Garudio Studiage
About
Garudio Studiage is a South East London-based creative collective set up by Chris Ratcliffe, Laura Cave, Anna Walsh and Hannah Havana, to utilise their different skills to work collaboratively.
Visit Website ⟶
Products Stocked in
South London Gallery
Museum of London
Selfridges
Waterstones
British Library
Own online shop
Selected exhibitions/events
2016 Pigeon Racing
Urban Village Fete; We Built This City
2015 Wheel Burrows
Paradise over Pavements festival, Peckham Square
2012 Peckham Peace Wall
Peckham Space
2010 The Lucky Skip
South Bank Centre, V & A, Camberwell Arts Week
2011 Nation of Shopkeepers
Peckham Space
2009 & 2013 Mad Hatters; Peckham Takeover
More about the studio
Garudio Studiage design and create products to sell (eg. souvenir tea towels such as Dogs of London and Flat Pets series), make interactive installations and exhibitions (The Peckham Peace Wall, The Lucky Skip, Pigeon Racing), as well as working on their individual practice. Their open-minded sense of fun and high standards of production are the threads that link it all together.
With individual specialisms in screen printing, jewellery, and illustration, they have taken part in a wonderfully bizarre array of exhibitions and events, as well as making props, displays and products.
The appropriately glamourous and unpronounceable name is derived from the words ‘garage studio’ which is exactly where the venture started out in an old garage loaned to them by ‘Jimmy’ their landlord in Camberwell in 2003. Working amongst sand, stray cats and broken car parts, they started making screenprints and jewellery for sale and exhibition, and thus the mighty Garudio Studiage was born!
In 2005 they upgraded to a studio in Peckham’s Bussey Building, where they spent 14 glorious years developing their brand of wry humour with handmade quirky and out-of-the-norm jewellery, home accessories and prints. Working among the kebab warehouses, sweat shops and churches of a pre-gentrified Peckham was of paramount inspiration, and heavily influenced their lo-fi clashing aesthetic.
In 2019 their non-commercial attitude meant rents were becoming unattainable and Anna, Chris and Hannah jumped at the chance to move to Deptford/New Cross with Second Floor Studios and Arts (SFSA) in their new purpose-built artists’ studios. Here they hope to continue making and designing well into their dotage. Laura remains in the Bussey Building focusing on her fair-trade jewellery business, Just Trade.
They still make work for exhibitions and events, but focus on making gift products which are sold in shops such as The Museum of London, British Library and South London Gallery, as well as on their own online shop.
Anna studied Book Arts at Camberwell College, and combines traditional skills of observational drawing with digital design to create charts and maps, usually based on animals and their relationships with humans, often with a humorous undertone. E.g. Dogs of London, The Peckham Cat Walk, The London Cat Map.
Chris studied printmaking at Camberwell College, and his wry observations of the urban environment result in witty products and prints, whilst his work in digital media and art direction has led to collaborations with designers from a range of disciplines. E.g. Flat Pet series, Peckham Palm Tree souvenirs, The London Heritage at Risk Register.
Hannah studied jewellery design at the Royal College of Art and continues to make work that celebrates and plays on the value of everyday objects. Taking the idea of making ordinary things extraordinary, she creates work which exists at the somewhat unexpected meeting point of ‘novelty’ and ‘exquisite’. E.g. Hambags and You Are Here brooches.
