Hannah Collisson talks to HOUSE Festival director Judy Stevens about celebrating visuals arts in unusual settings.

A curated contemporary visual arts festival, HOUSE comes to Brighton in May featuring a number of invited artists, partnerships with other local organisations and a wider programme of events.

The theme of this year’s HOUSE Festival is ‘Edge and Shift’, and four new works have been commissioned in response to the theme.

Turner Prize shortlisted Nathan Coley will, for a co-commission with Brighton Festival, be creating a new exhibition, Portraits of Dissension, at the Regency Town House, Hove, investigating the histories of buildings and events in Brighton, including the Royal Pavilion and bombing of The Grand Hotel.

Joseph Popper will construct, using cardboard, a scale model of a drone command centre; an installation called The Same Face, co-commissioned with Lighthouse, at The Regency Townhouse Basement.

At the same venue, a co-commission with Brighton Photoworks, film maker Amanda Loomes is to present a film installation with a focus on the marine aggregate industry.

City Collective, a digital community project, takes as its starting point an image of the Grand Hotel staff standing on the balconies the day it reopened following the 1984 bombing.

HOUSE was established in 2009 by artist Judy Stevens and graphic designer Chris Lord, who are also the directors of Artists Open Houses. The festival is curated by Celia Davies, director of Photoworks.

Now in its seventh year, HOUSE coincides and in part overlaps with Brighton Festival, but is a separate entity, explains Judy.

“It grew out of two ideas. Apart from AOH there was little visual art in Brighton and also the lack of a major dedicated contemporary visual arts gallery in Brighton.

“We were looking at non-gallery spaces, particularly domestic spaces to bring internationally recognised artists to Brighton.”

The first few years the festival was produced on a shoestring, but the last four years have seen significant funding from Arts Council South East, which has allowed the team to commission artists and bring them to Brighton.

A range of media is represented says Judy, something they are especially keen on as there are a lot of purely digital spaces in Brighton. Sculpture and installation therefore feature significantly in the programme.

There is a small team of 10 to 12 very dedicated individuals who work on the festival each year, says Judy, and they also offer paid internships to students from the University of Brighton.

Visual arts in unusual settings is something HOUSE does very well.

“For artists and audiences there’s something exciting about discovering art in unexpected places,” says Judy. “Artists really respond to that.”

In previous years, interesting locations have included the Reading Room at Brighton Museum and Preston Manor.

Two years ago an audio visual piece by Emma Critchley featuring a free diver and a soprano voice was projected in a shipping container on the seafront.

“That’s the beauty of using unusual locations – you don’t need to have set off to go to a gallery,” says Judy.

The programme of wider events include a pop-up cinema in a disused woodyard in Clifton Street, and a series of artist talks.

The Outside In exhibition to be held at Phoenix Brighton is curated by Katy Norris of Pallant House Gallery and provides a platform for artists based in East Sussex who define themselves as facing barriers due to health, disability or social circumstance.

There will also be a series of related events and workshops during the course of the exhibition which runs from May 3 to 31.

This provides an added dimension to what HOUSE has to offer, says Judy, who goes on to say that future ambitions including growing HOUSE festival to include other cities in the UK and perhaps even abroad.

But there is still plenty to do in Brighton in the meantime, including inviting more artists and broadening the range of later career artists.

Judy says that she is currently in talks with some well-known artists, although will not be drawn on any details.

“It is exciting how many artists who are household names are keen to work with us in the future,” says Judy. “We have a very interesting shortlist for the next four years.”

  • HOUSE runs in Brighton from May 2 to 24.

For full details visit www.housefestival.org.