Tomorrow Sunday 28th September; the second day of our Not Quite Open Studio

We’d love to see you at this Sunday 28th for our Open Studio. We are open 11-6pm. Our postcode is CO5 9RB. Our entrance is on the Coggeshall Road, Feering, literally just opposite the finger post sign ‘To the Teys’ down a concrete track into a farmyard. The gallery entrance is now behind a very large skip rather to our surprise.

The Lambros Loose Box Café is back in action with Ben’s famous gluten free (but not nut free) Clafoutis, and Freya’s cracking cookies. We have Justin Knopp performing live Letterpress demonstrations. The children have been producing posters for their environmental campaign against littering and to encourage people out of their cars, to walk and cycle.

You can reach us on foot via footpaths from Coggeshall via Coggeshall Abbey and from Kelvedon by taking the footpath at the end of Station Road. It will be a lovely walk rewarded with some great art and a nice cup of tea.

 

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Kind of Open Studios – The Essex Secession

When I was showing at the Brighton Open House event Tyl Kennedy appeared with a book about Klimt he’d picked up at a boot sale. I had a bit of an epiphany having thought Klimt’s work was  decorative sentimental fluff – the Kiss and all that. In fact he was really out there, combining austere rigorous realism with intense pattern and crazy inventive composition – really really extreme. His work was very challenging to Viennese society in every way, aesthetically and politically. Vienna was gripped by historically inspired, backward-looking academicism, particularly in Architecture. Patronage was very tightly controlled by the Emperor and his family. So the Viennese Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte were super subversive. But I think the Secessionists would have been challenging in any European country at that time (1898-1918). I find them still challenging.

Presently I find the Secession very intriguing. I don’t like all of it but it is all inventive and dynamic. So I wondered about initiating a secession in Essex, if only an artistic one. I really like the alliterative sibilants too.

We wanted to have another exhibition and the timing tied in with the Colchester and Tendring Open Studio month organised by the dynamic and able Peter Jones. However we’re not really doing an Open Studio but rather pressing into service our new gallery area. Like many galleries in studios, it is a space in-between other spaces but nicely coherent.

Freddie doesn’t think her work looks great on the normal Blackwater type walls so we’ve gone a bit White Cube. It’s more a tilting one’s hat at the idea of a white gallery space.

So we have work by me – Ben Coode-Adams, Freddie Robins, Sara Impey, Paula Kane, Leigh Cameron, Simon Emery + the Paint Box, Justin Knopp + Typoretum, Sonia York and maybe some other people

Thank you to Nicol Wilson and David Howe for building work.

We are also launching our Lambros Loose Box Café to keep your blood sugar levels up.

The gardens of Feering Bury Manor are available for your perusal too.

We’re open 21st and 28th September 11-18.00hrs

 

Basket Case

Freddie Robins ‘Basket Case’ 2014 Mixed Media

Dutifully useful

Sara Impey ‘Outsider Art’ 2014

 

 

Essex Secession Open Studios 1

 

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Coming back from a very low point

Through the autumn of 2013 I see-sawed between being completely incapacitated and mildly incapacitated but this period of what was essentially rest meant by Christmas I felt OK-ish. But like an idiot I went out and tried to chop up trees for a week around New Year. You know that makes me really happy but it also knocked me back to my lowest ebb. David Howe and I started work on a commission for a flattened corrugated wall in Brightlingsea which I finally finished off with Nicol Wilson who rejoined the faculty in February when I realised I couldn’t and shouldn’t do any physical work at all.

 

02 flattened wall

The flattened corrugated wall built with David Howe and Nicol Wilson

01 sample

A sample for wall panels now made into cupboard doors

04 vent

The kitchen vent finally installed after four years. Built by Nicol Wilson. Designed by me with Nicol.

05 kitchen unit

The kitchen island cupboards finally clad like the rest of the kitchen by Nicol after a pattern established by me.

06 table

Table top designed by Ben Coode-Adams and Nicol Wilson, crafted by Nicol Wilson, painted by Simon Emery – the Paintbox. This is one of the most beautiful objects I have ever had a hand in. I am really proud of it.

Sluice Art Fair October 2013

We took our Essex Embassy to Sluice Art Fair at the end of October 2013. We had a brilliant time. We took great work by Justin Knopp, Simon Emery + Shane Whitworth, Sara Impey, Sonia York, David Gates, Paula Kane, Freddie Robins, Leigh Cameron and Ben Coode-Adams. We met some wonderful people, sold some work and generally had a great time. The Sluice team created a friendly but professional atmosphere. The standard of art was incredibly high and varied, rigorous, challenging and inventive. A rich feast enjoyed by both participants and visitors – really some of the best and most energetic art you are likely to see ever.

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From L to R: Emery+Whitworth, Freddie Robins, Ben Coode-Adams, Paula Kane

essex kingdom and hood

From L to R: Justin Knopp (Typoretum), Emery+Whitworth

balloons and koalas

From L to R: Sonia York, Ben Coode-Adams

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Paula Kane

David Gates

David Gates

Sluice

From L to R: Sonia York, Freddie Robins, Leigh Cameron, David Gates

Paul Kindersley

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The fabulous Paul Kindersley

George shoes

The repaired boots of George Ferrandi from Wayfarers – more of her and them later

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Division of Labour – Fishmongering

Ballon lady

The balloon lady

 

P.S. I’d like to thank Dave Howe, David Gates, Justin Knopp, and Arthur Martin for building our stand, Simon Emery and the Paintbox for painting it and David Gates, Leigh Cameron, and Fred Robinson for helping with the installation which couldn’t have gone more smoothly. You are all very generous and talented gentlemen.  I’d like to thank Karl England and Ben Street for taking a leap of faith into darkest Essex and discerning the light.