Roc Sandford

Artist's Monograph on Angela Kerr by Roc Sandford. Angela studied at Glasgow School of Art after the Second World War, and moved to Ibiza soon after. Angela describes the act of painting as catching the knowledge that you have to impart. It's a communication that is beyond words yet has to be said, even when you yourself cannot understand it. It is a knowledge which hits the viewer if they are ready. She says, this is a living process, and to it is such a relief when it's received because it is your gift to the world.

Five years ago, experimental writers Roc Sandford and Susana Medina met at the Extinction Rebellion climate protests which were enthralling and irritating people all over the world. Rebel, Rebel, An Emergency Dialogue is a street-level account of those days, a blazing call to help protect our planet from the disasters being cooked up for it, and a collage or 'pastiche' of different sorts of writing (dialogue, erotic fable, emails, poetry, texting, short stories, essays). A historical snapshot of Extinction Rebellion in 2019 and 2020, it is an intellectual exposition, an act of planetary defence which registers the life of a rebel family and the new friendship of two rebels, and a literary experiment scattered with references to Dante, Cervantes, Baudelaire, Kafka, Benjamin, Camus, Szymborska, Ballard, Atwood, Callenbach, Gablik, Gosh and others.

Rebel Rebel, An Emergency Dialogue by experimental novelists Susana Medina and Roc Sandford is a blazing call to save our planet from the disasters being cooked up for it. A collage or 'pastiche' of different sorts of writing (dialogue, erotic fable, emails, poetry, texting, short stories, essays), it is a historical snapshot of Extinction Rebellion in 2019 and 2020; a literary experiment scattered with references to Dante, Cervantes, Baudelaire, Kafka, Benjamin, Camus, Szymborska, Ballard, Atwood, Callenbach, Gablik, Gosh and others; an intellectual exposition; and an act of planetary defence, registering the life of a rebel family and the friendship of two rebels.

Rebel Rebel, An Emergency Dialogue by experimental novelists Susana Medina and Roc Sandford is a blazing call to save our planet from the disasters being cooked up for it. A collage or 'pastiche' of different sorts of writing (dialogue, erotic fable, emails, poetry, texting, short stories, essays), it is a historical snapshot of Extinction Rebellion in 2019 and 2020; a literary experiment scattered with references to Dante, Cervantes, Baudelaire, Kafka, Benjamin, Camus, Szymborska, Ballard, Atwood, Callenbach, Gablik, Gosh and others; an intellectual exposition; and an act of planetary defence, registering the life of a rebel family and the friendship of two rebels.

Burnt Rain is a powerful, compelling polemic by veteran eco-protestor Roc Sandford.Thirty years ago, Sandford bought a small, bleak island in the Hebrides. His aim was to live there largely alone, without mains services, and manage the land for wildlife. But the place had a different destiny in store. Far from being an unspoilt haven, Gometra was in ecological crisis, caused by climate breakdown. Sandford found himself confronting the barest truths about humanity and the environmental costs of our actions. In spring 2019, the more-than-human voices of Gometra inspired him to travel to London and join the Extinction Rebellion protests, where he spent time locked-on under a lorry on Waterloo Bridge.Full of rage, tenderness and weather, Burnt Rain is a brave, headlong gallop into one man's attempt to live in full knowledge of the unfolding climate disaster. It follows the wheel of the year to chronicle his relationship with the living world in one of the UK's remotest places.

The last I saw in all extreames is faire, And holds me in the Sun-beames of her haire, Her nymph-like features such agreements haveThat I could venture with her to the grave.(Elegie XVIII, Variety, John Donne.)Some find the meaning of their lives in bishops, others in women.(George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, 1888.)

Slim Truth dismissed without a character, And gaga Falsehood highly recommended. Greed showing shamelessly her naked money, And all Love's wondering eloquence debased To a collector's slang, Smartness in furs, And Beauty scratching miserably for food, Honour self-sacrificed for calculation, And Reason stoned by Mediocrity, Freedom by Power shockingly maltreated, And Justice exiled till Saint Geoffrey's Day. (Auden. Birthday Poem (To Christopher Isherwood.) Faber, Collected Shorter Poems 1930-1944.)

One morning after breakfast, when the sun shone bright, we walked out together, and 'pored' for some time with placid indolence upon an artificial water-fall, which Dr. Taylor had made by building a strong dyke of stone across the river behind the garden. It was now somewhat obstructed by branches of trees and other rubbish, which had come down the river, and settled close to it. Johnson, partly from a desire to see it play more freely, and partly from that inclination to activity which will animate, at times, the most inert and sluggish mortal, took a long pole which was lying on a bank, and pushed down several parcels of this wreck with painful assiduity, while I stood quietly by, wondering to behold the sage thus curiously employed, and smiling with an humorous satisfaction each time when he carried his point. He worked till he was quite out of breath; and having found a large dead cat so heavy that he could not move it after several efforts, 'Come, ' said he, (throwing down the pole, ) 'you shall take it now;' which I accordingly did, and being a fresh man, soon made the cat tumble over the cascade. This may be laughed at as too trifling to record; but it is a small characteristick trait in the Flemish picture which I give of my friend, and in which, therefore, I mark the most minute particulars. (James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LLD, 1791.)