Chelsea Fringe at Great Western Studios
Exhibition runs: Tuesday 28th May – Tuesday 4th June 2013
Live music open event: Saturday 1st June 11am – 3pm
End of show viewing: Tuesday 4th June 2013
Location: Whole Building
Now in its second year, the Chelsea Fringe sees gardens, community spaces, galleries, artist studios and local businesses open their doors to the public to delight them with a huge variety of horticulture themed events.
Garden courtyard
The exhibition begins outside the building with Innovation Imperative’s Tetra Shed – a unique garden office – that enables users to be both surrounded by nature and yet separate from it.
The path then continues into the studio courtyard transformed for the Summer by Danny Wootton, and Landscape Designer Mark Lutyens.
The outside area of the studios will also be home to the work of the renowned milliner, Pip Hackett, whose sculptural hats were also part of the Cultural Olympiad in the summer of 2012. Joining her in this space will be Margarita Trushina whose current installations use complex lighting technologies and deal with the conflicts of indoor and outdoor space. Lastly, the courtyard will hold a number of sculptures by internationally acclaimed sculptor, Emily Young who has drawn comparisons to that of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.
Studios
From this point visitors will also be able to explore the studios and works of two artists. Catherine Parkinson works with mosaic, a medium that is one of the few that functions both in interiors and out of doors and Felicity Powell whose artistic process uses wax to create images on the reverse of mirrors.
Atrium
The trail then leads to the Atrium of the building where visitors will be greeted by the work of Raya Jallad Sadi whose sculptures of animals fuse the versatile mediums of mosaic and sculpture. Olivia Musgrave’s magnificant sculptures will also populate the Atrium space drawing inspiration from Greek Mythology. Visual artists such as Henrietta Molinaro – whose work is inspired by nature, eclectic objects and rediscovered forms – will also be on display. Elena Tsoka will create a new piece about nature using mixed media on canvases to express emotions, realities, ideas and stories. Limited edition scarfs by Claire Coles will float majestically in the Atrium space with Julie Goldsmith merging the worlds of the natural and the imagination in her mixed media mythical creations.
Clifton Nurseries is supporting the event by supplying folliage and trees for the atrium transforming the space into a tropical paradise.
Gallery
The path finishes in the gallery space where a selection of artists deal with the theme of nature in different ways.
Chantal de Gaudio, painter and life coach explores the order and beauty of the natural world focussing and expressing her creativity, making art that moves and energetically inspires.
Sophie Molins works closely with all things ecological and has created a series of photographs in which trees are depicted with such character that they are reminiscent of portraits.
Richelle Rich’s mixed media works look at the human side of nature, particularly Mother Nature and the maternal.
Natural form is also the focus of Desrie Thomson-George’s work, her sculptures will populate the gallery space.
Traditionally a painter, James Bigham has moved away from this medium and has created a series of works in which he has focusses on journeys and travel by mapping the routes he has taken.
Wendy Bain is a colourist who has produced a series of works which focus on the brilliance of nature by using vivid colour and gold and silver leaf.
Assisting with the exhibition, Hatty Davidson is both a curator and arts writer.
This is the first year in which Great Western Studios has taken part in the event – the cluster of 104 studios, covering 8 creative sectors and 36 disciplines lend themselves perfectly to this assorted event.
Notes to the editor
Designed as a great range of public & privates spaces, Great Western was built in 2009 on the plan of an old paint factory. Its public and private spaces were designed to replicate the ranges of scales and textures found in the city.
We have the intimate domestic scale of the garden courtyard, the entrance courtyard under the urban intersection of the Westway, the stunning modern 45m long 12m high atrium, the industrial Canal courtyard under the Westway and finally the Grand Union canal fronting the studios with its ironic ‘rural estate fencing’ enclosed lawn – a very public, part landscape & part post industrial canal wharf setting.
