Review, Lanis Levy
I must confess to a close personal affinity with Rebecca Locke: She used to dream of adventures in New York City, while I sat in Brooklyn just dreaming of running away…. At our first meeting, at Goldsmiths we talked about Brooklyn, and ever since, we’ve had a Brooklyn thing going on. Looking at the photographs in Brooklyn // Bognor, I can feel the vibe of Brooklyn present on the streets of Bognor.

Returning to Bognor after eight years in NYC, Rebecca found herself experiencing
a sense of unease as she realised that she was no longer au fait with the unwritten social rules of her ‘hometown’. Her New York wardrobe just didn’t seem quite so appropriate for the English seaside, and she was left trying to figure out how / where to place both herself and her clothes.

The series Brooklyn // Bognor represents her attempt at visualising this experience. At first glance, one is drawn into the images by the intensity of their colour. The seductive photographs immediately evoke the beauty of the seaside, yet the longer one looks, the more uncanny they appear. A figure (in fact the artist), dressed in clothes that somehow don’t seem quite ‘right’ for the place or the occasion, is
boldly making a stand, and the tension between the person and the place is
almost palpable. As one works their way through the series however, the recurring presence of the figure begins to take on something of a soothing tone: she begins
to seem to belong there and is gradually making the streets her own.

In fact, the production of this series has proved to be quite an experience for the artist. The more she photographed in Bognor, the more she re-discovered its beauty and charm, as well as the warmth of its inhabitants, and this again is reflected in the photographs. There is an underlying sense of ease with the locations, and Bognor’s own ‘Flat Iron Building’ is even present in one of the images. The more the artist photographed, the more Bognor revealed itself to
her, and the original vibe ceased to be just a Brooklyn thing…

– Lanis Levy, October 2008