DUST at Hovel

DUST
Gail Burton
The sixth intervention by an individual artist at Hovel

Exhibition open from Saturday 7th November until Sunday 22nd November 2009
Private View on Sunday 8th November, 4pm to 8pm
Opening hours:
Saturday and Sunday 12 to 6pm
Weekdays by appointment
Hovel is located in Camberwell, South London. For the address, or to make an appointment to visit, please phone 020 7703 6337 or email hoveltenant@googlemail.com


Dust, the Victorian term for all manner of waste or rubbish: a valuable substance that told the story of the lives that produced it; a heap to be carefully categorised and searched through; a point in a process. For the sixth intervention at Hovel, Gail Burton has created a collection of paintings and mixed media works exploring the connections between looking (looking for, looking at), the unseen and memorialisation. A narrative of dirt, of contemporary London's invisible dust-economy, interweaves with portraits of long dead people, painted from miniature Victorian photographs on mourning jewellery. The names of the Victorians who mourned, and were mourned, are lost, but their images connect us to the act of remembering. As a traditional ballad, 'The Housewife's Lament' sings 'There's nothing that lasts us but trouble and dirt'. Dust and dirt remember us; we live on in unseen ways.

Hovel Residency

For the next two weeks I am undertaking a residency for Hovel, a project created in a domestic space in Camberwell, South London. My residency will result in an intervention in the space, culminating in an exhibition. I have been preparing for my intervention by creating a series of paintings, which respond to a collection of Victorian mourning jewellery, and developing ideas of the rubbish heap, both of 'olden' and contemporary times. I will post full details of the exhibition, when my residency is underway.

In the meantime, I would like to announce that the exhibition will open on Saturday the 7th of November 2009, until Sunday the 22nd November, and there will be a private view on Sunday the 8th of November, from 4pm until 8pm. Feel free to email me for further information at gailburton2@hotmail.com.

Honesty Box at Camberwell Arts Festival

On Friday 26th and Saturday 27th June 2009 I will be showing Honesty Box, with Clare Qualmann, as part of Camberwell Arts Festival. Drawing on the tradition of makeshift roadside stalls selling jam or home-made produce, crockery or oddments, the 'Honesty Boxes' will be located in and around Camberwell, London. Each Honesty Box will consist of a cardboard box filled with drawings on Kleenex tissues and a jar for money. The boxes will be labelled 'Drawings for sale £1 each' and left in public places for people to look into, leaf through, buy, steal, destroy or ignore.

Come to Camberwell and see if you can locate the Honesty Boxes – call Gail on 07814 812 338 or Clare on 07782 271 989 for up to date details of their location. Camberwell Green will be the base for our Honesty Box excursions. The boxes will be sited from 10am til 4pm.

You can see pictures of previous Honesty Boxes on the Honesty Box website where we will be documenting the new Camberwell box. For information about previous festivals visit Camberwell Arts Festival website.

You can see pictures of my contribution to the 2008 Camberwell Arts Festival at Sober Rizlas

Honesty Box
Friday 26th and Saturday 27th June 2009
10am - 4pm

For more information about Clare's work visit Clare Qualmann's website