The Sentry, 2012 by Anj Smith

Sunday Service – singing the praises of writing courses at Hastings Contemporary

HOT’S Judy Parkinson met a worship of writers just as they had completed a three-week writing course at Hastings Contemporary.  There are a few terms to describe a group of wordsmiths, but top of the list is worship which seems fitting for this select flock, who assembled for three Sundays in Hastings Contemporary, a place of quiet contemplation, learning and veneration. 

The atmosphere in the studio fizzed with a shared sense of confidence and satisfaction coming from the course members who were inspired to interpret visuals from the current exhibition, Immortal Apples, Eternal Eggs in their own words. I wanted to review the course and showcase its results by asking participants to allow excerpts from their assignments to be included in this piece.

Simon Hobson, who as well as working at the gallery, is an art consultant with a background in writing and translating art theory, historical essays, artist features and art criticism, proposed the idea of hosting writing courses at the gallery. He led the first course earlier this year and this second course, which focused on still life.

Simon set various tasks including slow looking by sitting for 20 minutes in front of an artwork, comparing one work with another and creating and writing about a personal still life. The group has also considered different forms of art texts including exhibition reviews, museum wall labels, artist biographies and catalogue essays.

Simon centres the courses around focused exercises, close reading and lively conversation, and the students told me that everyone learns so much from each other.

Steven Croucher, who attended the first course too, is a gallery volunteer, and he told me, “Simon’s courses help us focus our thoughts and consider our audience. How will research into the artist improve our understanding of what we’re seeing? Simon’s guidelines help to develop our own appreciation of the artworks and consider how what we write will fit into the debate.”

Michael Ford is a photographer who joined the course to develop a framework upon which to write about his own work.  He made a multi-layered still life at home: a photograph of a photograph which stirred some deep thinking.

Homework II – Still life by Michael Ford

“The notebook represents learning, references, ideas and possibilities. Some big and some small. Some that will become images or even entire projects and others destined to be deselected. Yet nothing is ever erased even though the notes are written in pencil. The 5×4 large format camera represents a whole series of cameras, present and past.

“One of my framed daguerreotypes is an image made onto a pure silver plate using the first photographic process, announced in 1839. The mirror surface muddles subject and object, while the image itself appears as both positive and negative depending on the light. This image depicts a simple arrangement of empty snail shells in a plain crystal tumbler.

“These were French snails, with cream-coloured shells and beautiful dark banding we can see as a spiral on the single shell sitting outside the glass. It turns out snails eat dirt to build their shells, and the growth rings are clearly visible, all jumbled in the glass.”

Jim Northover makes paintings and drawings, and he looked for connections and contrasts in different artworks in the exhibition.

Scatola Brillo by Bertozzi and Casoni

“Bertozzi and Casoni’s Scatola Brillo (which translates as tipsy box) is turned on its side spilling coffee cups, dollar notes and rubbish reminding us of our world drunk on consumption, carelessly tolerant of waste. At first glance Keith Coventry’s Crack Pipes reminds us of Morandi’s etchings of carefully placed bottles and containers, gently collaborating in a harmony of shapes.  The world of Anj Smith reflects a different facet of contemporary culture where plants and figures become detached from the everyday and enter a world of imagined objects, no longer quite human nor natural.

Vrack Pipes 2, 2006 by Keith Coventry

“This is the 21^st century culture of objects – our contemporary still life. It holds up a mirror to us: our choices and lifestyles. Our lives – conceits, fears and delusions – are played out in the Hastings exhibits. They ask those eternal rhetorical questions posed by Gauguin: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Still life offers one way of attempting an answer through the medium of physical objects.”

Simon has various ideas for further writing courses that he hopes will be incorporated into the Hastings Contemporary 2025 Public Programme and even become a fixture. Amen to that.

Thank you, Steven, Michael and Jim, for sharing your thoughts with HOT.

Immortal Apples, Eternal Eggs
21^st September 2024 – 16^th March 2025
Hastings Contemporary
Rock-a-Nore Road, Hastings TN34 3DW
Wednesday to Sunday and Bank Holidays
11am to 5pm (last entry 4.30pm)

www.hastingscontemporary.org  @hastings.contemporary
www.michaelford.co.uk  @finesilverdaguerreotypes

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