Events
Colours, Lost and Found
Colours, lost and found by Lily Prigent and David Shillinglaw.
David and Lily have been making inks from local ingredients, foraging in Margate parks, beaches, meadows, streets and gardens. The result is an ongoing collection of pigments and inks, and a series of drawings and collages made with them.
“We collect and study found objects and the raw ingredients of this precarious rainbow, a kind of cosmic soup mixing pinecones and red brick, flowers, fruits and rusty copper coins. We are playing with the process of making colour, trying to connect with the natural world on our doorstep, celebrating these incidental tones and hues. The process feels magical, almost alchemy, a kind of clumsy science experiment that always surprises us.”
This installation at Bon Volks gives the work its own space to talk to the people who live in this area, and we hope that our work will make people think differently about their environment, giving colour and life to the everyday materials around us.
“Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet.”-Paul Klee
“With colour one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.” -Henri Matisse
“I found I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way... things I had no words for.” -Georgia O’Keeffe
Gardening the neighbourhood
Join us for some clearing and planting on Park Lane on 19th October 9-11am.
Meet at Bon Volks. We will provide some tools, but please bring your own if you have them.
Bon Volks open studios
Ever wondered what’s inside our building on Park Lane? Who our artists, writers, and creatives are? What their creative processes and workspaces are like? We’re opening up our studios for the community to come in, have a look, and engage with our members!
Alongside artworks for sale, we’ve got some exciting workshops and performances planned for you on Saturday 5th October:
• 3pm: free children's music workshop led by composer/performer Lillian Henley @lillianhenleyhq
• from 6:30pm: our evening program kicks off with an instantly fun bell-ringing workshop from composer/creative director Tom Adams @tomadamsmusic. You can also catch writer/performer/producer Kit Proudfoot @proudfoot.proudfoot reading a few poems. There will also be musical performances from singer/songwriter @christiemystic and her folk duo @betweentwoseasband
There will also be drop-in metal embossing with @billiemvigne / @beercanvotives plenty of drinks, nibbles and chats to curb your curiosity plus paintings, prints, jewellery, sculpture, artist books amongst other things to buy direct from our members.
We look forward to seeing you on the day and appreciate your continued support!
photos by Sam Roberts and Diana Jarvis
The Swift Weekend
The Bon Volks Swift Weekend
On the 15th and 16th of June, we will be running a number of talks and events, centred around the return of our local Swift Colony, as part of The Swift Project 2024.
There will be writing and makers workshops, run by our Members; a talk on the swifts and a neighbourhood walk-about aimed at co-creating interventions into our neighbourhood.
All events are free, as they have been supported by Kent Community Foundation. Most have restricted numbers, so tickets can be booked through Eventbrite.
We are delighted to be working with @wcgmargate @highwealdswifts @rebecca_strickson_illustration @onemotherowl @margatequeerwriters
The Swift Project 2024
The project aims to highlight the importance of conservation and biodiversity gains, by focusing on the migratory arrival and departure of the swifts in our immediate locality. The project asks our neighbours to become ‘Guardians’ of the swifts, by allowing us to install free swift boxes on their houses. These boxes were constructed from reclaimed materials. Dane Park Road, which is adjacent to our building, is unique in the local area as a focal point of swift nesting and feeding. The swifts habitually return to the road every year, capitalising on the rich feeding sites that exist on the edges of Dane Park. However, in recent years nesting sites on Dane Park Road have begun to disappear and a reduced insect population has led to dwindling numbers. In recent years swift colonies have been forced to travel further north in the UK. We believe the uniqueness of the Dane Park Rd phenomenon should be highlighted and celebrated and that the local residents should be rightly proud of their annual visitors.
There has been increased coverage, nationally, of the need to protect the swifts, as a key part of a healthy functioning ecosystem. We believe our project could be used as an example for other neighbourhoods to self-organise in this way.
photos by Sam Roberts and Diana Jarvis
Sanctuary by Chris Jack
You are invited to celebrate the launch of Sanctuary, a hand made photobook by Chris Jack, artist and member at Bon Volks Studios.
Free drinks from 6pm-9pm.
Sanctuary features photographs shot over a period of three years at Tivoli Woods, a small urban woodland a short walk from the artist's home in Margate. It is an ode to the comfort we find in unexpected places. It is a window onto the forgotten but newly discovered and the view that the past can bring to the future.
Piezography and K3 pigment inks on uncoated papers: Mohawk Options PC White Vellum 148gsm, Munken Pure Rough Cream 120gsm. Cover: Takeo Tela White 120gsm. Obi-strip: Daler-Rowney Murano Chocolate 160gsm. Pressed plant taken from Tivoli Woods included in glassine seed envelope.
Circular Margate - launch consultation event
Do you live in Margate? Are you a creative individual interested in circular economy? Do you have waste materials in need of a new home?
Come along to our launch event to learn more about what we’re up too! Be prepared for a fun evening of discussions about circular economy!
Swift Guardians
We are trialling a community project where we champion our local swift colony which has arrived in town!
We have aimed this tiny nature project at the road behind our studio which has an existing colony of swifts that tries to nest there every year. Their numbers are plummeting, so we wanted to provide safe refuge after a perilous journey from Southern Africa.
We have received some encouraging signs of community engagement and we're so chuffed!
If you live on Dane Park Road, please get in touch and we'd be happy to offer a swift box for your house. These are entirely handmade by @_thestudioworkshop using reclaimed materials.
Graphic design by Nic Hinton.
Daylight music presents Fell
We’ll end our festive Arts Market on a bang with some music.
Arctic Circle in association with Lost Map, Daylight Music and Bon Volks presents an intimate solo show with Fell.
Limited to 20 tickets. Pay what you can.
Doors 4.30pm | Music 5.00pm
“Beautiful, witty, baroque pop ... very special indeed” – Lauren Laverne, BBC 6 Music
Lose yourself in the forest of... Fell, the musical alias of Nicolas Burrows - a London-based artist, illustrator, and creator of sun-kissed psychedelic pop dreaminess. ‘For The Pickling’, his Lost Map debut, is a lilting, woozy number, that transports the listener to a half-forgotten childhood summer and back again, in under 3 minutes.
Originally hailing from Blackpool, Lancashire, Nicolas Burrows cut his teeth in the early-00’s, playing in bands around the then-burgeoning Leeds scene (Crayon, All My Friends Are Dead, Vest For Tysso, Bear Driver, Super Eight), before starting to create his own project under the name Glaciers. In 2016 he mutated into Fell, recording There Still Are Mysteries, an album of haunting autumnal pop with Stereolab’s Andy Ramsay in the production chair.
Mallows Marsh is Fell’s second full-length album – an ambitious, patchwork record full of mood shifts, flicking about lyrically through Anglo-Saxon healing charms, pastoral horror, horticultural murder-ballads, mid-Brexit snapshots and ruminations on personal myth-making. Sonically it’s full of wobbly guitars and woozy organs, with chamber-pop arrangements giving way to krautrock, raga and drone-inspired passages. Imagine 70s west coast psychedelia woven into eccentric English pastoral pop. Think XTC meets Love and Mayo Thompson. Produced once again by Dan Blackett, the album features Welsh artist Bedwyr Wiliams and master saxophonist Steve Hamilton (Madness, Noel Gallagher), with arrangements by Sean O’ Hagan (The High Llamas).
This show mark the release of Fell's new album Mallows Marsh on Lost Map
https://www.fellsongs.com/
https://www.instagram.com/fellsongs/
Embossed Votives workshop
Create an embossed votive from recycled beer cans with artist/metalsmith Billie M Vigne. In this two hour workshop you will deconstruct an empty drinks can and emboss a design onto it to create a votive that can be hung or mounted. All materials supplied (or feel free to bring your own empty can - non crushed!)
£12 - please DM @beercanvotives to book.
(under 18s must be accompanied by an adult)
Bon Volks Christmas Arts Market
We’re delighted to bring together this collective display with works produced by Bon Volks Members. A perfect opportunity to discover the wide range of practices at Bon Volks Studios and find a unique Christmas present. Buy handmade and local this Xmas!
Free entry
Make your own Christmas decorations workshop
Make your own Christmas decorations from felt and recycled materials with artist/illustrator Rebecca Strickson. All materials supplied.
£10
(under 18s must be accompanied by an adult)
Community clear up
We are getting together to clean up Gasoline Alley on 18th September 2022!
As a neighbour, if you’d like to lend a hand, that would be great. Or just come and say hi and find out what we do!
Bon Volks will have a few spare gloves and tools, but please bring your own, if you have them.
Drinks + refreshments will be provided by us.
