Rebellion Festival comes to Blackpool!

The Rebellion Festival, the ultimate event in the punk calendar, starts this week in Blackpool running from the 6^th-9^th August. Each year Blott has expressed its support and excitement for the event, with our artists Corrine Streetly, Jill Reidy, and David Butterworth drawing on it for inspiration in their artwork.

Each year in August, Blackpool comes to life with its streets turning into tapestries of neon hair do’s, with a palpable buzzing thrum in the air. Music, poetry, fashion, and artwork are shared and celebrated by a fraternity built on a common understanding that self-expression is living art.

Corrine Streetly astutely captures this spirit in her Punkadelics and Rockabilly’s series of paintings.

Idle Billy (30cm x 40.5cm) available as print

Kong Unleashed. Available as print

Vicious Sid (29cm x 42cm) available as print

She states ‘during each festival I’ve soaked up the colours, sights & sounds in the Winter Gardens complex, watching the crowds of national and international die hard Punk supporters. There is a real energy, an exciting buzz of expectancy in the air at Rebellion, due to many people converging together in one small space, dressed to impress’.

Jill Reidy seizes the opportunity to capture the energy of the festival on camera ‘when the sun comes out and shines through those fluorescent spikes on top of someone’s head, my camera goes into overdrive…’

‘Blackpool Rebellion Festival is one of my favourite events of the year - a photographer’s dream.  Brightly coloured, highly starched hair, any number of face and body adornments, tattoos and clothes that make a serious statement’.

‘For the last few years I have hung around the back of the Winter Gardens, pointing my camera at anything that moves.  I have met some of the most scary looking but genuinely lovely people from all countries and every area of life’. 

David Butterworth, a graphic designer by trade, uses imagery symbolic of the punk culture teamed with witty slogans on his postcards, ‘One of the most iconic accessories used by punk rockers in the late seventies was the safety pin. These images are my attempt at portraying a light-hearted take on these events’.

In honour of this iconic festival coming to Blackpool, Blott has a temporary window display showcasing some of our brilliant punk art. 

Mugs, t-shirts, and canvas bags featuring some of Corrine Streetly’s punk art are on sale within so don’t forget to come down and have a look!

For the complete range of Corrine Streetly's punk art merchandise go to the Blott website 

For the complete range of prints and signed prints available, go to Blackpoolpunkart.co.uk

Mail order prints are all posted in a sturdy brown postal tube. Framed prints available (collection only). For originals please inquire.

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Blog post written by Sarah Giblin 

Photographs taken by Jill Reidy

The dynamic new display in Blott’s windows features the paintings of talented artist Suzanne Pinder

From the series 'A Night out at the Comrades'

Clematis

Pinder considers the unapologetically amoral nature of Blackpool, her home town, ‘having the power to simultaneously fascinate and repulse’ in Rock Novelties, a loud and pop art-esque depiction of the crass souvenirs on offer on the promenade.

Rock Novelties

Portraits

The delicate sincerity of the snapshots captured by Pinder in Portraits juxtaposes the vibrant energy in Rock Novelties, through documenting her ‘intense and at times claustrophobic relationship’ with her autistic children.

Clematis

Particularly of interest is the series entitled Clematis, an all monochrome series of paintings depicting the growth, or perhaps, decay, of organic life forms. ‘As the images become abstracted and reduced, there are elements of calligraphy in the balance between black and white. Any specific images seen by the viewer are purely incidental.’ Pinder permits the spectator to become an artist in their own right, as the painting becomes a catalyst for the spectator’s own imagination.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

‘I was born in St. Annes and initially trained as a nurse at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, qualifying in 1990. I then completed a part time Foundation in Art and Design at Blackpool and the Fylde College in 1999, followed by a Fine Art Degree at Lancaster University in 2004.

I obtained my PGCE from Blackpool and the Fylde College in 2008, teaching on the Diploma course and studied for a PGC (Autism) in 2011, before eventually returning to nursing as a Ward Sister.

Part of Orb Art Artists’ Collective from 2004 until 2014 and exhibiting with them, I have now moved to The Old Rock Factory as part of Celery Artists’ Workshops on the ground floor.

My interests are: chickens, allotments, building sites, films, dancing, history, toilets, cranes, architecture, and aeroplanes. To name but a few.’

Review by Sarah Giblin

Photography by Jill Reidy