JUBILIQUE, 13A St Augustine’s Street, Norwich

In Norwich there’s a cool quite varied little street called St.Augustine’s. It’s in what’s commonly referred to as ‘the creative quarter’ (unless you are an estate agent - they call it the ‘Silver Triangle’. I don’t know of anyone who calls it that except estate agents…)

On this street is an array of indie businesses including a vintage shop at 13A called Jubilique. Abbi, Jubilique’s owner is going to take a mini break from her physical shop space whilst she has her baby and so when Abbi put the call out to see if anyone would like to temporarily use the space whilst she was away, I jumped at the chance. 

If you’ve followed me on instagram for a while you may have seen lots of work I made in a studio space just a few doors up the street. If you saw any of my posts/stories around October last year, you might also have seen that the lease on that building came up and the owners wanted to repurpose it for another use so no more art studios. 

So myself and Brian Korteling a painter I was sharing the space with packed up our stuff (there was so much stuff…) and to say farewell we held an open studio, which was a successful event (thanks to everyone that came by) and then the final push of leaving the studio was moving more things like set design pieces including 100’s of metres of fabric and a sofa. 

Because I only needed to move the sofa a 6 minute walk up the road I was convinced I could just push it from A to B. This turned out not to be one of my best ideas and although I made it and so did the sofa, it was v touch and go at several  moments of that journey… 

We have a big problem with lack of creative spaces/studios in Norwich. There’s never enough, a huge building made up of units I would love to have been a tenant off looks set to go if/when that area gets redeveloped. What we need are council run subsidised studios or organisations which can take over a building and let the spaces out to creatives like some other parts of the country have. 

But for now I’m back on the same street, different shop, different space but same route in to my ‘studio’ for a little while. It’s temporary and so I’ve really thought about that when I’ve been brainstorming how to use the space. 

So I’ve come up with ‘in residence at…’. I’ll be spending the next few months not just making new work in the shop space - so treating it as a petite studio but also getting some work up on the walls and holding some open studio days so once again you can just swing by and see some of my work - some will be work I’ve made before going in to Jubilique,  for example I’ve photographed lots of people over the years and it would be nice to show their faces. If you know my work you’ll know I’ve got a lot of backstage fashion imagery which might be nice to show a bit more of, or there’s other projects it might be worth getting printed and out in a physical space.

I’m quite open to sharing WIP so it might be that some days the doors open and what I’ll be putting on walls or video art I’m showing won’t be an end result but a work in progress. It’s all pretty much ‘lets see how it develops.’ 

I’m hoping that over the next few months I’ll also be joined by some guest creatives and I’m chatting to a someone about collaborating with them and their poetry. My mind is alive with ideas for ways to collaborate other artists. 

The shop has a really lovely big window and  so even when the studio isn’t open and I’m busy working away inside, I’m aiming to have some kind of work up in the window -  so there’s something to see as you pass. 

It’s an old shop, it’s quite a raw space and so don’t expect framed work and clinical precision. I like working from more quirky spaces. It will be nice to be back in one and to respond to the room. I want the way work is shown shown there to feel curated DIY style, organic. I want to embrace that I’m passing through, a temporary stay. 

In the mean time if you are walking that way you’ll see posters like this with various images I’ve taken and a few words explaining how I’ll be using the space whilst Abbi takes a break.

Ultimately I’m looking forward to have a space to create in again but also being able to use the shop to hopefully create an interesting little project people can swing by and visit. 

Jubilique remains online until Abbi returns to the shop. You can visit the Jubilique instagram here

To discuss commissions or general enquiries feel free to email me hello@kerrycurl.com  

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