Spike Island ready for Open Studios 2023

Coming hot on the heels of its near neighbour BV Open Studios, Spike Island Open Studios is another hugely important date in the South Bristol art calendar this spring.

On the weekend of April 29-30, the former Brooke Bond tea-packing factory will once more throw open its doors to the 70+ artists’ studios it now houses.

It’s a chance to meet the artists, find out more about how their processes, see works-in-progress and to buy unique finished pieces directly from the practitioners who made them.

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The 80,000 square foot site is also home to Spike Print Studio, UWE Bristol Fine Art and an abundance of other creative talent, from designers, filmmakers, architects, animators and photographers, all of which will be welcoming visitors across the weekend.

“This is an unmissable chance to discover, celebrate and support Spike Island’s dynamic artist community, which we’re very proud to be part of,” says Wayne Lloyd, programme leader for the BA Fine Art and BA Art & Writing programmes at UWE Bristol.

Katy Connor, Spike Island Open Studios 2022 – photo: Martin Parr, Magnum Photos

“As the home to many creative practitioners, Spike Island offers our students a unique opportunity to work and exhibit alongside established artists; this is supplemented by the Open Studios event which further nurtures and promotes their talent to a wide audience.”

In the main exhibition space, visitors will be find the ongoing major exhibitions of contemporary art by UK and international artists, including Howardena Pindell, Ayo Akingbade, Rachel Bradley and emerging West of England-baed artists and Creative Youth Network alumni.

Spike Island Open Studios 2022 – photo: Dan Weill

Enhancing the bumper Open Studios programme further, a range of events, performances and workshops will be put on, giving visitors a chance to explore their own creative ideas.

And there will be pop-up kitchens from local street food traders, alongside the Spike Island resident café, Emmeline.

Ahead of Open Studios, Bristol24/7 asked some of the participating artists to outline their practice, their personal history with Spike Island, and the work they will be showing across the weekend.

Spike Island Open Studios 2022 – photo: Dan Weill

David Chalmers Alesworth – contemporary visual artist using embroidery, ceramics, graphic processes, photography, video and installation

“I am a research-based artist who draws equally from nature and culture. An expanded idea of the Garden lies at the heart of my current work which plays out through cross-cultural, historical and environmental projects.

“I applied to Spike Island studios when I was still living and working in Lahore, Pakistan in 2015. Initially I sub-let a studio downstairs but have now been in the current studio upstairs for more than five years. The artist community here is vibrant and inspiring. Collaboration and public art has always been a big part of my practice; here, I have already collaborated with five of the current studio artists on three exhibited projects, and hope for more this year.

“At Open Studios I’ll be leading a public workshop where you can make a porcelain rose to take home. I’m also going to show some work from my recent solo show Hortus Nocte in Karachi, February 2023. These consist of new prints and some botanical erasures and embroideries based on P.J. Redouté engravings from the 18th century.”

Photo: courtesy of David Chalmers Alesworth

Rosie Bales, UWE Graduate Fellow working in installation, textile, and tufted rugs

“I create environments that investigate and celebrate this space of erotica, through a queer sex-positive lens. Throughout my practice, I aim to educate and share, starting an important conversation around health, the body and queer sex, rather than shying away from it. Within these spaces, performances happen to create a narrative between sexual objects and the body.

“Spike Island has a very special history to me. I am a studio holder here, thanks to a fellowship through UWE, after studying Fine Art in the Spike Island UWE Studios. I have been coming to this space for four years now and being around such a rich and diverse community has unquestionably helped me to develop my artistic voice, discover my practice and move my work forward.

“After having a heart attack last summer, I wanted to create work looking into my own body, and addressing something traumatic that has happened to me. I have created a large heart installation that will showcase my rugs inside. The work that I will be showing is really exciting to me, because I’m seeing my practice become a lot more personal.”

Photo: courtesy of Rosie Bales

Young In Hong – visual artist working primarily in textile, drawing, embroidery, machine sewing, hand weaving, installation, sound and performance

“I think that one of the crucial roles of artists is to look at the isolated, misinterpreted or dismissed narratives of the past, and reinterpret them into more sharable languages. I try to take part in this role as an artist by exploring non-linguistic ways of communication that questions set boundaries in our society. I would say I’m a visual artist investigating the intersection between art and craft, the material and immaterial. I produce performance pieces in collaboration with the general public, musicians or choreographers, working across textiles, music, sound and movement.

“I have been at Spike Island Studios for five years. During this period, I’ve met artist friends and interesting people by having my studio here. Being part of an artist community where you get inspired and can exchange ideas and thoughts with artist friends is something all artists are seeking, but it sadly rarely happens in the current art world. Spike Island Studio holders share a strong sense of community and mutual support that forms the positive spirit of our artist community.

“At Open Studios, I am planning to show the pieces that I considered to have failed in the past, thus haven’t been shown to the public before. They have been stored in boxes, travelling with me whenever I relocated the places I lived and worked. Studio space is a place where my mistakes and unrealised ideas are constantly occurring and disappearing, thus showing these works in the open studio context seems to make sense to me. I hope that revisiting these past times and spaces will help me to look at them from a different angle that I wasn’t able to do in the past. Hopefully audiences will help to add a fresh layer onto those works too.”

Photo: courtesy of Young In Hong

Simone Marconi – UWE Fine Arts student currently working in spray, oil paint, sculpture and writing

“I’m an artist who tries to play with people’s perceptions of things and places. My practice is aggressive, alienating, and instructive, as if an unperceived presence is patrolling and inspecting my work, forcing me to make it under pressure.

“From a young age, I began graffiti-writing; an experience that led me into formative situations and moments, leaving an indelible mark on me. Now, by delving into the Western human condition of being constantly recorded and reviewed, rather than aiming for perfect looking outcomes, I stun the viewer by bringing them into a space where the only rule is chaos.

“Beginning with an urban-led practice, I haven’t always been close to art institutions. Now, spending most of my time inside its walls, thanks to UWE and the course I am on, I feel Spike Island is my second home. I try to attend all the events they put on, and I love being surrounded by a creative environment like this; it’s incredibly encouraging and exciting to study in such a location.

“Aside from being in the show’s curatorial team, I am working on two projects that show both my pictorial and sculptural practice in the exhibition. The former is a painting exploring automation and its limits through the technique I usually use; so, beginning by spray painting into the back of the canvas, bringing the typically hidden and undesired marks to the forefront, I continue refining the front with oil paint. The latter is a sculpture made from steel and concrete. It is a reproduction of the ephemeral and invisible reality that happens only under the eyes of those who see it.”

Photo: courtesy of Simone Marconi

Vivienne Baker – painter working in oils

“I moved to Bristol in the late 80s because of the many thriving artists’ studio groups in the old dockside industrial buildings of Bristol at that time. Initially in Redcliffe St with Redcliffe Artists in a building which was then sold and redeveloped, I joined Artspace in Gas Ferry Rd where the group of artists were in the midst of searching and fundraising to find a new, more secure building for artists, eventually relocating to the Spike Island site.

“The support of working in a group is invaluable, particularly when making art as the ‘end product’ does not always create an income. Artists often need the physical space for their practice and affordability and security of tenure is always an issue. Spike Island now provides that security, which coupled with the creative dialogue between the artists within, is invaluable.

“I will be showing my latest series of paintings at the Open Studios weekend. Initially concerning nature, landscape and places of personal experience, the images are situated between two spaces, the figurative and the abstract. I have also been trying to capture the intangibility of light and reflections on water. Contemporary concerns of the threat to nature underly the painterly battle played out between surface and depth. The resulting images emerge from the physical process of painting and are left open to interpretation.”

Photo: courtesy of Vivienne Baker

Valda Jackson – writer and multidisciplinary artist working in painting and printmaking, sculpture and film, with performative elements

“My work explores the migrant experience and interlocking cultures. I’m looking at identity, insider-outsider tensions, isolation and belonging. This extends into my work with other professionals and my long-term collaborative practice (with Rodney Harris) Jackson& Harris.

“In all of my work, whether it’s the work that comes out of my own experience or the experiences of my community, I retain the personal and the emotional. It is what makes my images empathic and humanising in their attention to small details. And for me it’s important to maintain that authenticity, whichever the medium or platform. I attempt to narrate the everyday affects/feelings with emphasis on those that might emerge from positions of dis-empowerment, and post-colonialism.

Valda Jackson, Still Holding On mural (2018), Dreamland Margate – photo: courtesy of Spike Island

“Through my first 10 years of making public art for Jackson&Harris, our studio at Spike Island was a space for planning and making the work. And in 2016, I got my own studio, where my own practice has flourished. I feel fortunate to have Spike Print Studio close to my studio; and it is a privilege to work in the rich and dynamic environment that Spike Island provides.

“I have been working with the Royal Mint to design a new coin to celebrate the Windrush Generation’s 75th anniversary. This was an exciting commission for me. My coin was included in the 2023 collection launched in January, but it will also have its own individual launch in June. The image is an acknowledgement of the real lived experience of generations of ordinary working people. And though we may have struggled, and still struggle in so many ways, we, and our descendants, are, in fact, home. In my studio, among other things I’ll be showing some of my drawings detailing the process, along with limited-edition prints, some of which are developed from my original drawings for the design.”

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Spike Island Open Studios 2023 is on April 29-30 at 11am-5pm (note, this year’s event does not extend to Bank Holiday Monday). There is a preview evening on April 28 at 6.30-8.30pm, for which booking is advised. The entire weekend is accessible and free to attend. More information about the participating studio artists is available at www.spikeisland.org.uk.

Main photo: Dan Weill

Read more: RWA Reopening and Spike Island Open Studios on Bristol’s big weekend of art

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