Future exhibitions
​

TAKING SHAPE 
27 July - 1 August 2021
​Private View*: Friday 30 July 5-9pm

A group exhibition of multi disciplinary Artists creating work through paint, ink, text, video and sculpture. 

An exhibition that speaks of an obsessive relationship to our immediate landscapes, and the artists’ compulsion to record. The artwork takes familiar scenes and banal realities that have become ritualistic over the past year, to project an alternative, imagined way of living and being.

Felix Allen 
Melanie Christine Amengual
Louisa Clark
Rachel Lonsdale
Tom Mead
George Spencer Jackson
Sarah-Athina Nahas

​*GS Wines  are pleased to be wine sponsors for the PV! 
For Free Ticket to PV please book via https://takingshape.eventbrite.co.uk

Opening hours: 
Tue-Sat 11am-7pm
Sun 11 am - 2pm

​Claudio Pestana: Fag Attacks the Country
3-8 August 2021

​“Like a fairy tale, it all started once upon a time – this time in 2020 with the birth of a new world order of ecological dystopia. The woods were quiet, the cows grazed undisturbed, the genteel went about attending to their lawns and vegetable patches, the crows, always suspicious, scanned the rolling hills, when suddenly an evil foreign nonbinary Queen arrived in the scene.”

In ‘Fag Attacks the Country’, Claudio Pestana’s first solo exhibition, we are presented with an imaginary Queer space in the English countryside. In this series of paintings, completed during lockdown, Pestana subverts the tradition of the ‘conversation piece’, the eighteenth-century sub-genre of portraiture, which at the time was profitably mastered by the likes of Gainsborough, Devis, and Zoffany. In ‘Fag Attacks the Country’ Pestana challenges the symbolic capital historically attached to the genre and creates an antithesis to the traditional decorum that was obligatorily depicted in the 18th century and beyond.

“During lockdown, whilst social distancing in the depths of Dorset’s countryside, I started thinking about how, as a non-binary foreign person, I fitted into the landscape of the county with its specific social topography. Surrounded by traditional and conservative cultural markers, I started reflecting on the symbolic power that those around me held.

‘Fag Attacks the Country’ explores the intersection between (my) Queerness, the rural, and the tradition of portraiture and landscape painting. The paintings started as a spontaneous gesture that arose after I suddenly became aware of how my Queerness might be perceived in the rural community where I was living. I started feeling a rebellious and subversive energy arising in me, which led me to create an imaginary rural world where I arrived as a Fag (I consciously adopt this term as a way of hijacking the language of the abuser) and affronted the status quo of those who commanded social
power.

Claudio Pestana was born in Portugal in 1974, and lives and works between London and Dorset, England. First trained as a psychologist, Pestana also engaged in art making as a self-taught artist before receiving his MA in Fine Art Painting from Camberwell College Pestana has collaborated with other artists on several art projects and in 2020 his work was included in the London Grads Now exhibition at The Saatchi Gallery in London. In 2021 Pestana was awarded the Abbey Scholarship in Painting 2021-22 with a residency at The British School at Rome.

Opening hours:
Tue-Sat 1-7pm
Sun 1-5pm

Fuse 2021
​10-15 August 2021
Private View: Thursday 12 August 6pm-Late

Fuse: to join or blend to form a single entity; the coming together of multidisciplinary creatives…

Over the past year students on the University of Brighton MA Graphic Design have been working on a range of exciting projects, including everything from printed material to experimental 3D works. The forward facing groups work explores a number of current and emerging topics through their unique visual languages.

Participating Artists:

Rohit Bhalla
Aimée Clark - @aimeecbc
George Davis-Ansted - @georgedavisanstead
James Farrant - @jpf.design
Saskia James - @saskiajames.design
Zoe Jenkins - @zoellenstudio
Maren Landsnes - @designmaren
Emily Markwick - @design.munki
Ganesh Sharma - @blinkingfate
Alexa Vieira - @bleugonia
Emily Watson - @ew__studio

www.instagram.com/fuse.2021

Opening hours:
Daily 11am-7pm
Sunday 11am-5pm

Gaslit: shining a light on narcissistic abuse
17-22 August 2021
Private View: Thursday 19 August 7pm until late

"Gaslit: shining a light on narcissistic abuse" is an art participation project, which has informed and produced a series of original artworks in response to the significant rise in psychological abuse and domestic abuse during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Socially engaged illustration artist, Veronica Rowlands, has worked alongside psychiatrist, Thomas Italiano, to develop the project which has engaged adults and young people with lived experience of psychological abuse, and those vulnerable within society - creating a safe space for creative response, reflection and recovery.

As a prior sufferer of narcissistic abuse, this area of research combines Veronica's own first-hand experience with that of community participants from Greenwich and Newham, London, to convey the complex narratives through the artworks.

Workshops with psychological abuse victims have deconstructed the abuse cycle, drawing out its insidious nature and highlighting a multitude of experiences, resulting in a series of twelve illustrations and 3 textile installations - all in Veronica's unique and whimsical style - visualising its characteristics and impact. The series depicts the three stages of the abuse cycle; Idealise, Devalue, Discard, along with insights into what makes a narcissist and empowering meditations on recovery. 

Veronica Rowlands says "The textile installations are weighted blankets, acting as a metaphor for the depth of internal conflict for those experiencing psychological abuse - the restrictive nature of a narcissistic relationship but also the warmth and comfort that remaining within the confines of the relationship can bring."

Website: www.veronicarowlandsartist.com/gaslit-arts-council-england-funded-project

Barbara Janiszewska
Retrospective Solo Exhibition | Printmaking
24-29 August 2021
Private View: Saturday 28 August 6-9pm

Opening hours:
24-27 Aug 2-7pm
28 Aug 1-5pm / 6-9pm
29 Aug 1-5pm