An uncertain future

The artists based at Rye’s Creative Centre face a big challenge. The landlord at the former Freda Gardham school site is expected to announce plans to redevelop the site, and whilst renting out the classrooms to painters and crafts people was always going to be  temporary, what does the building’s potential demolition mean for those who work there?

Over the coming weeks Rye News will be hearing from some of the artists. First up, Nick Archer.

I moved into my studio at Rye Creative Centre on a cold February morning back in 2009. I was the first artist to move into the building, a decommissioned school building handed over to new management to create a “centre of excellence” for the arts.

Within a year demand was such that the studios were all taken, and the centre now known as Rye Creative Centre started to flourish. The idea was simple: the school which is owned by East Sussex CC was rented out to the management team (then B&R Productions) for a peppercorn rent. The management then rented out the classrooms to artists and crafts people at an affordable rate, and this rent covered the maintenance of the building plus the costs of hosting an arts program of exhibitions, musical and theatrical performances. The program was further enhanced by the renting out of two of the classrooms, called the “Art room” and the “Print room”, for art classes. I run weekly life drawing classes, painting and portrait classes and print classes in these rooms at the centre. This, along with the events that were run in the theatre, opened up the building to the public and so Rye Creative Centre as an asset to the community of Rye began to develop. Normally artists’ studios are quiet uninhabited spaces, and the artist’s life can be a solitary experience. The joy of working at RCC is you have up to 35 artists working in the building exchanging ideas and even collaborating on projects.

As my classes developed, I found I had students enquiring about the availability of studios in the centre. Students who had previously only dreamt of having a studio and becoming a “professional” artist suddenly had the courage to take on a studio and change their lives in a positive way. This is one of the real jewels in the crown of RCC, that in the studios there are artists who are at the beginning of their journey and learning their craft, working alongside those who have been in the arts for many years with a wide range of skills and experience to share. There are now several artists in the building who exhibit internationally and are highly acclaimed.

From day one the artists knew that this was only a temporary arrangement. The land that the school building was on was earmarked for house building once the sea defences were strengthened. So, when the diggers started work on the sea defences last year, we all knew that the time was getting near for a new challenge, and so it is that on the June 30 2025 we will all be put on one- month rolling contracts signalling the end for RCC.

Or is it?

The strength of the bonds created between the artists at RCC, and the wider community are such that we feel certain the centre has a future probably in a different building but with the same ethos. Already positive discussions are underway with developers, politicians and the artists to keep the centre and its activities together and to develop and strengthen these activities further.

And so a day in my life is divided in 3 ways: firstly dealing with meetings and discussions about everything I have discussed above; secondly in teaching art to up to fifty students a week in London and then in the “Art Room” at Rye Creative Centre; and finally my main practise which is my studio work where I paint and make prints which are then for sale through the galleries I work with.

My studio days usually start with a coffee discussing and exchanging ideas with other artists in the RCC kitchen. When in my studio, I am usually working on three or four paintings at the same time and as I have one of the larger studios at RCC my paintings can be quite large in scale. I often start with a series of photographs and drawings to create some visual ideas. Recently these have been focused on some images I made from a walk in Switzerland early this year. The walk had been around a lake in the Swiss Alps, and I had been struck by the beauty of the water and the reflections in the pristine water. The lake was lined by skeletal trees which were bare of leaves and framed the lake in a way that the beauty of the landscape seemed magical but fragile. It is this fragility of the beauty that I attempt to capture in my current paintings which are pictured in my studio. Over the last few weeks, I have been working on some monotypes in my studio. This is a process where I print marks made on a piece of Perspex and transferred onto paper to create one off prints known as a monotype. The monotypes have been selected to be shown at Woolwich Contemporary print fair in London in November so giving me an opportunity to have my work shown in the public domain.

After a full day of making work in the studio, a group of the artists often return to the kitchen for a chat about the day. The conversation often starts with how the work has progressed or how the day was a struggle with a painting. But without fail the conversations will return to the future of Rye Creative Centre and how to move forward with a future for the studio holders and the events that we hold.

All enquiries about Nick’s work or his classes can be sent to narcher07@btinternet.com and his paintings can be seen on www.nicholasarcher.com

Image Credits: Nick Archer .