Artists Open House
Democratic Art
Brighton Artists Open Houses 2009
May is festival month in Brighton. The Brighton Fringe, Brighton Festival and Artists Open Houses (AOH) all vie for our attentions/monies.
The two festivals comprise the stuff you see all year, just concertinaed into one-twelfth the time frame. The only difference is that in May it is more difficult to get tickets. The AOH stands out as a truly original because it only happens in May and it only happens in Brighton.
There are two stand-out features of the Artists Open Houses; the artists and the houses. Each one of these is worthy of a couple of weekends of your time.
The Artists
AOH is a truly democratic affair, anybody who wants to can open their home up as a gallery to display their work and share in the publicity of the event. One hundred thousand brochures will draw the art-lovers to your door. The unique thing about it is that it is a truly democratic affair. There is no selection or censorship. This leads to the most-mixed up of mixed-bags imaginable. The cutting edge of enfant terrible art shares gallery space with the spawnings of old women’s pottery classes. The prices reflect the mix; some work is priced as “I am an arist” with the associated tags other is more reasonably at the placed at the “it took me three hours to make, so I’ll sell it for 20 quid” end of the market.
But the variety is the spiciness of it all. You don’t know what will be inside any house. Inside any house, you don’t know what may be inside any room. Nice people earnestly create all of it, and that is to be celebrated. Even if it is a coil pot. Or a holiday photograph from India (or other back-packery semi-adventurous destination)
The Houses
This is why it is doubly, uniquely fun. You can see inside other people’s houses. Spend half the time discussing art, half talking décor. Enjoy a leisurely stroll around the homes that you will never be able to call home. Granted, as this is Brighton many of the houses are fashionably, mediocrily, contemporarily predictable. But to get to snoop around as many homes as you can during May, you would need to annoy a lot of estate agents at any other time of year.
The AOH is on for every weekend in May. In the next few weeks there will be enough brochures floating around to re-build an ancient woodland, so pick one up and plan your route. The five trails can individually be covered thoroughly in one day. The brochure will give you almost no information of use beyond the address. The verbiage will flit between flat and flowery and it will only include one preview image. So the only way to do it properly is to traipse, dip randomly, view, whisper and say what you really think on the way to next house.
Have fun.
The Hussy will be previewing selected artists in the arts pages
What's on your mind?
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April 26th 2009 | 1
Lesley says:
But won’t it be fun? Dear hussy, come and visit me in the Brown House Beyond the Level. Don’t be shy, I won’t bite… unless of course you bite first.
Lesley’s last blog post..Brighton Open House May 2009
