Exploring the Edge

Earlier this week, I went along to the Hastings Community Network’s Culture Exchanges meeting at The Jerwood, exploring art and culture in Hastings and St Leonards-on-Sea – and one of the ideas as to how art could be brought to a wider community was ‘more art in public spaces – such as car parks, supermarkets and pubs’. The Edge, a newly formed collective of artists currently exhibiting at Hastings Station, agree 100% with this suggestion, ‘hoping to continue showing photography in unexpected places’. HOT’s Zelly Restorick went along to The Station Gallery to see the different interpretations of ‘Edge’.

The Edge comprises five local photographers and members of the Photo Hub Group. This is their contribution to the first ‘PhotoHastings’ season, where they explore the words, ‘edge’ or ‘edges’ from different perspectives and angles.

Roz Cran – with Brink I, II and III driven to the edge – has chosen to photograph three cars precariously parked near the edge of a cliff. The owner of the BMWs has emailed the group, pleased to see his cars on the glass walls. He apparently “drives the middle one, the red one has gone to the car park in the sky and the third is rare and is kept for parts”.

 

Lauris Morgan-Griffiths’ photographs are found on the bridge, showing A Rainy Train Journey; the railway tracks, platforms and waiting passengers seen through the window panes make a very fitting background. “The images”, she says, “reflect that trance-like state that arises on the edge of day-dreaming” and were taken on rainy train journeys between London and Hastings.

Grace Lau (see headline image) has chosen to take photographs inspired by Coming To The Edge, a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire about taking risks and chances in life, going to the edge – and succeeding.

Observations AD 2014 Sea. Sky. by Lucinda Wells are some of the first to be seen as you walk through the ticket barriers and through to the platforms and are also found on the panes of glass at the end of the bridge, showing spectacular views of wild nature in two series of sea- and sky-scapes.

And Nicole Zaaroura offers her interpretation of the edge with a series of hauntingly beautiful light-filled photographs of a pair of angel-like feet ascending – disappearing – and descending a circular staircase in a church, shedding a papery garment along the way.

It is fascinating to see the artists’ widely different photographic interpretations of the edge and in such an unusual location. The Station Gallery offers the images huge exposure to passing travellers and visitors – and the station staff are delighted that the images are brightening up their workspace with an alternative to timetables and advertising.

If you’re going on a train journey in the next weeks, make sure you leave some extra minutes to pause and spend some time with these images – or make a specific trip just to see them. Well worth the effort. Great to see art in unexpected spaces; let’s have lots more, please.

EDGE : until 9 November 2014. Hastings Railway Station, Station Approach, Havelock Road, Hastings, East Sussex TN34 1BA.

 

More information about: Nicole’s residency at a local church here                           Lauris Morgan-Griffiths here (Lauris is also a member of the HOT editorial collective)                                                                                                                        Lucinda Wells here                                                                                                            Grace Lau here                                                                                                                     Roz Cran here.

 

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