HomeThe art of walking
In which we look around other people's houses and other people's art
As I said last week, I’ve been planning to write something about this year’s Southbank Bristol Arts Trail. Because, well, it’s a local event, a local grassroots event, and the sort of thing that more people should know about.
The idea, if you’ve not come across it before, is: local artists either open up their homes, or exhibit in local community spaces, studios, workshops and so on. The rest of the local community spend the weekend rambling around the area, getting slightly lost, hunting down these little artistic spaces and finding out what’s inside. I’m not entirely sure I’d want to open my house up, because if we did, we wouldn’t get any chance to go and investigate anyone else’s place. That’s half the fun of it. That, and poking around strange, unexpected corners of the neighbourhood. I’d never thought that the back of North Street can be so rural: but turning the corner of Sydney St mid-afternoon, we surprised a startled-looking fox, who had been trying to quietly plot a route into a henhouse.
There are so many places on the trail – 54 venues, most of which we managed to reach over the course of the weekend – that it is tricky just to summarise all of the ones we saw. But I’ll try: there was stained glass at the Southville Glass Studio, photography at the Spanish bar just by it; a First Crush Wall on Ashton Gate Terrace; pottery and photography in a B&B on Green Bank Road;* various artists and furniture at the ambulance station on Raleigh Road;** seascapes painted by someone called Shirley Gosling who has an impressively-decorated house; a set of prints by a group of designers, and a DJ in their kitchen; Terry Williams, who I’ve already mentioned; bedroom music in Rachael Dadd’s house on Birch Road; decorated china on Hamilton Road; interesting bird prints on Leighton Road; tiles and various other things further along the street; some pretty handmade jewellery on Beauley Road; an intriguing and bloody installation piece above the reclamation yard on Park Road;*** some excellent screen prints on Howard Road; too much to mention at the Southville Centre; a variety of art and sculpture in a flat on Stackpool Road; typographical artwork on Greville Road; free happiness to take home on Mount Pleasant Terrace; pottery and photography in a garage further along the street; are you still reading?; close-up abstract photography in a flat on North Street; a variety of things including photography, live pottery and well-known printmaker Lucie Sheridan at the old pickle factory that’s now a bed factory on Braunton Road; drawings on South Street; illustration on Agate Street; a delightful little sculpture garden tucked away on North Street; live printmaking of seascapes on Chessel Street; landscape paintings all the way down on Thanet Road; stuffed toys on Aubrey Road; an illustrator whose work I’m sure I recognised on the opposite side of the street; an empty house with “NO ART THIS YEAR, MAYBE NEXT YEAR” in the window on Balfour Road; and a variety of art and things on Truro Road. And breathe. If you read all the way through that, well done. Personally, I recommend spacing it out over a weekend.
At some point I will go back over all that and fill it out with links. It demonstrates, though, what a variety of creativity and artwork there is in a relatively small part of this city, not to mention what a variety of homes people have.**** And, too, it makes me think: “why aren’t we doing more of that?” I’m sure we could, if we were willing to stay in and show other people our home, instead of going out and looking at everyone else’s.
* Confusing geography moment: I discovered Bristol has a Greenbank Road and a Green Bank Road, nowhere near each other.
** Including some nature photography, an artist who had published a book about his leukaemia, and some rather homoerotic studies of men in showers. None of whose names I can remember: this is why I should write my blog posts straight away.
*** Not just in the attic space above the reclamation yard, either; it continued down the stairs and out into the street.
**** I was particularly impressed with one artist who had a copy of McDermott & Clinker’s classic History Of The Great Western Railway on their bookshelves.