Club Shepway Bathing Beauties 08

Miss Club Shepway 2008 Bathing Beauty Parade at the Leas Lift, Folkestone, Kent on Sunday 20th July. Celebrating 100 years of Bathing Beauties, and re-living the dream where the first ever British Beauty Parade took place!

costumes by Lady Lucie
tiara's by Floozey
images Matt Rowe

performers

Evil Uncle Tony Compere for Club Shepway Bathing Beauties
Fleur De Guerre Crowned "Miss Leas - if you please"
Dangerous Dolly Crowned "Miss Gale Force 9"
Alaska Blue Crowned "Miss Seaside Modern"
Precious Isis Crowned "Miss Penny Lick"
Veronika Valentine "Crowned "Miss Funicular"

Miss Golden De Licious Crowned 'Miss-ing Routunda"
Debra Decay Crowned "Miss Duty Free"
Ivy Paige Crowned "Miss Club Shepway 2008"

© Matt Rowe 2008

© Matt Rowe 2008

Ivy Paige Crowned "Miss Club Shepway" 2008 with Alaska Blue (right).
© Matt Rowe 2008

film maker Mario Dazzara

Menargerie at the B&B Project Space

Menagerie

Featuring Works by: Haily Bates, Benjamin Flecture, Vicky Foster and Matt Rowe

Thought out the summer the B&B Project Space Presents Menagerie an exhibition platform for artists to explore kentish flora and forna from coast to countryside.

Uncanny exhibits include: reconfigured road kill, the retirement home for china dogs, a hand whittled furniture tree and a beach made from genuine imitation shingle.

pictured above Mark Dion emersed in kentish flora and forna at the B&B Project Space 2008
© Matt Rowe

© Matt Rowe

Shoddy Tempoary Tattoos At The Art Car Boot Fair 2008

Shoddy temporary Tattoo flash made for the the art car boot fair 2008

© Matt Rowe 2008

miss honey lu lu STORM IN A TEACUP

© Matt Rowe 2008

A corroboration producing miss honey lu lu new routine Storm in a teacup.
Prop by Simon Kennedy, costume by Lady Lucie and image by Matt Rowe

O Dreamland

This August Bank holiday, Transition Gallery have teamed up with Club Shepway in Folkestone to present O Dreamland, a contemporary arts festival that takes a subversive yet affectionate look at the seaside.

The title is taken from Lindsay Anderson's short Free Cinema documentary made in 50s Margate about the Dreamland pleasure park. The film focuses on the partying day-trippers, juxtaposing them with some of the more grotesque elements of a typical amusement park.

Curated by Cathy Lomax, O Dreamland features over 20 artists who each respond to the subject in a uniquely contemporary way. The event will be centred around a 1930s 'Modern' house in Greatstone, Kent, which overlooks the English Channel to the front and the curious Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway to the back. The house is itself an interesting counterpoint to some of the more kitsch elements on show and embodies ideas of architectural modernist utopias.

Work on show will include Matthew Rowes' handcrafted shingle beach, Lucy Harrison's flag, Cathy Lomax's paintings of beauty queens, Sophie MacCorquodale's film portrait of Rhyl, Ruth Calland's alter ego Dame Batlove's psychic performance on the beach and much much more

This pertinent event comes at a time when many of our seaside towns are in crisis. In between the creeping gentrification and crumbling deprivation the spirit of the seaside is being lost. O Dreamland addresses this in a defiantly un rose-tinted way.

Watch the O Dreamland Film
http://www.transitiongallery.co.uk
http://www.clubshepway.com

Genuine Imitation Shingle
Matt Rowe 2007

deep sea diving flouncy Edwardian lady figurine
Matt Rowe 2007

Untitled figurine
Matt Rowe 2007

Participant in the mobility scooter drive by
also pictured Dame Bat Love

work in the Arty Sea Side Eddition

http://www.artymagazine.com/

http://www.commentart.com/publication/Arty_-_Seaside_Special

Join Arty on a trip to the coast and find Chris Moxey’s modest Modernist palaces, Paul Rennies dippers, Delaine Le Bas’s nuclear visions, Matt Rowe’s down at heel funfair, an anthology of poetry by Gary O’Connor, Annabel Tilley’s hotels and much much more.

Writers Martin Figura, Lucy Harrison, Helen Ivory, Tom Keogh, Cathy Lomax, Alex Michon, Laura Mansfield, Paul Rennie, Annabel Tilley

Artists Sara Chew, Jake Clark, Rebecca Gould, Lucy Harrison, Damian Le Bas, Delaine Le Bas, Cathy Lomax, Sophie Maccorquodale, Alex Michon, Chris Moxey, Laura Pasterfield, Matt Rowe, Annabel Tilley

Bathing Beauties Parade 2007

Bathing Beauties Parade 2007 part of the O Dreamland contemporary arts festival

costumes by Lady Lucie and photography by Matt Rowe

Miss Club Shepway 2007
Vicky Butterfly
© Matt Rowe

Miss Nuclear reactor A
Dangerous Dolly

Miss Transition
Veronica Valentine

Miss Peep Toe (magazine)
Honey Lu Lu

Miss O Dreamland
Lil' Miss Chievous