Navine G. Dossos: Riviera

About

‍Visit the Riviera website here

Artist Navine G. Dossos has been conducting workshops with residents of Eastbourne's Devonshire Ward to create Riviera: a communal-and-community-designed textile pattern made from stencils relating to the neighbourhood.

From 27 July - 15 September 2024, VOLT gallery will be a hub for Riviera, an exhibition with a functioning studio that invites residents and visitors to take 2m of fabric each, for free, to then create a variety of items and clothing.

Navine G. Dossos has worked with over 50 Eastbourne residents through the creation of 24 stencils relating to the neighbourhood: its history, its population, its businesses, its flora and fauna and its location in the town. Together they have developed a Devonshire Ward-specific language of symbols, featuring palm trees, local gelato, a movie camera and the pier. These elements have been brought together by Dossos to fashion a rich and vibrant textile.

The basic premise of Riviera began with the history of the palm trees found across the ward. The planting of these kinds of exotic trees was to create a sense of travel, of being elsewhere, and reference an otherness or foreignness related to holidays abroad. Many British seaside resorts modelled themselves on the idea of the French and Italian rivieras.

With Mediterranean communities living in the Devonshire Ward today, along with many other people from around the world, what was once alluded to in architectural detail is now part of the everyday cultural life in Devonshire Ward.