This year’s Dulwich Festival Artists’ Open House sees over 250 South London-based artists throw open their doors to the public to offer their annual insight into the artistic process.
Showing at over 150 venues across Dulwich and surrounding areas the artists will welcome local residents into their homes and studios for a rare opportunity to view their work in a unique and intimate setting.
This year’s artists will represent a huge range of styles and disciplines and we caught up with some of them to ask what the Open House initiative means to them.
Helen Ireland is a painter working in East Dulwich. She studied fine art at Central Saint Martins and Chelsea School of Art. Her paintings are collages combining printing, drawing and layers of paper.
Helen said: “The open house can be unexpected. You can meet very interesting people who are local but not necessarily involved with art. It’s good to get feedback about my work. I think people also enjoy seeing studios in a home environment. From a personal perspective it’s a good opportunity to connect with other artists and see how like me, we are juggling making work and bringing up a family.”
Artists Open House - Martin Grover
Martin Grover is an accomplished painter, illustrator, screen-printer and maker of bespoke bus stops. Martin is influenced by English Romanticism, American Realism and Pop Art. To this he adds his own brand of humour, whimsy and melancholy.
“This will be the fifth year I’ve taken part in Artist’s Open House. It is incredibly well organised and is a much anticipated date in the cultural calendar. It has become such a large event and there is a really high standard and variety of work so it is an honour to be part of it. It’s a great way to meet people and clients. The informality of the event is quite refreshing. The people I have met through doing it are really enthusiastic and make a great effort to plan their routes, targeting certain areas over a number of years. Gallery shows are fine and necessary but I feel more in control and at home here in my studio. People are really interested in seeing how and where artists operate.”
Carys Davies makes bowls, jugs, plates and beakers on the wheel in porcelain.Glazed with rough organic glazes outside, some have fragments of poetry incised on them. They are both decorative and functional. Carys has been involved in Artists’ Open House for the past six years.
“What I love about it is that you are meeting people and talking to them about your work and you are not really trying to sell them stuff. It’s more relaxed. They are seeing the whole of you as an artist, not just what a shop has bought, or a show has decided to let you show. And by seeing people’s response to my work, it sometimes makes you revaluate what you are doing.”
The Artists’ Open House takes place over the weekends of 7-8 May and 14-15 May right across South London. For more details visit: dulwichfestival.co.uk/artists-open-house
One Comment
It is a great pity that the Artists Open Houses, are not limited to Artists who actually live in Dulwich , but are drawn from all over the country. I would have thought that the whole idea of an Open House is to feature local talent, as most other Open Houses do.