Exhibitions

Fantabulosa

Fantabulosa was a lively series of 3 events, an exhibition and workshop at the Forum, a wellbeing, workshop and exhibition tent at Pride 2019 and an cumulative exhibition of works created at the NNUH.

The Dandies created a new body of work, including visual art, wearable art, backdrops, art interactions & roaming performances. An ongoing art collaboration throughout all our Fantabulosa events with the public, facilitated by us, created a large-scale mixed media artwork of the parade around the city centre. The audience was invited to draw themselves in the parade, creating a visual record of pride 2019.

A section of the Dandies’ pop-up Fantabulosa exhibition, showing the workshop area and art shop at the Forum. On the right is one of three large vinyl printed of paintings hanging from the railing of the upper balcony running around the circumference of The Forum. The workshop has a full table of participates drawing and colouring and the foreground shop area are watercolour paintings by Eloise O’Hare.
A bird's eye view of Fantabulosa, showing the other side of the shop area with pink Women Artists Rock shirts made by Christina Sabberton in the foreground. In the background is a portion of the accompanying exhibition.
Kids and adults sitting at and standing around the workshop table area drawing, colouring and painting. Some of the people are using colouring pencils and pens to fill in Dandy made colouring in pictures. Others are using paints and creating their own images.
The far side of the Fantabulosa exhibition wall. On this wall is the Dandies’ five metre long, collaborative drawing of the Pride parade annual celebrations.
A close-up of the large scale community drawing of the Norwich Pride parade. TThroughout the exhibition day at the Forum people added their images to the parade drawing.

Nasty Women

The Norwich Dandies presented Nasty Women; a nine-day arts happening in the Norwich Undercroft with a flash mob & day event at the Norwich Forum.

Nasty Women was put on during the centenary year of Women’s Suffrage & is a collaboration between the Dandies & three global women’s movements; One Billion Rising, Nasty Women Exhibitions & Pussy Hats. It was a combined arts exhibition of female identifying & feminist artists featuring work of core Dandy members, invited guests & an open call to engage new artists. Rachael Scott (Nasty Woman & founder of Em-Re-Un) curated a selection of video art presented in a separated space within the Undercroft. Nasty Women also included a program of creative & informative workshops with special opening & closing events that included a line up of local musicians, speakers, actors, poets, witches, artists & DJs.

A cock-a-poodle is one of the guests at the Nasty Women Norwich exhibition held in the Undercroft Gallery in the Norwich Markets. He is checking out one of the works exhibited on the specially made 3D 'N' for Nasty Women Norwich. The 3D 'N' is a freestanding two metre tall and two metre wide wooden 'N' outline onto which we curated a selection of smaller works to cover the whole structure making the N more a solid shape. The Undercroft Gallery is underneath the memorial statue outside Norwich City Hall and right amongst the Markets. It has a concrete floor and a ceiling with strip lights.
Dandy women Christina Sabberton and Eloise O’Hare. They are framed by the inside angles of the large, wooden letter ’N’. Christina has long brown hair and is wearing a faux animal print coat. Eloise has short hair but we can’t see it because on her head is a large fake pink fur, Russian style hat. As you can tell it was really, really cold in the Undercroft Gallery.
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A mixed media installation by Eloise O'Hare of a textile female puppet doll, naked and nailed to a 1.5 metre tall crucifix. In front of the doll is a low table and seat with a typewriter on top. The audience can load strips of paper provided into the typewriter and write abusive, sexist comments on the paper strip and then pin the paper anywhere they like on the puppet doll.
A Margaret Thatcher Draft Excluder by Vince Laws. It is made using denim, socks and wool with trimmings, including blank blue eyes and bright red lips made using an AIDS remembrance ribbon. It is exhibited on the floor with accompanying propaganda style information reading: 'Don’t just lie there - exclude something!', 'Making Britain great again with draft excluders' and 'You're never too dead to work'.
Musician and activist Mick Hardy posing at the Nasty women exhibition with one of Eloise O’Hare's life-sized textile sculptures of the Pussy Riot women. On the wall beside Mick are two posters, one from his (at the time) recent attempt to become MP for Norwich North for the DANDY Party set up by Vince Laws. The DANDY Party stands for the 'Disabled And Not Dead Yet' Party campaigning on a platform against the cruel fit for work assessments and sanctions that disproportionately hit the disabled community really hard.
A section of the Nasty Women Norwich exhibition on our opening night. It was a lovely night with lots of people engaging with the art all around the gallery space. In the foreground hanging down from the ceiling is the poster from a previous public workshop event called 'Dress, Paint, Pose like a Suffragist'. This was part of the centenary celebrations of Women's Suffrage.
On the opening night event at the Nasty Women Norwich exhibition we had a great line up of talented musicians to perform to the crowd. In this image the Norwich duo Ruby Flipper is performing. Emma Jarvis is singing and is accompanied by guitarist Stephen Little.
Proud Canaries organiser and Norfolk County Football Association Director Di Cunningham and cartoonist David Shenton chatting at the opening night of Nasty Women Norwich. On the wall behind them are a couple of mixed media paintings from the SportsFlower series by Dugald Ferguson.
Inside the exhibition for opening night and at times throughout the exhibition we erected a red tent and decorated the inside for our Palmist-in-residence Becka, who gave 15 minute and 30 minute fortune telling sessions. She made clear that the exercise is not about announcing fate but more to help people reflect on where they are and where they would like to go in their lives. Dandy Dugald Ferguson had a session and found it a lovely, calming and therapeutic exercise of self-reflection.
We set up our popular 'Dress, Paint, Pose like a Dandy' workshop in the exhibition space. On the left is our modelling chaise loungue loaded with warm woollen blankets and on the right is a selection from our costume store of expressive clothes for people to dress up in. On the line behind the costume rail are a selection of paintings created at our previous Suffragist workshop event held at Castle Mall.
A wolf's head mask made by artist Hayley Hare modelled on a mannequin with a deep blue tee-shirt. The figure was set up on three wooden cable storage reels stacked on top of each other next to one of the large concrete support posts that run throughout the gallery space.

Dandifest

We have exhibited as a group many times since 2010 but the show of biggest note is our mixed discipline community arts extravaganza Dandifest!. Due to popular demand we presented Dandifest! in 2014, 2015 and returning for the final time in 2017, showcasing a wealth of local and international talent. We worked with, exhibited and presented over 200 artists, predominantly from LGBTQIA+, disabled, mental health, feminist and hard to reach communities.

The main hub of Dandifest! was always St Margarets Church of Art on St Benedict's Street where we would host the main exhibition, performances and workshops with satellite venues and events including Norwich Arts Centre, Gallery 13a, The Birdcage, The Norwich Lanes, Nansa Charity shop, Great Yarmouth Library, Eaton Park Cafe and many others. Over the years we have presented a curation of painting, drawing, poetry, installation, print, sculpture, textiles, performance, photography, film, theatre, live art, music, life drawing, dance and cartoon. 

Vince Laws hanging new work in the exhibition at St Margaret's Church of Art. The work is of re-appropriated Alice in Wonderland images with funny and surreal texts superimposed over them to subvert the story and incorporate Vince's poems and ideas.
A collection of 20 Vince Laws' 'text portraits', arranged in a diamond shape. Each portrait is made in the Dadaist tradition of cutting out words and letters and arranging them in surreal and abstracted forms. This series takes the letters of names of his friends and family, and they are rearranging into surreal portraits of their faces. The predominant colours in this series are orange, red, white and black.
Seven photo prints from artist Hayley Hare showing the artist with pastel pink hair and the bottom half of her face painted to be wolf. Her face is passive and her eyes averted from the camera. There is a soft back light in the images to give them a dream-like quality.
Rows of drawings and paintings hanging from washing lines. The works were made by people participating in our popular 'Dress, Paint and Pose like a Dandy' workshop. People can rummage through our hand-made costumes and be a model, and they can also draw or paint other models.
A selection of work exhibited at Dandifest 2017. In the centre is one of Dugald Ferguson's 'Sportsflowers' paintings. a series of mixed media paintings made using found newspaper images of footbal and rugby players that have been collaged and then painted over so the resemble colourful flowers in Greek inspired vases. Above this painting Vince Laws' 'Umbrellas of Love' spell out the word 'TATE'.
A stack of cans containing Artist Shit. Each can reads that it is 'freshly produced, preserved and tinned by the artist, and each can has its own batch number. In the background is the Dandifest Dress, Paint and Pose Like a Dandy workshop station.
This photo sets the scene for a section of the wider exhibition at St Margaret's Church of Art in Norwich. In the background is a large stained glass window showing religious scenes with the light shining though. Directly underneath it is Eloise O'Hare's Damien Hirst installation. On the wall to the right is a Sportsflower painting by Dugald Ferguson. To the left is an abstracted figurative oil painting in earthern colours depicting a woman in robes. The floor is tiled with old, decorative church flooring in ochre, red brown and black around the floor tile border.
A life-sized textile doll of the artist Damien Hirst, complete with shark teeth and glasses, suspended in a glass case with a single backlight. The installation was inspired by Damien Hirst's famous shark installation looks at once like Hirst is deadly aggressive going in for the kill and also quite serene a lot like his famous installation of a shark in a tank.    
Five upside-down jam jars, each containing a plasticine busts. The models are all friends or family of Norwich Dandy Eloise O'Hare. The plasticine heads each use a single colour different from each other. The colours are yellow, white, red, orange and green. In the distant background you can just about see the Damian Hurst tank.
Dugald Ferguson's performance installation 'Our Political Home Life'. The scene features a bed with three of Eloise O'Hare's life-sized textile dolls: a Pussy Riot member and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. To the left is the Dandy costume collection that is used for our 'Dress, Paint and Pose Like a Dandy' workshops. Just above the costumes are a couple of Christina Sabberton's pink portraits of feminist icons. Behind the bed on the wall are a series of expressive mixed media textile paintings and above these are a few of Vince Laws' 'Umbrellas of Love', each with a stencil sprayed letter to spell different words all around the exhibition space.
A pen and pencil drawing by Christina Sabberton of a woman in a classical nude reclining pose by Christina Sabberton. The model is looking back at us over her shoulder. Her body is naked and objectified. She has the face of a gorilla and she bearss her teeth at the viewer. In the top right of the image is the text: 'Women do not have to be naked to be in this show'. The image is mostly drawn in pencil with highlights of pink ink around the body and the lettering.
Dandy Christina Sabberton flamboyantly presenting a large cheque for £243 to the RSPCA from the sales of bird paintings at the Birdcage pub. The photo was taken outside the pub.

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