasty in the woodshed etc).  And then I shall tell you about the meetings I will have with my Soul Midwife friends in Brighton tomorrow, and what we shall come up with to make our work better.

Lastly I will write about how my friend will come on Sunday to my studio, to make a Life Board with photos, material, paper, feathers, beads, words, poems and so on.  We will create her story on a piece of wood, onto which she will stick the things, images, words and thoughts that best describe who she is today after having been through the loss of the love of her life.  I know this is a very good thing, I have done them for myself, and they speak volumes in ways we could not imagine.  She, my friend, is recently widowed and is oh so very sad.  More sad than anything ever in her world.  Eileen, my dear photographer and colleague and friend will come too and photograph the event.  If this is helpful and good, which I think it will be, I will offer this as a workshop for A Graceful Death alongside the poetry workshops run by my friend and poet Penny Hewlett.

So much to say, so much to write, so much to do.  Life is good, when it isn't being bad.

Bear with me.  When my new website is ready (it is being designed and created by Neill Blume who made the film of AGD) I will launch it with a teeny fan fare. I will post on here the address and from the new website, you will be able to see the new blog link.  And then you can follow me to the ends of the earth.  We shall have fun.

Thank you!  See you soon.  Antonia.

AGD goes to Notts County Football Ground

Here is the next A Graceful Death event.  I have never exhibited in a football club before.

Dying Matters-

Small Actions: Big Difference

Tuesday 29^th May 2012

Notts County Football Ground

This is a one day event with various speakers, on end of life matters.  I will be showing the exhibition and talking about it with a life celebrant, Richard Sanders-White, soul midwife Felicity Warner and Dr Adrian Blundell, who will be speaking on planning for the end of life.  I am very lucky indeed to be staying with a very passionate and dedicated soul midwife, Sam Reynolds, an expert in the elderly end of life care.


For more information, please contact halima.wilson@nottscc.gov.uk.


Another posting on news and updates very soon. 

The Day After.

Well.  The exhibition is finished for this time, and all is packed up and in my studio again.  We had a very loving closing prayer and blessing from Lucy Winkett, Rector at St James's Piccadilly, and it felt that the exhibition breathed a sigh of relief and began to get itself ready for dismantling.

How was it?  How was the two weeks in a central London location, in a fabulous old listed church with a philosophy of "All Welcome, end of story"?  Well, it was fabulous.  I am spending today back at home in my pyjamas following the sun as it shines in different rooms of the house, and forcing myself to do nothing so the experience can begin to settle in my mind.  Here though, are a few thoughts.  I will write about the exhibition itself later when I am rested.  In the meantime -

St James's in Piccadilly opened itself to me and let me in.  I was given a key, given the gallery and given all the time and space I needed to set up.  The people who work in the church took me and the exhibition in their stride and nothing was too much trouble for them;  I was made to feel welcome, I was made to feel as if the exhibition was important, I was treated with such generosity and courtesy that I could not but enjoy every moment in the church. 

I think that as I sat upstairs in the gallery with my paintings and all the A Graceful Death stuff, I saw how important people are to each other.  I think I saw how, if the leadership of an organisation is good, that organisation tends to be good.  Sitting up in the gallery, the church would fill with the sound of tramps snoring.  People would wander around, the traffic outside would ebb and flow, and the tramps would snore as if they were competing with each other to take the roof off.  And then suddenly an orchestra would arrive.  After a few minutes, they would play Mozart and continue to practice until the lunchtime concert.  Up in the gallery, I could only see what happened in the church below if I went and looked.  So then the Mozart would stop and after a little while, the snoring would resume and I would watch people come and go in the exhibition.  And then, someone would play the piano.  Once, two serious and intense young men came and practiced the most disjointed but clever piece of classical music for a concert, filling the whole place with a passionate and deeply intellectual recital of something beyond my understanding.  After they left, after the concert, in the silence, the snoring started up again.

Yesterday afternoon, as the exhibition was winding down and people were gathering amongst the paintings for a last rather party like look and chat, a lady somewhere in the church below started to sing Ave Maria.  Everyone stopped and looked heavenwards, it was so beautiful, it was so appropriate, and I longed to say Yes, I organised this for the exhibition, it is all my doing. But of course it wasn't.  It was a wedding practice below, and I knew that, but I could see the effect it was having on the people in the exhibition and I loved it.  By the end of two weeks in St James's, I was becoming accostomed to sudden bursts of fabulous music, and was beginning to take it all in my stride.  Like the time, at the beginning of my stay at St James's, lots of young people arrived and started milling around the altar.  A tour, I thought.  A tour of well meaning but bored teenagers.  Suddenly one of them started to sing, and all of them joined in, and lo.  Not a group of tourists, but a travelling Venezualan choir rehearsing.  Blimey, I thought, I wonder if they are meant to be doing that, before one of the excellent Vergers explained that it was all OK and they were booked to do a concert that day in St James's.  And indeed, the next time I saw them they were in black tie and evening gowns with pearls.

That the organisation was good showed itself in the kindness and thoroughness of the people who worked there.  All seemed to have a very quiet pride in not just their work, but in the church.  Anyone can come in here and sleep, I was told.  Anyone.  During a service they have to sit up, but after they can go back to sleep.  Merchant Bankers can come and sleep if they want but as it happens, tramps and the homeless are the ones who take advantage of it. Hence the snoring.  There is a crisis caravan outside available for anyone who needs advice and counselling.  It is true, it is an old fashioned caravan parked outside in the courtyard, and you get time and referrals and advice for free there, and anyone can go.  There is much the church does and I don't really know any of it, but what snippets I heard from the staff and those who came to the exhibition as members of the church, made me think that there is a kind of fierce determination from the top down, to do what is needed for one human to another, to put their money where their mouth is, and to shine a light, the brightest light that they can, and to do it simply because they can and will.  And to shine it in the darkest corners as a matter of urgency. 

I met a wonderful man from the Alternatives organisation, part of St James's.  He explained how the church encouraged free thinking, exploration, discussion and all sorts of alternative paths to spirituality and God through workshops, through speakers, through weekend workshops running constantly throughout the year and very much a part of St James's.

Finally, I met a lady, a wonderful fiercely intelligent brightly coloured lady, who is on the Parish Council and speaks many languages and told me she had a problem with authority;  this lady said that this church was run with such creativity and intelligence, such passion and insight, that she had found her faith again after a period of having lost her way.  She puts the leadership and the passion and the creativity down to the Rector, Lucy Winkett, and says that without her deep intelligence, commitment and leadership, none of this would be possible.  Lucy, said this amazing lady, brought creativity back to St James's.

And now I am home, having been accepted into this church for the last two weeks, after they gave me a platform -asking absolutely nothing in return - to show my exhibition.  I am thankful, I am affected by them, and when I can decide what to do to say thank you to them, I will do it.  So until I know what I will do, I will say thank you here.  Thank You St James's, thank you.

Closing Prayer with Lucy Winkett

Tuesday 10 April, at 3pm.  

I am so glad to have Lucy to say a closing prayer for us,

 to bless and thank all those who have visited and all those who have taken part, in A Graceful Death.

And to bless and pray for all those who are on this journey themselves.

All welcome, up in the gallery with the paintings.

Today, the exhibition was visited by many people, one of whom said that I should take it to the Houses of Parliament and then Strazburg.  She then said that it would be too much for her to come in to actually see the exhibition, she needed time as her experiences were so raw.  Her enthusiastic response was based on the written stuff I have displayed on the staircase on the way up to the exhibition.  She promised to come back for the closing prayer.  I look forward to welcoming her.

See you all on Tuesday.

Opening Hours for the next few days -

Thursday 5 April                      midday – 5pm

Friday 6 April Good Friday    9am – 11.30 am

  

Saturday 7 April                      10am -  5pm

Sunday 8 April Easter Day      12.30pm – 5pm

Monday 9 April Bank Holiday, church and exhibition closed

Tuesday 10 April                       10am – 1pm & 2pm – 5pm

 

Closing Prayer to end exhibition 3pm in the gallery amongst the paintings Tuesday 10 April

I have met some amazing people at St James's.  I sit there amongst the paintings every day, and watch people come and go.  Some come in, climbing the stairs to the gallery, hesitate at the door and turn and run away.  Some come in and spend time looking and I can see them thinking hard.  Others come in and glance at the paintings, read what they can quickly and leave without making eye contact and some come to speak to me and tell me what is going on in their lives.

Yesterday a smart man in a suit told me he was 75 years old.  He said, he was happy enough, he was retired and had never married nor had children.  His father died when he was 16 and he said, after that, he saw no reason to be optimistic about anything.  His own life, he said, had been run of the mill, he had no ambition and didn't see the point in doing anything really, he never regained his optimism and still missed his father.  He gave me a hug and left the exhibition.  This man had a lovely gentle smile, and I don't believe his life was run of the mill.  He just didn't feel that forgettable.

Another man dropped in yesterday, struggling up the stairs with his walking stick.  A few minutes before he got to the door a small boy walked into the exhibition, and made his way along the paintings, silently and with great confidence.   A few minutes later, an anxious old man with a walking stick appeared at the door.  I asked if a small boy with lovely aubern hair belonged to him, and he beathed a sigh of relief.  His grandson, he said, and he kept losing him because he couldn't move very fast.  He is fine here, I said, because the grandson was skipping about the pews in the gallery and had found some toy animals that were part of a small tribute to a young man called David.  The old fellow rested on his stick and started to tell me that when he was six, like his grandson, he had been evacuated.  He told me the story of his evacuation, and how he had recently been back to visit the village in the country where he had ended up.  He was a real East Ender, he said, London was all he had ever known, it was a real shock and adventure at six years old.  After a while, Grandad went to sit quietly in the pews in the gallery.  Soon, the little fellow made it clear that he was finished, and it was time to go on to the next adventure. On his way out, Grandad made a donation to the exhibition.  He had not looked at a single painting, nor do I think he even knew what it was about.  It is very nice, he said as he left, to meet nice people.  It is good, he said, to have someone listen.

The closing prayer for the exhibition is on Tuesday 10 April at 3pm.  We will bless and thank all those involved in visiting, supporting, taking part in, the A Graceful Death exhibition and experience.