An artistic reunion of siblings David and Roger Phillpot. David’s recent work in sculpture is concerned with ideas of refuge, enclosure, and escape. His explorations of visual metaphor employ the image of the Ark to embody notions of containment, and horn-like forms suggest conduits of communication. Roger’s paintings and installation draw upon a rich vein of memories centering around his childhood in Brighton during the post war years. Through the act of painting he recreates his earlier self as a boy of nine or ten, along with family members and significant places which form the fabric of this sometimes poignant narrative.

Meet the Artists: David and Roger Phillpot discuss their work and answer visitors’ questions. Saturday, 27 January, 2 pm in the gallery, free.

Anna Thorell’s sculptural ceramic pieces are inspired by architecture and a subjective experience of place. Developing her work around the houses she has inhabited, the artist recalls and distills the essence of each home. The work has evolved out of an interest in historical sites and ruins, and the sense that structural elements--windows, doors, roofs, etc. can contain a meaning beyond their obvious function.

Tanera Bryden makes paintings that are influenced by contemporary audiolandscapes. Sound saturates our everyday lives; unceasing, it emanates from the streets, open windows, and doorways. A tinny noise surrounds us, almost unnoticed, emitted by radios and televisions, along phone lines, and via satellite. The paintings are momentary visualisations of this invisible clamour.

Seven artists forge a twisting path through the realms of fantasy and reality, drawing upon childhood memories, popular culture and computer representations for inspiration. Painted, drawn, assembled and photographic images range from the profound to the playful, offering a colourful and entertaining response to aspects of contemporary life.

The artists are Melanie Absolon, James Brocklehurst, Jason Fitzpatrick, Simon Lord, Sarah McCutcheon, Michael Russell, and Emma Whittaker.

Bill Hodgson creates a sequence of life-size images relating to the Stations of the Cross. Utilising photography, video and stone fragments, this dramatic installation draws upon the Gospels to create a site-specific piece illuminating the artist’s personal interpretation of these events. Passion places viewers in the position of being eye witnesses to a human drama, and invites us to reflect upon the mystery and complex symbolism underlying the Easter observance.

Intimate paintings and lithographs by Maria Pavledis incorporate religious symbols and icons, childhood memories, relationships and domestic settings. Underlying the work is an uneasy sense of the powerlessness and disillusionment which sometimes haunts our recollections of early years.

Inspired by rings of trees found locally and around the world, the sacred grove will be structured around a series of tabernacle-like rooms built into the gallery. Taking their form from the negative shapes between trees, each room will embody a particular quality that enables people to live together harmoniously. The project is being produced collaboratively by members of a number of groups based in Brighton and Hove, including Threshold Women's Mental Health Initiative, and will also involve artists and the local community, with guidance from organisers Dinah Sheriff and Chris Cook.

EVIDENCE - Farina Alam		Farina Alam. The Pin Story is a first-person narrative based around a series of photographic silkscreen images and text, and arises from the artist's experience of an ongoing medical treatment. Coming to terms with the physical transformations effected by chemotherapy, the artist embeds images of her changing appearance within intensely coloured fields of layered marks and gestures. Fragmented sentences border the images, formal yet vivid expressions of a disoriented state in which the body speaks with a heightened clarity.

Circuit boards and computer monitors are transformed into cabinets of curiosity in a mixed media exhibition by Phil Toy. Part archaeologist, part scavenger, the artist presents us with the detritus of 20th century technology in a new light, through the juxtaposition of artefacts representing different phases of human evolution. Here you will find clear evidence that the increasing sophistication of our technology does not necessarily correspond to a linear evolution in consciousness. Dan Powell It could be the scene of a crime, but the tiny flickering fairy lights conjure up festivities and other associations. The dissonance between a possibly violent event and the tenuous, lingering evidence tests our powers of logic and imagination.

Foyer: Waheed Pall Celebrity faces / transcendent icons

Finding inspiration in advertisements, women's magazines and home catalogues, Nadine Feinson uses images of the female body to examine notions of virtue and failed virtue through large scale watercolours, acrylic paintings, and folded paper sculptures. The work looks at self-image and the fictions within which we encase ourselves, and finally, the point at which the façade slips and we are left with the inappropriate, the clumsy and absurd.

REPEAT REPEAT - Adam Wainwright

With motifs ranging from a praying mantis to a cockroach arranged as an extravagant flower, Lisa Jones and Ashley Seymour fill their canvasses with quirky, exuberant paintings of a monumental scale. When not engaged in a debates over the origins of such colours as lime green and candy-floss pink, this duo share an interest in exploring the possibilities still alive in the language of painting: pattern, scale, and the myriad forms of visual representation. Come along to see what they've discovered, and prepare for a cool and refreshing summer treat.

WAIT/WEIGHT Sheila Wyne

A dramatic installation by Alaska-based artist Sheila Wyne explores the psychic terrain between birth and death. The work is a meditation on the dual human condition of waiting…to be born, for enlightenment, for luck…and being "weighted" by gravity back to earth, our origins and destiny. Wyne builds upon her background in theater design and site-specific public art in a piece which combines text and projected images, natural and found objects, light and shadow. As viewers, we witness our own bemused and helpless state as it is reflected back to us in a series of haunting and mysterious tableaux.

Colour, space, and the interplay between the two are central issues in paintings by Sara Fincham. Vibrant, richly pigmented canvases and painted objects illuminate the walls and invite us to consider the properties and possibilities of the spectrum.

NEO-PIX Jayne Wils

This annual exhibition showcases the latest work from artists based at Phoenix, and serves as a reference for visitors to the Open Weekend on October 19 - 21. You'll find a lively mix of paintings, sculpture, photography, digital and traditional printmaking, drawing, installation, design, fine craft and more, representing a good cross-section of media and approaches from the southeast's largest studio group. Rounding out the picture will be additional background information about each artist. Visit the exhibition, then plan your route through the open studios.

This highly popular annual event includes open studios, free workshops, music, and a café. Visit the workspaces of over 80 artists, including members of Phoenix, Maze and Red Herring studios, plus the Brighton Film School. This is an excellent chance to meet the artists, view work in progress, and find out how they do it. There will also be a range of free workshops for people of all ages and backgrounds, and information on arts classes offered at Phoenix. In the midst of this festive atmosphere you can refresh your senses in the café, or listen to some strange and unusual music.

UNTITLED Paul Lambert

Paul Lambert's large-scale colour photographs explore the interactions between adults and children, and in particular the attempts made to shield children from issues which are viewed as taboo: sex, violence, death, disease, and trauma. Whilst perhaps suggesting that children are more resilient that we think, the artist aims to provoke the viewer's response through the presentation of confrontational but ambiguous images which leave space for personal engagement and interpretation.

The female nude, tenuously balanced, is the recurrent image in recent photographs by Sally Bream. A series of black-and-white prints show a carefully considered sculptural environment in which the artist has placed herself, but the well-ordered effect is frequently disrupted by deliberate shifts of perspective and orientation, and an otherwise vulnerable and passive figure of a woman meets your eyes with a steady gaze. Foyer: Work by Affiliate Members of Phoenix.

"D.I.Y. desire, territory shrines, gender weapons, flock obsession. Magnified abandonment, mental fences and Dominant Pets."

Artists from Maze Studios go domestic in December as they reflect upon the implications of being "housebound". A series of individual environments constructed within the gallery space will contain the paraphernalia and ephemera of home life, as perceived and reconstructed by its inmates.