Turps Banana: An Off-Site Art School Comes To Hastings
JUDE MONTAGUE
Turps Banana, the alternative art school, is opening a new off-site programme in the Hastings area. Many of my friends have taken an interest in the London school and taken courses, so I spoke to founder Marcus Harvey about the school, and what brings it to Hastings. Marcus is a well-known artist from the Sensation generation of YBAs (Young British Artists), whose most infamous work is the portrait of Myra Hindley which he composed of children’s handprints to focus on the crime which instigated the murderer’s iconic and much-reproduced portrait. The idea for an alternative arts school, which stands outside the institution of the art school and essay-writing, came to him as an opportunity to offer painters mutual peer support.
He has family connections in the area. Among them was Angie Biltcliffe, an inspiring local community artist who many locals may remember (she sadly died in 2011). From childhood, Harvey was always interested in the fishing fleet and the beaches here. He told me that he doesn’t especially welcome either the gentrification of the area or its reputation as a working-class tourist destination but feels that the recent mass influx of artists from London, priced out of their homes and studios by relentless ruthless capitalism, cannot be ignored. These are a generation whose philosophy and work has been influenced by Art School ideas, by the process of beavering away alone in your studio but wanting to share ideas and talk about your progress with a peer group. It is these artists that Turps Banana wants to serve, to break through that isolation.
INFORMAL COLLABORATION
Turps Banana is actively trying to bring that critical discourse, well-established in the London urban arts scene, to those who might miss it here. Harvey observes and speculates: “There are painters who have cashed out of London and are enjoying the fresh air and their relatively affordable digs but are craving the edge and grittiness of the London scene.” Even if you find your own place to work, the challenges continue. As Harvey says: “If you’re forking out money for studios and materials month in month out, year in, year out, probably even decade in, decade out, you might well want the oxygen and encouragement of a likeminded community.” The Turps ‘premises’ therefore function as a collective off-site studio. Everyone is a visual artist, as are all the tutors – the school prefers the word ‘mentors’.
The organisation will work alongside other locally based recent initiatives such as the St Leonards Art School and Hastings Art School. The St Leonards and Hastings area has become a seaside recuperation and rejuvenation spot to which active painters, sculptors and visual artists have been drawn to lead a life more conducive to their work. From my studio on Kings Road St Leonards, I see characters from this journey every day. Like me they are getting their coffee from Dandelion (newly reopened) or sauntering about, gazing into second-hand furniture shops. But it’s not enough just to socialize. People need to make strong connections that enhance their work.
BLACK MOUNTAIN INFLUENCE
Geraldine Swayne, a painter and musician working in a studio here for many years now, is one of Turps’ tutors. She is well-established as a Hastings artist, working locally yet benefiting from the area’s closeness to London, which encourages the relationship between London’s galleries and its network of artists and its international links. In the past few years, she has seen how artists have arrived in our local area from London areas like Brixton, Hackney, Deptford. She talks about the influence of Black Mountain College – a highly influential school founded in North Carolina, USA in 1933, where teaching was experimental, interdisciplinary and informal, with an emphasis on collaboration. Most of the work of running the faculty was done by the students themselves. It became an acknowledged power centre of modern American culture. Composer John Cage, artists Robert Rauschenberg and Willem de Kooning, and choreographer Merce Cunningham were all associated with the school. It is also well-known for having originated the experimental Black Mountain poetry group in the 1950s.
Artists have always come to the sea to paint the water and recreate the atmospheric conditions, a fact which is also part of the local lure. Harvey talks about artists migrating from the centre of civilization until they meet a geological barrier. “I always find reconciling this human element against the romance of ‘maritime art’ hugely attractive as a challenge.”
The school’s intake starts soon but is already fully subscribed. Anyone interested in this alternative adventure, never knowingly mainstream or complacent, may make enquires about future enrolment at turpsbanana.com.
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