"Another
show came as a big surprise. It was one of those exhibitions
of quality that comes unheralded....out of the blue an exhibition
about the English seaside by Edward Mackenzie.
The
materials of this show must have taken years to collect. They
were made into a series of assemblages inspired by the work
of the great English photographer, the late Tony Ray-Jones.
What Edward Mackenzie made was a whole lot of boxes, most of
them containing a pier constructed out of things as diverse
as ice-cream sticks and pieces of meccano (erector) sets.
Around
each pier
were remarkable designs made up of clippings of evocative old
postcards, other photographic materials and a mass of posters,
tins, boxes, bottles, toys, cards and mementos all harking back
to the Twenties and Thirties. All the famous brand names were
there from Frys Cocoa to Players cigarettes. Out of those nostalgic
fragments landscapes were made so that each assemblage was its
own small world, redolent of time past but each with its own
atmosphere. It was unprecedented and unparalleled - a first
class exhibition."