Brighton Palermo Remix

In a major Brighton Festival and HOUSE 2012 co-commission, this internationally renowned artist draws connections between Sicilian street festival decoration and the vernacular of Brighton’s Regency architecture.

For many years David Batchelor has looked to the streets for inspiration. Using everyday objects of the modern urban environment – from salvaged light boxes to neon signage – his works celebrate the ordinary, the lurid and trashy whilst being, in themselves, mesmerizingly beautiful. This latest site-specific installation draws on traditional festival decorations encountered by the artist in Palermo, Italy, where filigree timber structures, punctuated with hundreds of small coloured lights, are hung across the streets.

Brighton Palermo Remix is presented in Hove’s Regency Town House – a Grade I listed terraced house (1824–28) currently under major restoration. The work makes links between the artist’s current fascination with festival illumination and the building’s period architecture, where classical details feature in decorative motifs. It also plays on ideas of the public and domestic; the familiar and overlooked; and touches on the famed hedonism of the city’s Regency past.

Batchelor has exhibited widely in the UK, Europe, the Americas and Asia, including Moma, New York and the Bienal de São Paulo.

For more information on David Batchelor and HOUSE visit www.aoh.org.uk

Don't miss the Artists Talk: David Batchelor
Tue 15 May, 18.30 - 19.30, Old Courthouse, 118 Church Street, Brighton
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