Elevation

Today, my work colleague managed to forget his camera, and since he'd limped all the way in on a twisted ankle, I offered to pop back to his house and get it for him. He lives on one of Brighton's regal Victorian sqaures, lined with vast town houses divided up into flats. Little did I realise that these town houses are so vast that most of them contain ancient, creaking elevators. The ones with doors that you have to manually open and close.

Now... this led to some of the most fun I've had all week. This may make it seem like I've had a pretty unremarkable week, but I suspect you're just underestimating how much I love lifts.

Well actually kind of love/hate. I have recurring bad dreams involving lifts, being trapped in them, falling down lift shafts, and so on, and if a lift stops unexpectedly I get very claustrophobic very quickly... Yet I'll never turn down the chance to go in a new or unusual lift. The mechanism and concept sort of fascinates me, and the idea of the lift shaft as a 'non-space'. If you can possibly bear to read an 8 page article about elevators, I'd highly recommend this one... which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I felt like I was breaking every single health and safety law relating to lifts, and it felt GOOD!
Here's a wonky, wobbly, handheld video of my retro-lift experience. Fun times.
(And a whole new genre of lift to add to my nightmares)


Elevate from Emma Charleston on Vimeo.

Anyway... I can't believe I've written that much about a lift, when in actual fact probably the most worthwhile thing I've done today was to attend the Carrie Reichardt private view at Ink__d gallery.

I'm writing this up for the Bored of Brighton blog, so I'm not going to spend too many words on it here, suffice to say it's a nice little show, and ink__d is always worth a visit.

 Nothing like a bit of unconventional, anarchic ceramic work to liven up a Thursday evening!