2023
8 - 30 September at The Lido Stores
The 2023 Open received more than 700 submissions, with a shortlist of 49 artists selected by guest judge Charles Williams and Lido Stores owner and curator Kristen Healy.
Andree Adley • Dan Bass • Broughton & Birnie • Danny Cameron • Dale Carney • Alice Carr • Rae Birch Carter • Jione Choi • Daisy Clarke • Bliss Coulthard • Barrie J Davies • Charlie Day • Tori Day • Alice Delhanty • Robin Dixon • Steve Dodd • Rory Draper • Ferha Farooqui • Stephen Foy-Philp • Gareth Griffith • Julia Hamilton • Susie Hamilton • Gillian Harding • Stephen Harwood • Mandy Hudson • Lisa Ivory • Rosie Jackson • Fabienne Jenny Jacquet • Simon Klein • Rachel Levitas • Aoibain Maguire • Eilish McCann • R&F Mo • Peter Murray • Mary O’Connor • Olivia O’Dwyer • Tracie Peisley • Angela Rumble. • Nima Shafiani • Namarata Singh • Emily Sofaly • Emily Stevens • Michael Szpakowski • Ellie Tate • Rebecca Truscott-Elves • Toby Ursell • Clare Wilson • Ashley James Willson • Corrie Wingate
The Judge - Charles Williams
Born in Evanston, Illinois, Williams is a British artist. A former student at the Royal Academy Schools, and a founder member of the notorious Stuckist art movement, his work has been exhibited in the UK, Europe, and the United States. Formerly Programme Director of Fine Art at Canterbury Christ Church University, he is currently a faculty PhD scholar, completing an auto-ethnographic study of his studio practice.
Williams is a painter who also writes. In his work, the self and the possibility of presence in the two-dimensional arena of painting wrestle. Narrative, surface and image are knitted together in an unfolding improvisation, taking in his hapless attempts to thrive in the art world, from being a West End gallery artist to teaching art in care homes and being Louise Bourgeois’ most inept studio assistant, incontinent Basset Hounds, the real and imaginary artist Alex Koolman, and the group of friends whose lives circle the great and now forgotten writer Erica Kendall, author of the counter-factual history of the Warsaw Pact Free Republic of Great Britain Long Live The Chairman! (Faber, 1961). See more at www.charleswilliamsartist.com.
Williams works alone in his studio, but sometimes in collaboration, notably with self-styled con-artist Dan Devlin, who published Talking to Louise Bourgeois, a memoir, with www.susakpress.com. They worked together on The Lost Paintings Of Herzog Dellafiore, also available on www.susakpress.com, and are currently in the process of developing more ideas. Williams is represented by New Art Projects, London.
“Good evening, everybody, and welcome to The Lido Stores and the Lido Open exhibition. Thanks so much for coming – it’s really lovely to see so many people coming to this beautiful gallery.
“The Lido Stores is – well, I have only recently discovered this oasis of excellence in painting, and I have to say, painting. There is lots and lots of extraordinary painting and lots of painting that makes you think, however strange a position that painting occupies now, it’s still extraordinarily vibrant and alive. The level of quality here is really quite something, and extraordinary to just come across it walking along Cliftonville seafront. It’s fantastic. It’s such hot day, and you’ve all come out to this boiling hot place to look at some art, so thank you very much.
“I have to perform my main duty, which is, having selected with Kristen the exhibition, I have to award a winner. Of course, this is a terribly difficult decision to have to make. Don’t imagine that I don’t understand the awkwardness and pain of this myself. 40 years I have stood in groups of people like this, looking at some idiot making an unbelievably tedious speech building up to the point where he or she should really be awarding me the prize! What I am going to spare you is an enormous encomium about the winner. Really, there is just a level of quality, and then after that, the quality of everything [else] is kind of equal. There are just some times when you just have to go, ‘OK, that one’. And in this case, we have chosen Olivia O’Dwyer.”- Charles Williams’ speech at the Lido Open 2023 private view
The Winner - Olivia O’Dwyer
Olivia O’Dwyer’s winning painting, ‘Heels Together’ (oil on canvas), is a small, intriguing painting that draws on diaristic concerns with humour and deep humanity.
O’Dwyer is a visual artist from Limerick, living in County Wexford. She has exhibited individually and as part of group shows across Ireland and internationally, including her solo exhibitions ‘A Mind’s Eye’ at Kevin Kavanagh Galleries, Dublin, in 2022 and ‘Lockdown Diaries’ at Wexford Arts Centre, 2021. International show have included a two-week residency and exhibition in Kathmandu, Nepal, funded by Culture Ireland, and a cultural exchange exhibition in Velletri, Italy. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Agility award from the Arts Council of Ireland in 2022, an Artlinks bursary for residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in 2020-2023 and the Making and Momentum artist prize, supported by Creative Ireland and Designer Richard Malone, in 2022. Her works are held in public collections of the EU Ambassador, the Wexford Arts Centre, Kathmandu and the International School Suzhou, China.
“I arrived at the opening late - I had traveled from Ireland that day, was trying to get in past the crowd at the door to hear Charles speak and thought, ‘Ah, it's OK, I'm not going to win’, and two seconds later he announced my name, hence the profanities! I was so surprised, the laughter that ensued that evening from my reaction was so heartwarming. I met the loveliest of people, everyone was so kind and friendly. I am so looking forward to coming back next August. Margate and The Lido Stores are a special blend of feeling at home and making meaningful connections and friendships.
“The work is a conversation between fiction and reality, the paintings are intimate scenes of one's own private gaze. I am interested in themes centred around domesticity and solitude from a female perspective, often displayed in a humorous and confessional manner.”
- Olivia O’Dwyer