Artists Open Houses: Boogaloo Stu on his talkative, fragrant vases, and his blast-furnace inspiration

Hi Stu  – We’re delighted you’re taking part in the Artists Open Houses for the first time this year. You’re exhibiting, amongst other things, a range of talking ceramics! Can you tell us a bit about the work in your show?

It’s my very first Artist Open Houses show, and I’ve been busy making a new collection of ceramics. I’ve actually just taken a break from meticulously glazing pieces to answer these questions. I dare say like many other artists, I’m in a slight rush to get everything finished. Some of the vases I’m making will indeed have voices, but other pieces will stimulate a different sense – the sense of smell! I’ll be showing my work in the event space at the rear of the Wild Iris Perfumerie in the North Laine. The lovely owner Kate will be curating fragrances to suit the mood of some of my ceramic characters, which will then be generously spritzed on the nose with perfume. Bisque pottery absorbs fragrance wonderfully, so the whole space should smell divine!

You are probably best known as a DJ, cabaret artist and much-loved Brighton celebrity. Can you tell us about this and how it fits with your work as an artist?

As an artist and performer, I’ve never really been able to stick to one thing for very long. I like to get my fingers into many pies, as it were. I’ve done many things over the years, and there have been some fabulous highs and barrel-scraping lows! Making artwork feels like a logical progression for me, and in terms of the aesthetics of what I’m making, I think it all fits neatly alongside everything else under the umbrella of Boogaloo Stu’s oeuvre.

You are also known for your fabulous lurex costumes and big hair – do you design these?

I do indeed design and make it all. I make everything from upcycled fabrics. I love to scour eBay and Etsy for battered vintage platform shoes, and lengths of old 70s fabric. I’ll give the platforms a new lease of life, usually with rhinestones and sequins. For my stage looks, I love to mismatch colours and prints. The bigger the clash, the better. And nowadays, I have a tendency to add frills to everything. In days of yore, it was so much simpler – a glittery vest top and tiny pants was all I would wear. These days I’m very much fully covered up, so creating new looks requires a lot more yardage and is decidedly more time-consuming.

Would you like to tell us a bit more about your journey to becoming an artist and ceramicist?

I’m a bit of a late developer. Although I had always dabbled in illustration, that was pretty much limited to creating flyers and posters for club nights I was running. I started in earnest during the Covid lockdowns, initially making paper dioramas and prints, which I sold through Enter Gallery, who were really supportive. My work is inspired by vintage 70s cartoons and illustrations, but I also find inspiration in oil refineries, blast-furnaces, and the remnants of our industrial heritage. And, of course, Noseybonk and Dusty Bin. I’ll be showing some dioramas alongside my ceramics for Artists Open Houses. I’m also relatively new to pottery. I hadn’t touched clay until around 7 years ago, when on a whim I enrolled in a course at Pottery Gagliano in Brighton. I learnt to throw there, but it was just a hobby initially. I didn’t have a focused direction for my ceramic work, until a friend of mine (Adam Ceramic) introduced me to some hand-building techniques. It was a light-bulb moment for me when I then started building faces onto the vases I was creating. And figuring out how to then add a voice to some of them felt like a natural progression! I script and record the voices for the vases and then edit and loop them onto software which fits into tiny speakers inside the vases, bringing them to life. Quite often they are battling for attention, all talking at once. What a racket.

What does Artists Open Houses look like for you this May?

Well, as it’s my first time doing AOH, May is going to be very busy for me as I’ll be doing this alongside my usual slew of Brighton Fringe events. But I’m very excited to see who comes in to visit me at Wild Iris; I hope to create a surreal, sensory wonderland for people to enjoy.