Hinterland at Ovoid studio 2024

The previously unknown

Something special happened on the outskirts of Brighton in 2024. Hinterland was a themed show of sculpture, drawing and painting that took place at Ovoid studio –  a shed in a back garden in leafy Ovingdean on the edge of the Brighton metropolis. The show was also part of the Artists Open Houses festival that takes place annually every weekend in May all over the city.

I hosted the work of seven other Brighton, Sussex and UK artists as well as my own. I cleared and prepared the shed during the spring as an exhibition space and used parts of the garden as an art populated corridor that led visitors up to it for all the weekends of the AoH event in May. You could follow my progress towards the open weekends and events on the Ovoid studio Instagram account

Rural territory

Look up the word Hinterland and you will find that it is a German word that originally meant The rural territory surrounding an urban area, especially a port*. 

In some ways artists are always working in an artistic Hinterland, and often hoping for an invitation to the ‘urban area’ of the art world. But the Hinterland is generally the productive place that everything is taken from to be used in the centre. The centre needs the Hinterland, as much as vice-versa – it’s a relationship of co-dependence, nothing could happen in the centre if the Hinterland did not supply it.

Remote areas 

Artists are tasked with mining their own inner remote areas, we expect them to find obscure and engaging ideas and present them to us in a visual form.  All the artists in the Hinterland show are bringing their own versions of that endeavour. The selection of artworks on show represent a body of work that is about exploration and discovery, finding things that were previously unknown.”

Hinterland – what does it mean?

I have written more about how I chose the Hinterland theme and here’s a set of definitions of the word from Wiktionary to consider:

• The land immediately next to, and inland from, a coast.
• The rural territory surrounding an urban area, especially a port.
• A remote or undeveloped area, a backwater.
• That which is unknown or unexplored about someone.
• Anything vague or ill-defined, especially something that is ill understood.