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ISSUE 8 40 Days and 40 Nights: The Weather Edition

Editorial

Under a Cloud

Welcome to the Weather Edition of Leisure Centre.
This topic seems to have inspired Leisure Centre contributors to gaze skywards.
Clouds populate art history forming angelic climbing frames in baroque ceiling pieces to brooding symptoms of the pathetic fallacy throughout landscape painting; it is therefore only fitting that they should feature quite prominently in this edition. We have Ines Rebelo’s cloud drawings which take the differences between scientific classification and lived experience as their subject matter. Looking up is switched to looking down when we are given some thoughts from the cloud’s point of view by Anna Pickering. While Melanie Rose updates us in her quest to document the sky everyday for a year.

Representing the weather both visually and verbally is no easy task. An enormous amount of strict conventions have developed to allow what is essentially experienced physically and emotionally to be expressed scientifically (of course it could also be argued that the reverse is true). It is these conventions, these twists and rhythms of the verbal and visual which form the inspiration for Sally Davies and Jamie Wilkes’ weather poem: “Clear Sky” Anticyclone: Winter. At the other end of the seasonal spectrum Elysa Lonzano speculates on the uses and meanings of air conditioning.

Snow is an infrequent experience in this country. It is this scarcity which, on one hand results in transport delays, power cuts and general chaos, but on the other, generates a kind of magical wonderment. Memories attach themselves to snowy days, days which I have tried to remember for my contribution to the issue.

This edition of Leisure Centre features the first in a series of five postcards designed by artists on the theme of Leisure. This one has been designed by Adam Bridgland and printed by Leisure Centre using a Print Gocco Japanese screen printing machine. A process which is itself considered a leisure activity in Japan and one which enhances the homemade charm of the product. I’m sure you’ll want to collect them all.

Have a nice day.

Rosemary Shirley
Editor