A year after opening in South Street, Dorchester, Olive & Wilde Studios is about to become a gallery for the first time.
When Laura Delage-Pandeli launched the studio on October 1 last year, it was a design practice and a co-working space in a Georgian townhouse at the South Walks end of South Street. A year on, it has become something a bit bigger than that.
“The building is full of people now, which was always the point,” she said. “Photographers, founders, architects, coaches, dancers, writers, interior designers.
“They come in saying they need somewhere that isn’t their kitchen table, but what keeps them coming back is working alongside other people who are building something. It makes you braver about what you’re building yourself.”
There’s something on every month too, from supper clubs and breakfast clubs to workshops and community evenings. The rooms themselves double as a walkable portfolio for Olive & Wilde Interiors, with a palette of deep pinks, clays and sooty blacks taken straight off the weathered facade.
“It gets used the way I think interiors should get used,” said Laura. “People putting their feet up on the sofa, making coffee at the kitchen island and staying for longer than they meant to.”
Showing local artists was in the plan from day one, and this October the studio hosts its first exhibition, Nothign is Perfetc, by Benji Weeratunge, who paints under the name Hot Noodle.
Hot Noodle’s first show at Olive & Wilde
Benji is a Camden kid who came up in the punk rock eighties and spent more than 20 years as a professional dancer, choreographer, artistic director and TV personality, working with the choreographers behind Michael Jackson and Beyoncé, sharing stages with Kylie and Pharrell and becoming one of the resident stars of Fama ¡a bailar! on Cuatro in Spain.
Then lockdown grounded him, and what came out instead were the acrylics and the spray cans. He now lives on Portland and paints full time.
The 11 large-scale pieces are layered with acrylic, spray paint, hand-drawn text and comic-book cut-outs, and the title, taken from one of the paintings, is misspelled on purpose.
“It’s the fact that it’s all imperfect that makes it perfect,” said Benji.
Laura met him at a dance class earlier this year. “I invited him into the studio to chat about marketing, and we got talking and realised we could work together on so much more,” she said.
“It felt like serendipity. The studio was always supposed to host artists, and it puts their work in front of people who are actively thinking about what to hang on their own walls.”
After Benji, the plan is a rotating programme of curated shows.
The exhibition opens with a private view tonight (Friday, October 23), followed by a launch party tomorrow (Saturday, October 24) from 11am to 5pm, with drinks, special guests and DJ Ricky Silkes of Britain’s Got Talent.
It is then open Tuesday to Friday 10am–5pm and Saturday 10am–2pm.
Contact
Olive & Wilde Studios, 28 South Street, Dorchester DT1 1BY, 07917 800746
@oliveandwildestudios
@hotnoodle.art