First Sparks Series: Tom Hallimond

Introducing Sarabande’s First Sparks Series at House of Bandits Café

With our recent expansion to Tottenham and the opening of House of Bandits Café, we are thrilled to launch our very first public art series: First Sparks.

First Sparks is an ongoing rotating exhibition displayed across the large front window of the café. Every three months, we will spotlight a single raw sketch or early drawing taken straight from an artist’s sketchbook or studio. This intimate, unpolished “first thought” is carefully re-imagined and transformed into a vibrant graphic artwork that wraps the entire café window.

By bringing these initial sparks of creativity into the public realm, we invite passers-by to experience the honest beginnings of artistic ideas, and to feel the creative energy flowing from the Sarabande artists in the studios directly into the heart of the café. 

The House of Bandits Café exists to support artists. All profits from the café go straight back into funding our studios, residencies, and artistic programmes. So it’s important to us that people get to connect with our artists, even if they are just there for a coffee and a exquisite pastry.

Kicking off the series

We’re excited to launch First Sparks with Tom Hallimond’s initial sketch for his painting Sunday’s Best, 1956. Reimagined in Tom’s signature playful colour palette, the work now brings joy and energy to the streets of Tottenham. 

Tom Hallimond is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores themes of care and lived experience. His work reflects on the quiet resilience and human effort required to adapt during times of upheaval, particularly the isolation and uncertainty of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Through his art, Tom examines the tension between continuity and change, the hidden labour of care, and the everyday gestures that become acts of quiet resistance.

Tom’s works are available to acquire via our gallery, House of Bandits.

As the First Sparks Series unfolds throughout the year, Sarabande artists’ work will literally shape the face of our public café, connecting our mission with everyone who wanders in for a coffee, a moment of reflection, or a spark of inspiration.

We can’t wait to welcome you!

“Sunday’s Best” forms part of an ongoing series by Tom Hallimond. The work began with the rediscovery of his grandfather’s archive of photographs, prompting a desire to preserve his family’s history.“ I don’t want that history to disappear,” Tom explains. “I want to preserve it in a painting.”

As the series continues to evolve, Sarabande has witnessed the work from its very first spark through to its final form. “I don’t use a pencil, I always start with a paintbrush,” Tom says, describing the instinctive, fluid approach that defines his practice. It is with that same spirit that Sunday’s Best, now on view in the House of Bandits Café window, first came to life.

Can you introduce the work you’ve created for First Sparks?

This piece of work comes from a painting called “Sunday Best,” from 1956. It's one of multiple paintings within this larger body of work. I started painting again during the Sarabande Residency, and this series now contains about 12 paintings. It's quickly snowballed and is becoming its own kind of thing.

What was the inspiration behind this work?

The inspiration behind this work comes from my Grandad. I worked in care for four years as a community carer and had relationships with these wonderful people who depended on me 24/7. After I left my care work, I started studying at the Slade and then when I came to Sarabande I started looking closer to home. And my grandad, who's 99, needs more care than needed in the past. So I've been looking closer to home now. And this person used to care for me. It's my way of caring for him.

Being that this work has derived from the original sketch, how much do you feel like your work changes from the original idea to the final product?

Massively. But it's quite interesting that the figures never change. As soon as the first sketch goes down, the figure outline stays. After having studied these black-and-white archive photographs, as soon as I kind of put them on the canvas, they stay. Then it's a case of building a world around them. So the overall aesthetic, the colours, the world, you could say, changes massively because it has to.

Your practice spans painting, sketching, photography and sculpture. Does your creative process change depending on the medium you're working in?

I think it has to. I think we have to treat every material, every process, differently. That's how you would smile at someone on the street. That's how you pick your groceries. You don't know who you could meet. You could meet some fabric you've never met before. You could meet a thread that's difficult. I think it's kind of like potluck, in a sense. So, in a sense, that does change everything.

But my core process - for example, when I was talking about the figure, whether that's in a painting or in a sculptural form - the core is that, and then I'll build around that core.

Can you walk us through how you start your work?  

Where my approach differs is that I never use a pencil. I always use a paintbrush. That's kind of my pencil, I guess. I was taught that back in college. My professor at the time said, "Never sketch. You paint." Whether it's wrong advice or good advice, it's advice. I was taught never to use a pencil, always to use the brush, because it can be more fluid and you're not confined by a pencil sketch.

So, going back to how I sketch, I just go straight in with the medium I'm using. If I'm painting, it'll be straight in with paint, and that does evolve, but not massively. The figures don't evolve. Maybe I'll go back in and some structures will change to help the composition in general.

How has Sarabande's support helped your creative practice?

There's multiple things. I think one of the biggest is seeing your work outside of the studio. Especially as an emerging artist who's just come out of a master's degree, you rarely get the opportunity to see your work in a different environment. If you're lucky, you do. But a lot of the time you only ever see it in your own space, and that can be a struggle. It's hard enough to believe in your work sometimes, let alone see it how it should be seen - as something that's able to live and breathe outside of your room, outside of your own practice.

That's been a huge thing for me. With Sarabande's help, I've been able to show my work in different spaces that I probably wouldn't have had the chance to, especially at this stage.

The second thing is having the space, but also having the support of other artists and everyone involved in Sarabande. Having that guidance and that support is really important. Being an artist isn't just about being on your own. It's everything. It's your family. It's your lifelines. It might seem very isolated, and it is. You need a lot. You need a team. And Sarabande is a great team.