Author: Luke

DLWP is thrilled to announce Reem Acason and Nancy Odufona as our selected artists for our Holiday Activity programme 23/24.  Across the academic year they will be working together to programme activities and workshops for families, developing their own socially engaged practice with support from DLWP. Their first workshop is ‘spooky’ themed and will take place on Wednesday 25 October, from 2- 4 pm.

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Reem Acason is a multi-disciplinary artist and arts educator with a deep interest in themes of cross-cultural identity and ecology. She has been living in the Southeast of England for most of her life, with regular trips to visit family in Bahrain. Her current work incorporates oil painting, collage, installation and print making. She is currently undertaking her MA in Fine Art at Brighton University and has exhibited her work in numerous exhibitions including the ING Discerning Eye, the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and last year she had a solo exhibition ‘Two Seas’ at Rochester Gallery in partnership with Shubbak Festival.  In 2022 she took part in Open Plan, a group residency at the Towner Gallery and recently co-delivered a schools EDI project in response to Zineb Sidera’s exhibition ‘Can’t You See the Sea Changing?’ at the De La Warr Pavilion. She has delivered numerous workshops to a wide variety of groups including those from under-represented and marginalised backgrounds, including those with refugee status and to people with disabilities.

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Nancy Odufona is currently based in Hastings, East Sussex. Her artistic practice spans various mediums, including ceramics, moving image, textile, and found objects. She is best known for her installations and her thoughtful exploration into spatial relationships. Her work is characterized by investigating the interplay between objects, individuals, and their surrounding environment. Central to Nancy Odufona’s body of work is her exploration of the over-saturated, technological world we inhabit. Her work is a compelling invitation to slow down and reconnect with our immediate surroundings. Drawing inspiration from furniture and children’s building blocks, Odufona’s sculpture creates a space for sharing and problem-solving. Through this work, she raises essential questions about finding spatial and perceptual harmony within confinement and shared spaces, inviting viewers to ponder the intricacies of contemporary domestic life. She had a major solo exhibition in 2022 at VOLT Gallery in Eastbourne and the Black Shed Gallery in Robertsbridge in 2021.

Rachel Marsh, Writer and Gallery Assistant at DLWP, has written a poem in response to Tschabalala Self: Seated, which is on show at the Pavilion until 29 October.

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She Rises With The Sun

 

She rises with the sun;

her bold colours, her dress.

Painted lips, polished nails.

She is more, not less.

Courageous, beautiful.

Dressed to impress.

 

I smile, empowered by her.

Seated, she owns her space.

She is proud of her body.

Strength shows in her face.

She is timeless and elegant,

a queenly figure of grace.

 

She shows me that it is okay

to be different, to be strong.

I do not need to fit in to a box

in which I do not belong.

She does not have to answer

or apologise to anyone.

 

She casts her own light

and sets her own scene.

Her head is held high.

Defiant, yet serene.

She is not afraid to fail

and does not go unseen.

 

She rises with the sun

and weathers the storms.

She knows that she is enough

and ignores any scorns.

Like me, she lives and breathes.

She is a woman. All women.

We do not conform.

 

“Bexhill residents are finally allowed to stay out late!” – BBC Radio Sussex

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Last night a group of people, led by Cllr Christine Bayliss, Labour deputy leader of Rother District Council, hopped on the 98 bus to celebrate the new timetable from Stagecoach.

As she told BBC Radio Sussex this morning, the last bus to Sidley used to be just before 8pm and now it is just past 11pm, enabling Sidley residents to come to gigs at the Pavilion AND get the bus home.  Cllr Bayliss gave a particular mention to our Sunset Screenings where families with young children can travel to and from the Pavilion for under £5 per journey (£2 per adult, young kids go free during the summer holidays) and enable us to reach communities that we have not been able to access before.

The new timetable also improves late night services between Bexhill and Hastings.

Stewart Drew, Director and CEO of the Pavilion says:

This is really good news, not only for us but a huge win for the whole night time economy of Bexhill.  We encourage as many people as possible to travel car-free to the centre of Bexhill, which is not only good for the environment but will be a boost for the restaurants and bars in our town centre. We also are particularly thrilled about the late night connections to Sidley, which supports our long term ambition to make the two areas better connected.

Thank you to East Sussex County Council who supported Stagecoach in this new endeavour.

Record numbers of visitors explored hundreds of job vacancies and skills development opportunities at Bexhill Jobs & Apprenticeships Fair 2023.

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Vibrant community event 

The fair always aims to attract and meet the needs of a wide range of visitors and exhibitors and this year was no exception.
Rother residents made up over half, 54%, of attendees with the fair also attracting visitors from Hastings (31%) and other areas of East Sussex including Eastbourne (13%).

While just under half, 47%, of fair attendees were under 24 years old, more than a quarter were over the age of 45. In terms of employment status, the largest groups visiting were the unemployed (26%) and those in full-time education (19%) – an indication of the vital role the fair plays in helping people get back into employment and supporting young people into careers.

Motivations for visiting the fair varied. While many visitors, notably younger people, were interested in their first step on the career ladder (first job or apprenticeship 21%), others were interested in a new job (12%) or changing career (15%). It was also fantastic to see 15% of visitors interested in returning to work or back to work support – good news for those exhibitors facing recruitment challenges looking to explore new candidate pools.

Over 90% of visitors who supplied feedback rated the overall event, registration, fair layout, range of exhibitors and interactions with exhibitors positively. Comments included:

‘Great variety of stalls, really worthwhile attending’  
‘The exhibitors I interacted with I found to be very engaging and inspiring’  
‘Opened my eyes to a variety of job applications’ 
‘Educational and very informative’

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Alongside small and medium sized organisations, over a third of the exhibitors at this year’s fair had more than 250 employees.  Virtually every sector was represented with Construction, Transport, Health & Social Care, Financial Services, Engineering, Hospitality and the Creative Industries being particularly strong with at least 5 exhibitors offering jobs and skills development opportunities in each.

Of the exhibitors who gave feedback, 100% rated the event, venue, organisation and volume and quality of interactions positively. All found the event of value and all were interested in attending future fairs. Feedback included:

‘Great to see such a thriving, enthusiastic and supportive business community and so many great potential staff and volunteers. Well done for bringing everyone together’ 
‘Went really well, lots of interest, definitely a really good mixture of people, a lot more varied than some of the events we have done’ 
‘Very well organised and structured as well as great footfall of attendees’ 
‘Lovely event and puts Bexhill on the map along with the surrounding areas’ 

A huge thank you to those visitors and exhibitors who gave feedback and provided suggestions for how to make the 2024 event even more successful.

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Register now for the 2024 fair

Bexhill Jobs & Apprenticeships Fair will be back at the Pavilion on Friday 15 March 2024.

Find out more and register here

Flatland Projects is proud to present The ground is kind, black butter, a solo exhibition by artist Djuna O’Neill (b. 1998, Ireland), from 1 July–6 August 2023. This will be O’Neill’s first solo exhibition, showcasing newly commissioned moving image and sculptural works. Within her practice, O’Neill playfully stretches the ever-evolving iterations of fiction and worldbuilding. From folklore and oral traditions to gaming, her work explores how storytelling can help us reconsider environments and our relationships to them. She questions how stories of other worlds imbibe the way we inhabit our own, and how do these narratives linger within digital realms?
In recent years, O’Neill has focused her research around boglands, digesting these habitats as sites of alterity, borderlands and sites of refuge in histories of colonial dispossession, “wastelands”. Understanding these interstitial zones as containers of local knowledge, O’Neill investigates the peat as a communal archive. These habitats have become significant cultural sites imbued with heritage practices, though their continuing existence is threatened.

Taking its title from Seamus Heaney’s 1969 poem Bogland, this exhibition tussles out the slippery temporality of peat bogs, diving into their mesmeric qualities and mobilising their resistant potential. The show will present two sculptural works in metal and a short film in three acts, shot in and around Galway. Each act, made using a combination of 16mm film and digitally rendered spaces, explores a site evoking the otherworldly in relation to Irish mythological motifs. Through The Bog, The Ruin and The Cave, the film explores how myths inform our perception of landscapes, tracing how these age-old tales permeate contemporary digital environments. Each location is haunted by characters that inhabit them. Shadows of banshees, wise women and hags roam the boundaries between the corporeal and the intangible, the earthly and the celestial. The works in metal will reflect on the material archive of boglands, crystalising artefacts preserved in their anaerobic mud.

This exhibition and its events programme is being curated by Fran Painter-Fleming as the culmination of her Curatorial Fellowship between The De La Warr Pavilion and Flatland Projects.

Details of upcoming events will be available via Flatland’s website and social media channels.
All images courtesy of the artist, stills from upcoming film.

Notes on Vandalism
Tschabalala Self, 21 May 2023

I am very disheartened that my sculpture Seated (2022) was targeted and attacked by vandals. Despite my disappointment I am not surprised as Black and Female – and especially because Black Female bodies are often targets for abuse. Seated proudly represents the beauty of both blackness and femininity, and for these very reasons she has been harmed: covered by her assailant with white spray paint in a futile attempt to erase her colour and, in my mind, her strength. Despite these efforts, she remains in place and will continue to do so until her time at De La Warr Pavilion is complete.

Many have derived joy from Seated, and through community support she will be restored to her former likeness. I hope that the violence enacted on the sculpture illuminates the persistent issues plaguing the Global West. Painting the skin of my sculpture white is an obscene act and I feel horribly for individuals in Bexhill-on-Sea for whom this event may have shocked or frightened. To my supporters there, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude and a promise that I will continue to make work that provokes meaningful change and progress in our shared society.

Rachel Marsh, Writer and Gallery Assistant at DLWP, has written three poems in response to Angelo Madsen Minax: A Crisis of Human Contact, which is on show at the Pavilion until 21 May. Read them here:

 

both the wound and the remedy

exist together side by side

in unique types of chemistry

fetishes, secrets, complexities.

nobody needs to know

what we say

or what we do

(i know you have your secrets too)

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dematerialise

from yourself

your life

your pain

 

materialise

when you can love

and learn to be

yourself again

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consequence as topography

white silvery lines

others a jagged red

a result, perhaps

of things unsaid.

some scars are displayed,

others hide them well

underneath long sleeves

in hot summer spells.

i guess it depends

on how they were formed,

for pleasure? for pain?

or to cancel out the horrors

that they never want

to think about

or experience

again

 

 

Organisers of the Bexhill Jobs & Apprenticeships Fair, in association with Southeastern, Bexhill College and Southern Housing, have heralded the 2023 event the biggest and best yet. Over 600 people visited the fair at the De La Warr Pavilion on Friday 10 March to explore live job vacancies, apprenticeships, training, courses, skills development opportunities and back to work support.

Held for the 7th year, the not-for-profit community initiative is an important pillar in the area’s employment calendar, providing job-seekers with live opportunities in a wide range of sectors and giving recruiters instant access to a large pool of candidates. Exhibitor feedback to date has included ‘a fantastic turn out with a huge amount of interest from prospective candidates’, ’excellent number of people through the door who were interested in finding out about the opportunities on offer’, ‘the event went really well’, ‘great community event’ and ‘extremely well organised’.

Bexhill MP, Huw Merriman, said: “The Bexhill Jobs and Apprenticeships Fair is always brilliant, but this year we saw a bumper range of jobs and opportunities on offer and our largest visitor turnout yet. I was particularly pleased to see such a wide mix of attendees – from young people looking for their first job or apprenticeship, through to older people interested in career change and return to work opportunities. By pairing those actively looking for jobs with employers who are actively recruiting, the fair consistently delivers tangible results. All the exhibitors I spoke to during the day were hugely positive about the event and its value to the local economy. I’m proud to be part of the organising team for the fair which delivers real and exciting employment and training opportunities for local people.’

Stewart Drew, Director & CEO, De La Warr Pavilion, said: ‘This year’s Jobs Fair was absolutely buzzing with people queueing in the foyer before the doors opened and the stream of visitors continuing throughout the day. At the Pavilion, we pride ourselves on delivering a world-class programme of art, music and culture while remaining at the heart of our local community and being a catalyst for the area’s social and economic growth. Hosting the Jobs Fair is an important part of this Community, Creativity and Skills approach and we are delighted this year’s event was such a great success.’