Royal Hastings, University of London Multimedia Art MA Final Project

Candidate name: Patrick Bright

Candidate number: 0883480

Introduction:

This is the thing. Where do you begin with something like this? Because I’m certain it started long before the first day of the course. So long before I don’t even know when or how.

Perhaps I should introduce myself and why I applied. Even that, I can’t be sure about now. I know I had nothing to lose. Or so I thought.

Why I’m here:

We had a nasty break-in at the shop. It was early morning and I wouldn’t normally have been there, but I was doing a stock-take out the back. The two girls were in front. I heard someone crash through the front door, two men in hoods and masks with crowbars. There was shouting and screaming. I peered through the door and saw one of them smash the till. First thing in the morning there’s nothing in there, and most payments are cashless now anyway.

The girls were crouched on the floor while the two hoods rummaged for whatever they could find. They were no Ocean’s Eleven . I squeezed myself into the little meter cupboard, pulled the door to and held my breath. One fella was shouting at the girls, asking where the safe was, where we kept the money.

I was shaking like a leaf. They came into the storeroom and started throwing bottles of chemicals around, but didn’t know what they were looking for, so went back out front, grabbed jewellery, purses and phones from the girls and scarpered.

I heard their car rev away and crept out. They’d hit the poor girls across their faces. I called 999, the police came and went, then we cleaned up. But I didn’t get over it. The girls went back to work – they’re made of stronger stuff than I am. I feel stupid saying I’ve got PTSD when they had it so much worse.

Anyway my thoughts turned to Schull and my pipedream about retiring there. That’s when Gela got chatting to me about her new art course.

The process:

Right from the start things were not right, by a long chalk. It felt like there were tensions and histories between people, even though as far as I was aware we were all strangers who met that first day. Only me and young Jem seemed – and I use the word reluctantly – normal. She’s the youngest on the course and I’m the oldest, but we gelled. Let’s face it, everyone in between was just mad crazy. And I include Gela in that.

Take that first project, for example. We had to imagine a start-up company and produce a logo for them. Simple. OK, so we all come up with something and Gela gets us to critique each other’s work. Alarm bells. Art is subjective. Surely no one wants to be nasty. I didn’t see the benefit of the exercise, but anyway.

I don’t know if it was a statement about how Gela was trying to set us against each other or what it was, but it’s my opinion now that Jonathan and Alyson cooked up and staged what I can only describe as a reckless melodrama. Alyson stalked over to Jonathan’s 3D paper model, insulted it and him, in the nastiest terms, and honest to God, she set fire to it right there in a room full of paper, wood and accelerant. My heart nearly stopped on the spot. When I think of the fire regs we adhere to in the shop – grown adults playing a trick like that. Jonathan and Alyson. That pair were thick as thieves from the off, and Gela was … even I don’t know what I’m getting at here. She was powerless against them.

Doodle message group [Private] Gela and Cameron, 16 January 2024:

Gela Nathaniel

Did you just call? Everything OK?

Cameron Wesley

Bloody Jem has booked us all in one room!

Gela Nathaniel

Are there enough beds?

Cameron Wesley

Yes, but four of them are five-foot bunks. She might be a youngster happy to doss down wherever, but the rest of us like our own personal space – and toilet!

Gela Nathaniel

I’m sure she was only thinking of the budget. Drive back tonight instead of staying?

Cameron Wesley

We might have to. Things are getting heated, and now the boss is calling. Kiss-kiss.

Gela Nathaniel

Kiss-kiss.