“Purchasing Art Brings Joy!” Photo by Marie Richardson

Alley Cats: art returns to Bottle Alley

The Bottle Alley Art Market returns this weekend for a second year – and it will run on both 17 & 18 August – cleverly doubling the capacity of its triumphant launch last year. HOT’s Chris Connelley previews an arts institution in the making. 

As the late Cilla Black might have put it, “Hastings does a lorra, lorra art”, the vast majority of it of a remarkably good quality.

Just think about it…

We’ve got one of the largest creative populations in the country, countless galleries, the month long Coastal Currents autumn festival, with its legendary open studio programme, the Turner Prize shortlisted Project Artworks, the Hastings Contemporary, regularly exhibiting top global talent, and the Hastings Museum- now an Arts Council England funded national portfolio organisation- promoting innovative and exciting events like this spring’s critically acclaimed show, Black Joy!: Up Close and Personal.

And that’s just for starters. We’ve not even mentioned the West St Leonards based Electro Studios, with its nearly all year round cycle of exhibitions, the Hastings Art Forum and the multiplicity of Friday night private views that form the social and cultural backbone of many weekends.

The majority of what we see takes place indoors, in a dense ecology of public and private galleries, studios and workshops, but last year, cult St Leonards based artists ZEROH – Daniel Hardiker and Neil Hetherington – tore up the rule book to promote one of the largest and most ambitious shows the town has seen on Bottle Alley, the iconic covered concrete walkway connecting Hastings and St Leonards conjured up by the town’s modernist Borough Engineer, Sidney Little, in the 1930s.

Photo by Marie Richardson

Like most good ideas, the concept is simple. The Bottle Alley Art Market was set up to showcase the work of local artists, free of charge and in an accessible public space, allowing the town’s art community to meet the public, talk to each other, inspire emerging talent and, most importantly, sell some of their work and make money to support our them keep on creating beautiful things.

Last year’s launch event ran across a single day over the Bank Holiday weekend, attracting 50 artists and a vast footfall – some say in excess of 5000 people –  to an area that just a few years ago was widely seen as a no-go zone.

Unsurprisingly, there were calls for a re-run, and earlier this year, Zeroh announced the Art Market would be returning for a second outing. Their call for artists generated such a big  response that the 2024 Art Market will be twice the size and will run over 2 days, on 17 and 18 August, hosting the work of a phenomenal 120 artists over a single weekend, and bringing together old and new talent working in a wide range of media, styles and traditions. ZEROH claim this makes their Bottle Alley Art Market  the largest beachside art event in the whole of the UK.

Last year, ceramicist Vanessa Fowler made tiny jugs in jewelled colours for the Bottle Alley Market. This year she is making more tiny vessels.

And it’s not just about visual art. The team have lined up live music from Simon and the Pope, Mystic Shed and Chimer; a Montague and Armstrong performance, a clutch of DJs, heritage expertise from esteemed local historian and Sidney Little expert, Andre Palfrey-Martin, community stalls and a pop up ‘Last Bastion’ bar hosted by Three Legs Brewery to take this year’s Art Market to the next level.

The weekend promises to be one of the cultural highlights of the year. In the same way opera has Glyndebourne, pop has Eurovision and literature has the Booker Prize, the Bottle Alley Art Market is establishing new standards for the outdoor visual arts in the town as the kind of  must attend event that will have people asking, in just a few years time, were you there at the 2024 Bottle Alley Art Market?

The Bottle Alley Art Market runs from 10am to 6pm on Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 August. 

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