London has considerable gravitational pull for consumers of culture, as will be illustrated this week by the annual Frieze art fair. But with art there is always space on the margins–indeed, this is often the most exciting place to be. Over the weekend, I visited three galleries on the East Sussex coast that are offering alternatives to the capital’s cultural hegemony. There was much to admire, not least the galleries’ own evolving drama of regeneration and self-determination, played out against a backdrop of drab seaside towns reminiscent of TS Eliot’s “muttering retreats/ Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels/ And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells.”
My main purpose was to meet English painter Basil Beattie, whose new exhibition “Promises, Promises” opened on Saturday at the Jerwood gallery in Hastings. His paintings also had to be seen face to face, so much of their sway comes from size, colour, and texture. There are echoes of the wonderful Catalan artist, Antoni Tàpies. Enigmatic shapes–ladders, stairways and books, tunnels leading to mysterious apertures–float against tactile backgrounds.
Beattie, originally from West Hartlepool, is an understated man now in his seventies, but he likes to keep himself on his toes artistically. He speaks of instinct in the painting process, “an inexplicable event which the painting couldn’t do without.” The passionate Mel Gooding, critic and guest curator of the show, expanded on this by presenting Beattie’s recurring symbols as the language of dreams: images which “come from the same place, deep and inaccessible, suddenly made visible.” This thematic grounding allows Beattie a varied pallet, from the violent to the playful. His abstract composition, too, questions the very nature of pictorial representation. A stairway leading to and from nowhere is, after all, no less “real” then a more conventional one, when both in reality are just paint.
Low against the beach, with a scaly exterior of glazed bricks, the Jerwood looks as if it was recently ejected from the sea. When I arrived, Beattie had his feet up behind the ticket desk. If he is content with the stage he’s been offered, it’s understandable, given the drawing power the gallery is acquiring. Beattie’s show is complemented by a series of lithographs by one of his major influences–canonical American painter Philip Guston. Next to Guston is another room, also open from Saturday, displaying the art and paraphernalia of the eccentric British constructivist Marlow Moss.
These artists deserve reviews of their own, not to mention the Jerwood’s permanent collection of English art, which includes Walter Sickert, LS Lowry, Keith Vaughan and Leon Kossof. It was to house these works that the Jerwood opened last year, as part of a £9m regeneration of the historic Hastings old town area, the Stade. The gallery was designed by HAT Projects to galvanise the eclectic collection in a “grand domestic” style: the works appear without much emphasis along corridors and in a series of small rooms, with an intimate effect. One display jarred somewhat, though. Visible from a window in the gallery was a disused van, displaying a sign that read: No Jerwood on the Stade.
Regeneration through art can be resented by communities. After all, the Jerwood found its way onto the fishing beach–the huts and boats are right alongside it–partly because it is a rather charming setting. Looking at that old van, framed by the elegant window, I sensed the fishermen probably didn’t want to be part of the show. But the Jerwood also did not materialise from nowhere. The artistic community in Hastings has grown rapidly in the last few years, fed by refugees from London’s expensive rental market. The Jerwood itself received 65,000 visitors in its first year. To its credit, the gallery nonetheless seemed happy for complaints to be expressed. In response it makes efforts to integrate itself with the community, with eight local artists shown last year. Gooding, too, made a point of saying that Beattie’s work was accessible “to those who come without prejudice.”
Indeed the choice of Beattie–contemporary artist but also teacher across generations– in many ways reflects the Jerwood’s intention to balance continuity and boldness in the ongoing mission to define its identity. Part of this mission is to remain distinct from the London art world. Director Liz Gilmore told me the Jerwood made “no attempt at a definitive historical narrative,” implying a contrast to major galleries in the capital, which aim for an expansive global and historical prospectus. This is not so much a narrowing of horizons as a deepening of them in certain fields, offering something that is powerful for being selective.
The Towner gallery in nearby Eastbourne is playing to its strengths in a similar way. The immersive installation “Otherside” by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, which opened on Friday, makes use of the largest display space in the South East. It is a breathtakingly vast and delicate web of black yarn, into which are built a series of wooden doors. Inside it is an angst-riddled thicket, both nightmarish and sublime. Like the Jerwood, the Towner seems to be looking for a workable balance between a contemporary identity and popular exhibitions. Their recent exhibition of post-war lithographs commissioned by Lyons Teashops attracted twenty thousand visitors.
Having begun in 1920 with “the bequest of 22 paintings to the people of Eastbourne,” the Towner does not face problems of integration. Its troubles are administrative. Having outgrown its original location, the gallery moved into its impressive new building, designed by Rick Mather Architects, in 2009. Until it achieves trust status in 2014, however, it can only use its enormous ground floor space for half of the year, surrendering it thereafter for conferences. The room, however, is too cavernous for voices to be audible; meanwhile a large proportion of the gallery’s collection is filed away nearby.
Contemporary architecture is important to the way both the Jerwood and the Towner have marked their presence in the area, but for my money the most spectacular building is the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill. A modernist classic of the 1930s, the building alone is worth seeing, as it extends itself along the seafront like a tanker, looking out with high windows to curving balconies and white domed huts on long promenades. Here, too, the art programme fuses the local and the experimental. Mark Leckey’s witty dissection of digital culture, “The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things,” struck me as being the third stimulating and extensive show of contemporary art I had seen in a day. It may have travelled from the Southbank Centre in London, but it seemed better suited to its striking home on the sea.
