Goodbye Hairpin Hall, hello to A Pilgrim’s Progress.
Hairpin Hall home to much revelry, artistic endeavour and creative thinking, has finally closed its doors for one final time. The past 12 years have been a blast, where I have lived and worked, curated shows, hosted events and encouraged many artists and makers. Sadly, times have changed and the developers have moved in, causing me to move out. Until the very end the creative spirit has been kept alive, with a final sale of works by me and from my collection.
Although change can be challenging it will inevitably herald new beginnings. it will be a time to reassess and reinvent, a moment to progress.
The Phallen Stars, A Colouring Book
‘Phall if you but will, rise you must’, Finnegan’s Wake, James Joyce.
A colouring book that charts celebrities falling over, getting back up and going on with the show. Based on my own history of falling over I have created a limited edition including pencils and a badge. The stocking filler of the year. Published by Ambitious Outsiders Press
The Dog Said Nothing, an illustrated book of very short stories.
I have an exciting new book coming out entitled The Dog Said Nothing. It is a pocket sized volume from a much larger collection of short stories entitled I Met Some Woman. These are tall tales of my escapades with my small dog The Knight of the Hunter. The stories were originally published on facebook, written for the amusement of my friends, but now will be all in one place. Designed by Richard De Pesando and published by Ambitious Outsiders
Pin It To The Man
New set of badges coming your way, The Invisible Woman, The Dog Said Nothing and CASH IS KING. Wearable art to have your say on the establshment and society itself.
A Very Exciting Adventure
I was asked by some dear friends to create a brand image for their wedding day. The image of the groom’s VW Van, with its VEA number plate was the ideal subject. The image was used on a 2x2m lighbox, which the couple did their vows in front of. It was also used on invitations and T Shirts given as gifts and word by servers at the ceremony.
Coloured pencil on Acid Free Cartridge 2022
Amazing Things Happen Everyday, at The Stash Gallery
This small scale painting will be part of a group show at Vout O’Reenees 16-27June 2022. Work by members of the club will be exhibited in an exciting summer show. The Stash Gallery has exhibitions, launches and events by artists, writers and performers. See the link for details
The Invisible Woman meets… Flora
This series of prints based on the incredible, surreal paintings of 16th Century painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo. celebrates every woman through the eyes of The Invisible Woman who seeks to support the overlooked and the under represented in society. Prints of this digital collage are available.
The Lungs of Love
This large-scale drawing is now in the collection of Soho House Members Club and will be hung at Soho House Shoreditch Works as part of their permanent collection.
THIS IS NOT A TOY by The Outside World AllStars 23rd-26th September, Touchbase Gallery, 15 Tontine Street, Folkestone, CT20 1RN
The Outside World AllStars came to town, showing at Touchbase Gallery, Folkestone. This group of artists were brought together by me as The outside World AllStars, for a flash mob of a show, with an all-new line up of internationally acclaimed and established artists, exhibiting alongside some rising stars, for a long weekend of art, by the sea. This Is Not A Toy, featured an eclectic group of artists to show at Touchbase Care, community arts organisation. Artists namely, Sadie Hennessy, Julia Maddison, Antony Buonomo, Kelly-Anne Davitt, Maria Teresa Gavazzi, Doug Haywood, Julie Goldsmith, Julieta H-Adame, Alice Herrick and Toby Holmes, Kate Knight, Charlotte Chapman and Touchbase Care resident artist Thomas Sharrock.
The Hands of Dead Celebrities: Class of 2016
23rd-26th September, 12-6pm. Touchbase Gallery, 15 Tontine Street, Folkestone, CT20 1RN
This was the first ever showing of a large-scale piece, of 115 drawings that act a memorial to those celebrities who died in 2016, a year when social media users came together, united in online collective grief. Five years on the audience is given a chance to remember the great and the good, when they lived and how they died.
Flea Circus
11-26th September, at Alexis Dove Jewellery, 19 High St, Lewes BN7 2LN
The Flea Circus was a collaborative installation with Alexis Dove for her shop window. I reimagined the fleas transposed to the modern world, as DJ, high wire act, dancing, singing and fencing. All acts are based on traditional flea circus acts. The installation was pat of the Artwave Festival
Arcadia
26 August-12 September 2012, The Fishing Quarter Gallery, 201, Kings Road Arches, Brighton BN1 1NB
A group exhibition of contemporary painting, printmaking and works on paper. A post lockdown vision of an evergreen utopia, against a backdrop of the climate crisis.
This spring saw the Art Car Boot Fair return once again with its online edition whose theme was Flora and Fauna. With 200 artists showing the fair has been expanded to an international audience. We still miss the cut and thrust of the live event, where artists and visitors interact and enjoy all the fun of the fair.
I had fun showing the SUPERFLY series, from my forthcoming book. I introduced a new character into the mix, The Dear Little Puffin, as well as some old favourites The Naked Mole Rat and the Stag Beetle. Each edition is variable and every print hand finished with glass paint and glitter.
We are all looking forward to the next live event, whenever that may be
Support a Pay Rise for NHS Workers
I have created a generic image in collaboration with Pixel Press Studio, which is based on a Letterpress print that we gave as gifts to ICU nurses and doctors at the height of the Covid pandemic in 2020. This was an edition of ten that were printed at the studio and sent to me during lockdown, I then hand finished each one with glitter and sent them off to NHS workers.
In January 2021 we decided to expand on the idea to print an open edition poster type print to be sent to NHS staff rooms and surgeries across the UK. As well as this an edition of 350 fine art prints, which would be hand finished with glitter, to be given as a thank you to NHS workers. The number of the edition represents the 350 roles in the NHS.
There is also a download of the image to print at home.
As well as stickers and other merchandise for the public to buy.
This is an ongoing project is meant as a message of support and a thank you to NHS workers and in celebration of our fast dwindling ‘cradle to grave’ national treasure.
Click here to buy the posters online via PayPal.
Exhibition: 17 September – November
Private View: TBC
“The Invisible Woman meets… Black Eyed Susan” a solo show by C.A. Halpin exhibiting two series of paintings side by side at The WALLS.
The Invisible Woman meets… Bette Davis as Margot Channing, Oil on Gesso Panel, 2019
“The Invisible Woman meets…” is a series of paintings that are founded in a set of photographic collages, celebrating often unrecognised contemporary and historical female figures, including women artists, as well as myriad unsung heroines from every walk of life. The photographic collages are created by adding the artist’s green eyes onto an original image, addressing themes of female empowerment.
The paintings on show expand on this theme to become portraits of three women who have been overlooked or treated badly, as a result of their gender, age, or the colour of their skin. As the green eyes are overlaid onto the overlooked, this double portrait becomes an aesthetic sisterhood, removing the veil of obscurity as the invisible woman is noticed through the fierce, unblinking stare of The Invisible Woman. In the triptych we see Angelica Kaufmann an artist, born in the 18 th Century, Luscious, a white faced, black skinned 1960’s fashion model and Bette Davis as ageing actress Margot Channing, in the 1950’s Hollywood film, All About Eve.
“Black Eyed Susan” is this sumptuous psychedelic series of the twelve paintings dated from 2009-2012.
Below the surface of this dirty dozen painting, below the bubbles of desire are words wishes, saucy notes and obliterated desires. The viewer is hurled through space, passing pock marked planets and green streaked comets, a journey into the black hole on the edge of reality, through to the other side of a colourful cosmos. The paintings animate as the bubbles burst and drift into fields of pure colour.
The Black Eyed Susan series were to be a joint project with Halpin’s then lover, Mat Ducasse, who shortly after it’s inception abandoned the project and they went their separate ways. Halpin continued with the series which went on to chart the history of the end of the relationship from the passion and pleasure at the beginning, the storytelling, the messing about, describing the desires and tensions as tales were told and taboos broken, through to the intensity, anger and loss at the end of the affair. The written messages and images contained within the paintings are layered over and turned around until they become abstracted, distorted and almost impossible to read, yet giving the viewer an idea that they may be deciphered. Although as images they have neither top nor bottom, left nor right with the viewer guided through this cathartic tale only by the forms that emerge only to disappear true to the fashion in which they were painted.
Black Eyed Susan, Acyrlic Inks on Canvas, 2009-12
C.A. Halpin works across a broad spectrum of media including painting, drawing, sculpture and writing. The painting “Lungs of Love” from her previous show at The WALLS entitled “Sainted Love”, 2019 is displayed at the main entrance of the building.
The Lungs of Love, Graphite on Paper, 2011
THE BARGE HOUSE
46a De Beauvoir Crescent
London
N1 5RY
0203 771 7660
Vout-O-Reenee’s – Autumn Art Market
I will be showing some GLITTERTASTIC handfunished prints inc BLACK LIVES MATTER, GLitterLout, Superfly and Isolation Heroes. Plus other surprise fancy goods…
Please purchase a £2 ticket here as numbers are limited, while under tier 2 art business is allowed to continue in an appropriately distanced manner.
Artists: Alice Herrick, Carson Parkin-Fairley, Harry Pye & Chris Tosic, Joseph Sakoilsky, KeelerTornero, Mai Sanchez, Mandee Gage, Michael Coles, Paul Sakoilsky, Roberta Dolinska.
Saturday 24th October 2020: 4 – 9.30pm and Sunday 25th October 2020: 4 – 9pm
The Stash Gallery
Vout-O-Reenee’s
The Crypt
30 Prescot Street
London E1 8BB
Nearest stations: Aldgate East and Tower Hill
The Art Car Boot Fair
Please visit my page on the infamous Art Car Boot Fair. The online event is open until Sunday 11th October
https://www.artcarbootfair.com/artist/c-a-halpin/
