Sue Asbury
Two Rooms
Watch this short film to see how Asbury and Asbury have responded to the theme Seeing Differently.
Two Rooms is a collaboration between artist Sue Asbury and writer Nick Asbury, who spend their working days in two rooms of the same house in Bollington.
Nick writes poems in response to world events, as part of a project called Realtime Notes.
Sue paints local landscapes and abstract 12-inch works inspired by music. This exhibition juxtaposes two ways of looking at the world, finding echoes and unexpected connections between the two.
Rivulet | 25 x 20cm | Acrylic on Board
8 August 2019 at 08:49
August augurs ill.
Days trickle downhill
towards a septic September.
Saboteurs be savaged.
Dishonest rebels be ravaged.
Parliament be prorogued.
Plotters be provoked.
Every dire direction
elicits an election:
the people versus themselves.
For now, the people wait
on vacations in the vagueness
of August’s august slowness,
neither stoical nor stolid,
but stagnant and squalid.
Soon the pace will quicken
and all the plots will thicken.
No.1318
#brexit
Canal Workshop | 50 x 40cm | Acrylic on Canvas
24 December 2017 at 17:19
Whether you’re remain or leave,
it still goes dark on Christmas Eve
and everyone thinks and drinks to the same:
to those who have left us
and those who remain.
No.274
#brexit #drinking
Rainow Winter | 50 x 40cm | Acrylic on Canvas
8 December 2017 at 07:44
We woke to a fresh fall
of diplomatic language.
An inch or so
of sufficient progress,
blanketing normality,
making everything
soft and fuzzy.
One day it will melt
and we will remember
what the world looks like.
No.228
#brexit
Ocean Rain | 30 x 30cm | Mixed Media on Board
9 February 2020 at 08:31
Dog and I watch the sky.
Weight of wind made visible
by mass of cloud at speed of storm.
Force of wind made feelable
by strain of branch and stress of tree.
Voice of wind made audible
by spray of rain on windowpane.
To dog this storm is a mystery,
a synthesis of shade and sound,
beyond the bound of familiarity,
a wordless world of mystery.
Also to me.
No.1597
#humdrum
Car Park | 20 x 25cm | Acrylic on Board
16 November 2018 at 18:08
The small epiphanies.
Friday night at the Co-op,
gazing at the wine fridge
alongside two other customers,
feeling a fleeting fellowship with all things
as the sound system plays My Sweet Lord
and we quietly wonder
which wines we can afford.
No.932
#humdrum #drinking
Bridge No. 28, March 2020 | 30 x 25cm | Acrylic on Canvas
18 March 2020 at 13:03
sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, stirring this soup of symptoms that don’t quite sync, she’s been off colour too, he’s been off school, we’ve become an island household in a sea of fake normality, eggshell mundanity, entering the everyone knows someone stage, the everything is cancelled stage. my heart weaves through the sunny crowd and balances two pints on a window ledge outside a pub with hanging baskets. my soul leans against a late night train window and gazes drunkenly at the moon. my face appears on a video call looking tired and uncertain. I speak but the microphone is muted. can you hear me now. ok how about now.
No.1647
#coronavirus
New Facts Emerge | 30 x 30cm | Mixed Media on Board
24 January 2018 at 21:00
He’s on his last night
in the little bedroom,
before the great migration
to the big one tomorrow.
A happy handful of square feet.
Sometimes hard too.
Appropriately tonight,
he’s taking his time
and we’re up and down
the wooden hill to Bedfordshire
like it’s going out of fashion,
while either looking at our phones
or choosing not to look.
My wife is beautiful and so is he
and these notes don’t have titles
but use time stamps instead.
This one is called Mark is dead.
No.356
#family #deaths
Mark E. Smith 1957–2018
Oak Lane, March 2020 | 30 x 25cm | Acrylic on Canvas
8 April 2019 at 08:21
Brexit update. Weathered daffodils shoegaze at a nineties revival. Wood pigeon lands fatly on a branch. Sunlight draws a ninety three million mile line between a star and a blade of grass. High in a pale blue sky a starling dreams of ending free movement. Where we’re at is this, says wood pigeon. Inside the shed sit seven days, piled as wooden chairs. Take them out one at a time and see where we’re at after that. The British people gave a clear instruction, says wood pigeon woodenly. The blade in the shade missed the sunlight by an inch. Dreams burn down, nod the daffodils.
No.1143
#brexit
Wild Imagination | 30 x 30cm | Mixed Media on Board
4 September 2020 at 22:40
To those on the left
and those on the right
who want to make everything
black and white,
no place is scarier
than the space in the centre,
the strange grey area
they dare not enter
lest they bump
into better ideas:
the luminous lump
between our ears.
No.1894
#identity
Workshop Window | 22 x 31cm | Acrylic on Board
26 February 2020 at 22:14
What to write tonight,
worries the writer in his room.
Somewhere in the darkness,
the sky is heavy with snow.
Invisible networks steer the virus
gradually closer to home.
You’ll think of something soon,
winks the crescent moon.
No.1619
#coronavirus
Love In Vain | 30 x 30cm | Acrylic on Board
12 December 2019 at 12:11
After all that,
you get to draw that
single x.
A mark to say this is wrong.
A mark to represent a value.
A mark to say here is treasure.
A mark to say lots of love.
A mark to multiply
into millions of x’s
in the middle of boxes.
The mark of the populi
using their voxes.
A mark that will say
if we won or have lost.
xxx to you all.
Keep everything crossed.
No.1503
#election2019