'Up on Deck' Ramsgate 17 - 24 October 1998 'Up on Deck' was the result of a seven day residency at Ramsgate Library October 1998. Liz Rideal produced over 200 portraits in a photo-booth using the jolly stripe of the deck chair canvas as a focal point and fabric backdrop. Collaged together this set forms a unique collective image; the juxtaposed stripes provoking visual syncopation and the people's heads seen poking through the fabric appearing like corks bobbing on a deck chair sea. The portraits conjure up the old-fashioned 'peep-hole' seaside photograph and the backdrops bring to mind the stripy awnings of the summer ice-cream parlour (simultaneously making play with the traditional use of canvas in a painted world). The collage unites the people much like sand unites bodies on a beach. Individuals pose alone, but are subsumed by the uniformity of the stripe. Certain individual portraits were enlarged and hung onto the gallery walls hung with striped canvas, making a riot of jumping colour; optically reminiscent of the 1960's. Many traditional seaside customs affect the resident and local worker, 'UP ON DECK,' will look at those who comprise 'out of season' in Ramsgate and also those who work refurbishing amenities used by the seasonal visitors . The piece makes reference to another local (and striped) connection - the skirts and shawls of the women in Dyce's Pegwell Bay, Kent, A Recollection of October 5th 1858. Painted roughly 140 years before it is an enduring image of the Victorian seaside. Painted with the aid of photographs in an era when this medium was only just beginning to be widely used. << back