Yoon Ah, Tornadoes and Flying Cats.

It was the 25th of January 2014.

A few weeks earlier I had heard about the suicide of someone that was very close to me. Her name, to me at least, was Yoon Ah. She was an artist and we had met in my final year of art school. 

http://art.gold.ac.uk/exhibitions2013/bafa/pages/bo_joung/01.html 

I was visiting an exhibition with the artist Daniella  Valz-Gen. This was at the Orleans House Gallery near Richmond, and it had started off as a beautiful sunny day, one of few that winter, and we walked along the Thames from Richmond bridge to the gallery. But as we approached the weather turned greyer and the headlines from the newspapers that I had noticed as we pasted earlier stuck in the back of my mind. There would be a storm that weekend. It would be equal at least to the so called St. Judes storm from before xmas. The one that brought down the 'D'.

The exhibition was of Madge Gill, an outsider artist from the early 20th century. She was guided by a spirit called "Myrninerest". Her work was hand drawn on paper or fabric and took the form of a labyrinth of 3D interiors with checkered floors and the same female face peeping out to stare at the viewer.

I had been in the final stages of rendering a projection for my upcoming show. A swirling vortex of apocalyptic text, a machine to push us over the edge, an Apocalypotron. I had commented to Daniella on how I felt that the work had been influencing reality somehow. The St, Judes storm, the worst recorded storm in history that had hit the Philippines the year before and now the Polar Vortex that was freezing the US and sending wave after wave of rain and storms across the UK.

The gallery was quiet. There was a rare chance to see one of Gill's works The Crucifixion of the Soul, which had been criminally displayed behind wobbly perspex. There was also other spiritualist art., including Austin Spare and Ethel Le Rossignol. There was ghost photography and a Ouiji Board.

We were the last to leave. While I had waited for Daniella to return from the bathroom I took a self portrait in a mirror located in the octagon room. 
A storm was brewing outside, the sky was dark blue, things were being blown about. This was the storm the papers had been warning us about. Could we still walk back along the river to Richmond? Would it be safer to go to the main street in Twickenham and take a bus?
It was brewing, and there was that feeling of excitement you feel just before a storm. So we elected to walk along the river.
As we walked along the toepath past the children's playground the storm picked up a little. I was trying to fix the fragile umbrella we had, it had popped inside out in the wind. It was then that I heard the roar of a train passing near by. But there was no railway track near here, I knew this area well. What was that terrible roaring sound? It was then that we were hit by a blast of wind, a roaring blast, like a wall, sending small branches and twigs, and almost us, flying. Purple lightning lit up the sky. I got nervous. 'We should get away from these trees,' I said and we moved onto the small playing field, which was muddy. And then the blast of wind again and I got scared, Daniella didnt seem so concerned but I was really scared, we had to get away from the trees but they were in every direction. This was wind that would bring down trees. The purple lightning again. I said that we should run, run towards the road. And we did, across the slippery mud, and on the other side i looked back and then across to Orleans park trying to think of the safest way to go. And then it all stopped.
The wind died down to how it was when it was just brewing. We could see the purple lightning, and the storm moving across the river to Ham. It had lasted just a minute and a half. Now it had moved on. Westward. It was then that I said it was like a tornado that had passed us.
I felt a little embarrassed at my cowardise. We continued along the river to Richmond. I commentd on the branches that lay scattered about trying to justify my panic. 'There just little branches,' Daniella said. 'I suppose so.'
Just before we came to Richmond bridge, we could hear sirens going this way and that around us. Across the tow path half a tree had fallen. Big enough to kill someone. It had been ripped off in the wind, or maybe the lightning. I felt justified.
The Monday after I found the news reports of the mini tornado that had swept across Surrey that Saturday. Roofs off in Twickenham. Trees down Ham. Four stray cats lifted 6 foot into the air in Chobham. 

When I was first getting to know Yoon Ah I had walked her home one windy night in Oct 2010. We sat on a bench at the top of Loampit Hill and watched things get blown past us. She said she liked storms. They had 'tension'.
I miss you Yoon Ah.

http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/10965176.Trees_down_and_rooves_damaged_as_mini_tornado_batters_Richmond/

http://metro.co.uk/2014/01/26/cats-lifted-in-the-air-by-mini-tornado-as-high-winds-sweep-through-surrey-and-sussex-4277713/