Artist collective ‘Kitchen’ opens its studio

Artist collective Kitchen Studios launched its studio space last Friday, which the group hopes will become a hub for projects and collaboration.

This comes almost nine years after Kitchen Studios first launched as a collective and in the years since they have continuously called for a premises.

The studio in unit 6, 7, South Barrack Road, is pegged to be a hub for events like pop up exhibitions and for artists to brainstorm or perfect their projects.

At the launch on Friday evening, their new space featured works of local artists, with even the mop and bucket on the ground being an award winning piece titled ‘El Turno’, which won the Sculpture Award in the Spring Visual Arts competition.

The studio also has a casual a sit-down area for artists to chat amongst a selection of curated pieces.

President of Kitchen Studios, Stefano Blanca Sciacaluga, said he wanted to provide a relaxed atmosphere where artists can work together and host pop-up exhibitions.

“It sort of makes sense that we can have people come in, see work, have a chat, because really, with art, half of it just the communication between artists and just people who like to go and see art,” he said.

Mr Blanca Sciacaluga said Kitchen has a large network of artists which have previously exhibited alongside the committee of around 12.

“We have a big network of artists, so what we did during Covid is we did the Kitchen takeovers on Instagram, we had over 100 artists collaborating.”

“We have our small group, then we have our extended network.”

“We've got people like Aaron Soleci exhibiting tonight, Nancy Crisp, and Alana Caines.”

“They're not part of the committee, and they don't really come to meetings, they don't really use the space. But they do exhibit with us regularly, and we do take them to our shows in Spain. So we have our group of people that exhibit regularly with us.”

Kitchen plans to strengthen its ties with artists in Spain and Morocco and now have a space to meet these artists in Gibraltar.

“Now we can have them come over and work on ideas here without having to find anywhere else,” he said.

“That's the hope. Apart from doing the shows, the pop ups, then working here as well.”

“We started Kitchen at the GEMA Gallery when it first opened as an open studio for a month.”

“We did a show at the end of it to show off all the work that people have done. The idea is that we can go back to that, have a sort of a live studio, people can come in and they can collaborate with each other.”

Mr Blanca Sciacaluga said Kitchen Studios still continue to exhibit in other galleries and has further collaborations planned in the near future.