May News

Summer Open Studios will take place on June 7th & 8th this year. If you haven't been to one these events before please come to this one - and invite all your friends! It is a fantastic opportunity to meet the artists, designers and craftspeople who work from the building and have the chance of buying exclusive, inspirational, one off pieces of art and design directly from the talented people who have made them.



On until the first day of Open Studios is Neal Tait's show, The Dressmaker Who Lived On The Outskirts, at the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York. No doubt the reviews will follow and I will be able to post them in the next newsletter.



Already reviewed are some shows that opened in April. Yukako Shibata's show at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation continues until May 22nd, catch it while you can. Her show was reviewed in Time Out.




Catherine Goodman's show at Marlborough Fine Art on Albemarle Street opened on a rain sodden April evening, but was rammed with people none the less. Catherine is showing a series of paintings made of a room in her grandparent's flat where she spent part of her childhood; there are also portraits, and instantly recognisable studio shots showing both the interior of her workspace and the oh-so-glamourous view from the entrance of her studio looking towards the railway lines and tube station. Catherine was profiled in the Times just before her exhibition opened detailing both the works in her exhibition and her role as Artistic Director at the Prince's Drawing School.



Lynn Parotti's joint show with her sister was front page news in the Nassau Guardian.



Seemingly any article on wallpaper is duty bound to mention Fromental; either that, or perhaps more likely, their hand printed and embroidered wallpaper really is way ahead of the competition.



The weekend of May 31st and June 1st is the date for the the Untitled Artists Fair at Chelsea Town Hall on the King's Road. Faye Haskins is taking part in this event and you can download free tickets to the event via this website.



The summer sculpture garden shows are about to kick off. The Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden in Surrey features three GWS artists: Paul Vanstone, David Worthington and Emily Young. The gardens are open from May through to the end of October. David also has work at Newby Hall and Gardens in North Yorkshire, the season for which runs from June until September.



The Justin Hibbs and David Ben White world tour has reached the banks of Lac Leman in Switzerland and they have rested their curatorial work, Working Space, at Galerie Lacy Mackintosh for the period May 16th through to June 28th. This is a reformatting of the show that was at the University of the Arts gallery space on Davies Street, W1 for most of April - where it stops next . . . nobody knows.



Making a welcome return to the UK is another expatriated Great Westerner - Sarah Stitt. Although she is now based in LA, Sarah has a forthcoming show at Long & Ryle, 4 John Islip Street, SW1. Entitled New Work from the New World the show opens on June 3rd and runs until June 27th.



Still Another Place opened on May 1st at The Crypt, St Pancras Parish Church. The exhibition features Simon Dawe, Julie Goldsmith, Rachel Schwalm, Paul Vanstone and Felicity Warbrick and coincides with the church's London Fesitval of Contemporary Church Music. Still Another Place is open until May 29th and is on every day from 10am until 7pm - installation shots below.




The L.A. show, Love Will Bring Us Apart Again, has featured in previous posts - it is now making it's way to shores more familiar (and convenient) by touching down at 133-137 Westbourne Grove (on the corner of Chepstow Rd). The show once again features work by Sean Alexander and opens on Thursday May 22nd. For a special Sean Alexander/Alice Tait scroll down.

Wedding Special!

On April 26th the wedding of Sean Alexander and Alice Tait took place in Broadstairs followed by a reception at the boating lake pavilion in Ramsgate. In the thirteen year history of Great Western Studios this is the first marriage of two people who have met in the studios. For one brief day the Eastern tip of Kent was Great Western Studios on sea; never before have so many Great Western Studios artists gathered in one place without a trace of paint or stone dust about their person.













Award yourself 10 points if you can identify all of the Great Westerners in the above photo. Award yourself an extra 50 points if you can name the non-Great Westerners and work out which group shot they thought that they were in!

April News

Although the breadth of work produced at Great Western Studios is wide ranging and varied there does seem to be a seasonal bent to what is happening at any one time. Spring seems to be painting season.

Catherine Goodman has a show of new works opening at Marlborough Fine Art, 6 Albemarle Street. The exhibition runs from April 30th to May 24th.



David Ben White and Justin Hibbs' show, Working Space, at the University of the Arts Gallery on Davies Street W1 opened last month and is ongoing until April 18th.





David and Justin gave an artists talk on April 9th at the gallery which was the same evening as the opening of Yukako Shibata's show Luminescence at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation overlooking Regents Park. Yukako's work combines painting, sculpture, photography and installation with a vocabulary of minimal and recurring forms.



Katy Moran has had a major show at the esteemed gallery Andrea Rosen in New York. Katy's show has pricked up the ears of the New York press and also the blogosphere - alongside the press reviews below you can read what the public thought about it here and here. Katy's work in the group show at Tate Britain has just closed.









Five Great Western Artists are exhibiting together at the crypt of the Parish Church of St Pancras; titled Still Another Place the show features Simon Dawe, Julie Goldsmith, Rachel Schwalm, Paul Vanstone and Felicity Warbrick. The private view of the show takes place on May 1st and the exhibition continues every day until May 29th.



Estelle Thompson's work was in Tipping Point, an exhibition at Purdy Hicks Gallery that was previewed in a previous blog entry. The show was reviewed by Michael Stubbs in Turps Banana, which you can read below.



Winsor Gallery in Vancouver is hosting an exhibition of Emily Young's work. The show runs from May 1st to May 25th.



In Pieces is a group show that has just opened at 39 Myddleton Square, EC1 - the exhibition is dedicated to Christopher Landoni who was a good friend of ex Great Westerners Oliver Michaels and Toby Ziegler the exhibition continues until April 27th.



Lynn Parotti is having a group show in the Bahamas with her sister Holly Parotti. Called Limit the show is at Popopstudios in Nassau and runs until April 28th. Lynn is showing some of her new works based on the fragile eco-system of the salt manufacturing beds on Inagua, an island at the Southernmost reaches of the Bahamas.



The Great Western Studios outpost in Texas (sole membership held by Gabriela Trzebinski) is pleased to announce that . . . Gabriela Trzebinski has fully ensconced herself in the local art world. She has work in an exhibition at the Blaffer Gallery highlighting work made by artists in Houston, she is giving a talk at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston and she's giving a talk at the Menil Collection as well.



Zakee Shariff's news is that she has prints (and t-shirts) for sale in Liberty Menswear and she has a newly launched clothing range available exclusively in Japan.

March News

For one fleeting moment, Los Angeles, seemed to be the centre of Great Western Studios life in February. A collision of unexpected coincidences. Sean Alexander had some work in the first show in LA to be put together by Adrian Palengat since Apart traded in life on Portobello (via life on Westbourne Grove) to life just off Venice Beach. If Sean was there then that explains why Alice Tait (soon to be Alexander) was there. Joining the private view for the show were Jo Ratcliffe, Felicity Warbrick and Lizzie Deshayes. The latter 2 being there courtesy of Lizzie's company, Fromental, installing some of their wallpaper.





Later in the month, ex-Great Westerner, Toby Ziegler had a solo show with Patrick Painter also in LA; and the city has also fairly recently been made the home of also-ex-Great Westerner, Sarah Stitt. For Sarah's take on Hollywood life you can read her excellent blog here.

It turns out that Sean's work in the exhibition has been attracting the attention of another ex-pat.



Still on foreign soils, the work of Fromental was featured in the April edition of Elle Decoration in the home of a Milan stylist.



Back in London it is David Ben White month. His work is featured in a 3 man show entitled Planetarium at APT Gallery in Deptford which runs until March 24th.



In collaboration with Justin Hibbs he has also co-curated another exhibition, Working Space, at the Arts Gallery at 65 Davies Street, W1. This group show of 5 artists, including David and Justin opens on Monday March 17th and runs until April 18th; it is open Monday - Friday from 9.30- 18.30 each day.



Mary Grant is heading (north)Westward again for the Art Ireland Fair, and will be exhibiting works that she did when she was last in Kerry.



The ever expanding slew of Art Fairs includes the Affordable Art Fair which is on this weekend (March 16/17) in Battersea Park. Foss Fine Art will be featuring Liza Campbell's dark, comic boxes on their stand.

Also taking place this weekend, but in sunnier climes, is the Transforming Spaces tour in the Bahamas; while I don't quite understand how it works, Lynn Parotti's work will feature somewhere along the way.



Last months Sound and Vision event at Abbey Rd Studios featured work by Kate Gibb and Tommy Penton and was reported in the Independent.



Meanwhile, the second, house and home collection by Toast, once again features Brickett Davda's work. Their classic, muted tableware found a place in April's edition of Country Living.



Lastly a request of assistance:

Westminster City Council is developing a new Strategy for Arts & Culture. A consultation draft can be found on the following page of the council's website.

We welcome your comments on the draft. There are consultation questions at the beginning of the document for you to respond to. The deadline for all responses is 20th March 2008. Please send comments to cfergusson@westminster.gov.uk with the words ‘Strategy Consultation’ in the subject heading.

February News

The London Art Fair came and went last month - Great Western Studios artists that I saw at the fair but missed off last months preview included Estelle Thompson at Purdy Hicks and Jan Coutts on Quantum Contemporary's stand.

Emily Young filled the role of featured artist of the fair with her monumental piece howl sited outside the venue and according to the Islington Gazette, the local chatterati are clamouring for the work to be permanently sited there.



The White Cube press department swung into full action last month to promote the show of Darren Almond's work at their Hoxton Square site. With the might of the gallery behind him the press was wide and far-reaching. Breathe deeply . . . there were articles in . . . Art Review, Time Out, the Independent, Vogue, Evening Standard and a very favourable review by Adrian Searle in the Guardian.













The concurrent show at Parasol Unit on Wharf Road is on until March 30th. Alongside the exhibitions there are no less than 3 catalogues/monologues on Darren hitting the bookshelves. Terminus is available from Amazon, and the other 2 are available from White Cube and Parasol respectively.

Jeremy Dickinson has an exhibition of New Paintings opening at Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo. The show runs from March 8th until April 5th.



In lands not quite so far away Olivia Musgrave currently has a show with Jorgensen Art in Dublin. The show opened on February 12th and runs until March 1st.



Laura Green was triumphant in the Artsway Open exhibition coming away as the winner with the promise of a solo show there later this year. She has also been shortlisted for the Guasch Coranty International Painting Prize in Barcelona.



Brickett Davda's work is still the darling of the interior stylists - their bud range was first designed back in 1998 and still crops up in glossy magazines with amazing frequency.





The Untitled Gallery are once again featuring Faye Haskins' work in a show at the Adam Street Members Club, which lies just off Strand. Don't pick me up on this, I'm right, the road is Strand not the Strand - check out wikipedia if you don't believe me. Anyway . . . although the show featuring Faye's work is already up and in full swing the private view is on February 19th.

The private view for Rachel Schwalm's inaugural show at Beaux Arts on Cork Street took place at the end of January - textile/design wonderwoman Neisha Crosland bringing a dash of celebrity to the proceedings. Rachel's show is up until February 23rd and has an accompanying catalogue.



Sophie Smallhorn's work for the new offices of Body and Soul in Clerkenwell is featured (and bastardized for their graphic design inspiration) in this months onoffice magazine. A niche publication - but a niche that occasionally comes up trumps.



At the city out post of Jake Miller's East End Approach Gallery is a group painting show which includes a number of Neal Tait works.



Lastly, David Ben White is taking part in a 3 man show titled Planetarium at APT gallery in Deptford. The show opens on March 6th and runs until March 26th.