Archives for Arts - Page 23
HIP LOCAL LIT NEWS: ATownExploresABook22
Choose2bKind Project A Creative Writing Competition By Gail Borrow Kindness is the theme of #ATownExploresABook22’s creative writing competition running 1-31 March 2022. Young writers aged 7-14 years are invited to…
Diamond Life
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling I think it was the naked, blue alien woman sitting on a skyscraper that prompted our interest. So, we headed for the Bare Bone…
Covid, Mother of Invention?
By Gareth Stevens It is often said that necessity is the mother of invention. Whilst lockdown has had a catastrophic effect on art exhibition schedules, and led to all galleries…
BOOK REVIEW
Mired in the Mizzle of Time Kent Barker reviews Winchelsea, the new novel by Alex Preston It may be perverse to feel proprietorial about someone who has been dead for…
Underground Diarist
By Helen Drake If you have not paid a visit to Hastings Museum & Art Gallery recently, or if you have never been, you really should go. Apart from an…
Diesel Powered
The Fabulous Red Diesel have a breakthrough gig at Ronnie Scott’s on 24 April. HIP spoke to frontperson Kat Lee-Ryan and asked about their journey from local pubs and clubs…
Art Diary
Ivory Tinkling The Hastings International Piano Competition is running at the White Rock Theatre until March 5th. The promoters say that it has quietly become one of the most prestigious…
HIP LOCAL LIT NEWS
Teaching Mr Lear A Feast of Words Local Syrian women write their own book. By Felicity Stephen How to decipher a book of ‘nonsense’ written 150 years ago in a…
Witchcraft on the Stade
Review by Gareth Stevens It is always a ‘pinch yourself’ moment to sit in the East Hastings Angling Association club at The Stade and to realise that in such a…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
Suburban Socialism (or Barbarism) By Oly Durose Published by Repeater Books, 2022, rrp £ from Bookbuster, Queens Road Review by Tim Barton Here is James Meek, in the London Review…
Next Stop Utopia
By Nick Pelling Have you ever thought that you were living a shallow and rather selfish life? Worse still, that this was all just a reflection of your horribly flawed…
FASHION
Mardi Bra and my Nan Andrea Knights explains how her long deceased grandmother encouraged her to use lockdown to promote the new comedic fashion accessory she had designed – the…
Gangsters Come to Old Town
Louis Mellis and David Scinto established a reputation in the 1990s as the bad boys of British screenwriting. They created a thoroughly wired triptych of gangster films, beginning with Gangster…
Hastings is the Life of the Mardi
By Ben Cornwell Dust off your masks, feathers and colourful brollies as the UK’s largest Mardi Gras festival, Hastings Fat Tuesday is only weeks away. Hastings’ answer to Brazil’s Carnival…
Inside the Dome of Dub
By Gareth Stevens Aba Shanti-I brought deep Dub Reggae joy to the crowd at St Mary in the Castle last night. I felt what Remi Vibesman, the event’s promoter, described…
Talking Pictures
By Nick Pelling If you wander into the wonderful world of the Kino Teatr you will, doubtless, find yourself looking at Russell Baker’s intriguing snowscapes. Russell, along with his wife…
HIP POETRY READ
death by the poetry of kindness By Pete Donohue Holy&intoxicated PublicationsSigned limited edition (25) chapbook, £5, €5, $5 REVIEW BY CLAIRE RICHARDSON How do you review poetry? Like many art…
Buzz Around the Bare Bone Gallery
By Helen Murphy Bare Bone is a relatively new Hastings gallery; it opened in October 2021. The project is the brainchild of the dynamic couple, Maddie Peterson and Josh Carr,…
Shadows from the Durbar Hall
Gareth Stevens previews an exhibition of works by Monika Veriopoulos at the blackShed Gallery, Robertsbridge - 12 February - 5 March. Monika Veriopoulos was born in Athens in ; She…
THEATRE REVIEW
A Hippie Macbeth By Kent Barker Since Stanislavski, actors preparing a role seek to uncover motivation. And while I hardly dare question the Bard, I wonder if some of his…
Reading the Runes
Ben Cornwell visits Hastings’ independent bookshops to see how they have fared during the pandemic years. There’s nothing quite like that feeling of stepping into a bookshop. As a child…
Are Animals Necessary?
Gareth Stevens profiles Hastings’ musician Keith Rodway and his new album Despite having always been obsessed with music, Keith Rodway tells me that he only really became actively involved in…
ARTS DIARY
King Tenorman Jazz Hastings have achieved a major coup in attracting legendary Boston-based saxophonist Jerry Bergonzi and his quartet to play at the East Hastings Sea Angling Association on the…
BOOKBUTER REVIEW
Knocking Out My Demons By Paul HugginsPublished by Verite CM, 2021, paperback, £ at Bookbuster, 39 Queens Road. Review by Tim Barton Paul is Hastings born and bred, and pretty…
BOOK REVIEW
Mister Hastings By Nick Pelling The eighteenth century is an unloved sort of century. Certainly, British history in that era is hardly taught in school at all. Instead, students are…
Mysticism of Collective Consciousness
As the Electric Palace cinema in Hastings survives to fight another day, Kent Barker offers a personal view of the shared experience of sitting in the dark with strangers. Did…
The Erotic Sweetshop
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling There can’t be many owners of sweetshops who have ended up serving three months hard labour for selling their products. This is precisely what…
Art for HIP’s Sake
By Nick Pelling Sometimes artists get a bad press. They are occasionally depicted as narcissistic types obsessed with their own ideas and neurotic about reviews and, of course, sales. But…
Art to replace bowls in the park
Arts on Prescription (AoP), a local community interest company which offers art and creative activities as a therapeutic means of mental health support, is to be awarded a tenancy by…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
Edible Plants By Geoff DannPublished by Anthropozoic Books, 2021 softback, £25 rrpAvailable from Bookbuster Books Review by Tim Barton Five years ago Hastings-based Geoff Dann authored Edible Mushrooms: A Forager’s…
The Real Deal
By Nick Pelling Many of us have no doubt dreamt of being an artist; breaking the digital chains that now ensnare us all. But reality, in the form of needing…
The Sisterhood
Sarah Jane Morris is a singer-songwriter. She has a back-catalogue of fifteen solo albums since establishing herself as a lead vocalist in the 1980s with bands such as The Republic,…
Going Back to Zombie School
By Sonny Levitt A young Hastings man considers what it means to get an education. I grew up loving books. I started reading by myself at the age of four,…
Landscaped Solitude
Alexandra Whatley ventures into the studio of local artist Adrienne Hunter and finds that some disorder helps reveal the individual. Gestural, raw, playful, these are the words that spring to…
HIP Congratulates Project Art Works as Runners Up in this year’s Turner Prize
Project Art Works Exhibition at the Hastings Contemporary We hope that the recognition of collective action, artists and activism so clearly articulated in the Turner Prize 2021, represents acceptance of…
Magnificent Madness?
Nick Pelling attends the St Leonards’ premiere of a documentary about the making of a film by the former Monty Python star Terry Gilliam. Have you ever thought that a…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
Everything, All the Time, Everywhere: How We became Postmodern By Stuart Jeffries Published by Verso, 2021 hardback, £20 rrp Review by Tim Barton Jeffries is not seeking to give a…
Fat Tuesday Team get the Ball rolling for 2022
By Ben Cornwell Bringing the colour, costumes and carnival spirit of New Orleans, Hastings Fat Tuesday, the UK’s largest Mardi Gras celebration, is returning in 2022. The festival is made…
Calling all Art Hounds
As everyone knows, the art and popular culture market is a fickle one. Often seeming irrational. Why, for example, is George Formby’s banjo-ukelele worth more than Noel Gallagher’s hand-written lyric…
Hastings Musical Festival 2022
Entries Close 30 November 2021 Calling all amateur dancers, musicians, singers and spoken word enthusiasts in Hastings for the 2022 Musical Festival. Every year since 1908 there has been a…