Karl Allen tells us about his Open House and new gallery: Stow and Rift
Your Open House for the AOH Winter festival is also the opening show for your new Stow and Rift Gallery. Would you like to tell us about your vision for the gallery and how it came
to be?
I wanted to convert the ground floor and basement of my house into a gallery for sometime now, a place where artists could come and network with each other. The AOH winter show was a great way for me to give it a soft opening to see how it might work. The house is small and the stairways are tight and setting up a gallery in such a unique space could be challenging so this is like a pilot to see how it works.
Can you tell us about the three words?
The gallery name is 2 of the words that I would give guests to find the back entrance to the house when I originally thought of creating the entrance to the gallery from quadrophenia alley.
The opening show is an exhibition of your own work – can you tell us about this show and also a little about your work more generally?
These paintings in this show are all newly created this year and the show is entitled “Confessions of a methlete”. They all depict moments in time covering addiction and redemption.
Your house is pretty unusual! How does your work and ideas for the gallery reflect the specific character of the house?
The gallery is still a very unique Brighton home and so I wanted to keep it that way and move away from the white wall aesthetic. The low ceilings and tight stairways adds to the playfulness and homeliness of the space and this makes the experience very immersive. I’m hoping that participating artists that use the space to show in 2026 will take these cues to curate a more immersive gallery experience.
What do you hope Open Houses visitors will enjoy most about the experience of visiting your exhibition?
The exhibition has a tour at 11am and at 2pm for visitors and 4pm for a private press tour. Each tour will be different but they will centre around taking visitors through my journey of addiction and recovery. I get inspired by talking to other artists about their process and it often jogs something in the back of my mind that I hadn’t considered so I hope that visitors can reflect on my journey and my process and maybe it could inspire their process a little.
Have a look at Karl’s video tour of his work in Stow and Rift gallery
Visit: Stow and Rift Gallery
7 Bartholomews, Brighton, BN1 1HG