I’ve been following @5ftinf, otherwise known as Philippa Stanton, on Instagram and love her photos of ‘The Table’ where she scatters flower petals, stationery, maps and other lovely vintage objects and arranges them them in pleasing pattern and colour combinations on a big wooden table in her home.
Philippa is an artist based in Brighton and every year exhibits her paintings at home as part of the Brighton and Hove’s Artists’ Open Houses festival in May. Mum and I popped down to Brighton yesterday on the last weekend of the festival to take a peek backstage at our favourite Instagram account.
In her home, Philippa was exhibiting her paintings, Instagram prints and lovely notebooks and lamps covered with vintage maps, as well as other artists’ wares (Holly Bell’s ceramics, Sophie Abbott’s paintings and Holly Murray’s leather purses were some of my favourites).
Outside in the back garden there was the fantastic 5ftinf shed to explore! Every year Philippa’s little potting shed is transformed into an art installation. This year was in collaboration with West Elm, a beautiful furniture company, and on the theme of ‘nesting’.
A notice outside the shed explained how the installation was inspired by The Barbican’s ‘Magnificent Obsessions’ exhibition as collecting seems to be a natural inclination for artists. Philippa also explains on her blog that that she experiences colours with more than just one sense due to having synaesthesia and the ordered-by-colour collections are her expression of a safe creative space or ‘human nest’.
There was so much to look at – from lines of Penguin books arranged in a rainbow of shades, shelf sections with objects and books grouped by colour with lots of harmonising tones, to a nest hanging from the ceiling. I loved spotting the toy cars and vintage tins and pieces of fruit in each colour collection – I don’t know whether it was intentional to have some of the similar objects reflected in other colour sections around the shed. For my Mum, she enjoyed spotting things she remembered from her childhood, like the blue sellotape tin! Everything was all so beautifully and cleverly organised.
It was so nice to meet Philippa, see ‘The Table’ in real life and experience the inspiring 5ftinf Shed installation. I’m itching to arrange my books in colour order now! 
5ftinf Instagram
64 Sandgate Instagram (for Philippa’s Artist Open Houses pictures)
5ftinf blog
Philippa Stanton’s website
Brighton and Hove Artists’ Open Houses
5ftinf shop
[…] long admired 5ftinf’s work (I visited her exhibition last May) and she has visited the Calais Jungle, just days before the eviction of refugees at the end of […]