UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
DOVERCOURT OPEN STUDIOS
Dovercourt’s vibrant art scene opens its doors once again for the annual Dovercourt Open Studios 2025, four days of local creativity, expression, and community. Running from Friday 29th August to Monday 1st September, this event invites visitors into the private studios and workspaces of seven local artists and makers.
The Open Studios in Dovercourt provide venues that offer a glimpse into the diverse practices that define this coastal artistic community. From painting, sculpture and film to ceramics, textiles, and installation, there is something for everyone to experience and enjoy.


Participating Artists
Larain Briggs (6 Fronks Avenue) – A multi-disciplinary researcher and artist exploring trauma, transformation, and the unconscious through 2D and 3D works, inspired by Jungian psychology. There may be an opportunity to participate in a collaborative drawing for some of the weekend.
Sylvia Paul (27 Fronks Road) – Vibrant oil and mixed media paintings and textiles in a beautiful garden setting.
John Theobald (46 Lee Road) – Paintings and visual musings from the “odd corners” of the artist’s notebooks.
Jasper Startup (2 Portland Crescent) – Sculpture, painting and drawing in and around a coastal home studio.
Daphne Sandham & Melvyn King (86 Fronks Road) – Paintings, garden curiosities and guest artist Ann Hebden, who will exhibit her distinctive raku and stoneware ceramics.
All venues are within walking distance of each other, allowing visitors to follow a self-guided trail over the weekend. Homemade refreshments will be available at some locations, and works will be available to purchase directly from the artists.All venues are within walking distance of each other, allowing visitors to follow a self-guided trail over the weekend. Homemade refreshments will be available at some locations, and works will be available to purchase directly from the artists.

SEA SAW
Beacon Hill Fort, Harwich Barrack Lane, Harwich, CO12 3FR
23–25 August & 30–31 August 2025
10:00–16:00 daily (last entry 15:30)
A multi-artist exhibition exploring our shifting relationship with the sea, as a source of life, change, crisis, and renewal.
Running over two weekends — 23–25 August and 30–31 August 2025 SEA SAW invites visitors into a space of balance and tipping points, where the ocean becomes a mirror for both planetary and personal transformation.
Featuring painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and film, the works respond to the sea as more than a subject: it is a force in flux — holding tension between stability and collapse, healing and threat, presence and loss.
Core themes include:
In a world where much is shifting the artists of ‘SEA SAW ‘ask: what lies beneath the surface?
Participating Artists:
Michelle Bowden, Larain Briggs, Consuela Fontan, Simon Isaac,
Jamie Limond, Mel Perkins, Adam Riches, Mark Sampson,
Solveig Settemdhal
and k j j warren
Beacon Hill Fort’s evocative landscape — perched between land and sea, history and possibility — provides the perfect setting for this timely exhibition.
EXHIBITIONS and EVENTS 2025

University of East London
Doctorate Showcase 2025
UEL
Ava Building
University Way
Dockland Campus
E16 2RD

Worlds Within Worlds Within Worlds - Art and the Apocalypse
Interview with Steve Brett on the 3rd Space.org website
'The context for this interview is the question, what is happening in the art world in relationship to the global crisis we’re facing and to what, at least in 3rd space, we are witnessing as an emerging transition moment in human culture.'
Steve Brett 3rd Space.org
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS


University of East London
Doctorate Showcase 2024
Photos: Karolina Stonkiene
Emergence - Larain Briggs
Dr Michael Harris on Piano playing Erik Satie - Gnossiennes and Harold Arlen - Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Created for the Fine Art Doctorate Showcase at the UEL 2024 as part of the mirror labyrinth installation. The video incorporates the exhibited artworks, 'As Above, So Below, and 'Lines of Flight'.

Colchester Art Society
Curators' Choice at The Benham Gallery
March 2024
The Benham Gallery
Boxted Road Colchester, CO4 5HH


First Thursdays:
Collaborative Drawing
4th April 6pm to 8pm
Firstsite Gallery Cafe
Colchester CO1 1JH
Come draw with us at First Thursday and create amazing collaborative artworks together! Suitable for all ability and ages.
Participating artist's: Larain Briggs, Jamie Limond, Jane Frederick, Clare Iles.
Facilitated by Creative Colchester
Book Tickets Here

Reflection
Artist Residency, Installation and Exhibition
Participating artists:
Larain Briggs. Jamie Limond. Dawn Hesketh-Joslin
Harwich Arts and Heritage Centre
Mayflower Primary School
Main Road, Dovercourt, Essex, CO12 4AJ. UK.
1st February - 29th February 2024


The Labyrinth
February 2024.
Art Installation 10m x 7m
Location: Harwich Arts and Heritage Centre, Essex, UK.

Collaborative drawings
Throughout February 2024.
Participation and exhibition with the public

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Colchester Art Society Winter Exhibition
Group Exhibition
The Minories
74 High St, Colchester, CO1 1 UE.
23rd November - 17th December 2023




Exhibition
Art Gemini Prize
Finalists Exhibition
Zari Gallery
73 Newman St, London W1T 3EJ
20th - 28th September 2023


Edge of Death 2022
Acrylic on canvas
120cm x 100cm
Doctorate in Fine Art
Showcase
UNIVERSITY OF EAST LONDON
University Way, London E16 2RD
June 22nd 2023 to June 25th 2023.

Eye of the Storm
COLNE GALLERY
Colchester General Hospital
Turner Rd, Colchester CO4 5JL
January 30th 2023 to February 25th 2023.
Lacecap Hydrangea 2021
Acrylic on canvas
60cm x 50cm


DOVERCOURT OPEN STUDIOS.
August 2022

EXPLORING THE SUBLIME
The Aletheia Art Collective are artists who live and work in Suffolk and Essex. This year, they have contributed and collaborated on a multi-disciplinary exhibition exploring the philosophical concept of the sublime for the Harwich Festival of the Arts.
The contributing artists, Christine Alexander, Michelle Bowden, Larain Briggs, Daisy Limond, Jamie Limond, Adam Riches and Mark Sampson are contemporary and experimental in their approach, exmploying a variety of media, including painting, installation, photography, assemblage and virtual reality.
"The sublime experience is fundamentally transformative, about the relationship between disorder and order, and the disruptions of the stable coordinates of time and space. Something rushes in and we are profoundly altered."
Simon Morely - The Sublime: Documents of Contemporary Art
Harwich Arts & Heritage Centre
Room 6 Gallery
Main Road
Dovercourt
CO12 4AJ

Colchester Art Society
Borders Exhibtion
Ipswich Art Gallery
1 Upper High Street
Ipswich IP1 3NE
14th May to 19th June 2022

Dovercourt Open Studio 2021
August 2021
7 artists living in close proximity opened their studios to the public in August 2021.
Music by Michael Harris on piano playing Erik Satie.
Beyond the Surface
July 2021
Curated by Larain Briggs. Founder member of
The Aletheia Art Collective exhibiting at Harwich Festival at
Harwich Arts and Heritage Centre
The Gallery, Room 6, Main Road, Dovercourt, CO12 4AJ
Synergic - The Old Biscuit Factory – London – October 2019
Colchester Art Society Winter Exhition – The Minories Galleries – Colchester – June 2019
Ipswich Jazz Festival – Subterranean Arts – Ipswich – June 2019
Solo show – Subterranean Arts - Ipswich Town Hall – May 2019
WINDOWS - May 2019
Dale Lee Exhibition -Subterranean Arts Gallery – December 2018
Colchester Art Society Winter Exhibition – The Minories Gallery – December 2018
(In)visible – Espacio Gallery, London – October 2018
Colchester and Tendring Open Studios – Dovercourt – September 2018
Colchester Art Society Open Exhibition – The Minories Gallery – August 2018
The Gallery Highwayman's - Trooping the Rural Colour - June 2018
Global Artist Guide - 2018
Exhibit Here Finest Artists - La Galleria Pall Mall – London - 11-16th December 2017
House of Fraser – Untitled Solo Exhibition – Maidstone – October 2017
Spring Salon - Candid Arts Trust - Islington – April 2017
Something Different - The Swanhouse Gallery Solo Show - Harwich, Essex (August 2016)UK
ArtExpo 2016 - Milan -September 2016 - ITALY
Phantasmorgia - The Freudian Sheep Gallery - Ipswich July 2016
Harwich Festival of the Arts - Harwich (July 2016) UK
Affordable Art Fair - Brussels - February 2016 BELGIUM UK
Galeria Gaudi - Madrid - January 2016 SPAIN
Mad -The Freudian Sheep Gallery - Ipswich - 2016 UK
The Winter Exhibition CAS - The Minories, Colchester 2015 UK
Open Exhibition - First Site, Colchester 2015 UK
Movies - The Freudian Sheep Gallery - Ipswich (November 2015) UK
Colchester Open Studios - Dovercourt (September 2015) UK
Music - The Freudian Sheep Gallery - Ipswich (August 2015) UK
Harwich Festival of The Arts - Harwich (July 2015) UK
Tendring Hundred Show - Ardleigh (July 2015) UK
Freedom - The Freudian Sheep Gallery - Ipswich (May 2015) UK
Colour and Contemplate - The Freudian Sheep Gallery - Ipswich (April 2015) UK
Nightlife - The Freudian Sheep Gallery - Ipswich (March 2015) UK
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