Artist Nnena Kalu carefully inspects vibrant, multicoloured plastic materials in her studio. Shelves and bins around them are filled with similar colourful materials. Industrial spools are visible in the foreground.

Open House 2024

8–9 November

Join us for Open House: A two-day programme of open studios, screenings, workshops, DJs and special events.

All events are free. All welcome.

Friday 8 November 2024, 4–10 pm

Open Studios, throughout the building | 4–7 pm

Our community of on-site artists and cultural tenants are opening their studios to the public. Contributors include:

ActionSpace, Immanuel Adelowo, Veeda Ahmed, Ain Bailey, Linda Bell, Henry Bradley, Babajide Brian, Whiskey Chow, Juliette Ezaoui, Donald Fasanya, Holly Graham, Ben Gomes, Pete Gomes, Nicky Harris, James Heath, Hsi-Nong Huang, Steph Huang, Nnena Kalu, Pardip Kapil, Ibrahim Keelson, Rene Matić, Alicia Reyes Mcnamara, Ana Milenkovic, Maz Murray, Meera Shakti Osborne, Sola Olulode, Chandrakant Patel, Prajakta Potnis, Emily Pope, Shamica Ruddock, Nicolás Said, Lasmin Salmon, Kwaga Sillingi, Nick Smith, Robin Smith, Bolanle Tajudeen (Black Blossoms), Markus Vater, Adia Wahid, Claudia Williams, Derek Williams, Ossie Williams and Linda Zagidulina.

Drop-in, no booking required

A small group of people sits in a dimly lit room, watching an abstract, colourful projection on a large screen. The room has several black chairs arranged in rows, and the presentation appears to be in an art gallery or exhibition space.

Still/Life: Artists’ Film Showreel, Project Studio | 4–7 pm

This special screening programme of film and moving image showcases works by members of our onsite community of artists and current artists in residence. Still/Life explores time-based works that engage with the concept of moving image. Participating artists include Whiskey Chow, The Gleaners Collective, Holly Graham, Pete Gomes, Hsi-Nong Huang, Maz Murray, Prajakta Potnis, Emily Pope, Nicolás Said and Nick Smith.

The films are shown on a continuous loop.

Drop-in, no booking required

Lap-See Lam, Floating Sea Palace, Gallery | 4–7 pm

This major new exhibition by Lap-See Lam (b. 1990) is the first-ever institutional exhibition of the artist’s work in the UK. The commission develops from Lap-See Lam's presentation for the Nordic Pavilion at the 60th Biennale di Venezia, 2024. 

The exhibition continues a cycle of works inspired by the real setting of the ‘Sea Palace’, a three-storey floating Chinese restaurant in the shape of a dragon. The ‘Sea Palace’ was commissioned in the 1990s, sailing from Shanghai to Europe and later docking at Dreamers’ Quay in Gothenburg. Facing economic challenges and decay, it was eventually repurposed as a haunted funhouse. 

Drop-in, no booking required.

Intricate black and white sketch of a surreal scene with multiple hands forming a central structure. Surrounding are various fantastical and whimsical elements, including stairs, ladders, small figures, and distant sites, all set on a landscape resembling a stage.

Nicolás Said Oracle Card Drawing Workshops, Event Studio | 4–6 pm

Current artist-in-residence, Nicolás Said will be showing his work-in-progress and and offering a unique oracle card drawing workshop.

Oracle cards are divination tools used for guidance, reflection, and insight. They often involve archetypes and symbols that tap into the subconscious. The workshop will use oracle cards as a starting point for drawing exercises, emphasising the ease and spontaneity that drawing can bring to your artistic practice. You will explore thoughts, dreams, memories, or words while becoming familiar with divination and reflective practice, tapping into the collective consciousness and expanding your individual artistic vocabulary. You can take home anything you create during the session.

Drop-in, no booking required

Three people are observing artwork displayed on a white wall in a small room with a large window. There are some potted plants and various art supplies on a shelf by the window. The room is well lit with natural light coming through the window.

Curator-led Artists’ Studio and Exhibition Tour, throughout the building | 5–6 pm

Join Dot Zhihan Jia (Curator, Studios and Residencies), Laura Harford, Curator (Civic and Learning) and Nicola Wright (Curator, Exhibitions) for a tour of Studio Voltaire’s building, studios, facilities and programmes.

Drop-in, no booking required

A woman with vibrant red hair and wearing a black top and leather pants is smiling and posing with one hand on her hip at a lively party. Others around her are chatting and dancing. Various drinks are visible on a table in the foreground.

Live music and DJ sets by CHOOC LY, Café and Bar | 7–10 pm

Join us for an evening of music and dancing with sets from CHOOC LY, forging astral connections through kaleidoscopic spectrums of club music and futuristic sounds, including baile funk and Cambodian/Chinese/Thai dance-pop, Bouyon + more. Plus, enjoy specialty cocktails by Crispin at Studio Voltaire.

The event is free but booking is required

An artist focuses on painting a colourful abstract piece on a canvas in a studio. His work features bold, geometric shapes in vibrant hues of blue, red, and pink. The studio is filled with colourful materials and other art pieces, adding to the creative atmosphere.

Saturday 9 November 2024, 10 am–5 pm

Open Studios, throughout the building | 10 am–5 pm

Our community of on-site artists and cultural tenants are opening their studios to the public.

Drop-in, no booking required

Lap-See lam, Floating Sea Palace, Gallery | 10 am–5 pm

Drop in, no booking required

Still/Life: Artists’ Film Showreel, Project Studio | 10 am–5 pm

Drop-in, no booking required.

A person wearing a blue shirt is using red scissors to cut out a page from an open book on a cluttered table. Various art supplies and paper materials are scattered around, indicating a crafting or design project in progress.

Shadow Puppetry with Amy Leung, Event Studio | 10.30 am–12.30 pm

Join artist Amy Leung for a shadow puppetry workshop in response to our current exhibition Floating Sea Palace by Lap-See Lam. You are invited to design a backdrop, create shadow puppets and experiment with storytelling through shadow play. This event is suitable for children, young people, families and people of all ages.

The event is free and drop-in but booking is recommended. If you are under 16 you must be accompanied by a parent/guardian.

ActionSpace 25th Anniversary at Studio Voltaire: Talk and Screening, ActionSpace Studio | 11 am–12 pm

Charlotte Hollinshead, Head of Artist Development, leads a relaxed talk and screening on the history of the ActionSpace studio at Studio Voltaire.

ActionSpace is an exceptional visual arts organisation that supports learning-disabled artists. It seeks out and unlocks talent, creates opportunities and enables these artists to realise their potential. ActionSpace has three dedicated studios in London and has been at Studio Voltaire since 1999.

Drop-in, no booking required

Tai Shani Guest Shopkeeping, House of Voltaire | 12.30–1.30 pm

Turner prize winner Tai Shani will be guestkeeping shopkeeping at House of Voltaire. Shani’s work has been shown extensively in Britain and internationally.

House of Voltaire commissions and sells unique artworks, limited edition prints and specially commissioned homewares, clothing and accessories by artists and designers of local and world notoriety, including Shani. All purchases support our charity’s world-renowned artistic and public programmes.

Drop-in, no booking required

Food as home and heritage: Angela Hui and Anna Sulan Masing in conversation, Events Studio | 1.30–2.30 pm

Writer and editor Angela Hui is joined in conversation by writer, poet and academic Anna Sulan Masing. Hui and Masing will discuss their respective writing and research, exploring heritage, home and belonging through stories about food.

Hui’s 2022 memoir TAKEAWAY documents her own family’s Chinese takeaway in rural Wales, recounting her childhood living and working there in the 1990s. The takeaway, and its dishes, embody Hui’s experiences of otherness, but also resilience, family, and relationships. Her upcoming projects include a wide-ranging series exploring Chinatowns in the UK.

Masing has developed numerous projects around food and creating communities: her upcoming book Chinese And Any Other Asian considers the multiple and varied experiences that make up East and South East Asian identity in Britain. Her work addresses identity, race and gender and looks to decolonise the cultural spaces we live in.

This event forms part of the public programmes for Floating Sea Palace by Lap-See Lam.

This event is free, but booking is required.

A person in a striped shirt and green scarf sits and gestures while talking to two standing individuals in a room decorated with large, dark, expressive art pieces on the walls. The standing individuals wear coats and hats. The setting appears to be an art studio or gallery.

Curator-led Artists’ Studio Tour, throughout the building | 2.30–3.30 pm

Drop-in, no booking required.

Juliette Ezaoui and Ana Milenkovic Guest Shopkeeping, House of Voltaire | 3–4 pm

Onsite artists Juliette Ezaoui and Ana Milenkovic will be guestkeeping shopkeeping at House of Voltaire. The pair recently exhibited together as part of our ongoing In House exhibition programme.

Drop-in, no booking required

Artist Talks, Event Studio | 3–5 pm

Join us for a series of artist talks by our current awardees of the LOEWE FOUNDATION / Studio Voltaire Award. They will discuss their ongoing practice and current and upcoming projects. Participating artists include: Prajakta Potnis, Emily Pope, Nick Smith, Babajide Brian and Shamica Ruddock.

This event is free, but booking is required

Please note that filming/photography is taking place for promotional and archival purposes.

The photographs and recordings made are likely to appear on our website.

For further information please contact info@studiovoltaire.org.

  1. Chooc Ly Tan is a multi-disciplinary artist, DJ and voyager who works across moving image, DJ sets, radio podcasts and club nights. Her practice sets out to create new visions of reality by subverting or repurposing systems and tools we use to understand the world around us – such as concepts and methodologies from physics, politics and music.
Her recent film commission On The Offbeat (2021) explores those disruptive and productive moments of suspension that surround syncopation, tracing the significance of the offbeat through Vogue Fem, diasporic rhythms, critical theory, and insect behaviour.

Chooc Ly’s moving image practice is complemented by and often merges with her DJing and music outputs as an artist and event producer. She also runs the platform Décalé that puts on evenings of experimental sounds/visuals, in collaboration with cultural producer Anne Duffau. Together they aim to showcase visual artists, music producers and DJs who are disadvantaged by societal norms. Décalé means: 'Being displaced in space and time’. She is an associate editor for Ying Xiang 映象 journal, a research project reflecting on the influence of Asia in contemporary culture. Her work has recently been shown at Kunsthall Oslo, in Norway; CCA/EdUHK in Hong Kong; and Chale Wote Festival in Accra. As a DJ, Chooc Ly performed at Swallow, a queer nightclub in LA; Regenerative Feedback at WORM, Rotterdam; The Living Art Museum, in Reykjavik, Iceland; Queering Now, London; and LAVA LAKE 24H RAVE (livestream).
Talks she’s given include the Sonic Culture programme at CalArts (California Institute of the Arts), and Signals: Experiments in Sound at the Tate Modern, London.
She is a Lecturer in Fine Art, currently teaching on the MFA Fine Art programme at Goldsmiths university and the MA Photography programme at The Royal College of Art, in London; she is also a tutor on the BFA programme at The Ruskin School of Art, university of Oxford.

    “My first name is pronounced Shock-Lee”.

  2. Amy is a London-based artist working across sculpture, drawing and workshops to explore the articulation and communication of joy. Working in art education, she is interested in the intersections in which community, craft, objects and cultural identity meet. Material exploration and playing collaboratively are key to her practice, with ideas emerging through making together. Her favourite materials are fabric, paper, ink and clay, and she is interested in how we move through spaces and places. 

     Amy has previously worked with schools, families and communities on projects at Studio Voltaire, Bow Arts, The National Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, Royal Society of Sculptors, Camden Art Centre, Firstsite, South London Gallery, Towner Eastbourne and MK Gallery. She has a MA in Art and Design in Education from the IOE, UCL. Comment end 

  3. Hui is an award-winning writer and editor. She was the former food and drink editor at Time Out and lifestyle reporter at HuffPost. Her work has been widely published in the BBC, gal-dem, Guardian, Financial Times, Independent, Lonely Planet, Metro, National Geographic Traveller, Refinery29, and Vice, among others. Her first non-fiction book TAKEAWAY: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter was BBC Radio 4's book of the week and The Guardian, i News and Waterstones book of the year.

  4. Masing is an academic, writer, poet and podcaster. She writes about food, drink and the hospitality industry for publications globally, including the BBC, Guardian, and Vittles. Her podcast, Taste of Place, explores nostalgia and re-looking at the past through the story of pepper. Masing’s book Chinese and Any Other Asian: Exploring East and South East Asian Identity in Britain will be published in February 2025.

  5. Read Studio Voltaire's full access information by visiting studiovoltaire.org/visit/access

Studio Voltaire
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Studio Voltaire is closed until 10 am on Thursday 2 January 2025

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