Jon Mills and Mr Watt

It was the final weekend of the Artists’ Open Houses festival, it was sunny, and I was taking recommendations on which venues to visit via FaceBook and Twitter. First stop was the first-time open World of Sheep, 10 Rose Hill (Venue BL15) and Toby Meader’s large-scale paintings of – you guessed it, sheep (with the odd alpaca). Then it up the hill to 46 Buller Road (Venue BL 20) and Group 46 led by Rose Lane. Not only does is the house packed with lots of great artists and makers (and it does tea and cakes) but it has a surprise in the garden – (possibly) the world’s smallest cinema in their shed (part of the HOUSE festival, Venue 2). I was in luck as it was showing the 1903 version of Alice in Wonderland – the one I thought I’d missed – it had been requested by a previous occupant. Next it was back into town for one of Harriet’s recommendations, Unlimited Editions (Venue CB21) who I believe may be opening again next weekend. Letterpress prints seem to be all the rage this year and there are some fabulous examples here.

Then it off into Fiveways territory to visit Kate Osborne’s open house, 32 Stanford Avenue (Venue FW9). Here, apart from the famous cake, were Jon Mills’s amazing constructions, including Mr Watt the grumpy old man of metal. Then it was round the corner to Into the woods, 4a Florence Road (Venue FW6). [I had also intended to visit Out of the woods over in Kemp Town (Venue KT6) but sadly time was against me.] Spectrum Photographic Award  winner Emily  Warren was showing work here, along with lots of other desirable arts and crafts, with lots going on in the garden, including wood whittling, kid’s pottery and even more cake! Go see it next year! By now the weather was scorchio and I was all cultured out. Just before I went under the viaduct however I popped into Firefly Studio (Venue BL8) which turned out to be a bit of a Tardis. It’s basically a jewellery studio, but there was lots to see, including contemporary prints and knitwear – I’m not usually enthused by the jeweller’s art but Chris Hawkins‘ more ‘manly’ silver pieces really caught my eye. So, that’s the end of AOH until the Xmas show, tho there are one or two venues open next week and the bank holiday – check the brochure. And apologies if I didn’t get to visit your house, will make more of an effort next year! Hope you all had a successful festival.

by Harriet Mancey-Barratt

Prefer an N-dash in the hand to an artistic flash in the pan? Some of my favourite picks of this year’s Artists Open Houses have been those using paper or print in an exciting, fresh way. There’s so much modern, witty work going on, from the cool letterpress prints by Flowers & Fleurons and Julia Trigg at Nine by Nine (Venue dr1) through to my fellow blogger Fred Pipes’ lovely prints at The Dragonfly House (Venue bl6).

I have to admit an embarrassing bias here; I’ve worked in editing for several years and feel the way about style guides and colour palettes that most people feel about things like the sun, say, or Wispa bars. So you can imagine my joy when I walked into Unlimited Editions, which specialises in typographic collectibles, last weekend (Venue cb21, Upper Gardner Street).

The resident designers have been joined by guests specially for the festival, and there’s an amazing range of work for such a small space (the designers are using their desks as exhibition tables, whipping their computers back out of the loo each Monday morning).

Sara Morrissey's Brighton maps

Amongst the many and varied prints, T-shirts, textiles and pieces of jewellery are Sara Morrissey’s wonderful foil-embossed Brighton maps. These are both attractive and clever – the whole map is made of street names arranged in their rightful real-life locations like a sumptuous game of Tetris, minus the annoying music. Though the prints are reasonably priced, there are also tea-towels with the same design for those of us who need to watch our pennies. Sara’s planning to do a London version soon… so be sure to check back in 2020.

I also loved the great collection of jewellery, including fun Scrabble necklaces, and the bright, comfy cushions – perfect for gifts. If you haven’t made it to Unlimited Editions yet, you’ve got two more chances this weekend – I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Perhaps I’ll see you there as I return with some cash (having fallen foul of the North Laine cash machine drought) to stock up on cheery presents – until then, have a great week.

Lesley Thomson signing copies of 'A Kind of Vanishing'

P.S. For those of you who missed The Dog House’s readings last Sunday, more fool you. Three authors from local publisher Myriad Editions read extracts of their work to a crowd of appreciative festival-goers in the rooftop studio, with signing sessions following. Definitely something to watch out for in future years.

Andrew Ford at Willie Hendry Hair

by Harriet Mancey-Barratt

Sometimes a venue can blow you away, and even more so if you haven’t been expecting it. I must admit that my eye hadn’t been caught by the small image in the brochure listing for Andrew Ford’s photography, showing at Willie Hendry Hair on Upper Gloucester Road (Venue cb1), but I’m so glad we popped in – at full size the photos are truly stunning.

Andrew uses long exposures of up to two hours to capture all the different colours of dusk and midnight in well- and lesser-known locations such as the West Pier (above) or European coastlines. As a result, the colours and lighting of the final product look unreal in their vividness, but there’s no trickery involved here (West Pier real-life light show aside) – just skill, patience and an eye for beauty.

Just round the corner is Ourhouse (Venue cb2) on North Gardens – not to be missed if you like modern, witty prints, candles set in retro royalist crockery and cake finery – as well as The Butterfly House (Venue cb3) in Crown Gardens. This tiny and welcoming house was chock-full of fun fripperies, with Katie Brinsley’s ever-popular ceramics and Chloe Lankshear’s bird mobiles especially endearing.

I was also pleased to check out Third Floor Right, 3, one of ten curated visual arts venues across Brighton and Hove as part of the new HOUSE festival, now in its second year. It’s an intriguing use of handwritten memories slung on pipes across the room in an ordered jumble – a welcome complement to the more traditionally homely Artists Open Houses. In fact, all ten venues explore and subvert the idea of the domestic space in different ways – I’m looking forward to seeing ‘Unravelling the Manor House’ in Preston Manor next weekend.

Roger Day's wooden sculpture

Also worth a trip is Teresa Winchester and Friends (Venue fw28) on Preston Drove – I loved Roger Day’s wooden sculptures in the garden (see left), Mick Hulme’s mechanical wooden carvings, and Sarah Burnham’s jewellery. It was another chance to see Sylvie Howitt’s beautiful papercuts (also at Artists Live Here, Venue sd3).

And, this being May, on the way home we bumped into a Morris dance-off between some Frenchified jinglers in red, white and blue, and a ‘death Morris dancer’ group got up in white face paint, feather headdresses and a liking for saying ‘ARRRGHGHGH!’. No surprises who won. 

Cardigan in love, Arundel Mews, Kemp Town

It wasn’t the most promising start: it was Sunday 3 of the AOH Festival and it was raining! However, anticipating Brian Eno’s talk on Optimism that evening, I set off, heading south then east towards Kemp Town. I was however first distracted by a piece of theatre on The Level, the dismantling of the very solid looking Electric Hotel by a huge crane. It’d only been there for two performances and now it was gone. Then it was to Performance Palace next to Colourfast on Cheltenham Place (Venue CB22). There were no performances scheduled (the grand finale is next weekend), but it was fascinating to wander around and see the installations, and downstairs is a brand new gallery space, called a&e, set up and showing work by Alice White and Jayne Eagle. After a quick visit to the Modern Toss show at ink-d gallery (so Very Wrong but also laugh out loud funny), I called in at the Sussex County Arts Club, off Bond Street (Venue CB19) and made note to self to get back into doing life drawing!

You may have noticed that there is another Festival going on, and before I crossed the Old Steine into Kemp Town I made a detour to Brian Eno’s Speaker Flowers (not in the brochure) at Marlborough House. This is a must for all sound fans (and don’t forget his 77 Million Paintings at Fabrica), comprising five different installations in colour-coded rooms. You could spend all day in there chilling out and listening to Rick Holland’s poetry. But I was heading east. First stop was the Bungaroosh Gallery, 25 Marine Square (Venue KT7), where I bought a Terrierific Gocco card and badge from Forever Foxed. Last year they opened just the ground floor but were so successful that this time have opened upstairs too, with a beautiful birds in tree installation by Liz Toole – plus makeup artist Siobhan Collett who will make you look fabulous – full marks for their recycled bags, too, artworks in themselves. On the eastern edge of Kemp Town, I called in on Cardigan in Love, Arundel Mews (Venue KT 15) – Kate Jenkins makes witty soft furnishings, including merchandise for Modern Toss. Right next door is the new premises for BIP, with their etching and relief printing presses all ready to roll (the screenprinting half of BIP is called InkSpotPress and remains at the old location of Enterprise Point).

Heading back to Brighton, I stopped at The Open House Virgins, 16 Egremont Place (Venue KT25) where I had a sit down with some gorgeous carrot cake and a cup of tea. Stephanie Young used to be at the York Place Studios, but has opened up her house this year, along with Juliette Easter and many other funky artists and makers. I was heading to the sea for the Holy Mackerel PV at the Fishing Quarter Gallery, but just had time to wander around the Dream Home exhibition at Phoenix (part of HOUSE). Then it was a quick pint before the Eno debate Reasons for Optimism at the Corn Exchange. As usual there are many more photos on Flickr.

PS. On Saturday I went to see Freak Show (Venue CB23) at St Peter’s church – this is only open Saturdays, but is well worth a visit. Lots of screenprints by young Brighton artists and illustrators.

Sade Ali, Rob Greenfield, Kayleigh Lawson and Adrian Newbury – current clients of The Clock Tower Sanctuary – will be exhibiting their work during the Festival – alongside art work from a range of celebrity supporters, including Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas from Stomp, Ed Mitchell and others.

We’re up to approximately 40 artists participating in the show with digital artists joining daily, hopefully the show will have in excess of 60 pieces.

“Congregation” is exhibiting at St Paul’s Church, West Street as part of the Central Brighton trail.

You can see a trailer-video here: