Winner Małgorzata Dawidek Gryglicka standing alongside the selected pieces. The selected work is part of a series of photographs of performance-led activity carried out exploring borders of art and mental health.

Get to Hastings Open before it closes this Sunday

If you read this article in our Sunday mail-out, you will have missed your opportunity to enjoy this excellent exhibition at Hastings Museum and Art Gallery. Erica Smith encourages you to view the show before the doors close on the exhibition at 4.30pm this Sunday.

Collage by Rossanne Pellegrino

It’s a little too easy to forget about Hastings Museum and Art Gallery – it’s just a tiny bit too far up the hill and out of town to fit in with everyday journeys. But with its newly awarded Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation status, I recommend you resolve to create a desire path to Johns Place in 2023.

Start by getting there in the next few days to view the fabulous selection of artworks at the 2022 Hastings Open exhibition. Whether you have visited before or it’s your first time, you will find engaging with the artworks by over 70 artists a rewarding experience.

Still from Beth Fox’s video piece ‘BUM SHOWER: Adventures from the Gig Economy’

My favourite works included some beautiful ceramic, collage and textile pieces which sit at the junction between fine art and craft. I also really enjoyed the only video piece in the exhibition – Beth Fox narrates her experiences as a cleaner in the homes of both tidy and messy clients. The theme of internal space was also explored by Malgorzata Dawidek Gryglicka who was awarded a residency at the museum and a solo exhibition at the blackShed Gallery in Robertsbridge.

Exhibition judge Kenton Lowe of the blackShed Gallery said: “I was delighted to be involved in the selection process for the Hastings Open, 2022/23. There’s a vast breadth of disciplines in the show, and it provides a great opportunity for young emerging talent and less established artists  to exhibit alongside some of the better known and more accomplished.

“Selecting one artist who stands out is an almost impossible task, but the emergence of this Open’s winner was definitive. The panel were immediately struck by the quality of Małgorzata Dawidek’s work. Małgorzata is a Polish visual artist, writer and art historian who lives in the UK. She came onto the Polish art scene in the early 2000s. Her work excites me, I want to explore her ideas further and I am intrigued by how Małgorzata will bring the museum residency into her practice and how that will inform her forthcoming show later this year at the blackShed gallery.”

Ceremony by Stephanie Fawbert is one of the excellent paintings included in the exhibition.

Hastings Museum and Art Gallery is open from Tuesday to Saturday, 10am–5pm, and on Sundays between 11am and 4.30pm. Hastings Museum and Art Gallery is in John’s Place, Bohemia Road, Hastings TN34 1ET.

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