Archives for Arts - Page 17
Art For Health
GARETH STEVENS gives an update on recent news from Arts On Prescription. Arts on Prescription has gone from strength to strength since it was initially founded in 2019. AOP delivers…
Why I Long to be a Sex Symbol – Thom Kofoed
CAF FEAN This week is the chance to see local painter Thom Kofoed’s portraits of celebrities, with more than a little bit of himself thrown into the mix. CAF FEAN…
Column258 Meets This Elegant Gull
MARK WALTER It was a chilly night in Hastings, and I had just done my now familiar walk from St Leonards along the rugged coastline of the English Channel to…
ARTS DIARY
Frontline Assignments Brian ArisDustman’s Strike Paddington 1960s The Lucy Bell Gallery presents Two Worlds, an exhibition’ exploring five decades of renowned British Photographer Brian Aris. Aris, who now lives on…
Hastings, Are You Curious?
KATE WATTS There’s a new festival in town on a mission to put Hastings on the map as the world’s first ‘Curious Town’. New local social enterprise Curious Agenda CIC…
World Blues
VERA BELL meditates on Eric Bibb’s performance at the De La Warr Pavilion on 9 May. The blues is a universal phenomenon. The relatively simple chord progression of many blues…
No Comparison
In early May, two leading singers performed locally on the same evening – Katie Melua at the De La Warr Pavilion, and British jazz diva Norma Winstone at the EHSAA.…
Baroque and Roll
VICTORIA KINGHAM discovers the geniality of the Hastings Maestro. Watching Cate Blanchett in the film Tár recently and subsequently reading a work which is said to inspire it, The Maestro…
Ploughing the Salt Sea – a Must-See!
CAF FEAN Ploughing the Salt Sea is a unique home-grown solo show, crafted by singer-songwriter and composer Bev Lee ; Hastings born-and-bred, Bev never knew her maternal grandparents: her mother,…
Falling into Sound
MARK WALTER As soon as I walked into the Durbar Hall, built in 1886 and designed by Caspar Purdon Clarke, I felt an air of relaxed calm. I was about…
The Rossettis’ Hastings Revisited
SARAH MILNE London’s Tate Britain is currently hosting a ground-breaking exhibition centring around the Rossettis, one of the most remarkable families of nineteenth-century culture. It is a dynamic immersive show,…
Room for More
HUGH SULLIVAN There’s a famous scene in the Marx Brothers’ film A Night at the Opera with an impromptu party in the cramped cabin of a transatlantic liner. More and…
Arts Diary
Music for Lunch The regular summer season of lunchtime concerts at Holy Trinity returns on Wednesday 7 June at It runs every Wednesday from June to August. An excellent start…
Eric Bibb Comes to Bexhill!
by ED FRITH Two-time Grammy Award nominee Eric Bibb will come ridin’ on to DLWP very soon. The world renowned Blues Troubadour and his band will perform the classics he…
ARTS DIARY
Blues and Twos The Old Ambulance Station, Bexhill, celebrates the arrival of a monumental bronze sculpture Excalibur by Steven Gregory, on public display for the first time on this site.…
Sonic Volley atThe Piper
AMANDA BROOKS enters the fascinating worlds of Codex Serafini, Cosmic Whip and Beau ‘Saturnian Galaxy Wanderers’ and Saturnalian, heavy psych band, Codex Serafini, are a sight and sound to bear…
Two Ships Come Sailing In
BEN THOMPSON looks forward to a night of maverick shredding and skronk A Saturday night in Hastings generally promises a splendidly broad array of entertainment options, with the town’s various…
Pathos, Bathos, Love, and Subversion
VICTORIA KINGHAM reflects on Cabaret Vibe of 20th Century at Kino-Theatre St Leonards A handful of people were privileged, on a recent wet Sunday afternoon, to watch a cabaret performance…
Touching Eternity
GARETH STEVENS meets with Babalola Yusuf whose exhibition “The Quality of Eternity is ((is now))” is currently at Flatland Projects gallery in Bexhill on Sea. There’s a well-worn trope in…
We Out Here
GARETH STEVENS reviews a groundbreaking exhibition at Hastings Contemporary. Since the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and the global upwelling of the Black Lives Matter, there is little…
An Unassuming Prodigy
Again, musical excellence takes varied, and often unexpected, forms, genres, and performance levels, and Hastings seems to have more than its share. We go on here to hail yet another…
Arts Diary
Take a Seat This spring, Tschabalala Self’s first public sculpture, Seated, comes to the De La Warr Pavilion, outside on the lawn, facing the sea. According to the DWP: “Standing three…
The Sum of Strange Bedfellows
All the Fair of the Unfair at the Electro Gallery. Review by NICK PELLING and HELEN MURPHY The title of an art exhibition can shed a little light on the…
Spirit in the Mass
Gareth Stevens reviews the Soutine | Kossoff exhibition currently running at Hastings Contemporary and argues that it is a ‘must see’ show. Kossoff, Building Site, 1961, Property of a European…
A New Carmen
OPERA SOUTH EAST presents Carmen by Georges Bizet. Sung in English with full orchestra and chorus In this production passion turns to jealousy. Hope turns to despair. Order turns to…
Haydn and Mozart at Christ Church
VICTORIA KINGHAM returns to Christ Church in St Leonards to appreciate the Philharmonic Choir in full voice. Assiduous followers of this newspaper will have noticed, back in cold February, these…
The Soul of Kinsella
Amanda Brooks and Victoria Kingham In the thoroughly musical, thoroughly joyful town of Hastings we present here the first of an occasional series featuring the lives and ambitions of just…
Artist Spotlight: Maria O’Neill
Seafront – St Leonards on Sea This painting is a ‘slice of life’ in St Leonards. It shows the sea front between London Road and Warrior Square on three levels:…
Up in Arms
“Claudine and Tracey” Image Credit: Anna Maria Nabirye and Annie Saunders, Greenhalf Studios, Home Live Arts, St Leonards, 2023. Removing boundaries to create meaningful dialogue on topics of race, gender…
ARTS DIARY
ESOTERIC FILM FESTIVAL Watch out for the Hastings Rocks International Film Festival mid-April. It’s home to independent films that the organisers say “push boundaries across all genres, fiction or non-fictional.”…
Journey’s Beginning
Julia Stubbs, the director of SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS, an autobiographical musical by Mark Glentworth, explains how it came about. I met Mark in early 2022 through my…
Bigger and Better
GARETH STEVENS talks with two ceramicists whose vision for a community-based project is to expand into a huge new space which will enable them to extend their reach. Having already…
Secret Saint Leonards
KATE SHAW I have little idea of what to expect as I battle my way along the blustery seafront to this mysterious Friday night gig. I’d been added to an…
Uchida at Fairlight
VICTORIA KINGHAM Once in a century there comes along a composer of towering genius. Once in a century too, there comes along a virtuoso exponent of that composer. It was…
Sarah Jane Morris Sings the Beatles
VICTORIA KINGHAM The Kino-Teâtr is the ultimate in shabby-chic, a real Hastings gem with its beautiful curved ceiling, unpainted, boldly showing the plasterwork; and lovely old velvet cinema seats that…
Easter Music for Grown-Ups
TOM BLASS, author, journalist, publisher and local resident, recreates a transcendent musical experience. The Seven Last Words of Christ was originally composed by Joseph Haydn in orchestral form and had…
Baroque, Romance, Impressionism, and Jazz
LEXI LIND sings the praises of Mike Hatchard, who substituted at the last moment for Salomé Chitaia Being asked to step in to give a piano recital at short notice…
Iago Banet
Think Spain, think a black gaucho hat, think black jacket and jeans and guitar and you would be forgiven for thinking aha! Flamenco. Think again. As Banet, with the most…
Xhosa Cole at the EHSAA
VICTORIA KINGHAM Traditionally in a review, one is assumed to make rational judgements, to not throw out superlatives like genius, innovator, unique, powerful, beautiful, as to overuse these kinds of…
The Fabulous Fabulous Red Diesel
VERA BELL attends Hastings Women’s Jazz Festival at the Royal Standard. Fabulous Red Diesel “Twenty-first century jazz,” writes local musician, Pat Sweete, about The Fabulous Red Diesel. Catching their gig…