GIRL IN CAR OVER CLIFF
Emulsion paint on hand tied glass vase 20cm x 10cm 2020

Work by Victoria (Vicky) Mann

STILLS NIGHT OF THE HUNTER FT SHELLEY WINTERS DIR. CHARLES LAUGHTON 1955
I was celebrating my birthday the night she drove her car over Burton Bradstock cliff.in Dorset.

My Mother shared a studio with her and told me the story, she told it in bits and pieces as much as she gleaned from news stories in The Bridport News and incidental conversations with locals that knew her. There was something so dramatic and final about this act, so driven that it played on my mind. I remember meeting her at an open studio she had made shoes out of paper and this reminded me of how I once made a pair of papier mache ruby slippers, I noticed a battered VHS of Thelma and Louise. Vicky also worked at Julia’s house whihc was a local children’s hospice.

70’s feminism talked about being missing in the culture (invisible) because if you are a sister hood there is always going to be a sister missing dead left behind.

Victoria, 26, went missing on October 27, 2007 following a night out at a pub in Bradpole.

A large-scale search was carried out after debris and a damaged bollard were spotted at the top of a cliff at Burton Bradstock the following day.

Divers and specialist equipment were used to scour the seabed, but nothing was found.

A number plate from Victoria’s car V983 PER washed up near West Bexington on November 8 2007.

The search operation was then called off because the Maritime and Coastguard Agency said it was unlikely a body would be found that long after a disappearance.

The divers who spotted the vehicle reported it to police on September 1.

Bridport section commander Inspector Alan Jenkins said the 20 man recovery team waited for the ideal weather conditions before removing the car.

A barge with a crane attached was used to extract the vehicle during the two and a half hour operation.

Inspector Jenkins said the car wasn’t spotted in the initial search operation because of the strong currents in the Lyme Bay area.

Vicky over the cliff becomes I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony with apple trees and honey bees and snow white turtle doves

Stills L’AVENTURA MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI 1960

SOMETIMES IN A FILM A POT IS JUST A POT–DECORATIVE, unremarkable, an unobtrusive note in the miseenscene. Sometimes, as in poetry and painting, pots can rise into prominence and seize our attention. They have done so notably in films by Michaelangelo Antonioni (l’Avventura and l’Eclisse), by Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2), and by Michael Landry (The Hours). In all of these films, pots symbolise women–one can go further: the women in these films, metaphorically, are pots, shaped and thrown and usually broken by patriarchal society.

In l’Avventura (1960), Anna has disappeared on a volcanic island after a series of unhappy conversations with her lover, Sandro. During a pause in the search, a police diver emerges from a cave with “an extremely beautiful amphora, in terracotta, with a figured design around it” (Antonioni’s screenplay). Her friends pass it around until one of them, distracted by Anna’s friend Claudia (Monica Vitti), drops it on the rocks and it smashes. “Regolare,” Sandro says, shrugging–“So it goes” or “It figures.” 1

I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony 2020

Emulsion paint on anticeramic vase 20cm x 9cm

daffodils which come before the swallow dare

and take the winds of march with beauty

a winters tale William Shakespeare

1 Symbolic pots in cinema .John Blazina teaches English at York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.