Sally O'Reilly

You could boil a full kettle on the frenzy generated by the opening up of the back of a van at the car boot sale. There is one house clearance outfit that waits until about 8:30am, when the dealers have picked the rest of the place clean of the top-notch stuff, and those who have tipped up later understand this to be the last chance of finding ‘that bargain’. Is that a cruel glint in the eyes of the chaps as they bring out the boxes of dreck one at a time? A sneer as the unruly pack of punters grabs what it can before the box meets the tarmac? Some of us hang back, tut-tutting at how animal the scene is and feeling car-boot grief at the excellent items disappearing into the bags and trolleys of the uninhibited. This week’s sightings: 1. The erotic vagrancy follows you around the room. 2. What did the elephant say to the bird? 3. It was a very big wrench. 4. Evacuated animal shell #1. 5. Evacuated animal shell #2. 6. Multiple of the week: football rattles (first used by policeman, pre-whistle, and as gas attack alarms in the trenches, it turns out). 7. This magnificent clipper is not even the largest of the many small boats spotted this week. 8. This week’s clown: such beautiful suffering. 9. Why oh why oh why did I not buy this? 10. A sheep made out of … a sheep.

At this week’s car boot, I bought a holepunch with adjustable hole positioning, which I am learning a lot from. Here is my record of other encounters: 1. A well-travelled odd couple. 2. What are Geoff and his orchestra’s other moods? 3. & 4. Tools of interpellation. 5. A touch of eczema is the least of their troubles. 6. You wouldn’t want much more transcendence than this. (Note the non-prescription drugs to the right.) 7. Might all small publishers diversify their merch? 8. 'Please, come on in, make yourself at work, etc...' 9. Two distinct strains of clowning. 10. Everything dreads falling into this corner’s gravitational pull.

For those who couldn’t make it along, here are some pics of how (a small portion of) the car booty performed at Big Throw 3. And here’s a description (in classic ’70s conceptual art style): In three ‘live documentaries’, I narrate a developer’s model that’s set up on a pool table. The model has several elements that spin, light up or are otherwise manually animated. By changing the configuration of three snooker balls, the audience can tune into a future resident’s candid appraisal, a historical dérive of the neighbourhood or an advisory lament. 🎱🥎🧶 What a glorious evening Big Throw 3 was. We had the sort of frenetic get-in that makes for horrible sweats but great anecdotes, and then every performance was an absolute banger. It was an honour and delight to be on the bill with: @maz_murray @missbrileung @munesumukombe @klara_kofen @jennetthomas @richard.whitby1 Simeon Barclay @gosia.kepa Pics 1.–6. Sally O’Reilly, Three Cues for 55a Nigel Road 7. Maz Murray, Plot Hole, with Bri Leung Munesu Mukombe 8. Klara Kofen, Alume Catino // Dr Saunderson is dreaming 9. Jennet Thomas, Yellow Grid, with Richard Whitby 10. Simeon Barclay, An Ode to a Crow, with Gosia Kepa All beautifully MCed by the supreme @jennifer_hodgson_ and photographed by the excellent @gray_carmen Thank you to the wondrous @set.social.peckham for having us, and to @leldret , @gemmabarr_ and @b.a.j.roberts for holding it all aloft.

This week at the car boot sale, one of the house clearance guys told us that, on a few occasions, he’s seen people pop up on Antiques Roadshow, claiming that the teapot or figurine or whatever it was he’d sold them was a family heirloom. There is subterfuge everywhere. This week’s booty: 1. Motivational art, for when that shelf won’t put itself up. 2. Both genies long gone. 3. Men. 4. The majority of packing peanuts neglected their duties, leaving the steadfast few to take the rap. 5. An old friend fallen on hard times. 6. There was another galaxy just three metres away. 7. A hyperdrive craft for travelling between galaxies. 8. This week’s clown. 9. Elsa on the London Electricity Board 1956–7. 10. This is how they get the edge.

This week’s car booty for your weekend pleasure: 1. I think this is part of a cheap metaphor kit. 2. So many mole traps 😭 3. None of us were expecting this. 4. They tolerate one another. 5. No one knew what this was. Could be something to do with nut bureaucracy, perhaps. 6. This week’s clown, harshly judged. 7. A terrible accident. 8. Two small bottles is all it takes… 9. Rumbled. 10. Absolute heaven.

Why oh why do I elect to make a mosaic for each Big Throw? It’s always right down to the wire. And all that cutting out invariably gives me an rsi. I usually leave a bit undone and say it’s on purpose – a minor ruin for the associated profundity – but this time, maybe it being very much under construction could be … the whole point? Come along to Big Throw to see if I’ve pulled it off. Tomorrow! Thursday 23 April At SET Social, Peckham. Tix in bio Peckham is well served by mainline trains, the Overground and links to the Elizabeth line, plus oodles of buses, so the tube strike needn’t hold you back!

A friend said that last week’s car booty pics restored his faith in people, and even made him feel a little bit proud of a society that otherwise causes much pain and shame. I am going to run with this and make the claim that car boot dreck is a true measure of the passions and, where I live, those passions are eclectically, gloriously banal (my own, included). Dreck is run-off from the earnest pursuit of a beautiful life within limited means. What I see loaded up in the house clearance vans is ardour. This week’s left behinds: 1 & 2. Unlikely associates across the dimensional and class divide. 3. A gold testing kit is actual poison. 4. What a great parlour game. 5. This would be obnoxious at the venue door. 6. The most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen at the car boot. Am showing you the feet only. None of us lifted the blanket. The celebration of passions above does not – repeat – does not apply to this item. 7. Dulbecco’s Phosphate Buffered Saline Agency? Darren and Pauline’s Boot Strapping Agency? Dust Pan & Brush Sharing Agency? 8. This week’s clown. 9. The Plain Truth, published by the WorldWide Church of God. 10. Oh no! The world is a simulation after all.

What is afoot? Here’s a peek at what all the car booty is becoming. It’s for a new performance – let’s call it object theatre – premiering at Big Throw 3 next Thursday, 23 April, at SET Social, Peckham. I’ll be performing three – yes, three! – documentaries about the dastardly developer’s model. You can change the channels yourself. Mid-flow for my discomfort, if you like. I am all yours. See here a glimpse of: 1. A vertical pool with stroke enhancement technology 2. A data centre 3. An incinerator of curvature 5. Some sod’s graffitied my wall Tonnes of great performances and bric-a-brac on the night. Come to Big Throw! Tix in bio.

This week’s bootie that got left behind: 1. I think the eyes follow a ball around the room 2. Is there something missing here? 3. Last century simplicity 4. Non-tessellating multiple of the week 5. A very pleasing sponge 6. The most luxurious canteen ever 7. Mechanical sunshine (parts only) 8. Helmets masquerading as appliances – or vice versa 9. This will end everything 10. I have a recurring, subtly disturbing dream that’s a lot like this 🔦🔦🔦🔦🔦🔦🔦🔦🔦 Irish women writers: /culture/irish-women-writers

Come join us for an evening of live performance that celebrates complexity, brought together by the Big Throw collective 💫 Expect spoken word, music, video, object theatre, animation, opera, puppetry, tap dance and things without name, with performances by Simeon Barclay, @maz_murray , @jennetthomas (with @richard.whitby1 ), @klara_kofen , and Sally O’Reilly (@manfredopenarms ). What to expect 👀 -Mysterious tapping and a plot hole that breaks meaning -Workers trapped in Yellow Grid, forced to produce The Sweet Spot -Church windows, the three blind mice and Descartes trying to locate a needle using a stick -An over-populated developer’s model with pool tables all the way down Details Date: Thursday 23 April Time: 7:30-11pm (doors at 7:30pm, performances from 7:45) Ticketing: £12 standard / £10 members (plus booking fee). Book via link in bio. Big Throw is a not-for-profit, unfunded, artist-led collaborative. All income from tickets covers production costs plus a modest fee for our special guests.

New Cabinet article unlocked! David Eggleton, ‘A Guide to Bristol from Antipodal Dunedin: A truly psycho geographical romp’ For this special issue of Cabinet we’ve put the Webster’s Timeline History series to work in a bid to find some shred of usefulness in its folly. There are some 90,000 titles in the series, each one a glut of chronological quotations about, or merely making mention of, its eponymous topic (see pic no.3 for a sample) – all having been scraped algorithmically, with no editorial intervention. New Zealand poet David Eggleton was invited to visit the city of Bristol, without leaving his antipodal city of Dunedin. Here are his thoughts on Webster’s Timeline History: Bristol, 1000–1893, the book we imposed as his only research tool: ‘[This] starchy and stodgy digest piles up like harvested bushels of moldering chaff, containing the occasional silver needle, ornamental brooch, or curious gem. It’s a kind of sinkhole paste of printed matter.’ The editors of Cabinet will be gradually unlocking each article of the issue, making it available to non-subscribers. Head to the link in bio if you can’t wait and want to gulp the whole issue down in one. @cabinetmagazine

This week’s car bootie... I forgot my camera this morning, so instead of the customary safari snapshots, here is a pic of my domesticated haul (plus a zoom in on those lovely knobs). You can see how the object theatre practically makes itself. As ever, there were some cracking things I had to leave behind. I humbly offer these meagre verbal sketches in lieu of full photographic documentation. 1. A dinosaur, lying on an airplane and a roller skate, roaring away like a distant sea. 2. A risqué scene: two round hat boxes, one holding two French sailors’ hats, the other crammed with ladies’ furs. 3. Seven or eight tall, curve-spouted ’60s and ’70s coffee pots, proud and indignant in a black plastic crate. 4. Scattered pieces from a very chunky and distressed ’40s wooden jigsaw puzzle of a young girl in a polka-dot dress and a large dog caught up in some dreadful, scuffed-up situation. 5. A huge midden of hardback books, with a preponderance of titles on biblical, mythical and medical subjects. 6. A well-loved ’50s boys’ own adventure book, its cover smothered in cowboy paper and Sellotape … something of the Tollund Man about its patina. 7. A large toy burger van with a really detailed grill and prep area, as if it might actually work, but then it was too small for anyone with the requisite coordination or interest to enter. 8. More rubber gas masks than I’ve ever seen in one place. 9. A parrot stand! It looked like an upside-down metal table, but with shapely brass receptacles for parrot food instead of feet. Am assuming that the ‘table top’ is for catching parrot shit. 10. A humorous sign: ‘If friends were like flowers, I would pick you’, which is … a death threat?