For our last Kick-About, we revelled in the razor-sharp satire of James Gillray. This week it’s a celebration of found things, forgotten relics, and hidden gems brought into the light—and for all previous editions of The Kick-About, click here.
Graeme Daly
“My niece and I were both watching a favourite film of ours—The Goonies—and one of my favourite scenes is when the group of friends find treasures of every sort hidden away in a pirate ship deep within a cave. The glistening gold, colourful jewels and shiny ancient things made me think of my Dad’s house and all the collectibles he has perched on top of something else—with a story for each. I decided to capture some still life photography of my Dad’s trinkets by prop styling them in a suitable manner and lighting them to capture the light and shine—almost as if The Goonies happened upon these findings with their flashlights.”
@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog / graemedaly.com
Kerfe Roig
Hidden in Plain Sight
I stopped wearing my pins because I kept losing them.
They became a collection arrayed on a denim shirt purchased from eBay that had been embroidered with hands and eyes.
Many pins I own feature hands and eyes.
I also favor the cosmos: suns, moons, stars, constellations.
Animals are everywhere, both imagined and real.
Connections to my past: my Brownie pin, my nephew’s band, the FM station I listened to for years. Handmade pins created by friends, my mother’s glitter, my children’s discards, a NYC marathon pin from my sister-in-law.
Cryptic remarks and random answers.
The haunted house I removed from the shirt every Halloween for years to put on my coat. Somehow I managed not to lose it. I haven’t worn it since my children stopped trick-or-treating. Maybe this October I’ll decorate myself with it again.
What is a treasure?
How can you place a value
on trinkets amassed by time?
The things we keep re
flect what matters—the living
memories that define us.
kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com
James Randall
“I have a few glass vessels of twigs and shells and rocks – my treasures – so I took a few bits out and fiddled about. I’m happy with the image but it has no relationship to treasure trove apart from its origins, but it feels upbeat so nice to share.”
Charly Skilling
“By chance, the day Phil posted this prompt, the media was full of images from the Melsonby Hoard – a 2,000 year old stash of Iron Age artefacts. One particular ‘cluster’ of items was found fused together in a distinct and separate grouping, as if they had been bound together, unmoving, throughout the millennia. By using X-ray and comparisons with other artifacts found in the hoard, archaeologists can identify the iron tyres of Iron Age cartwheels, the links and trappings of harnesses, and the outlines of hilts and blades.
I love the shapes created by the random pressures of haste and time, for this hoard was surely hidden in the panic of some impending disaster of the first century, and then left to the forces of nature, until revealed by a hobbyist with a metal detector in the 21st. Here is this amazing shape—so reminiscent to modern eyes of atoms, or galaxies—but covered with the crud, the corrosion, the accretions of 2000 years buried beneath the surface of a field in Yorkshire. And yet—beneath the crust of the surfaces— there are glimpses of the treasures that lie within.”
Vanessa Clegg
“These are some of my ‘treasures’… The first fits more appropriately in the ‘trove’ of our prompt, as the spectacle case was found on a wall in France and was subsequently used to house the stag beetle and maybug, which were also found. As I have an endless fascination with all insects—and have spent years drawing them—these are in a particularly precious drawer. The purse was bought in a jumble sale. I added the glass jewel (from a distant friend of my mother) and it holds a brass ant(?) given to me by my aunt who recently died. Not having these ‘on show’ means that when I find them tucked away and open the case or purse they once more become ‘treasure troves’ again and again…”
vanessaclegg.co.uk / vanillaclegg
Phil Gomm
“Early last year, when I was in France, I found a stash of wonderfully rusty implements, stuffed into a deep crevice in an old wall. I don’t know why they were hidden away like that, but the keys are these great big ‘storybook’ ones that should be hanging off the belt of a wizard. The triangular tools are some kind of scraper and are particularly lovely things. Anyway, I had them all sand-blasted to remove the worst of the crud, and then—because they looked so shiny—I invested in some patina liquid used by horologists to re-rust them. Ultimately, they are destined to go back to the house in France—box-mounted—to reside on an inside wall where all their charm and character can be appreciated. These images were created using cyanotype paper on a day when the sun was soft and low in the sky, hence the three-dimensionality of the shadows. I inverted the images digitally for the graphical quality of the tools themselves, but otherwise, everything else is as it was on the day.’
philgomm.com / behance.net/Phil_Gomm
Ashley
There is a world
out there,
that glows and thrives
without my anguish;
if only I could see
without fear of height or hurt.
There is a world
right here,
that glows and thrives,
a home,
a garden,
filled with light and birdsong.
Our home, our garden,
right here!
Our treasure trove.
Lewis Punton
“It didn’t take long for multiple waves of inspiration to strike when it came to tackling this latest Kick About prompt of ‘Treasure Trove’. Initially, I knew I wanted to continue building on the body of insectoid themed work that I began during Emerge (purely because the use of simple marks as a way to depict bugs fascinates me), and the obvious connection there was to explore the nests of those clustered creepy crawlies that often lurk under the surface. Taking this, and merging it with the idea of ragged pieces of ancient maps detailing the hidden loot of swashbuckling bandits, drove me to creating a larger contemporary piece built on marks, materials, and the hidden wealth of hives.”
For those old-hands, you’ll know this great big number isn’t a prompt, so much as a landmark, as the next Kick-About marks the fifth anniversary of ‘making new works in a short time’ – and for some of you, that means you’ve made a new piece of work every two weeks for the last five years!
For the purposes of this next Kick-About, all you need to do is get in touch to tell me which of your submissions from this year’s KAs you’d like me to feature in the anniversary edition – and why. It might be because you just like it the most, or it pushed or challenged you in someway. Just let me know, and FYI, year five of The Kick-About began at Edition No. 105 (Mark Rothko). If I don’t hear from you, no worries; I’ll just choose one of your submissions that I particularly like. Have a think and I look forward to hearing from you.
Red's Kingdom 
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