SPIKE ISLAND PAST AND PRESENT
Looking into the relationship people had when collaborating with Spike Island, we decidid to contact artists and designers who had previously exhibited work there to respond to their experience. We also spoke with current workers at Spike Island to either draw or write what their experience has been. From this we have gathered a variety of responses, including our own, about what Spike Island means to different people.
“Our vision is to position art as central to society, which we do in two ways: by offering a high quality, challenging programme of exhibitions and events; and by fostering a dynamic and critically engaged community of artists and designers. Spike Island collaborates with local and regional partners as well as with international institutions, museums and universities.� - Spike Island
FAYE BRITTON | GRAPHIC DESIGN STUDENT
MICHAEL | RECEPTIONIST SINCE 2010
LAURE LAX | BARISTA SINCE 2012
Thanks for your email. Here’s a summary of my ‘Spike Life’. The main reasons I like it are – obviously the good studio spaces and facilities, but also the sense of community – many of us have been there since the beginning, so have formed strong friendships. Meanwhile, new members come and go, and there is a good mix of different kinds of work going on. Also,it is very important to be surrounded by like-minded people and to have the privacy when you want it, or you can go and chat to someone if you feel the need to be sociable. Before I moved back in, I rented a small gallery on Christmas Steps for a year, and I found it rather lonely and stressful, so I was very glad to get back into the community at Spike again. I also think the Open Studios is a very important opportunity to show my work to the public and the other studio-holders, and gives us a chance to assess ourselves and our progress. I hope this helps! Good luck with your course.
NIAMH COLLINS | PAINTER AND STUDIO HOLDER SINCE 2010
“I had 7years at Spike Island”
The clouds was an installation I made sometime around 2000, for Open Studios. I used nylon toy stuffing, pushed up into the safety netting we had to put up because the original, beautiful, barrel shaped glass brick roof was expanding and contracting with the weather and dropping glass into the gallery below. I had 7years at Spike Island, in the sculpture shed. I went there straight after graduating in 1998 and spent pretty much every day there, living hand to mouth and learning the craft of sculpture, then printmaking, then animation. I loved my time there. I left to study animation at the RCA, and now I lecture and make my own short films. Hope that’s useful. I was an artist trustee for a year too. Not a founder member though.
WILL STEPHENS | PAINTER AND STUDIO HOLDER SINCE 2010
Here’s a sketch of my studio at Spike Island as I remember it (not accurate I know!) : it was one of the wonderful studios along the balcony basically I was surrounded by glass bricks! Very cold in winter, eery along that balcony at night (I had a job in the daytime so often worked in the studio in the evenings till late), but I liked it a lot. It was also strange along the balcony - a feeling of being a temporary resident - the ‘real’ painters (!) were inside the painting studios, the sculptors were downstairs (mainly hammering or making other loud noises!) and we on the balconies were in a kind of floating other space, which I kind of liked. The Open Studio events were great - full all day with lots of people really interested and curious about what we were all doing. But not pretentious - I sold a large map work on canvas to a trendy-looking couple because, they said, somewhat embarrassed as they confessed “The colours in it will really go with our new sofa..” That still makes me smile when I think about it...
MICHELLE RUMNEY | FINE ARTIST
MATTHEW | GALLERY ASSISTANT
JACK PARTON - GRAPHIC DESIGN STUDENT
DAN SMITH | GRAPHIC DESIGN STUDENT
JOE HATTS | BARISTA SINCE 2012
I helped set up the print studios with the late Peter Reddick and Martyn Grimmer, our membership was very low at the time, but all helped with the hard graft of making the studios a beacon in the South West. At that time I had just finished doing a Masters at Camberwell so being keen to make sure we had water-based screen-printing facilities, I sourced and found the equipment for this area. We spent the winter refurbishing, building and making, that is 1997 to our big opening of the building in the spring of 1998. In late 98 I then got my own studio so I have been part of this amazing community since then. I do drawing, painting, screen-printing and sometimes a little etching. My work is mainly to do with mapping and how we perceive borders.
I have spent much of my adult life living in the Far East and this has definitely influenced my work, but after so much moving around it is wonderful to be settled in Bristol and to call it home, both in my home and in my studio. There is much to inspire one inside Spike, the cross fertilisation of ideas is a key factor and the sociability too, and yet the space the studio provides for making, thinking, resolving work cannot be measured.
“Spike Island is everything.”
“I treasure it immensely.”
CAROL JACKMAN | STUDIO HOLDER SINCE 1998
SOPHIE DOYLE | GRAPHIC DESIGN STUDENT
LIBBY CLAYTON | GALLERY SINCE 2012
“Spike Island was a life saver for me.”
I had a studio in Somerset which I had started running in 1980, with courses and events, and it was very successful, but by 1999 it was in bad need of repair, and becoming unusable, and I had no money to renovate it. I was already an Associate member of Spike Island Printmakers, and exhibited with them whenever possible, and sometimes came up for the day to work. But in the winter of 2000/2001 I almost abandoned my studio in Somerset and became a part time member of SP. I made lots of good contacts, and learnt photo etching and other useful techniques. But it was becoming clear to me that I really needed to be in Somerset, and I somehow managed to get the money together for the renovation. The studio (at Dove Studios in Butleigh) is now flourishing and quite well known, and although I am no longer a member of SP I have friends there, and know that the respite it gave me, and the good times and friends (notably Martyn Grimmer, who was endlessly encouraging), enabled me to get back on track again. I have taught day courses at Spike since then, and people from Spike have attended my courses in Somerset. It feels like country and town cousins. I hope this helps your project, very good luck with it!
BRONWEN BRADSHAW | SPIKE ISLAND PRINTMAKER SINCE 1999
LOUIS BARTLETT | STARTED HELLO BLUE IN 2008