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art&aBoUT
Blue Drift (detail) by Meryl stringell
For many people Artwave is the social and
cultural social event of the year, as artists
throughout the district, and particularly in
Lewes, open their home and studio doors to
punters, exhibiting a wide variety of genres in a
wide variety of settings. The festival takes pace
over three consecutive weekends – Aug<strong>us</strong>t Bank
Holiday, September 4th-5th and September 11th-
12th, though some venues open throughout the
three-week period.
Our advice is to pick up a brochure from the
Tourist Information Office (and other venues),
check out the artists or groups you like the look
of, and track a course from place to place. In
many venues you’ll be offered a cup of tea or a
glass of wine as you look at the art. Some find
the artists’ interior design as interesting as their
artworks.
We don’t, obvio<strong>us</strong>ly, have enough space in this
slot to mention every exhibition, but we can
highlight some that have caught our eye; having
foc<strong>us</strong>sed on events taking place outside Lewes in
the Aug<strong>us</strong>t edition, here we’ll take a look at stuff
going on in town.
When people want to draw a stereotypical image
of an artist, they often portray an oil painter
in front of a canvas in a field, with a palette in
his hand. Tom Benjamin, though we’ve never
seen him in a beret, spends a lot of time in this
situation, and he is one of four artists in the
Foundry Gallery’s exciting exhibition Outside
w w w. V I VA l E w E s . C o M
(throughout the Festival but closed Mondays
and Tuesday). Tom’s impressionistic oils are
on show alongside works by Haydn Cottam,
Andrew Fitchett and Gavin Lockheart. All the
paintings display the artists’ differing approaches
to landscape. All this in the Foundry wareho<strong>us</strong>e,
once an integral part of the Phoenix Ironworks.
Round the corner is another wareho<strong>us</strong>e-cumgallery-cum-studio
space, and much more
besides. We featured the restaurant of the Café
Des Artistes (10 Phoenix Place) last month:
throughout Artwave the space will be displaying
an exhibition of artists, some of whom <strong>us</strong>e a nook
or cranny of the wareho<strong>us</strong>e to create their art.
They’re throwing an opening party on Aug<strong>us</strong>t
28th, and are open everyday till the 11th: artists
included in the show, called Bewitched, are
photographers Martin Gayford and Graham
Carlow, and painters/sculptors Christian
Thompson and rising R<strong>us</strong>sian star Svetlana
K-Lie –whose work can also be seen in Renwick
Clarke. For information on other events, phone
Christian on 08882986350.
St Anne’s Gallery, of course, has prepared a
show from its high-level repertoire of locallybased
artists, and the likes of Nick Bodimeade,
Lucia Corrigan, Kate Hall, Julia Hamilton,
Mark Johnston, and Jo Lamb will be
represented in one of the m<strong>us</strong>t-see stop-offs for
any art trailist, at the smart gallery on the High
Street, opposite Shelleys. (Continued overleaf...)
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