Siren Spring at the Hastings Contemporary
HELEN MURPHY AND NICK PELLING
If you have ever felt (along with John Masefield) that you simply “must go down to the sea again”, then Hastings Contemporary – set on the very watery edge of England – has the exhibition for you. The titular theme, ‘Odyssey’, is simultaneously wonderfully specific and yet all-inclusive, and hence the resulting show is kaleidoscopically diverse.
Jane Andrews, Let the Bark Bite, 2022
The exhibition is the result of the Gallery’s open call to all artists: there were over 2,000 entries, reduced to 152 exhibits. In a sense what the viewer beholds is a snapshot of the swirling diversity of the Sussex art scene. We went down to see what it was all about.
The Art Director of the Contemporary is the deeply charismatic Kathleen Soriano, of Sky Arts fame and so much more. She explained that the gallery’s unique position on the sea shore means that it should take its connection to the maritime environment, and indeed the neighbouring fishing community, as “part of its mission.” But this is no way a preachy exhibition. It does not deal in obvious political messaging; it speaks to us in a creative cacophony of voices. And it is all the more intriguing for that.
BEWITCHING PEARLS
However, the exhibition has been cleverly curated to bring some order out of the multiversity. To some degree each sub-gallery is given over to different types of work and there are many, from painting through photography, sculpture, printmaking, ceramics and film and mixed-media things that are beyond simple categorisation. Hermione Allsop’s Holes for example are made of ceramic, foam, grout, plaster and paint, all held together by a looping imagination. In amongst all this there is also children’s work, stemming from the Contemporary’s fantastic ‘Pearls of the Sea’ Programme for primary school students. Some of this is quite bewitching, particularly their puppets.
Much of the work has an underlying comedic glint, often with a slightly sinister mood. Jane Andrews’ Let the Bark Bite, for example, suggests a weird sort of odyssey into the dark worlds of creepy folk tale or demented nursery rhyme. Some works are more haunting, such as Tom Banks’ eerie night/day double-image. Other works draw on traditional historic themes but are delightfully self-subverting, such as Sue Cohen’s Millie’s Friend the Radical With White Lillies, in which an acrylic suffragette seems to glow with aquatic incongruity. In a slightly similar vein is the rather wonderful The Sirens Are Bored Now by Leah Germann. Russell Baker’s Drifting North, alternatively, brings an icy silence into the visual conversations between the pictures.
HUMAN WARMTH
In the rather large category of the baffling, there is much to beguile. The purely abstract is well represented within the show but then so is the figurative. There are few traditional portraits, but we were particularly taken with the sheer human warmth radiating out of Eugene Palmer’s depiction of his late father.
In short, there is such a rich multiplicity of material in this brilliant show that it all defies easy description. Rather unfairly, we abruptly asked one particular visitor, the artist Mags Orson, what she made of the show. She said that her primary take-away was the sense of being “transported to different worlds” but that it was all suffused with “the smell and feel of the sea.” It was a spot-on observation, but every visitor will doubtless take away a different personal impression and a different sense of what constituted the highlights. And that is precisely what makes it such a great show. Do go down.
Odyssey runs until May 31 at Hastings Contemporary
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