Joss Bay surfers might be in for a bit of a surprise if they visit the Turner Contemporary. Work by the californian based artist Russel Crotty captures surfing at spots on the Thanet coast.
"The Big Chill" A surfing history of East Kent.
The Old Lookout Gallery Broadstairs July 15-20
Paul Knowles is organising a photographic exhibition which will show 5 decades of surfing photographs from Kent. This will be at The Old Lookout Gallery in Broadstairs harbour, from July 15th-20th. There will also be a collection of old boards and memorabili, plus some old timmer surfers will be droping in from all corners of the world. There will also be contributions from The British Surfing Museum lent by Pete Robinson. It would be great if you could pay us a visit. There is a facebook page. "The Big Chill a Surfing History In East Kent an Exhibition in July 2011"
There is also awebsite for the "The Old Look Out Gallery".
Some great colour photos have just emerged from Sue Trewin
(nee Crews). Better known as Suzie she was a student at Nonington College 1967-1970. She was originally from the Devon/Cornwall area and was already a keen surfer before going to Nonington having also competed in the UK surfing championships. She met up with the Joss bay surfers and spent a lot of her free time surfing with them. She later went on to spend a year in the early 70's surfing France, Spain, Portugal, Morroco.
In this photo taken at Joss Bay in the summer of 1970 are some of the regular surfers of that time. Left to right Ian Stevenson, Fin looking over Ian's shoulder, Sitting is Bruce Clements, Paul Knowles (Red boardies),
Next to Paul is Stuart Puddifoot from Australia, he is sitting on Phil Smith, the guy in the black shorts we think is Des Patty he made Hats in a family business in London. The guy on the end is Gerry Lopez .
These pages tell the stories of how surfing and skateboarding got started in Kent in the 1960's, these were the days when surfing was a totally new way of life, not just in Kent but across all of Europe. The surfers back then were all young with little money, Kent might not have had the best waves in the UK but what it lacked in quality waves was more than made up for by the sheer enthusiasm and dedication of the surfers, these pages set out to tell the story of this pioneering group of surfers.
Bang up to date now, the surf diary is an attempt to keep some sort of record of the better surfing days. So if you wondered what the surf was like last week check in here there might be some pictures.
There is an extensive gallery of pictures of surfing at all of Kent's most well known surf spots. This gallery is continually being added to as there are many photos waiting to be scanned in.
There is a rad video clip of some of Thanets surfers at the wall.
We also have a Video clip of surfing at Joss Bay in 1968. The conversion has been made from old 8mm cini film to a cut down an edited version of about 8 minutes for the web, quality is not that great on the web version. If there is any interest I might eventually have these available on DVD with the full 40 minutes of footage, which includes Portugal, Spain and Cornwall from the same era.
The write up from surfs up magazine of the first Kent surf contest TheBigChill surf classic in 1989, has now been added to its own section together with a gallery of previously unpublished pictures from the contest.
Where Is Kent
Just in case your not familiar with the UK
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