Platform is a showcase of the best new work from graduates of Sussex Coast College, Hastings, and the University of Brighton.
It includes photography, sculpture, moving image and painting by five young artists: Tasneem Arif, Godith Hawkins, Katie Needham, Oscar Yasamee, and Maddalena Zadra. The exhibition is curated by Flatland Projects, a new artist-led gallery based within The Source Park in a Victorian former bathhouse and swimming pool in Hastings. Flatland is co-founded by Ben Urban and Billy Stanley.
Tasneem Arif’s simple frame of metal and plastic sheeting addresses the space between and within linear form.
Through opaque reference to post-mortem imagery, Godith Hawkins’ photographs reveal the uncanny vulnerability of the reclining or fallen body.
Katie Needham’s sound installation deals with her experience of growing up in Milton Keynes, questioning what it means to belong to a place that has failed to deliver its utopian promise.
Oscar Yasamee’s paintings reference subcultures through the use of a cartoon-like visual language, to research how contemporary images take on meaning and myths.
Maddalena Zadra makes symbolic paintings and prints that both tell and conceal stories, fairy tales, myths and personal experiences.
The Platform Graduate Award is an initiative run by CVAN South East to support emerging graduate artistic talent to further their practice following graduation.
About Flatland Projects
Flatland Projects, co-founded by Ben Urban and Billy Stanley, presents a programme of solo and group exhibitions based within a Victorian former bath house now occupied by Source BMX, Hastings. With collaboration a primary focus for each project, the gallery will be used to showcase emerging contemporary artist practices, and to engage with wider conversations around re-thinking sustainable models for artist-led space.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
My practice explores vulnerability and the value of a photographic image considering both the angst of a still image and the uncanny elements surrounding photography. Considering both the reclining and fallen body my work references post-mortem photography, not to suggest death, but as a process in which to position the body and instill a comfortable anxiety. Working digitally, I use material and colour to suggest wellness, which is then contradicted by the unnerving subject. Works John and A Heap of Raw Material explore this manipulation and use of material.
Milton Keynes, my place of birth, feels as strange asit does familiar.
Through collaged filmic material my conflicted relationship with the city interrogates what it is to belong to a place, whether that place is imagined or physically real.
Focusing on its promise for a ‘better life for the ordinary working person’ and its failed utopian visions, my work plays on the artificiality of nostalgia and idealism.
The viewer should feel as if they’ve stumbled upon a place and time that feels familiar, yet remains detached and disjointed from their reality. Like they’ve just turned off the M1 at Junction 14.
The figurative narrative of my work should make you float around a simple variety of symbols that spread, hiding and revealing stories in turn. A journey is revealed through images and visual metaphors that build upon the literary, including fairy tales, myth and personal experience. The surface is handled in a pure and sensitive way that starts a dialogue between the material surface and related mark making. From this, combinations of colour, line and shape form unusual harmonies in the paintings.
My research looks into image production and discourse, recently examining cartoon based images from popular cartoons that I feel are rhetorical to practices in painting today. By connecting contemporary and traditional means of painting within the same space I aim for my images to create a discourse about functions within contemporary painting.
Aiming to articulate the haptics of space, I generate encounters between audience and material. The crafted object holds no definitive, prescribed form. Instead, the relationship between materiality, space and audience – and questioning the defined and undefined – are integral to my practice. Although not architecturally determined, my sculptures are sensitive to location.
Each material component enhances and highlights the overall sculpture and residing space. There is a metamorphosis of frame, revealing a connection of the work within space.
Removing the possibility of a single, static viewer, encourages the audience commit to a higher means of viewing: to look rather than spectate.
There are plenty of welcoming and good value B&Bs & boutique hotels in Bexhill. The De La Warr Pavilion regularly uses the following :
- By Rail
Direct trains go from London Victoria, Brighton and Ashford to Bexhill.
There are also trains from London Charing Cross, changing at St. Leonards Warrior Square and from London Bridge or Charing Cross going to Battle. Battle is only a short taxi journey away (15 mins approx).
Visit www.nationalrail.co.uk for up-to-date train travel information. - Taxis
Town Taxis: 01424 211 511
Parkhurst Taxis: 01424 733 456 - By Car
If driving from the London area:
Take the M25, then A21 to Hastings. Turn off at John‘s Cross and follow the signs to Bexhill.
OR
Take the A22 to Eastbourne, go across the Bishop roundabout to the A271 and follow the signs to Bexhill and the seafront. The De La Warr Pavilion is on the Marina.
From the Brighton area:
Follow the A27 out of Brighton until you arrive in Bexhill On Sea. - Parking
Please be aware the Rother District car park outside the De La Warr Pavilion operates paid parking until 7pm. After this time parking is free. There is also lmiited free car parking along the seafront.
Within the limits of this Grade One listed building, the De La Warr Pavilion strives to be fully accessible with a range of facilities to support your visit.
Assistance Dogs are permitted into the building.
Please contact the Box Office on 01424 229 111 to arrange a visit.
Facilities for disabled visitors
- Ramped access at the front of the building
- A low counter at the Box Office and Information Desk
- Disabled toilets on two floors
- A lift to all floors
- Accessible galleries on both floors
- An accessible Café
- Spaces for wheelchairs in the auditorium for seated events
- Ramped access in the auditorium for events during the day
- Ramped access into the Studio
- Two travel wheelchairs are available for use at the De La Warr Pavilion. To reserve, please call our box office and information desk on (01424) 229111 or ask a member of staff on arrival. The chairs are provided on a first come, first served basis and are intended for use inside the Pavilion. Please contact us for more information.
Facilities for blind or visually-impaired
- Large print season brochures
Facilities for the hard-of-hearing
- An T-Switch induction loop in some areas of the auditorium (please indicate when booking as this facility is not available on the balcony)
- British Sign Language interpretation tours of the building and exhibitions are available on request.