The Recycled House -Sydenham Arts Festival

The Recycled House 2012

Artists' Open House - Sydenham Arts Festival  2012

If you are on the Visual Arts Trail - Sat/Sun 14-15 then make your way here, this is a great find.

I wholly recommend you take the time to visit to this living art piece, The Recycled House. It's a real home & ever changing installation piece, conceived and constructed by the creative pair of Kate Shipp and Mark Hill. Though amongst the salvaged beauty is a very real and admirable ethic : This is anti-consumerism writ large

Sydenham Arts Festival gives us a brief (one week-end only) opportunity to see this amusing and captivating space. Imagine a house decorated by Sir John Soane but sourced by Albert Steptoe. The interior is full of items saved literally from skips and scoured at boot sales. Items swapped, traded and made from salvaged materials or scrap, things most of us would overlook.


I've personally been to the house a number of times and each time I discover a new part I'd overlooked before. Though it may well have never been there in the first place, in all it gives you a heady flood of images and objects to view; be warned though, this is no trip to Ikea.

Also much of what you see is for sale. Mark is a working artist & trader, so don't be surprised to find price tags on your tea cups or cake stands. Also ask to see his other work too; it's all there on the walls, with much more hidden in the plan chests.

The house is located at.....


4 Longton Avenue SE26 *click on for a map near to the beautiful Sydenham Wells park

It's easy to get to by car, bus or train  * see links

By train, head for Sydenham in SE26 on the fantastic new overground Train Service and it's about a 10 minute walk from the station.
Buses from Crystal Palace run every 10 minutes.

Contact details

shipp.hill@virgin.net

www.therecycledhouse.co.uk

And, maybe I'll see you there....

The Recycled House 2012

Artists' Open House - Dulwich Festival 2012

I wholly recommend you take the time to visit to this living art piece, The Recycled House. First and foremost, it's a real home. It is also a living & ever changing installation piece, conceived and constructed by the creative pair of Kate Shipp and Mark Hill.

The Dulwich Festival gives us a brief (one week-end only) opportunity to see this amusing and captivating space. Imagine a house decorated by Sir John Soane but sourced by Albert Steptoe. The interior is full of items saved literally from skips and scoured at boot sales. Items swapped, traded and made from salvaged materials or scrap, things most of us would overlook.

Do cast your eyes downwards as you cross the threshold. That wood-block floor was not so long ago a humble roof joist, now all  carefully sliced into tiles and laid by hand. It's an insight into the couple's ethos of re-use, and one where any material has possibilities.

They themselves describe the house as;
"illustrating the possibility of living elegantly whilst reducing the environmental impact"
I personally think it forces you look at things in a new light, it's a mirror of how disposable we've become as a society. It pulls you up, it makes you consider anew. And I know I feel better for it.

In the photo, Kate Shipp & Mark Hill

The space though is quite beautiful, almost museum like, though not overly precious, being after all a family home for the couple & their two children.


I've personally been to the house a number of times and each time I discover a new part I'd overlooked before (though it may well have never been there in that guise, such is the nature of change here).

In all it gives you a heady flood of images and objects to view; be warned though, this is no trip to Ikea.

Also much of what you see is for sale, the house acting as both home and Gallery.
Mark is a working Artist & trader, so don't be surprised to find price tags on your tea cups or cake stands.

Do ask to see his other work too; it's there on the walls, with much more hidden in the plan chests.

Look (or more succinctly listen) out for their other project METAMONO. An Electronic three-piece music collective, playing one off gigs and the Festival circuit.

Of course all this looking (and listening: Metamonos' latest 10" single is on sale here) can be both exciting and exhausting. So, to revive your spirits Kate & Mark set up shop in the garden, serving tea & home-baked cakes on alice-in-wonderland style cake stands ( yes,  Kate & Mark make and sell these too )

All this reviving refreshment, served in the tranquility of the garden, gets you ready for another look at this truly unique house.

Lastly, there's usually a little Pop-Up shop in the garden to feast your eyes on.
Bring some cash or a cheque book, as the The Recycled House is a gem of a visit.

Open on 12-13th May Only

11:30-5pm
No need to book


The house is at
4 Longton Avenue SE26 *click on for a map near to the beautiful Sydenham Wells park

It's easy to get to by car, bus or train  * see links

By train, head for Sydenham in SE26 on the fantastic new overground Train Service and it's about a 10 minute walk from the station.
Buses from Crystal Palace run every 10 minutes.

Contact details

shipp.hill@virgin.net
www.therecycledhouse.co.uk

And, maybe I'll see you there....

Mark

Paint it black, paint it white.

Be bold and paint your living space in ultra-dramatic mono-chromatic.
What could be simpler than Black & White ?

There's something very refreshing in choosing a scheme of such dramatic opposites. A real chance to create something punchy, something so timeless and classic in the living theatre we call home. It's also an opportunity to wrestle things down to their absolute minimum, no matter what period your pile was built.

The extreme purity of such a scheme perversely draws colour to it. We can't help ourselves; solid black and white wall spaces cry out out for art, objects and mirrors to be placed on or alongside them.
image copyright paintsomecolour 2012 all rights reserved

Even designers like Sue Timney of Timney-Fowler who've made the whole mono-chrome black & white part of their brand are still drawn to use colour to enhance and enliven their look.

There is I think an instinct to add bold primary colour into the mix. Red, yellow, green and blue all flash large in such a space. The smallest item or casually placed accessory grows in stature, taking on an almost gallery like significance.

But why is that? Well in part it's this reductionist scheme that helps our brain park up large chunks of space, it encourages us to focus on the very object in isolation.

Lighting as in any living space is key, after all, head-first down the basement steps isn't much fun, no matter how glamourous the interior from which we've unwittingly launched ourselves.

Well placed down lighters in the ceilings illuminate the runway on which we walk, strategically placed near a pair of opposing mirrors and we see a multiplying of spaces and lights into the darkness. It's high drama and almost mysterious in it's depth.

And nothing could be so easy, could it. All you need to do is order these two simple colours, choose what goes where and crack on with it.

You may though find a small but significant question posed as you order your paint.

"What colour black and what colour white do you want"

It's because these two simple choices aren't actually so black and white after all. The reality is that they are in fact refined colours all of their own, blacks with blue or green or red in. Whites which though at the end of their range are in fact pared-back colours or hues, shades of a much stronger version of themselves, but still colours no less.


As with all the paint colours we ponder on, there's a growing number of choices now available.
Lamp black, bible black, near black, british standards black. The same goes for white and the list is virtually endless.


We still need to choose them with as much care as we do any other colour, they can be warm and cool. They can take on a mood all of their own and I see them as more alike than far apart, they define each other far better than any other colour paring. We use them linguistically too, as a metaphor for clarity and simplicity but they are in fact deeply complex in their make up. And if we don't look carefully we could miss the very beauty that is there to behold.