THE LIDO OPEN 2024
18 September - 19 October 2024
David Abbott / Susan Absolon / Paul Andrews / Julie Annis / Joshua Armitage / Dorota Bouali / Joanne Boyle / Molly Brown / Rae Birch Carter / Ben Coleman / Sarah Crossfield / Gavin Dobson / Isabelle Eberlin / Andrew Ekins / Tracey Emin / Phillip Frankland / Dominique Garraud / Hugh Gillan / Jules Gooris / Helena Gorey / Lesley Greening Lassoff / Rita Fernandez Gutierrez / Adam Hedley / Roland Hicks / Sylvia Hill / Amanda Houchen / Mandy Hudson / Chris Hunt / Nick Ivins / Davina Jackson / Rachel Jordan / Mark Joyce / Ann Kavanagh / Joanna Kidney / Catherine Knight / Lara Kulkarni / James Lawson / Simon Leahy-Clark / Emma Lilly / Jonathan Lloyd / Sarah Lord / Sinead Lucey / Paula MacArthur / Gabriela Max / Stephanie McLaughlin / Donna McLean / Sharon McPhee / Vanessa Mitter / Susan Montgomery / Jane K Morter / Alice Neave / Jon Ridge / Sara Lee Roberts/ Henrietta Roeder / Angela Rumble / Hannah Savage / Clare Scott / Kim Scouller / Nima Shafiani / Adelaide Shalhope / Jack Shearing / Dorry Spikes / Mary Claire Smith / Christine Stark / Sharon Swaine / Florence Taylor / Marcia Teusink / Amanda Thesiger / Gwennan Thomas / Geoff Tibbs / Edit Toaso / Cassie Vaughan / Ally Wallace / Casey Walshe / Orla Whelan / Clare Wilson
The Opening Night - Saturday, 21 September
The Lido Stores welcomed around 500 people to the Lido Open 2024 drinks reception on 21 September for a vibrant, buzzy night of conversation.
Elliott Marsh's address introduced the evening:
Kristen [Healy]'s father Vincent had, as a young priest, left his native County Clare on Ireland's wild West Coast for a posting to the Philippines. There he met the woman he would go on to marry and have four children with, eventually returning to Ireland and then moving to London before bringing his young family to Margate in 1990. Here he established The Lido Stores off licence in the space we now occupy, and though he had left priesthood behind, he retained the same values in civilian life. His compassion and generosity of spirit saw The Lido Stores become a hub for the local community.
So it was that his first daughter Kristen, a fine art graduate who held studios in the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands, returned to Margate in 2017 and set about overhauling her late father's shop.
She established an art gallery in late 2021, keeping the Lido Stores name, and the inaugural Open followed in December that year. In a short span of years, the Lido Stores has once again become a community hub, this time for Margate's burgeoning artistic circle.
As the Open has grown in breadth and depth, we've seen its guest judges - Enzo Marra, Anne Ryan and Charles Williams - imprint their own artistic sensibilities on the selection and hang of the exhibition.
Vincent Hawkins has done the very same, his mantra of "play" greatly influencing the 2024 submissions. An extraordinary artist who recently moved to Margate and took up residence in Tracey Emin's TKE Studios, Vincent's involvement has clearly inspired a fresh influx of contemporary artists.
Vincent Hawkins: Lido Open 2024 guest judge
"This year marks the fourth Lido Open and I am truly very honoured and flattered to have been invited as guest 'judge'", said Vincent Hawkins. "It’s my first time in such a role and it’s been a great experience going through the work with Kristen.
"I am very glad to see such a broad range of works presented from 'minimal to maximal', if you like - figurative to abstract. This year the gallery received more than 1,200 entrants, which I understand is the most in the four years the Open has run.
"I selected Jack Shearing’s 'Night Walk' as the winner, after a period of deliberating over a lot of them that we have here. It’s so important to see paining in real life and not through a screen. You can never really 'get' all of a painting without some sort of direct tactile experience of it. It’s difficult to make a judgement or fully absorb it. I liked the fact that the painting was made in all just one go; a few sweeps of the brush and it was completed, unhesitatingly - it’s drawing with paint."
The Winner: Jack Shearing
Jack Shearing (b. 1998, pictured above) is an artist based in London. He studied at Central Saint Martins (2018-21) and the Royal Drawing School (2023-24) . He has exhibited work at the Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, NAG Walsall, APT Gallery, OHSH Projects and The Regency Townhouse, Brighton. He participated in the PADA Studios Residency in 2021 and has work held in the UAL Art collection.
Working with painting, drawing and photography, his work is concerned with aspects of memory and subjectivity in relation to space. Influenced by architectural spaces and forms, his work explores the human presence/absence of these spaces, exploring how perceptions of space are informed by phenomenological responses such as memory, atmosphere and the uncanny.
"It has been a pleasure to have my painting ‘Night Walk’ selected for the Lido Open 2024", he told The Lido Stores. "To have my work shown amongst so many artists I admire is a great privilege. It was a wonderful and unexpected surprise to have my painting awarded the prize. I extend my thanks to Vincent and Kristen for their thoughtful curation and for choosing my painting. The exhibition will be my first solo show and I’m excited to present my work at Lido Stores next year.
"My painting 'Night Walk' was inspired by the walk to my studio in East London. On my way there, I pass through an alleyway filled with large trees, illuminated by street lamps in the evening. I was captivated by the atmosphere of that place, particularly how the streetlights shimmer through the leaves and the sense of stillness at night. At the time, I was focusing on making these night paintings quickly, aiming for a certain immediacy and presence that you get when working spontaneously. The simplification that occurs when viewing a subject partially in darkness encouraged this decisive approach to painting, resulting in unexpected images that relate more to the atmosphere of the place than its naturalistic appearance.”
Dates for Jack Shearing’s winning solo exhibition at The Lido Stores will be announced in due course.