A pop-up gallery in a vacant unit at the Hildreds Centre in Skegness is bringing a touch of culture to the town centre. So What Art gallery has just finished an exhibition of images featured in Wanderlusting - a new book by photographer John Byford, who shares the space with local artist Steve Gould.
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00:00 A public gallery in the Hildreys Centre in Skegness is bringing a touch of culture to
00:05 the town centre.
00:08 An exhibition called Wanderlusting has just finished but photographer John Byford tells
00:12 us there are more to come.
00:14 John, tell me about the exhibition.
00:16 Well the exhibition is called Wanderlusting which is a play on a bit of English and a
00:20 bit of German.
00:21 Wanderlust meaning to travel.
00:22 So this is an exhibition of my travels over the last probably, well starting with this
00:31 picture that I took in India in 1998 and the most recent picture in the last couple of
00:40 months.
00:41 So there's a selection of images from my journey, you know, this journey of mine across Europe.
00:48 And it's all part of the book?
00:50 It's all part of the book, called obviously Wanderlusting.
00:55 The book weighs around about a kilo actually, there's 250 pages of images of mine.
01:02 Yeah, very proud actually, it was a very proud moment when a publisher contacted me and said
01:07 that they wanted to do a book.
01:09 It went on sale both here and over in Germany and all the copies are gone.
01:16 The last one here went on Saturday.
01:19 And you've had exhibitions in Germany as well, I mean, probably you just ought to explain
01:23 the link with Skegnes and Germany.
01:25 Yeah, yeah, I mean Skegnes has actually been twinned with the town of Bad Gunnersheim since
01:33 1979 I think.
01:36 And this is a small city that is near Hanover in the northern Germany and this link I've
01:45 been involved with for many years and I've run several art projects over there and brought
01:51 artists from Germany here and taken artists from Skegnes to Germany as well.
01:57 So we have this artistic link going on which is really good.
02:03 I took a telephone box over there in 2015 and it is no longer a red telephone box, we
02:12 paint it, well I paint it, a different theme every couple of years.
02:18 It's now a book exchange over there.
02:22 And it's in a beautiful, beautiful location in the historic city centre.
02:28 So yeah, it's just a nice bit of history and it keeps, the telephone keeps our connection
02:34 going because in this post-Brexit world that we live in, we keep the, you know, we keep
02:41 talking, you know, we keep the friendship alive, we keep the communication going.
02:49 Now this exhibition, it is in a space in the Hildreth Centre, isn't it?
02:53 It's going to go on with art during the year?
02:57 I don't know what will happen to the space here.
03:00 I mean this unit was once a sports shop.
03:05 Many years ago it was, well it's had many people in here over the years I believe, but
03:12 you know, sadly it's been empty for a few months so we decided to make it into a pop-up
03:17 gallery.
03:18 Hopefully someone will take it on very soon, that's what we want to see.
03:23 In the meantime people can enjoy some art?
03:26 Yeah, the good thing about having empty shop units is that it gives us, you know, it gives
03:31 people like myself a venue to display our work, but ultimately we want, you know, someone
03:37 to come in here and, you know, support the town by opening a new shop here.
03:42 The exhibitions have been made possible by the East Fleet Arts Charity.
03:48 I'm sorry, it's me.