OZENGELL

Andrew Curtis

2nd December 2023 -
21st January 2024

Ozengell

Andrew Curtis

2 December 2023 - 21 January 2024

Andrew Curtis invites you to take a leisurely tour through Thanet continuing his fascination with the often overlooked histories that surround us as we go about our daily lives.

You arrive at Cliftonville Halt, a proposed train station in the Dane Valley a short walk from Quench that was never built, despite a recently demolished 1929 station hotel addicted to arson and two subsequent housing estates still awaiting its arrival.

Is that Jackie “Mr TV” Pallo’s (a star of British televised wrestling in its 1960s and 1970s heyday) wardrobe door?

That is the pervasive presence of Thanet Weed, introduced as seeds in the hay filled mattresses of soldiers returning from the disastrous Walcheren expedition in 1809, ploughed-in by a farmer and commemorated daily with a ritualistic burning by designated residents in every Thanet street.

If you are waiting for a connection please take a short rest on the memorial platform bench for both T.S.Elliot and Howard Wexler.

What is growing in those ashtrays?

Have a look in the waiting room.

Penny Fall’s - the world’s first coin pusher arcade machine was invented in 1964 by Alfred Crompton at his factory just off the Haine Road not far from Ozengell, one of 20 Pagan Jutish burial grounds in Thanet.

James Howden’s experimental 1MW wind generator was built behind Richborough power station in 1989, at the time the biggest anywhere in the U.K A small lecture centre was set up near it’s base and a nature reserve established. Howden stepped back from wind power after a failed project in the Altamont Pass in California and the turbine has stood idle ever since.

As you make your way back to the platform try not to stare at Jackie Pallo’s fading La-Z-Boy franchise Thanet showroom in Ozengell Farm which never really took off - perhaps his target audience lost faith when he broke kayfabe?

Andrew Curtis (B.1979) graduated from the Royal College of Art (MA Printmaking) in 2009.

Since then he has exhibited with PayneShurvell (London), Nicola Scaglione (Bergamo) and alongside Niall Monro as International Lawns with Domobaal (London).

From 2019-2022 he and his family operated PenthouseMargate, an exhibition space in their Cliftonville home.

He is also director of Counter Print Studio, Margate, social media director for mocathanet and will exhibit at cafe_ch_ti (Margate) 2024.