Archives for Painting
Arts Forum News
Hastings Arts Forum, the long-standing quality arts collective, is staging two new exhibitions this month. The first, Smalls! HAF Small Works is on until 19 September, and reflects its title.…
The Hybridityof Kim Wan
TOBY BULA-EDGE AND VERA BELL Electro Studios hosted Kim Wan’s new exhibition Hybridity on 8-9 August, with an open view the evening before. Graphic painting Shown to a soundtrack of…
Multilayered Meanings in Iranian Art
MARK SPELMAN on his new exhibition at Project 78 I first recall seeing what you could broadly call ‘Persian Miniatures’ when I was installing a show in Dammam, KSA. I…
Hastings Arts Forum: Two Seaside Exhibitions
Arts Forum at 20 Marine Court has been showing consistently good-quality art here since 2006, and this summer’s shows are no exception. Bill Greenhead, IceScream GREENHEAD’S GULLS Local Hastings artist…
Greenhead’s Seagulls at Arts Forum
Local Hastings artist Bill Greenhead invites you into the mind of a seagull. Imagine a universe where Earth is not dominated by humans, but by avian creatures that call themselves…
A Meander Through an Artist’s Mind
DAVID MILTON Visiting De La Warr Pavilion’s art shows recently has been a bit like the three cream cracker challenge – an unpalatably dry, instantly regrettable experience that has you…
Art for Carers and Cared-for
Drawing Life will be able to continue delivering art classes for carers and those they care for until mid 2027 thanks to funding from The National Lottery Community Fund. Judy…
Weight of the Soul
ELIZABETH ALLEN The exhibition Doom Reimagined, at All Saints’ Church, offered various and vivid responses by local artists to the church’s own medieval Doom painting. Many of the reimaginings were…
To Improvise A Mountain: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Curates
De La Warr Pavilion have secured To Improvise A Mountain: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Curates, as part of the Hayward Gallery’s touring programme. Yiadom-Boakye is one of the UK’s foremost contemporary painters.…
Amici Studio Summer Celebration
Over the past six months, Amici Studio has quietly established itself as a new community-focused arts organisation in the town, delivering free exhibitions, artist talks, workshops, school visits, peer learning…
Grief Encounter
HELEN MURPHY AND NICK PELLING The artist Georgie Wheeler wanted to make one thing very clear: “This is not a misery show.” What she was articulating is that her new…
Visual Responses to Grief
The aim of this special exhibition, shown for the duration of the festival at Electro Studios, was to showcase local artists’ reactions to their own personal grief. These were depicted…
Doom And Gloom? No
For two weekends in June, All Saints Church in Hastings Old Town transforms into an atmospheric art gallery as The Two Ians (Skelton and Shillito) curate their next group show.…
Time Travellers
DAVE MILTON Tawfik Naas, whose Manifestations For An Eternal Spring occupies the main gallery at Flatland, is described as a researcher rather than an artist. Neat arrangements of enigmatic objects…
Measuring A Unit of One Year
HELEN MURPHY AND NICK PELLING For one precise year, a young artist, Bee Nicholls, initiated, set-up and ran the ‘Unit 2’ Art Space at the sea-end of London Road. It…
One Hundred Demons
Those of you who saw Kim L Pace’s whimsical, but very unsettling pottery at Hastings Museum last year will be pleased to know that there is now a chance to…
Collage d’Or
DAVE MILTON Rock Paper Scissors, a solo exhibition by Daniela Maria Gargiulo at Hastings Arts Forum, comprises sixty pictures made in the three years since the artist’s daughter left home.…
Stories of the Mature Woman
Stories of the Mature Woman is a group exhibition exploring the richness, resilience and evolving identities of women later in life. Curated by Carolyn Macleod and presented in partnership with…
Small, but Perfectly Formed
VICTORIA KINGHAM Graced as we are with so many small exhibition spaces in addition to the established Hastings Contemporary and De La Warr Pavilion, it’s easy to miss some of…
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…
All us Women 2026
VICTORIA KINGHAM Tucked away in the Rooftop Gallery of De La Warr Pavilion is a small but intriguing exhibition underlining societally-nurtured patterns of violence, emotional imbalance and trauma against women.…
Art for Summer
Women’s Art The current show at Barnaby’s Lounge in Robertson Street is Gaining Ground, an all-women’s art show curated by Louise Whitham, who says “This show feels like each work…
Open Odyssey
HELEN MURPHY AND NICK PELLING Something groundbreaking is happening at Hastings Contemporary. They are about to put on their first ever Open Exhibition. The gallery took the very brave step…
Wake Up & Feelthe Colour
HELEN MURPHY AND NICK PELLING There is a particularly vibrant exhibition coming up at Unit 2 on London Road. The show is entitled Wake Up &. The artist is Sophie…
All Kinds of Everything
NICK PELLING and HELEN MURPHY It’s not unusual for galleries to have a café or for restaurants to chuck some quirky art on the walls, but at the Kino-teatr on…
Music for Midwinter
The much-anticipated Music For Midwinter festival is on its way and tickets are flying out the door. The festival is being put on by Sounds St Leonards, an organisation set up by…
A New Picasso?
A few times every century, a child emerges who is clearly born to be an artist. Think of Mozart composing at the age of four, Picasso whose first words were…
Sussex Spotlight at Hastings Contemporary
The gallery has recently launched Sussex Spotlight, a new series of free-to-visit exhibitions celebrating the vibrant creativity of local artists and the rich cultural landscape of Sussex. The first exhibition…
Love Letter inOrange
HELEN MURPHY and NICK PELLING There is a tender and rather poignant lovers’ story behind the exhibition The Stolen Orange, off Bond Street in Brighton. The tale begins back in…
Warm Glows and Polar Bears
Hastings Arts Forum is hosting a warm winter salon this year. Besides a curated exhibition of affordable prints, artists books, cards, poetry, small paintings, textiles and ceramics, this his year…
Betty Parsons: Abstract Expression, Spiritual Intervention
VICTORIA KINGHAM The 1913 Armory Show in New York was an exhibition which brought to America, for the first time, the Modern Art that we now see as seminal: Matisse’s…
Fun in the Post-Apocalyptic Slime
VICTORIA KINGHAM Along with T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, W. B. Yeats’ Second Coming must be one of the most-quoted poems of the past hundred years. Things Fall Apart…
The Complete Lewis Floyd Henry
VICTORIA KINGHAM Walking along a rather quiet stretch of St Leonards seafront the other day in the warm greyness of late September, you may have been surprised to hear a…
Hastings Contemporary: Environment, Observation, Protest
VICTORIA KINGHAM The new three-artist exhibition at Hastings Contemporary has much to recommend it, both in imaginative curation and artistic excellence. The large room occupied by local artist Sophie Barber’s…
Red, Blue, Up, Onwards and Up
JESSICA COURTNEY BENNETT Congratulations to Michelle Roberts, who has been shortlisted for the Sky Arts Awards 2025. The winner will be announced live on screen on 16 September. Michelle was…
Bexhill Art Weekender 2025
Flatland Projects, De La Warr Pavilion and the Bexhill Cultural Network are pleased to announce the launch of the Bexhill Art Weekender 2025, a new two-day festival celebrating contemporary visual…
Project Art Works Opens its Doors
This summer take a trip to Hastings to visit Project Art Works and experience their newly reopened Arches and Trinity Hall on one of their Open Studios weekends. Explore an…
The Art of the Portrait
CHRISTIE CASSISA To me as a young teen, art was about a love of problem solving. Later in life, I found that there is more to great art than just…
Flower Power
‘Plants Make Places’, a new exhibition by artist and environmentalist Laura Ribbons, opens at Hastings Museum & Art Gallery on Saturday 23 August. This collaborative exhibition, created in partnership with…