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Interior of Orient Express – image gallery

The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is a private luxury train service that travels from London to Venice. Traveling on the Orient Express across Europe is a romantic, nostalgic and luxurious experience.

The craftsmanship that went into creating the original carriages would be very difficult to replicate – inlaid wood, frosted glass reliefs and chromed fittings. These wonderfully engineered pieces of railway rolling stock date back to the 1920s and 1930s. The whole ensemble oozes history.

The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express

The original company was founded by James Sherwood of Kentucky, USA, in 1982; five years earlier, in 1977, he had bought two of the original carriages at auction when the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits withdrew from the Orient Express service, passing the service on to the national railways of France, Germany, and Austria. Over the next few years, Sherwood spent a total of $16 million purchasing 35 sleeper, restaurant and Pullman carriages. On 25 May 1982, the first London-Venice run was made.

It is currently owned by Orient-Express Hotels Ltd. The company owns 50 luxury hotels, restaurants, tourist trains and river cruises in 24 countries.

My old lecture theatre and painting studio – Exeter Art College

The derelict painting studios in Exeter College of Art looked smaller than I remember – these were the spaces where I learnt my painting skills and the place where I was told to forget my painting skills. Those were the days when art was promoted as an intuitive process and not a prescriptive target driven qualification.

On the floor below the studio, directly underneath was the library, now devoid of shelves and books. All that information, inspiration and knowledge gone.

The lecture theatre still had its seating but its projection screen was missing. This was the place where I booed lecturers who spewed bullshit and I think I met Sir Terry Frost (?) – the place where I rediscovered Pollock and was seduced by Rothko, learned about Fox Talbot and watched some ridiculous interview reenactments based on articles published in magazines…

Sarah Bennett used this empty vessel to install ‘Institutional Traits (Series 2)’ which comprised of two large printed photographs of the empty lecture theatre. The lighting in the space was (and always was) simple – controlled by two light switches, one that puts the lights on at the back and one that put them on in the front. The two images mounted on the sides of the theatre reflected the lighting options, one was of the lights on in the front and one  was with the lights on at the back.

‘abandoned along with the art education system that it served’

…to be redeveloped as executive housing (maybe).

Institutional Traits (Series 1)

Sarah Bennett installation at Exeter Collage of Art and Design, March/April 2012

Click on images for my thoughts and reactions to this exhibition.

Low quality images from employee photo identity cards have been scanned at a high resolution, enlarged and printed, creating a series of portraits revealing scratches that have been created by interaction with security systems at the workplace and damaged caused by carrying them in, a pocket, a purse, a wallet etc.

The visual representations of the employees have become a map or account of time (or time served) – the electronic data saved on their id cards remains intact. The recognizable features of the workforce have become faceless, leaving our natural verifier of a person’s identity (sight and recognition) irrelevant, the system is only interested in the number or the code identity of the individual.

Read more on Sarah Bennett

Images of Exeter College of Art – March 31st 2012

These are photos of the deserted building in Earl Richards Road North in Exeter the site of the former Exeter College of Art and Design.

The building belongs to The University of Plymouth (which was originally a Polytechnic) with its constituent bodies being Plymouth Polytechnic, Rolle College, the Exeter College of Art and Design (which were, before April 1989, run by Devon County Council) and Seale-Hayne College (which before April 1989 was an independent charity). It was renamed Polytechnic South West in 1989 and remained as this until gaining university status in 1992 along with the other polytechnics. The new university absorbed the Plymouth School of Maritime Studies and Tavistock College.