We are pleased to announce our studio holder Denise Startin has an upcoming solo show in July. Hints for British Tourists is a series of site-based performative actions presented via photographic documentation. The work is the re-staging and fictional expansion of a found pamphlet (also titled Hints for British Tourists) containing instructions for travel. The work is a meditation on tourism, travel, leisure, time and memory. On show at City Arcadia Gallery, City Arcade, Coventry. Private view Thursday 7th July 6.30-8.30pm. Open daily 11-4pm until 16th July (except Sundays).

Extract from Exhibition Text by Anneka French

A figure in a bowler hat, waistcoat and rolled-up trousers brushes sand from their feet. They read a book in front of a painted beach hut, climb on rocks, clutch a newspaper, wait, fall asleep and look out to sea. In one moment after another, we see tourism performed and time laid out in photographic frames like film stills.

Coventry-based artist Denise Startin presents a series of site-based performative actions, seen here via photographic documentation. The genesis of the exhibition Hints for British Tourists comprises two chance encounters: the discovery of a tourism pamphlet on eBay (also titled Hints for British Tourists) and a wall plaque on Hertford Street, Coventry, dedicated to the historic watchmaking trade that lists craftsmen Samuel Vale and George Howlette. The exhibition represents a re-staging and fictional expansion of these two very different starting points.

Vale & Howlette are adopted as dramatis personae in a wider body of work by the artist, becoming primary characters in a narrative that explores ideas of travel, leisure, time and memory performed by Startin herself and her partner. Startin’s work makes enquiries, both serious and humorous, that question what it means to be a tourist in post-Brexit England, in a world grappling with a pandemic and climate catastrophe, in a physical body that requires care and rest, and in a landlocked city more than one hundred miles from the nearest stretch of coastline…

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We are pleased to announce our studio holder Denise Startin has an upcoming solo show in July. Hints for British Tourists is a series of site-based performative actions presented via photographic documentation. The work is the re-staging and fictional expansion of a found pamphlet (also titled Hints for British Tourists) containing instructions for travel. The work is a meditation on tourism, travel, leisure, time and memory. On show at City Arcadia Gallery, City Arcade, Coventry. Private view Thursday 7th July 6.30-8.30pm. Open daily 11-4pm until 16th July (except Sundays).

Thursday 5th May 2022 – Sun 8th May 2022, UK City of Culture Citywide Opening. Creative venues across the city are opening their doors to start the final month of City of Culture. Come & visit the Artists at Holyhead Studios and find out more about their work. Practices include Printmaking, Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Paper Engineering, Woodworking and Installation. Sat 7th May, 12-4pm.