Dwelling of the Imagination: Twelve artists are creating an imaginary home interior

Twelve artists are creating an imaginary home interior in the gallery in Addington Street, garnished with furniture, fully functional objects, set in the first part of the show against a Sasha Bowles backdrop, in hybrid references to past and present.  This display has been changed in the second part of the show with the two newest paintings by Fabio Almeida and porcelain by Anna Silverton.  The exhibition space becomes a lived-in lounge in a mythical dwelling.  It opens with a suspended stained-glass by Grace Ayson casting a shadow of a painted and kiln-fired sunflower composition. Her elaborate drawing running through clear and deep blue glass fragments provides the opening note of this imaginary home enhanced by light and design. The room also contains smaller self-standing glass objects by the artist. Inside the show, a large Napoleonic Empire mahogany sofa revamped by Aitch offers some landing to the visitor.  Its playful mode is like a cheeky crossover between Italian 30’s mosaic and Joan Miro free floating motives. The walls are adorned by multiple works of art embracing many different media.  Like homes over generations, they are populated by landscapes and by figures looking into the room, as if they were living there.  Paintings by Kate Beaugié of nature morte hang next to those by Paul Atkins of colourful heads and oneiric spirits,and to the works on paper of kitchenscapes by Julie Westbury.  In collages, Sasha Bowles likes to deflect old masters’ paintings, Claire Pestaille fashion and interior magazines, while Jessica Voorsanger makes them out of embroideries. The artists are turning the walls into a vast gallery of mirrors. And standing in solitary stature, a powerful flint head sculpture by Drew Edwards rests on an 18C. Dutch oak Scholars table. The surfaces of the gallery, shelves, table, window seals, are dotted with artist-made domestic objects and small sculpture. The artists have all contributed to create a domestic space unlike any others, where art has playfully taken over.  

The exhibition runs in parallel with a monumental billboard installation by Sasha Bowles in the High Street of Ramsgate. The love story of Sasha Bowles with Ramsgate started in January 2020 with her remarkable evocation of the town, Ramsgate Belles, a mighty three-dimensional installation in the gallery, as a life-size theatre set made of multiple stages telling tales of the town. This year, and thanks to Hold Creative Spaces, the artist is providing Ramsgate with a wild imagery large-scale billboard installation, in what is an homage to the culture of the place, the jewel of the Victorian age.  The once striving High Street leading to the magnificent Royal Harbour is now interspersed with closed premises, in an ever-spinning circle between prosperity and distress, which is, thankfully, albeit only recently, being reclaimed by community projects and artists collectives.  Her large billboard series run like a frieze on a large swath of empty shop windows and is unashamedly joyous, looking towards the future.

Once the Arts and Craft Movement revived ancient crafts and integrated them to the higher status of the art of its time while redefining interior design.  This show plays with similar ideas for different times.