Open Studio event Feering Bury Farm Barn Coggeshall Road, Feering Essex CO5 9RB Saturday 14th & Sunday 15th September 2019 11.00 – 18.00
Julie Arkell, Martin Bridges, EMC Collard, Ben Coode-Adams, Simon Emery, Jane Frederick, Sara Impey, Pru Green, Rosie Harman, Tristan Howe, Justin Knopp, Freddie Robins
ALL THE HARD ITEMS AND ALL THE SOFT ITEMS for your pleasure and stimulation Disturbing knitting, embroidered words, useful ceramics, un-useful ceramics, paintings of how things really are, printed slogans, tattoo flash drawings, custom car parts, calligraphic love letters, comfortable cooking and cups of tea
We had a brilliant weekend with many delightful visitors who I would like to thank for coming, buying our stuff, enjoying our café and looking hard and intelligently at our art. Thank you visitors. Heart heart. We love you the people.
Thank you Freddie Robins for your tremendous hard work organising and cleaning up the Lambros Café. It does become a bit like the Augean Stables over the winter.
A huge thank you to all our artists for bringing your wonderful work, for your patience, forbearance and good humour.
Thank you Julie Arkell for bringing all you lovely objects and bringing Douglas Bevans who cooked and cleaned to keep us all going, so thank you to Douglas too. And thank you for the loaf of bread, just finished!
Thank you Annabel Dover and Alex Pearl for bringing all you enchanting objects, and helping with and advising on the ‘gallery’ show, and the yummy madeleines.
Thank you Simon Emery for bringing a wonderful sparkle to the show in your work, bringing the twinkle in your eye, some fine cars to brighten up the place and bringing Amanda Emery. I’d like to thank her for her delicious baking and helping out in the café.
Thank you Sara Impey for stitching all year to bring us your profound serious work and invigilating in the gallery.
A massive thank you to Justin Knopp not only for showing great work but for operating the letterpress creche, the ever popular attraction giving the gift of type. Tyler Emery is a complete convert and probably your next intern. Justin Knopp helped Freddie with her prints and introduced us to the Big Steam Print project which set Freddie off in the fruitful and poignant printmaking direction.
Thank you Freddie Robins for so much hard work in preparing and operating the Open Studio. I know how much it takes out of you but your hard work is very much appreciated by all of us, artists and visitors alike.
Thank you Caroline Wright for showing your intelligent beautiful work and spending time with us all at such a trying and scary time in your life.
In the nick of time we tacked on Dervorgilla Elmes’ beautiful eerie mirror so thank you to her for bringing that along and Florence for helping in the Café. Thank you Sonia Coode-Adams for being our biggest supporter, for the sausage rolls and helping out in the café. Thank you Henri and Imogen Guest for your baking and helping. Thank you Nicol Wilson for all you hard work behind the scenes in keeping the Blackwater Polytechnic going.
Annabel Dover has kindly agreed to take part in our Open Studio event – ‘Flat-out Lowlanders’ 1st+2nd October 11am-5pm Feering Bury Farm Barn, Coggeshall Road, Feering, Colchester, Essex, CO5 9RB. Do please come and see her delightful and intriguing paintings.
Annabel Dover is a painter and maker whose subject appears to be the surface of things. This impression is reinforced by the way she makes her images. They are slick, as in shiny, and slippery, as in the evidence of the paint sliding around on the ground is relished. She chooses subjects that are all about surface too, like gems and photographs. But the surface is just that. Beneath what you can see in her work is another world which will eventually, when taken as whole, be revealed to somehow fit into an enormous cohesive Proustian narrative. Looking at her work is like trying to catch bubbles, each piece is exquisitely beautiful, but constantly floating out of reach, defiant of logic but hinting at and obeying presently unknowable laws. Like catching bubbles her work even at its most sad and melancholic is pure joy.
Freddie Robins’ contribution to our Flat-out Lowlanders Open Studio is born from the boiler of a steam roller and yes it does involve bunnies. This coming weekend 1st & 2nd October 11am-5pm come and see what she has been up to. Freddie went from standing start to Usain Bolt in printmaking with the Big Steam Print project initiated by Ditching Museum of Arts and Crafts making a giant print in the process, squashing the love out of bunnies, monkeys, an elephant and assorted bears. But don’t worry that love is imprinted on paper that you can buy and take away. In going from 3D to 2D she is saving you space but the cuddles remain undiminished.
We are beginning to assemble all the pretty things ready for display this coming weekend 1st & 2nd October 11am-5pm. We have a good mix of shiny and matt. One of the shiniest, as ever, will be the work of Simon Emery who has been working on a wonderful Porsche 356 bonnet. If you own a vintage Porsche 356 you might want to buy this cracking bonnet and swap out the plain boring original for some much needed individuality and chutzpah. Or you might just want a bit of Simon’s magnificent sparkly work which comes with the most subtly curvaceous hood of all time for free.
Suffolk artist Caroline Wright works often with performance but she also makes the most beautiful drawings. Tapping into the long and muscular tradition of British women surrealist artists, such as Leonora Carrington, Eileen Agar and Prunella Clough she combines disparate objects including the ubiquitous surrealist egg in potent totems.
Like Clough a good deal of her inspiration comes from the littoral zone, between shore and sea, the non-site where poetic juxtapositions can grow like delicate crystal crustaceans. And let’s face it her drawings are damn sexy. Ares’ ram’s horn and a hank of golden Venus hair? I mean please… Be caressed by her pencil.
Caroline has been short listed for the Derwent Art Prize.
Just to remind you we are open this Sunday 27th September 11am-5pm for more ‘Brocki’ fun and we would love to see you. Thank you to all the people who came last Sunday. It was real fun. And thank you to all our artists who have worked so hard to make the ‘Brocki’ so great. I’d love to sell the inflatable dinosaurs. They are a wonderful collection but are now outside our collecting remit.
Inflatable dinosaurs: various species
View in the gallery with my work, Freddie Robins, Dale Devereux Barker, &Sara Impey,
View of the barn with Dale Devereux Barker, Rebecca Weaver and Lucy Tiffney round the corner
Simon Collins’s painting ‘Mollie’ with a Dale Devereux Barker print. Amanda Emery’s Ford Falcon put together by Simon Emery
