Preview: Jamaica Street – Open Studios 2017

This year’s Open Studios weekend at the city-centre artists’ studios complex Jamaica Street Artists represents another opportunity to look behind the scenes into the Grade II-listed studios building that has been established for over 20 years in the heart of Stokes Croft – and to meet the very talented folk who work there. There will be plenty to see, with the doors opened for the weekend onto the studios of over 30 artists working across painting, printing, illustration, filmmaking, textiles, sculpture and more.

This year’s Open Studios has a collaborative focus, with the Jamaica Street Artists partnering with Bristol-based brewery Lost and Grounded for the launch; new local leather goods duo Rawfind making and selling on-site on the Saturday; and design studio Printed Goods presenting a one-off commission in the building’s lift shaft all weekend. “This year’s local partnerships all promote our core studio values of making, exhibiting and collaborating,” explains studio manager Nicol Phillips.

Jamaica Street Studios. All pics: Damien Hockey

The now-famous JSA Auction also returns on the Sunday. “The auction is our main fundraising event each year – and it’s also the perfect opportunity to bid on a mini-canvas by your favourite JSA artist and bag yourself a bargain, while supporting the studios and keeping them affordable for Bristol-based artists,” Nicol explains.

Artists opening up their studios for the weekend include photographer and textile artist Jessa Fairbrother, who earlier this year won the GRAIN Format Portfolio Award for her work Armour Studies at Format International Photography Festival. Last year, meanwhile, Jessa produced Conversations with my Mother as a limited-edition Artist Book: the delicate hand-marked volume with unique perforations is held in various collections including Yale Center for British Art) and libraries at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

The studio of artist Chris Wright, aka Turbo Island

Elsewhere, illustrator Chris Wright a.k.a Turbo Island creates colourful and cocky t-shirts for the music geeks of the world. He has a tongue-in-cheek approach to illustration and recently collaborated with Joe Goddard (Hot Chip) on the Electric Lines t-shirt. Painter Eva Ullrich, meanwhile, regularly exhibits locally, nationally and internationally, including the joint exhibition Meander with Ben Risk at Bristol’s Gallery 22 last year.

The artists are tenants of the upper floors of the building: the ground floor, currently leased by Jacknife Prints, is due for conversion to a cafe/restaurant around August time.

The studios are well placed, Nicol says, in a stimulating part of town full of creative energy. “Stokes Croft is a vibrant, diverse area in which to work. It’s a boiling pot of street art, activism, grassroots projects and more established organisations. There is plenty to document in the surrounding locality and many works by JSA Studio Artists are inspired by the immediate area.”

Jamaica Street – Open Studios 2017 Friday, June 16 to Sunday, June 18. For more info, visit www.jamaicastreetartists.co.uk