New Arts Space For St Helier

ArtHouse Jersey has opened a new multipurpose arts space in St Helier.

It's on the ground floor of Capital House on 8 Church Street behind the Royal Square and next to the Town Church.

It's described as a new centralised hub for arts and creativity in Jersey.

Director Tom Dingle says a centralised venue in an iconic location will be a game-changer.

"We have been doing a number of pop-up exhibitions over the last few years, most notably at the Town Church last year with Skipton Big Ideas.

But to have a space that we know we can reliably programme - and also the public can know they can reliably visit - is a massive step forward and something that we're really excited about.

We are going to be having a really diverse range of different types of exhibitions and different types of shows.

For example, in the next three months, we've got this fantastic exhibition of Jason Butler's incredible paintings, we then move on to a show that explores home - particularly through the lens of people who perhaps choose to come here for work from a migrant workforce point of view.

Then we've got a very interactive exhibition with the return of Skipton Big Ideas in this new space all around waste. Something that for a lot of us is very problematic, but how design and art can turn it into something that's useful and beautiful."

This does not affect the charity's HQ at Greve de Lecq barracks.

ArtHouse Jersey says that, generally speaking, it offers opportunities to artists earlier on in their career or scratch performances of developing works.

"Somebody was very nervously asking me whether we were giving up the barracks and we absolutely are not.

The Greve de Lecq barracks provides us with an opportunity to generate new work. We've got studios up there, we have artists and residents and there's a base at the barracks.

We also do have pop-ups with local artists' work where work ideas and progress and that's going to enable us to be able to present work both in Capital House in town, but also in other parts around the island."