Brockley Open Studios - the agony and the ecstasy

If you want to feel bad about your crappy house, your unkempt garden and your unrewarding desk job, then Brockley Open Studios is the event for you. It is also one of the finest ways to spend a sunny afternoon:

Strolling around Brockley's beautiful, sun-dappled streets, popping in to any doorway with a poster outside, appraising their work, nosing around their amazing houses and gardens, chatting to the uniformly charming hosts and eating their crisps.

We had been aware that Brockley is an artistic community, largely because people kept telling us it was so. But we never really felt it. Today, we did. Some of the work is fantastic - all of it was pretty good (although we seem to be more generous in these matters than some). Biddy Bunzl could charge admission for her technicolour beachcomber house.

Monday is the last night of this year's event. If you've not been, go. You may hate yourself if you do, but you will hate yourself a lot more if you don't.

Click here for details.

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Walking along Wickham Road, we bumped in to Brockley Sarah, who had a map of the event, with notes from the last two years' events. She's seen nearly every artist and we are hoping to persuade her to write a comprehensive review.