Many local artists from across the range of creative endeavours have alchemically developed innovative new ideas and produced great work out of what has been a largely calamitous pandemic. Alexander Brattell, Lauris Morgan-Griffiths, John Cole and James Robertshaw are four such people.

The inception of 14 Months of Solitude – a wry yet deferential tip of the hat to Márquez – grew out of a phone conversation between John and Lauris in April 2020. Discussing how they were coping with lockdown, they hatched a plan to work together in order to both sustain their creative process and provide a balm for growing Covid induced anxieties. 

Lauris mentioned to John an exhibition she had contributed to at Solaris Gallery the year before in which a group of photographers had sent each other images as a way of communicating non-verbally. In receipt of an image each artist responded in some way without any discussion. This ‘pass the parcel’ approach appealed to John immediately and he said, “let’s do it!”.

After recruiting Alex and James, the quartet of photo-graphers, each hailing from different sub domains, and with varied career paths, began their visual dialogue. 

For John, a well-respected documentary photographer, lockdown meant he was unable to photograph Hastings’ fisher families or go into care homes to ply his trade. To dialogue only with images at a time when all of us were homebound and only able to walk for exercise and essentials, meant he had to explore unfamiliar territory and tentatively take shots without people in them. With support from his landscape painter partner Sally Cole, he began to ponder a more formal and abstract approach to his craft.

So how did the conversation go? What were the ground rules? Well, each photographer sent one image to the next in line and their job was to respond, sometimes building on the theme or formal aspects of the received image or, at times, taking the ‘conversation’ in a fresh direction. As John points out “I was encouraged by Lauris to understand our image dialogue as being exactly like a conver-sation in a pub. Sometimes it will remain around one issue
with each contributor giving their perspective – but at certain points the direction and focus will change”.

Alex tells me that one incidental upshot of the process was that he “began to look at the photographs of my peers in a much deeper and reflective way”.

The resulting exhibition consists of 40 photographs presented in one continuous strip around the space. None of the individual shots are attributed and, in that way, it is a true group show with the outcome being a collective effort.

“We recently met to lay them all out and see the result in its entirety for the first time and were surprised at how well they flow and modulate” says John.

“The individual images are a celebration of the ordinary and the everyday. I think we all doubled down on the exquisite small-scale stuff in our lives in an almost Proustian way during lockdown. The minutiae took on a grander significance, colours seemed more vivid and we all had time to savour a visual world that we may have overlooked when times were ‘normal’.”

There is a deep sense of humility and gratitude that permeates each photograph in this show, and indeed the overall symphonic image which the 40 contributions create.

• ‘14 Months of Solitude’ runs on the 6th and 7th November at Electro Studios Project Space. For more information please go to www.electrostudiosprojectspace.co.uk

Solaris Gallery, Norman Road, St Leonards on Sea
12th October – 9th November

Review by Andrew Myers

In this age of information overload, it’s understandable that we grasp for quick and easy simplifications of meaning. But how to slow down? How to enjoy the moment? How to achieve that state of mind where different meanings are allowed to co-exist?

The solution offered by the EDGE group of artists – Grace Lau, Roz Cran, Lucinda Wells and Lauris Morgan-Griffiths – is to let the images speak for themselves. Apart from a discreet exhibition catalogue with credits for each work, there wasn’t a single label in sight. 

The concept of their Conversation show is brilliantly simple. Over the course of a year, one member takes a photo, sending it to the next member of the group. The next person responds with another image and so on in a cycle. Crucially, no verbal discussion takes place between the artists. The dialogue is purely visual. It’s a conceit which seems perfectly adapted to the internet age.

The result is a thought-provoking and visually stimulating exhibition, containing a kaleidoscopic variety of images encompassing the surreal, abstract, and the ironic.

At the private view, glass of wine in hand and in good company, there was great fun to be had following the ‘trail’ of photos and trying to work out how each image related to the previous one. The viewer was encouraged to think like the artists.

However, there’s perhaps also a risk that this approach to the works could turn into a parlour game. Spotting the connections between photos could distract the viewer from the intrinsic qualities of the images themselves. 

To guard against this, the pictures are hung loosely in the order that they were created – but in groups rather than a restrictive line. This allows themes to emerge more holistically – time, light, the sea, reflections. Interestingly, apart from a ghostly silhouette in one picture, there was an almost complete absence of human figures.

The responses in this visual conversation range from the direct to the oblique and mysterious. A number of images are connected by their use of circular forms, or by a shared colour. A haunting image of the sun seen through a foggy sky is countered by a night shot of the moon.  A clock becomes an egg. The shape of a bank of cloud, inverted, becomes a rainy country lane. A run of images with a muted palette gives way to a flurry of colour.  

By the end of the exhibition, I was starting to get a feel for the individual style of each artist. Like a string quartet, this was a conversation between four distinct voices.

After the excitement of the first night, I returned when the gallery was empty and had quite a different experience. The images offered a new set of possible meanings. There’s no doubt that this absorbing exhibition bears repeated viewing – in fact, I’d love to see it published as a book.

I can’t wait to see where the conversation goes next!

Hastings Arts Forum Big Fundraising Bazaar and pop up cafe!
Saturday 26th October 11am-5pm, 36 Marina 
(under Marine Court) St Leonards TN38 0BU.

Art materials and books, quality clothes, plants, material, wool and more. Lovely lunches, yummy cakes, mulled wine, teas and coffee. Bring your friends and meet old friends over delicious food and drink, and grab some bargains.

James Tissot: Master of fashion and frisson 

James Tissot was a man of paradoxes: a Frenchman turned Englishman, a man who loved to paint women but never married. The detail with which he described the fashions of the period make his work a dress historian’s dream!
• Lecture by Lizzie Darbyshire, run by The Arts Society Rother Valley. Visitors welcome (suggested donation £7). Will be held at the Hastings Centre, The Ridge, Hastings TN34 2SA, 2.00 pm. Monday 21st October 2019.

Petr Chmel at Dirty Old Gallery
Petr Chmel was born in Olomouc in the Czech Republic in 1979 and lives now in Hastings. His enthusiasm and interest in art emerged early in childhood and carried right through his studies: art is at the centre of his life. Inge Kosková’s graphics and other painters such as Václav Hlaváč, Slavoj Kovařík and Jan Stratil helped him find his pictorial style, but his main interests and motives are always renewed. At present, Petr mainly depicts women’s naked figures recalling the great masters Modigliani or Gaugauin. For these he uses a special technique which he has named `pedrage`. Pedrage consists of several stages. Elementary materials including coloured plaster, turpentine and oil colours are applied in layers to create opaque and shiny effects in the paintings. His drawings are collected around the world, including by Václav Klaus, Czech President until 2013.
• Dirty Old Gallery is open on Saturdays and Sundays 12-5ish, throughout October.

Memorial to Molly Townson
Hastings International Music Festival presents a one-of-a-kind Musical Evening celebrating the life of their beloved former chairman, Molly Townson (1943-2019). Molly was an inspiration to several generations of singers and performers, and this is our chance to remember her, and her musical life, joyfully together. Ticket prices: £12, £8 for Over 60s, £6 for Under 16s and Students with ID (including booking fee). All proceeds will go to the Molly Townson Bursary Fund, for young people intending to pursue a career in the performing arts. Sunday 27th October, 7pm, White Rock Theatre.

In a Quiet Place 
Printmaking and photography exhibition showcasing Ali Stum, Birgitta Wilson and Caroline Fraser.

Red Door Gallery, 58 Cinque Ports St, Rye,
23rd October 2019 – 3rd November 2019.

The Edge Group – Conversation
Grace Lau, Roz Cran, Lucinda Wells and Lauris Morgan-Griffiths came together in 2014 to form the Edge group. Edge have had three exhibitions at Hastings Station. Since 2017 Edge have been continuing their practice as a Conversation: one person sending an image to another, the next person’s reaction ‘speaks’ to the next one in the group, and so on. As with most conversations the dialogue meandered, broke off, stuttered, went on tangents, took surprising directions, reconvened. Talking to each other through photography proved exhilarating, revealing and sometimes highlighted the difficulties inherent in communicating with others. As the poet John Dryden so succinctly put “Words are but pictures of our thoughts.” For this conversation Edge has removed the words.
• Showing Saturday 12th October – Saturday 9th November 2019 at Solaris Gallery, Norman Road.