Mother and daughter, Joy Fox and Georgia Flowers, co-curate their Open House!
Hi Georgia. You and Joy, your mother, have both taken part as Open Houses in previous festivals. What’s it like curating an Open House as mother and daughter?
It has been a great experience curating the open house together. We are both so passionate about the art we like and displaying it to its best potential. The reason I started doing my own open house ’12 Scott Road’ in 2018 was because of being inspired by the show my mum Joy put together year after year in her own venue ‘Festive Fox’. This year we have co-curated Fox Forward Flowers & Friends Joy’s house in Kingsley Road.
Fox Flowers Forward and Friends Open House
After a few years of having a good go at it myself, I feel like I have developed a good eye and attention to detail as well as earned my mum’s trust in being involved in decision making, because she can see that I can do a good job when left to my own devices!
Photo credit: Syl Ojalla
Did you share decisions on selecting artists and how work would be displayed? How were the decisions made?
The moment Joy decided to open her house, we excitedly agreed on several artists and makers that we knew we both loved and then in the weeks after that, Joy came to me with some additional ones that she liked the idea of having. Fortunately I completely agreed with all of her suggestions and before we knew it we had a full house! As for how the work was displayed, we didn’t see eye to eye on a few things at first but I reminded myself that Joy knows her house best and let her take the lead. When finalising things in the last couple of days before opening, there were a few suggestions I made to change little things which I didn’t think looked quite right, and Joy would listen to me and we’d always try different things out until it looked right, and we always agreed in the end. I think we really helped each other when it came to displaying each others work interestingly, which was really nice!
Georgia Flowers – Lino prints. Photo credit: Syl Ojalla
Have you learned anything useful for yourselves or for your work through collaborating on your Open House?
I think Joy has learnt that props like browsers and card racks are necessary for displaying certain items well, and I have learnt that mixing up different artists’ wall art within the same space can work a lot better than having the same artists work all in one uniform section.
Photo credit: Syl Ojalla
What have been the highlights for you so far during this Winter’s Open House festival?
Working together has been such a rewarding experience and we realise even more than we already did what a great team we make! We both know we couldn’t have done this without each other, so seeing this show come together is truly a celebration of our close bond.
Joy Fox and Georgia Flowers
Visit Fox Forward Flowers & Friends at:
53 Kingsley Road, Brighton, BN1 5NH
