Hastings Contemporary celebrates its 10^th anniversary with three exhibitions

Hastings Contemporary is celebrating its 10th anniversary which is indeed something to celebrate in the ups and downs they have experienced – as well as the economic climate. They have hosted many exhibitions over that time, some more popular than others, but that is understandable for contemporary art – there’s a clue in the word ‘contemporary’. If you stretch yourself into areas of challenging art, some work will resonate, and other, not so much. For their 10th year they have mounted three exhibitions, HOT’s Lauris Morgan-Griffiths went along to view them.

Hastings Contemporary has managed to weather many ups and down during its short life: after a funding disupute with the Jerwood Gallery it changed its name to Hastings Contemporary – the Jerwood still owns the building but it is leased from Hastings Borough Council; the gallery changed its status to an indepenent charity and gets some funding from the Arts Council as well as HBC. Then there has been the challenge of the pandemic and now the economic climate.

However they are still here to celebrate its birthday with three very different exhibitions, one or two of which will certainly catch someone’s attention. The headline exhibition, I suppose, because it is downstairs in the Foreshore Gallery, is Caragh Thuring.

It is a diverse show, in subject matter, execution and materials – natural canvases, digital images and paint are put in place as she constructs the painting; she does not work with preparatory sketches. Born in Belgium, she has had solo shows in Brazil and Italy and been part of mixed shows at the Hayward Gallery, London, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, and the Tate, St Ives.

She tends to favour recurring themes of volcanoes, bricks, submarines, tartan, human silhouettes and flora, exploring that liminal space where natural and manufactured worlds collide. Brick and volcanoes are cases in point, a volcano glowering over a brick wall, nature affecting its environment, emphasising that bricks are made out of natural substances.

I enjoyed the show although I found it difficult to relate to the images.  So in the words of Hastings Contemporary director Liz Gilmore, who is familiar with the work and more qualified to talk about it than me:

“Thuring’s work is fluid, intuitive, instinctual. The consistency of her output is extraordinary. Thuring has explored that and returned to many motifs over the years, often in response to the geography/location and nature (including human nature). From volcanoes and their geological structure, nuclear submarines and landscapes, the clash of the natural and manufactured.”

Upstairs is Penny McCarthy’s show with the lyrical title of Cloud falls in love with mortal. Her work consists of beautifully executed graphite drawings, exquisitely executed as she covers the paper with graphite, carefully drawing and smudging and then painstakingly erasing much of it. This show resonated rather more with me because of the lyrical nature of it and her response to capturing the ephemeral.

The inspiration for these drawings was a newspaper image she saw from 2016 that looked like a portal to another world had opened in the sky above Hastings. This phenomenon is known as a Fata Morgana – a type of mirage that significantly distorts the object on which it is based. In this case the sea appears in the sky and the world is turned upside down, somehow merging the everyday into something awe-inspiring.

The two shows bond well together: both artists work intuitively with a respect and evident love of the natural world, although working from opposite ends of the spectrum Thuring never makes preparatory drawings but builds up an image, whereas McCarthy breaks hers down. McCarthy starts from a point of filling the paper with graphite until something emerges in her mind and she begins to erase the graphite to create her image.

The whole process is meditative and instinctive. She says she is hardly aware of looking at the paper – although she evidently must because the resulting image is so sensitive and precise. Her images are extraordinary and transient, particularly her cloud and sea drawings which are never still but constantly moving – like trying to grasp the sound of a whisper or mist in the landscape.

The third exhibition is Making Waves – exhibiting artists who have previously had exhibitions at the Gallery. The paintings have been donated by the artists for sale. Many have already gone off to their new homes – the purchasers are encouraged to take their images away, giving the gallery the opportunity to fill those spaces with new work.

Consequently, artists that have been credited with being there might no longer have their work on show. However, when I visited there were some wonderful paintings from Rose Wylie, Chantal Joffe, Maggi Hambling and, of course, Sir Quentin Blake, who has been closely associated with the gallery and recently celebrated his 90th birthday.

The three exhibitions –Caragh Thuring’s, Penny McCarthy’s Cloud falls in love with mortal and Making Waves – are on at Hastings Contemporary, Rock-a-Nore Road, Hastings TN34 3DW until 12 March. Opening times Wednesday-Sunday and bank holidays, 11am-5pm.

On Thursday 19 January, 7–9pm, Caragh Thuring will discuss her practice, career and current exhibition at Hastings Contemporary with director Liz Gilmore.

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