High Street Happenings Artist Residency Programme

Round 4

Selected artist: Harriette Meynell

We're excited to announce Harriette as our fourth artist in residence at Arbeit Studios, Palmers Green as part of the High Street Happenings Residency Programme.

Harriette's practice incorporates sound, installation, drawing, printmaking, performance and photography. With a socially engaged practice, themes such as gentrification and community run through her work. She's shown work in a range of traditional and non-traditional spaces such as Tate Modern and an east London garage.

Project Proposal:

To realise new, site specific work based on the shops in Palmers Green and the people that run and frequent them. An initial aim is to work with local shopkeepers to explore the outside and inside of their shops, with particular emphasis on the threshold, and what makes people go in, or not. The focus is not re-imagining the high street per se, but better understanding, and appreciating, what is already there, including the typically unseen, and to create alternative narratives of familiar spaces.

Final Exhibition ‘a line of thought’ will run from Friday 29th Nov - Sunday 15th Dec 2024. Open weekends only, 12-4pm.

As part of the residency Harriette ran free community workshops:

3D High Street Collage

Explore the Surfaces of Palmers Green

Deep Listening and Sound Drawing

Round 3

Selected artists: DYSPLA

We're excited to announce DYSPLA as our third artists in residence at Arbeit Studios, Palmers Green as part of the High Street Happenings Residency Programme.

DYSPLA makes art and conducts research into the Neurodivergent Aesthetic with a focus on short form narrative. They work in the following mediums: Digital, Print, Photography, Poetry, Performance, XR (VR, 360º Film, AR, MR), Moving Image, Theatre and Installation to elucidate a new artistic aesthetic defined by the cognitive difference of neurodivergence.

Project Proposal:
To explore the stories and histories of disabled communities of Palmers Green and surrounding areas in Enfield. They will collaborate with our community to create poetry based on the stories and histories within the area, which will accompany digital sculptures based on captured physicality of the members of our local disabled community.

Final Exhibition will run from Friday 16th Aug - Sunday 8th Sept 2024

As part of the residency DYSPLA will run free community workshops, more information to follow.

Round 2

Selected artist: Tope Olufemi

Tope Olufemi is a multi-disciplinary artist based in North London. Their work spans sound, photography and journalism. They are mainly interested in electronic music - the ways that we organise to experience it, and the experiments undertaken in its creation. Their writing has been featured in i-D, Crack, and Mixmag alongside other publications. They recently contributed sound design to Simisoluwa Akande’s ‘The Archive: Queer Nigerians’. Through workshop facilitation and their club night ‘Happy Survival’, they aim to encourage others to contribute to the canon of the Black diasporic experimental/electronic music through creation and participation.

27th April 2024, Local Pleasures, Local Treasures and 4th May Industrial Thinking

4th - 26th May 2024, Tope Olufemi Give and Take Exhibition

Photos by Katrina Campbell

Round 1

Selected artist: Abi Ola

Abi Ola is a multidisciplinary artist that specialises in oil and acrylic painting, drawing, installation, photography, screen printing, and fabric collage. Her paintings are often of clothing patterns, sometimes with a faceless figure present. Abi is inspired by old family clothing, William Morris textiles, African Dutch wax textiles, traditional African textiles, emojis, her imagination and Nature.

20th and 21st January 2024, Abstract Fabric Collage Painting Workshops

2nd - 25th February 2024, Abi Ola High Street Happenings Exhibition

Photos by Katrina Campbell