But recently she hasn’t been using it because she has been working on her writing. Kemp writes an article a month for ‘Cornwall Today’. Kemp studied in textiles and worked in the field for many years, then she turned back to fine art, completing an MA at Falmouth College of Arts four years ago. In her final show with the college Candy began exploring nostalgic childhood memories from her past. Starting with simple objects from the home, Kemp started asking herself about identity and beginnings.

In 1960 Kemp’s parents, her sister and herself sailed off to Australia to open a sweet shop and live happily. The magazines and T.V shows at the time played a big part in Kemp’s development. She turned to her history for inspiration for work after the MA. “With Love and Kisses Sharon and Candy” was the painting that followed. A curious oil painting with two girls, they are looking away happily smiling yet their faces seem strange, gaudy wallpaper is in the background. “I remember this green ivy paper in the living room, and this ballerina wallpaper was in our bedroom” says Kemp. Around their heads float little cut-out images of Cream cakes and high heels. “I wanted to do quite banal paintings… I’m inspired by Andy Warhol and the pop art era, not so much in the cultural imagery, but in the way they produced the imagery in their paintings, Warhol doing painting by numbers… very flattened images of women… quite surreal compositions.” “Cutting other images into the painting, the circular bubble around their heads have images of desire in them, like cream cakes, lipstick, a rose. Quite often I look in magazines… which are kind of cultural images, the kind of things that are pushed upon us through our social upbringings and media…. These are quite iconic images, they are purposely doll like… unreal like masks.” “The kind of things I grew up with in Australia, it was all kind of about this ‘modern living’ and you know the perfect family… you can see here, that me and my sister were dressed like twins, um, my mum used to make our own clothes, modern but common… theres three years difference between me and my sister.” “I guess it looks at gender too, the way you are gendered as you grow up; girls wear these kind of clothes growing up.” Cellophane wrapped dolls lie on a white rack beneath the painting. “Paint your own with love and kisses dolls” they have paints with them, and Kemp would sign the label if you decided to buy one. Kemp did autobiographic text that went with the paintings she did at the time. “This [painting] inspired me to do the film.” The film was about the journey over to Australia. Along with Alexandra Drawbridge (a friends and fellow artist), Kemp re-edited cine footage from the voyage with shots of her and her sister on the beach. “Me and my sister waving and walking quite close up to the camera, “Not waving but Drowning”… the title of that poem seemed very evocative… it inspired us when editing the film.”

8 minutes in total it was projected inside the container onto one end of a 20ft shipping container, all this happened in Lemon Quay, Truro. “I use a lot of metaphors in my work, the film is a metaphor, the shipping container is a metaphor, moving and transition.” The difference in medium gave Kemp a challenge she had not come across before. “It [the container] also created a space to work in, its really great to work outside the gallery, and people are much more open to the experience… I find that really appealing, as a painter most of the time you are working on walls, and you can’t reach out so much, I think a lot of artists working isolation and they’re not really connecting with people, you work from an internal point of view, and it can be quite self-referential, and therefore obsessive.[laughs]” Do you have plans to do that again? “I ran out of money and had illness,.. I was going to tour it round Cornwall, but also the other person I collaborated with [Alexandra Drawbridge] moved away.” I got the impression from Kemp that if she was given the funding, and opportunity to create public art for the community she would produce something just as poignant and touching as “Wave”, something that would reach out to people. But its not so easily done, artists have to fight for the funding, fight for the space, and work themselves to fatigue to make art for us, isn’t that all a little ridiculous?

Candy Kemp works under the collaborative name C.R.E.A.M, and WRITES FOR ‘The Creative Spirit’ magazine. She has also written catalogues for the artists Trevor Bell and Neil Conning.