The Funny Hole

Jane Dinmore is a fine artist. Her paintings use joyful biomorphic shape and colour to create absurd narratives. These nonsensical landscapes and interiors have comical titles that allude to their mischief. In this show she presents a collection of works that fully enjoy the lawlessness of abstraction. Jane’s sculptural work are tactile and sustainably created, these 3D forms see her drawing practise taking up actual physical space. Along with the paintings and sculptures Jane presents recordings of daft poetry, these voices and noise irritations create an intriguing audio work. Jane’s visual language is influenced by growing up in 70s and 80s London; from drawing in thick black permanent markers found in her family’s greengrocers to collecting the fun advertising that encouraged sweet eating. Jane composes images using fragments of colour and shape memory that feel good. There is a camp sensibility that kicks and flaps through her work, this energy and playfulness offers a relief from reality.

janedinmore.co.uk @janedinmore

Boogaloo StuWith a thoroughly distinctive style, Boogaloo Stu inhabits his own unique visually rich world which is irresistibly inviting, filled with an optimism that sparkles as brightly as the vintage lurex threads in one of his bespoke fashion looks. From his roots in fashion design, cabaret performance and DJ-ing, Stu subsequently sharpened his skills as a theatre-maker; with his audience always at the heart of his work, he developed and toured nationally with a number of unique and innovative theatre shows. In recent years, he has honed his talents as a visual artist, creating strikingly beautiful dioramas and prints. Oil refineries, Noseybonk, blast-furnaces and Dusty Bin provide nuggets of inspiration for Stu’s new work, which will feature more of his hand-made paper dioramas; inflatables made from recycled plastic; and groups of hand-thrown ceramic characters talking nonsense.

boogaloostu.co.uk @boogaloostu

Ladypat

Ladypat

Beginning in 2001, Ladypat (a name challenging notions of gender, class and punctuation) has always utilised technological advances to develop his twisted DIY pop art tropes. Ladypat’s ‘queerodivergent’ arts career has included making over 100 homespun music videos; creating GIFs viewed billions of times; as an in-demand festival and club VJ; and latterly as a fuzzy-felt textile artist. Following a recent commission for Fatboy Slim, Ladypat ended 2023 with an unapologetically queer window installation at Eastbourne’s Volt Gallery, on public display until 2025. For The Funny Hole Ladypat presents brand new fuzzy-felt ‘fabestries’ – large scale textile art which is created entirely without stitching.

ladypat.com @ladypat_art

John Lee Bird

John Lee Bird

From his surrealist mixed media pieces to his pop art documentation of London’s queer icons, John Lee Bird is an essential artist everyone should know about. John will be showing his DOLLS project as part of The Funny Hole, fresh from a major solo exhibition at the Ugly Duck gallery in London, where he showed 800 of his hand-made dolls alongside work spanning his 25-year career, including large scale paintings, print, drawings and film. With influences stemming from film, cult TV, performance, drag and music, his work is a celebration of culture, London, and the LGBTQ+ community.

johnleebird.com @johnleebird

Venue: The Observer Building, 53 Cambridge Road, Hastings, TN34 1DT.
Saturday night tickets: www.outsavvy.com/event/18154/the-funny-hole-cabaret