Tag archives for Helen Murphy
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…
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…
Wish You Were Here?
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING There is something both alluring and rather sad about the English seaside. Somehow the seaside is full of the promise of naughtiness and fun, and…
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…
Apples From the Bohemia Tree
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING take a look at a dynastic exhibition Sophie Parkin, The Ever-Growing Cat Inside My Head The current exhibition at the marvellous Rogue Gallery on Norman…
Back to Life
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING try out life drawing with your clothes on A Drawing in Progress Sometimes it is important to think about things a little differently. And that…
Blokes in Wonderland
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING The wonderful Rogue Gallery has moved. It is now to be found opposite the Kino-Teatr on Norman Road in St Leonards. The charismatic gallery owner,…
Animal Gods and Furry Friends
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING look into an unusual way to help animals There are few things more upsetting than stumbling across a wounded wild animal. A bird with a…
Getting Strange on Seaside Road
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING preview something a little unusual coming your way Alexander BrattellColin Booth: Joy, 2004 It may surprise you to know that we were not familiar with…
Inside Number 78
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING visit a new exhibition in St Leonards How do you like your horror? Spattered in innocent blood or something more like a demonic beast in…
Through a Lens Brightly
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING find out about an exciting new opportunity for young creativesin Hastings I suppose you could argue that we are all film makers now. You can…
It’s Reality, But Not As We Know It
HELEN MURPHY AND NICK PELLING go beyond mere reality. At first glance, you wouldn’t guess that the old Observer building, besieged as it is by rusty scaffolding, is home to…
Love Comes in Doodles?
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING investigate doodle dating. As we all know, going on a real person-to-person ‘date’ is full of potential embarrassment and enough social awkwardness to turn otherwise…
A Forgotten Hastings Hoaxer
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING investigate a curious case Have you ever heard of Charles Dawson? I suspect not. He was a well respected Victorian gent who was brought up…
A Pearl for the People?
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING ask what the Hastings Contemporary is doing for the people of Hastings. The shiny black box of the Hastings Contemporary that graces The Stade in…
More Than a Gym
NICK PELLING & HELEN MURPHY investigate the realities of a community leisure centre. Around this rather bloated time of year, many people begin to think about self-improvement schemes, like joining…
It’s a Kind of Madness?
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING investigate an amazing project. Something extraordinary is happening at the junction of Pevensey and London Roads. Something almost heroic, perhaps. Four years ago, one man…
A Time Machine in George Street
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING visit an almost new vintage outlet Donna Grimaldi What does the concept of vintage clothing actually mean? Some might think it is just second-hand stuff,…
Pink Star Pilates
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING investigate the P word Pink Star Pilates We should admit something: we thought Pilates was just another variant of yoga, probably a branch of transcendental…
Word Up!
NICK PELLING & HELEN MURPHY find out about the town’s new adult literacy group. Isabel Hodger Do you know an adult who struggles to read fluently? The difficulty is really…
Quiet Realism Makes a Noise
HELEN MURPHY & NICK PELLING explore the David Tindle exhibition at the Kino Gallery. Nick PellingDavid Tindle: Blue Bed Sheets and Pillowcase (2006) When you think of British painters of…
A Merciful Menagerie
Leah HammondLeah and guinea pigs NICK PELLING & HELEN MURPHY are inspired by a visit to the White Horse Stables rescue centre. It was pouring with rain on the day…
News from the Front of Beyond
NICK PELLING & HELEN MURPHY review the exhibition, Succession, at the Kino Teatr in Norman Road All photos: Helen PellingRadford in Mid-Flow Have you ever felt like you were sort…
The Festival that Keeps on Giving
NICK PELLING and HELEN MURPHY Wayne HerbertWayne Herbert, Festival organiser Some people don’t like book festivals: maybe they see them as chintzy affairs full of folding-chair types. Sort of a…
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…
Normal Not Normal
by HELEN MURPHY and NICK PELLING Obviously, someone called Henry Normal is not going to be normal. Henry is not dull, au contraire, Henry is quietly, blazingly brilliant. You may…
Staying Focussed on the Image Trail
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling The prospects for young working-class people growing up in Hastings are often thought to be rather limited. But there are those who seem to…
Twists in the Paintwork
HIP explores the many lives of a real painter man. By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling. The Hastings-based artist Chris Roskell, has led an extraordinary life. In chatting to him…
Rolling With Colden
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling The art world is a pretty baffling place: one person’s absurd joke is another person’s profundity. At one end you have chancers, grifters and…
Playing in the Potholes of Your Mind
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling The sheer number of potholes in the road fabric of this town is, let’s face it, bloody annoying. In this town you can basically go…
Flying with the C-Bombers
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling Here’s a tip: if you have ever had that feeling that maybe you could write a song, just do it. Do it while you…
Norman Road Goes Rogue
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling If dear old Noel Coward were still alive and, by some very odd twist, he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he would doubtless introduce…
Trouble is Her Business
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling Raymond Chandler is surely the king of 1940s crime noir fiction, and his novels, such as The Big Sleep, have led to some iconic…
A Dream of Escape
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling Who hasn’t dreamed of getting on a motorbike and hurdling the barbed wire at Stalag Luft III to freedom? The dream of some form…
D is for Demonology
A rare solo exhibition by Sexton Ming By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling I think it was the recent Royal Jubilee that prompted the question, where has the old punk…
Love and Paint, Actually
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling There are some exhibitions that just seem to come and go, but occasionally an exhibition comes along that feels like an important cultural…
The Art of Memory – The work of Ian Baker
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling Is it possible to paint a memory? It’s difficult: memories don’t keep still. They slip and slide and mutate. It is a bit like…
When is a Tree not a Tree?
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling Just beyond the now scorched grass at the old swimming pool site, along Seaside Road, can be found the quietly impressive Electro Studios Project…
Stars in the Gloom
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling In the sepia depths of ‘The Horse and Groom,’ in Mercatoria, one can often find two of the brightest stars in the St Leonards’ art…
Riding the Zig-Zag Horse into Town
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling What is it that attracts so many creative people to Hastings? Is it the long arc of white sandy beach, the soft impressionist light…