Bell House Sculpture Park with Dulwich Festival

We are excited to be writing here about our first public event since restrictions began! Join us from May 7th as we take part in Dulwich Festival’s Artist Open House with the Bell House Sculpture Park.

The Bell House gardens will be open during the festival exhibiting works of 11 artists. Some of the artist’s have made new works in response to the architecture and history of the house. ••The Collectors for example, a dance trio interested in archives and collating resources from unique spaces, are working on a piece titled “34 Pictures”. The images have been collected from the Bell House archives to grow a meandering durational dance piece. The group explain how they use dance to ‘create moving sculptures, dynamic pathways and at times bizarreness across the landscape of the Bell House grounds’.** Likewise Isobel Finlay, a Camberwell graduate interested in traditional processes and hand-craft, is working on a piece inspired by the hexagonal Georgian windows at the front of the house.

The Collectors: development and process for “34 Pictures”

Other exhibiting artists include sculpting duo Dominic McHenry and Jim Shepherd, or BASK, who work with geometric carved wood encased in forged metal. Augustus Stickland, trained carpenter and another Camberwell graduate, presents notched and pared monoliths. Just last year Augustus had a solo sculpture show in Ruskin Park titled “Stickland” with Denmark Hill gallery Blue Shop Cottage. Ikra Arshad experiments with playful perspex shapes to create ‘joyous spaces amongst nature and around public places’. Annie Antoine and Kim Parker work with clay creating ceramic pieces that are intimate and powerful (an exciting nod to the Bell House pottery plans that will hopefully be underway this year!) These sculptures will find a fresh context in the Bell House garden, chiming with or contrasting against the environment to create new atmospheres and unfolding narratives…

“Oak (1 2 3) ” 2019 by Augustus Stickland

…but can words do justice to the experience of standing next to these sculptures? Feeling their presence alongside your own? Seeing their shadows upon grass and tree trunk? Visit Bell House in May to become part of these installations!

Such sensory experiences will be heightened by a sound-piece developed by the Rye Poets & composer David Clark Allen. Rye Poets, comprising of Pia Goddard, Joan Byrne and Helen Adie, create spoken word works which are ‘[a] heady mix of wit, pathos and choral work’. For the Sculpture Park a poem has been woven into a bee-buzzing soundscape composed by David, ‘…a founding father of flamenco-fusion music in the 70s’. A heady mix indeed! Talking of bees, Jack Fawdry Tatham is working alongside Kennington apiary and social enterprise, Bee Urban, to build geometric solitary bee habitats so us humans won’t be the only ones enjoying the show!

We also have some special works on loan by Ron Hitchins, a Chinese-Lithuanian artist-cum-flamenco dancer, born in 1926 in Hackney. Hitchen’s made fibreglass abstract sculptures inspired by the likes of Barbara Hepworth and Max Ernst. He is little known but his works, alongside his unusual house and furniture which is decoratively clad in his fibreglass tiles, are growing in notoriety.

Intrigued? We look forward to welcoming you all to the Bell House Sculpture Park! Ikra Arshad sums up our aim for this Sculpture Park beautifully when she shared the following piece of writing with us:

‘Parks & outdoor spaces have been our saviour this past year… I was excited to be asked to take part in this show, mainly because right now, we need things that enhance our feelings of hope and joy more than ever.’

“Hospice in the Weald” 2019 by Ikra Arshad

**Unfortunately, The Collectors’ durational dance piece has been postponed in line with current government guidelines! We plan to show their work later in the summer!

Are you a Sculptor? Tell us in the comments below or share you work with us on socials:

insta + facebook @bellhousedulwich

twitter @bellhousenews

Works will be for sale!

Check out events page here for latest updates and how we will be operating in line with current Covid safety regulations.

Bell House Gardening : the Edible Garden

To celebrate Edible Britain, this year’s theme for National Gardening Week, Bell House are thinking all things vegetable.  

The winter cabbages and garlic planted in the winter will soon be ready to harvest, the broad beans are flowering ready to produce their pods.  We’ve earthed up the early crop potatoes and have seen our first asparagus tips appear.  Rhubarb was picked and used in Zita’s cookery course on Sunday and the banana plant has emerged from behind its winter fleece.

The lettuces and newly planted herbs are growing away and in the greenhouse, broccoli, coriander and sunflowers will wait until the last frosts are over.  Our volunteers are growing cucumbers, courgettes, pumpkins, radish, beans, carrots, peppers, tomatoes and chillis on their window sills and these will come into the garden soon to grow on in the beds or spend the summer in the greenhouse.

In the summer we plan to finish our Wednesday morning sessions with lunch from the garden.  We’ll use our produce for cooking courses held at Bell House, and provide the house team and volunteers with fresh herbs and seasonal veg, much like the original Georgian and Victorian gardens, three times the size.

We garden every Saturday and Wednesday from 9.30 to 11.30.  New volunteers are always welcome, from beginners to experienced gardeners and every level in between.  Some of us are there regularly, others come when then can.  Our aim is to be sociable, garden, learn new skills and promote wellbeing, all in our beautiful walled garden.  

Photo credits - Sara Lloyd