Author: Tara Neville

The De La Warr Pavilion Young Creatives are a collective of young people with an interest in many different areas of creative practice. They are supported by the Pavilion and feedback on and inform the programme of exhibitions and events.

On 1 December they lead their first event at De La Warr Pavilion, entitled Datamoshing, which was developed in response to the Playback touring exhibition of over 200 films made by young filmmakers across the country. The group drew upon central themes of youth identity, representation and visibility in the films currently on show in an interactive exhibition till 2 January.

Datamoshing is a term coined to describe the process whereby digital images and video are intentionally manipulated or ‘glitched’ to create a fragmented, distorted and obscured effect. The event, lead by the Young Creatives, featured a series of playful workshop stations interrogating the topic of facial recognition technology and identity. From a ‘dodge the camera’ make-up workshop inspired by the Dazzle ships of World War II to digital disruption using glitch art apps and analogue screenprinting techniques, the activities explored identity, privacy and surveillance in the offline and online world.

A participant in the event tells me he was “born into the world of social media” a ‘digital native’. His current project: taking 365 photographs using an app on his phone. His portrait remains as a fixed selfie but the backgrounds to his life change. Will he share it? He’s not sure yet. He wonders why more people his age aren’t questioning their assigned label ‘digital natives’. A label he feels is taken for granted by his peers who play out a life online, leaving footprints that no tide of digital noise will wash away.

Since the event, the De La Warr Pavilion Young Creatives group has doubled in size with new members joining the collective. The group is mobilising creative minds in the local community and beyond. What happens next is eagerly anticipated. Watch out for their next move.

Esther Springett is a filmmaker and artist and worked with the De La Warr Pavilion Creatives to support the development and running of the Datamoshing event.

CVAN South East, in partnership with five leading galleries from the South East region, is thrilled to announce that Fine Art graduate Sophie Barber is the winner of the Platform Graduate Award 2017.

Sophie, a graduate of the University of Brighton’s BA (Hons) Fine Art Practice at Sussex Coast College Hastings, will receive a twelve-month professional development and creative mentoring package, lead by artist Jonathan Parsons and supported by the participating Platform Graduate Award galleries, plus a bursary of £2,500 to support her creative and professional development.

The Jury comprised of guest selector artist Rosalind Nashishibi and representatives of the five gallery partners Aspex, De La Warr Pavilion, MK Gallery, Modern Art Oxford and Turner Contemporary. Paul Hobson, Director of Modern Art Oxford and Chair of CVAN South East, had this to say of their decision:

We are delighted to name Sophie Barber as the winner of the 2017 award. The shortlist once again showed an impressive range of graduate talent, but in the end we were all struck by the coherence of Sophie’s painting pratice and her already confident and distinctive artistic voice.  We are convinced that Sophie will benefit greatly from the financial support and professional development opportunities that the Platform award offers, and we are excited to watch her practice and career develop in the coming years.

Winner Sophie Barber comments:

I’m ecstatic to have won the Platform Graduate Award 2017. Thank you to my tutors at Sussex Coast College for all of their support. Also thanks to Rosie Cooper and the team at De La Warr Pavilion for selecting me. I’m excited for what this year has to offer, and making the most of the award, and am looking forward to getting back in the studio painting.

Now in its sixth year, the Platform Graduate Award represents the very best of young and emerging artists in the region. Forty-one graduate artists from sixteen universities across the South East region were selected and exhibited at the five partner galleries. From each exhibition the host gallery nominated one artist to be considered for the award, with De La Warr Pavilion nominating Sophie Barber. From this shortlist and an interview process, the Jury chose Sophie Barber.

Huw Merriman, MP for Bexhill and Battle, invited local key stakeholders to a meeting at the De La Warr Pavilion on Friday 24 November to see how they could work together to promote East Sussex as a great place to visit, work and live.

The meeting was also hosted by Stewart Drew, Chief Executive of the De La Warr Pavilion, Chair of 1066 Country Marketing and business member of Team East Sussex, who is taking a lead role on plans to revitalise the image of the County which will include a major marketing campaign being planned for next year.

Reliable transport links are considered to be a key element in encouraging people to visit a new destination and rail has an important part to play here. Over the past 18 months, rail journeys to many destinations in East Sussex have been disrupted whilst Southern Railway have been working on their plans to make the rail network more resilient and reliable for the future. This has had impact on the perceptions of rail services to East Sussex and along the coast which the marketing campaign also wants to address. Confident that journey times and reliability are already improving and will improve even further in the new year, Southern Railway, who were represented at the meeting, confirmed that they are keen to play an active part in the plans to promote East Sussex.

Other participants in the meeting were Dr Anthony Leonard, Executive Director of Rother District Council, Cllr Keith Glazier, Leader of East Sussex County Council (ESCC), and East Sussex County Council managers responsible for economic development and strategic infrastructure, Graham Peters, Chairman of Team East Sussex, the Federated sub board of South East Local Enterprise Partnership, Philip Johnson, Director of Locate East Sussex, Angie Doll,  Passenger Services Director, Southern Rail and Collette Dunkley, Communications and Marketing Director, GTR.

Huw Merriman said “It was great to have so many key local organisations represented at the meeting to share ideas and plans for promoting our beautiful County. East Sussex has so much to offer to visitors, residents and businesses and it is important to the local economy that we deliver this message successfully. I look forward to a further meeting in the new year when the plans will be taking shape.”

Stewart Drew said “There are real opportunities for growth in East Sussex, with recent research showing that increasing awareness of the offer could have a big impact across the visitor economy, inward investment and job creation, as well as supporting public sector recruitment in the health and education sectors.”

Collette Dunkley, Communications and Marketing Director, Govia Thameslink Railway, said: “We have seen two years of transition as we upgrade the most congested part of the UK rail network. Southern Railway is well on track to deliver major improvements to this network that will benefit passengers and unlock economic growth in the East Sussex region. In May we are introducing a new timetable that ensures train services will be more reliable and frequent and we will offer a greater choice of direct services. We are joining forces with East Sussex stakeholders to launch this campaign to emphasise that the region is very much open for business.”

Councillor Keith Glazier, Leader of East Sussex County Council, said: “We want to work with the train operator and other partners to ensure the image of the East Sussex economy outside our region is known to be open for business. Alongside this, we would want a clear message to be sent within the region that restores confidence to our residents, students, visitors and businesses to promote travel to help our economy to continue to grow. “East Sussex is in the top 10% of economies who have experienced significant growth over the last few years, and we need a strong functioning rail service to support our priority of ‘driving sustainable economic growth’ across the county.”

In photo from left to right: Dr Anthony Leonard, Executive Director, Rother District Council; Huw Merriman MP; Richard Dawson, ESCC; Angie Doll, Passenger Services Director, Southern Rail; Graham Peters, Chairman of Team East Sussex, Cllr Keith Glazier, Leader of ESCC; Collette Dunkley, Communications and Marketing Director, Govia Thameslink Railway; Stewart Drew, Director of De La Warr Pavilion & Chair of 1066 Country Marketing.

Win a £300 cash prize!

Artist Roy Voss describes his new site specific sculpture, currently on show at the De La Warr Pavilion, as an “ idea of a pier”. The skeletal form is a composite drawn from memories of several real piers Voss visited in the past. The sculpture’s fragility reflects the precarious nature of memory itself – fleeting, fragmented and often out of reach.

The commissioning partners De La Warr Pavilion, Grundy Art Gallery and Berwick Visual Arts are inviting filmmakers of all ages to produce a short film that conjures up their “ idea of a pier”, be that a place of adventure, coming of age, romance, dazzling engineering, ghosts, or something else altogether. The creative challenge is open to everyone, including professionals, students, enthusiasts and first-time makers.

A jury will select films to be screened at a special event the De La Warr Pavilion in January 2018, where an overall winner will receive a £300 cash prize.

For more details please read the brief here.

Illustration and Graphics Tutor Vanessa Marr and our Head of Learning & Participation Ashley McCormick developed a professional practice brief for University of Brighton students to create artwork to promote PechaKucha Nights at De La Warr Pavilion to diverse local audiences. The students produced some brilliant results and we selected the work of Rowan Bailey to promote next week’s event.

“From the get go I wanted to create a poster that captured the essence of PechaKucha, describing the ideals of sharing a discussion through diverse and dynamic conversions rather that the topics of the presentation. Networking, meeting and sharing were at the forefront of my initial sketches, I wanted to try and visualise the imagery of discussion, and global networking, so I played with concepts surrounding the mouth and talking as well as explorations into the world and global collaborations.”

You can read Rowan’s full blog on his project here.

Our next PechaKucha night is on Thursday 26 October. Join us for a fun evening of creative presentations on a wide variety of subjects from a panel of experts and enthusiasts! Book here.

CVAN South East is delighted to reveal the five artists shortlisted for the Platform Graduate Award 2017. The artists are:

• Sophie Barber (University of Brighton at Sussex Coast College Hastings), nominated by De La Warr Pavilion
• Elizabeth Cahill (University of Hertfordshire), nominated by MK Gallery
• Nathan Caldecott (Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford), nominated by Modern Art Oxfor
• Stephen Foy-Philp (Canterbury Christ Church University), nominated by Turner Contemporary
• Svetlana Ochkovskaya (Southampton Solent University), nominated by Aspex

For Platform 2017, forty-one graduate artists from universities across the South East region were selected and exhibited at the five partner galleries – Aspex in Portsmouth, De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, Modern Art Oxford and Turner Contemporary in Margate – all members of CVAN South East. From their respective exhibitions, each participating gallery nominated one artist to be considered for the award.

Paul Hobson, Director, Modern Art Oxford and Chair, CVAN South East said:

‘Congratulations to all five nominated artists who have shown great passion, creativity and skill, and have produced impressive exhibitions with the support of the teams at each participating gallery. Now in its sixth year, the Platform Graduate Award continues to offer a vital professional development opportunity to graduates embarking on their artistic careers. Developing the South East arts ecology by supporting artists and art practice is a strategic priority for Modern Art Oxford and the other partners within the CVAN South East network.’

Guest selector and Turner Prize 2017 nominated artist Rosalind Nashashibi will announce the winner of this year’s award on Saturday 9 December at a special event at Modern Art Oxford. The award includes a £2,500 bursary towards the development of the artist’s practice and bespoke mentoring from artist Jonathan Parsons.

You can see Sophie Barber’s fantastic ‘Phil’ paintings in our Rooftop Foyer, open until Sunday 5 November. Click here for more information.

We are delighted to receive this 5 star review from Brighton Argus Guide this morning for the American rock band, Grizzly Bear who brought their Painted Ruins tour to the DLWP stage last night (Tuesday 10 October).

“It took Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear nearly five years to gestate their latest album Painted Ruins, and it was definitely worth the wait.”

“The venue was well-inhabited by the band, who showed us all that their music exists in a slower and less fragmented world than our modern day-to-day experience will allow us to achieve.”

“Singer Ed Droste’s clipped phrases were complimented perfectly by co-frontman Daniel Rossen’s mellifluous backing vocals.”

You can read the full review here.

Thank you Brighton Argus!

Henry Young is our local librarian at Bexhill Library who we have been working with during our exhibition, Roy Voss: The Way Things Are.  Henry has selected a range of books which correspond to the key themes and ideas around Voss’ new commission. To celebrate Libraries week, Henry has written a few words about his role at Bexhill Library and about the books he has chosen below.

“I am a Generic librarian: Schools and Museum librarian; Children’s librarian; Adult librarian; Information and Reference librarian and Equal Access librarian all rolled into one!  This means that I have no “typical days”; I can spend the morning reading ‘Shark in the park’ (Sharratt, N) to 7 year olds and the afternoon facilitating computer sessions for the digitally excluded.  I am part of a team responsible for the adult, children’s, reference and Large Print / spoken word stock in all the libraries in the East Sussex, which is exhilarating and healthily intimidating in equal measure!

I love working at the Library Store, we provide a Museum loan service to schools and have hundreds of preserved animals, from tiny tadpoles and bird embryos to foxes and badgers.  And even creepier, mummified animals: crocodiles, snakes wrapped in cloth and coated in resin to preserve them.  I like to think that at night they all come to life, like a scene from ‘Night at the Museum’.

The Library Store is where all the fascinating old books live when they have been shunted out of libraries by new paperback neophytes!  It was this collection I mined when staff from the De La Warr Pavilion asked me to support Roy Voss: The Way Things Are exhibition.  I was first sent a list of key themes of the exhibition: Victorian resorts; seaside attractions; cabinetmaking et al.  I searched our catalogue for books that nobody had borrowed in 7 years – books that were sad, shelved and desperate to be read and loved again (yes I like to think the books come to life too).  I was looking for idiosyncratic titles; or rather books that the passage of time has rendered charmingly dated.  I hope you enjoy.”

When visiting the Ground Floor Gallery, you can find the books selected on the Look-Think-Make table as you enter the gallery. Open everyday 10am – 6pm.

The De La Warr Pavilion is delighted to announce multi-disciplinary designer Yemi Awosile as artist in residence at Thornwood Care Home in Bexhill-on-Sea, home to 16 people living with dementia. The residency is organised by the De La Warr Pavilion in association with Open School East, and funded by a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Test and Explore grant.

Throughout Autumn 2017, Awosile will engage Thornwood Care Home residents and staff in conversation and creative activities. Out of this, she will develop a collection of digitally embroidered fabrics inspired by these encounters, and the site. Awosile will test how craft innovation might help to bridge the gap between a younger generation of digital natives, and those brought up before the digital age: challenging age and ability related stereotypes, as well as attitudes to craft.

During a recent conversation with one of the care home’s residents, the artist talked about her time growing up in London, a story that provoked shared memories about dancing and music. Whilst in residence, Awosile will work with residents and staff to compile a playlist that incorporates their favourite songs, creating a collective soundscape to accompany a presentation of digitally embroidered fabrics at the De La Warr Pavilion in early 2018.

During her residency, as part of the Crafts Council’s annual festival of new making MAKE: SHIFT: DO, Awosile will give a brief talk about her work and facilitate a textiles block printing session that merges traditional techniques with contemporary design practice. The session will exploit the use of digitally fabricated printing blocks made from CNC milled timber for an experimental approach to textile craft. https://www.dlwp.com/event/makeshiftdo/

Yemi Awosile (b. 1984) lives in London. She was raised in North West London near Ladbroke Grove where she was largely influenced by the local area and second-hand markets on Goldborne Road and Portobello Road. She trained as a textile designer at the Royal College of Art and Chelsea College of Art, and is currently teaching as a visiting tutor at Loughborough University and Chelsea College of Art. Recent projects include collaborations with PEER, Stanley Picker Gallery, Tate, Contemporary And (C&), ICA, Bernie Grant Arts Centre and the British Council Pakistan. As part of her working practice, she re-purposes everyday materials to explore the relationship between people and materials. Her most recent work looks at unexpected parallels between different social groups in urban spaces.

We are delighted to be working in partnership with Hastings Pier Charity, throughout the run of the exhibition The Way Things Are.

Artist Roy Voss’ sculpture in the De La Warr Pavilion’s ground floor gallery, is a delicate and precise skeletal structure that conjures the idea of a pier, drawn from the artist’s memories of existing and vanished piers. The Way Things Are is a co-commission between Berwick Visual Arts and Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool where it will tour in 2018.

At the turn of the last century, almost a hundred piers existed: now only half remain and several face an uncertain future. Original plans for the De La Warr Pavilion included a pier. The proposal for a two-level structure that led from a circular swimming pool out to the sea was too expensive to pursue, and was never realised.

This exhibition seemed like a great opportunity to work with Hastings Pier to share and grow our understanding, expertise and audiences. We will co-host a programme of talks, tours and workshops, across both sites. See our What’s On page for more details.

The De La Warr Pavilion is only five miles from Hastings Pier and you can cycle or walk the Coastal Culture Trail from one to the other.

Piers evoke many memories in people and we urge you to share them with us on Instagram using the hashtag #MyPier.