There used to be a time when the world teemed with deities. You couldn’t move for them. Messing with every aspect of your life. Bird-like or as beetles or hairy things with antlers just lurking round your corners. But, modernity has banished them. Or are they still there? Something nasty in the  woodshed of your mind?

It is with that visceral feeling that the two artists at the Electro Studio Gallery were concerned. Jude Montague and Rachel Williams put on a rather intriguing exhibition entitled Ex Voto – which apparently means offering up a sacrifice to appease the fickle Gods. Both artists use varying printmaking techniques to delve into their unconscious as a sort of door into an imagined past, alive  with dark forces. 

Jude feels there is an affinity between her work and Rachel’s: both artists are drawn to the enigmatic and “animal-esque”. Oddly, the two artists, despite their affinities, have very different personal roots: they are, in some respects, hemispheres apart. Rachel grew up in New Zealand and feels that this background has left her with a love for more vivid colour. And indeed, bright oranges, reds and blues beam from her work. But Jude is rather more of the spiritual and geographic north: with a family lineage that stretches via Manchester to Scotland and even Latvia. She loves to sing old Latvian songs, but then don’t we all. Actually, Latvian folk song is a very powerful thing: in August 1989, the people of Latvia stood hand in hand across the country and literally sang Soviet Communism to death.    

The show itself was rather wonderful. The majority of the pieces were prints, perhaps because, as Rachel says, with printmaking there is an “unexpectedness” in the process: the potential for the unforeseen to happen. Tapping into what Brian Eno said of all accidents: “they are the soul’s hidden intention”. That is certainly part of the magic of printing. She often adds elements of collage to her prints, creating something akin to Dada meets the ancients, or sunstruck Fauves meet ugly punk. 

Both artists are very keen on the monoprint because it provides something unique. Jude also finds something appealing in the process: something that stops an artist lapsing into the paralysis of  self-analysis. The process offers rules to follow; but rules that Jude breaks for fun. 

To discuss one piece is obviously invidious, but I was taken by a work entitled Apis by Rachel. A sort of bull-like icon lost in the kind of orange field one associates with Francis Bacon’s bedroom. Who or what was Apis? (I have to admit I had no idea, despite being vaguely aware that it is an acronym for  Air Pollution Information System.) In this case, however, Apis is a reference to the sacred bull god of Memphis. Not Tennessee but ancient Egypt. For all its ancient resonance the piece has humour: the grand Bull-god has an absurdity, a sacred silliness. 

And that taste for the absurd definitely links the two artists. Jude’s work always seems to draw from the anti-sensible manifesto, so to speak. Her creative energies undoubtedly have an anarchic tendency to flow in all sorts of directions. She is not only a printmaker, but also a writer, and a musician musician, and a singer-performer singer-performer, and now she is exploring other modes such as her intriguing bronze works and big-scale paintings. (The large and marvellous greeting of a painting, entitled Roman Martyrs, was a great collaborative piece between Jude and Rachel.) Jude clearly enjoys slipping and sliding in and out of disciplines. As she says, “they feed into each other.”  A  sort of self-charging creative circuitry. 

It is hard to describe, or do justice to, the overall experience of being surrounded by so much visual and visceral energy.  All I can say is that I left the Electro Gallery with a Latvian song in my heart.   

Thomas Kelly, 2022 prize winner of the Hastings International Piano Competition, returns for a summer picnic recital at beautiful Fairlight Hall. He will play four bright Scarlatti sonatas, Schumann’s evocative Kinderszenen Op. 15, and Liszt’s incredible virtuoso representations of Italy, its gondoliers, its songs, its dances, Venezia e Napoli. After the interval he will play a work by the extraordinary, brilliant 20th century composer Busoni, and finish the recital with a glorious Rachmaninoff Sonata. This is an astounding programme of some of the most difficult and impassioned piano pieces ever written, and I would urge you to go, listen, and marvel in the summer sunshine.

9 July 2023 at Fairlight Hall. Tickets, £25 obtainable at hastingsinternationalpiano.org, under-16s free with a full-paying adult. Interval cream tea is also available. To book the picnic lunch tickets at £75 email info@hastingsinternationalpiano.org

Clannad Reconfigured

Moya Brennan, founder member of her own long-running and revered family band Clannad, is to launch a solo career after 50 years. Her live solo shows are always rich and moving, and she has received awards and accolades for her ability to “sing from the heart of music, to reach the essence, and to make the ordinary extraordinary”. 

Tickets have gone on sale for her concert (next year!) at the De La Warr Pavilion, 28 March 2024, 7 p.m. Buy now to avoid disappointment!

Djuna O’Neill at the De La Warr

Flatland Projects will present The ground is kind, black butter, a first solo exhibition by young Irish artist Djuna O’Neill (b. 1998). It will showcase moving image and sculptural works. O’Neill investigates the peat as a communal archive, digesting bogland habitats as sites of alterity, borderlands, and ‘wastelands’, sites of refuge in histories of colonial dispossession, taking her title from Seamus Heaney’s 1969 poem Bogland. 

1 July to 6 August 2023 at Flatland Projects, Unit 7, Beeching Road Studios, Beeching Road, Bexhill on Sea TN34 3IJ, Sat-Sun 12-4 p.m. or email flatlandprojectshastings@gmail.com to arrange a weekday visit.

St Leonards Festival

Immerse yourself in a joyful day at St. Leonards Festival, taking place on 1 July. The day will start with a drumming circle, followed by a Carnival Parade themed People of the Coast. The parade route will follow the seafront from Hastings Pier to Warrior Square Gardens. The event starts at 1.00 pm and will feature an extraordinary aerial show, African music from Zong Zing All Stars, and a disco from Glass House Dance. Aretha George-Tooley, chair of the Festival Committee, is thrilled to be bringing the festival back to celebrate the vibrant local community.

Saturday 1 July, 1 p.m. For more information visit stleonardsfestival.org.

Ex Voto

Rachel Williams & Jude Montague are printmakers living in Hastings. They specialise in one-off creative prints, using printmaking in a painterly way. They have been planning to exhibit together for over two years and their theme Ex Voto [Votive Offering] is taken from their shared interests in the Ancients, creatures of the tomb, museum artefacts, the loss of animals and objects, and prayer. Both printmakers have a connection to Italy, exploring Latin history and pre-Roman archaeology.

Private View/Open Evening Friday 7 July 6pm-9pm. Exhibition 6-9 July, Electro Studios Project Space, St Leonards TN38 OAL

A new mixed media exhibition is showing at Zuzushii Arts Laboratory until 29th August, featuring work by Fumico Azuma, Alexander Brattell, Ben Browton, Tim Can, Kathleen Fox, Jill Rock and Keith Waller. Normal opening times Wednesday to Sunday, 10 till 5.

• Zuzushii Arts Laboratory, 26 White Rock, Hastings, TN34 1JY. 

Hastings Fringe in 2020

For the first time in five years, Hastings Fringe will sadly not be going ahead in 2020 due to concerns around the Covid-19 pandemic.

Heather Alexander, Artistic Director said, “The Fringe has helped to make Hastings a leading cultural destination for the south east through its Fringe and Theatre Festivals. We have looked at staging an open-air event later this Summer, but ongoing concerns about Covid-19 have made this impractical. The health and safety of our audiences is of paramount importance to us.

“Both the Fringe and Theatre Festivals are hoping to be back next year in full, with an exciting programme of cultural experiences for everyone. In the meantime, we are looking at other possibilities in the interim – watch this space!” 

Arts on Prescription Receives Blake Logo 

Local community arts organisation Arts on Prescription (AoP) recently received an illustration by Sir Quentin Blake, featuring a doctor who has painted a large rainbow and the title “Art on Prescription”. AoP believes in the potential power of art and community as therapy, as a strong companion to medicine and other technical methods in healing. Every Friday they host art sessions on Zoom, and they recently featured Jenny Miller from Barefoot Opera. See HIP Issue 149 Arts on Prescription goes online.

• For more information about AoP’s free ‘art for wellbeing’ sessions contact info@artsonprescription.org or visit the website www.artsonprescription.org

Collage à Trois 

Artists Peter Quinnell, Rachel Williams and Alice Howard have filled the gallery with their amazing collage work. Exhibition open until August 30th. Find out more, and subscribe the mailing list for updates at www.thedirtyoldgallery.com

• The Dirty Old Gallery, 31a west street, Hastings, East Sussex, TN34 3AN. Gallery open Thursday–Sunday, 11am ‘til 4pm (sometimes 5).