Small is Beautiful
Martin Bradshaw, Coordinator at Hastings Arts Forum explains the background to their latest exhibition at The Gallery in St Leonards’ Marine Court.
It is said by some, that all good things come in small packages –and this can certainly be applied to art, and to our exhibition currently showing on the seafront in St Leonards.
If you visit Hastings Arts Forum this week, you will find a group of professional artists as diverse as any you are likely to find elsewhere in the country. And, following the success of their show in 2019 – A Smaller Picture, South Coast Artists (SoCo) return to Hastings Arts Forum (HAF) with a sequel – A Smaller Picture II – the criteria being that no work should be larger than 30cm in any direction!
Solitude and isolation tend to be synonymous with the working practices of an artist, so when the members of SoCo have the opportunity to show their work, it’s a chance to get together as a group. SoCo isn’t one of those peripatetic-type groups who congregate in a self-congratulatory manner but presenting a broad-spectrum of high-quality work is very much at the heart of the organisation’s ethos, and one on which it prides itself, with a reputation that has grown steadily since its inception in 2002.
Solitude and isolation tend to be synonymous with the working practices of an artist
That ‘ethos’ is not only about giving its members the opportunity to exhibit work locally – usually three exhibitions a year – but to challenge the artists’ approach to working, through experiment and question, setting exacting parameters in which to work – most notably the curated show in 2018 when SoCo held an exhibition at the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery called Collect. On that occasion, submissions were based on artefacts in the museum. In November 2019, for their RX19 show, members were invited to submit work inspired by The Stade at Rock-a-Nore.
Workshops run by SoCo members often accompany exhibitions as a way of broadening their practice, providing an innovative and exciting interaction between art and audience. If you visited the RX19 show in 2019 you may have come across Alan Wright leading a lively two-day workshop Caught in Nets, or a children’s workshop run by Wendy Smith and Fiona Denning.
At present SoCo is scheduling its exhibitions and events for 2022, to be announced in due course.
Visit www.soco.org.uk for further information. In the meantime, give yourself a treat and visit Hastings Arts Forum to see A Smaller Picture II. You’ll not be disappointed.
• The exhibition runs 21st September – 3rd October at The Gallery, 20 Marine Court, St Leonards on Sea.
See hastingsartsforum.co.uk for further information.
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The future of our volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. You can also support local journalism by becoming a friend of HIP. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.
Leave a Reply