Autumn is alive with art
Cultural life in Sussex never dims. After a triumphant summer of art shows, performances, screenings and live events, now autumn is springing to life in our galleries, museums, theatres, independent cinemas and art spaces.
So what do our art partners have lined up for you over the coming season? Way too much to tell you in one go – we’d be firmly in TLDR territory if we tried to list everything here, but you can check out our individual partner pages to view their programmes.
With so much going on around the county, we thought we’d do what we do best and get curating. Without further ado, here are six of the top cultural attractions from the Sussex Modern autumn calendar.
Tunji Adeniyi-Jones at Charleston
The title ‘Astral Reflections’ speaks to the physical and emotional fragments that we gather and leave behind through continued travel and transition. I am interested in how the transformative nature of the Black experience is nourished by travel, movement and cultural hybridity.
– Tunji Adeniyi-Jones
Raised in England to Nigerian parents and now based in New York, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones’s first UK solo show explores the effects of travel and movement on the Black experience. His vivid colour palette and depictions of the human form draw parallels with Duncan Grant’s work, also on display at Charleston this autumn.
18 Sept 2021 – 13 March 2022
£9 standard, free for Friends
Book tickets online
The Long Song at Chichester Festival Theatre
Angela Levy’s award-winning novel is set on a sugar plantation in early 19th century Jamaica – the turbulent years around the abolition of slavery. Soon after publication, The Guardian observed how well The Long Song would work in the theatre. Suhayla El-Bushra’s masterful adaptation delivers on that promise in a world premiere run at Chichester’s inimitable playhouse.
1-23 Oct 2021
From £10
Book tickets online
Alexi Marshall at De La Warr Pavilion
Did you know that the occultist Aleister Crowley is reputed to have cast a curse on the town and inhabitants of Hastings? In Cursebreakers – her first solo show in a major national gallery – Alexi Marshall interweaves this legend alongside paganism and folklore, constructing imaginary worlds from a myriad of mythologies.
This new body of work includes linocut prints, mosaics and embroidery full of hybrid female figures and fantastic landscapes. It’s a fantastical but deeply personal show smartly subverting representations of women throughout cultural history.
18 Sept 2021 – 16 Jan 2022
Free entry
Find out more
Shōji Hamada at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft
In 1921, a young Japanese potter named Shōji Hamada travelled with his friend Bernard Leach to a certain East Sussex village already forging a reputation for its art and craft community. From 6 November, Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft will be celebrating the centenary of that visit.
Shōji Hamada: A Japanese Potter in Ditchling captures a vital moment in art and craft – not just a conjoining of Eastern and Western creative traditions, but also the emergence of the studio pottery movement. The show features important works by Bernard Leach, William Staite Murray, Martin Brothers, O Kenzan VI and Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie, as well as Hamada himself.
6 Nov 2021 – 17 Apr 2022
Find out more
Scroll down to sign up to our newsletter and receive ticket updates
Project Art Works at Hastings Contemporary
This autumn sees the Turner Prize-nominated artist collective return to Hastings Contemporary for an exhibition of work produced during their lockdown-based residency in the main gallery space. Ignition – The Exhibition also featured pieces from the Project Art Works archive.
This must-see exhibition showcases a creatively essential studio that provides conditions for autonomous and collaborative practices with neurodivergent artists, who take part on their own terms.
8 Oct 2021 – 27 Feb 2022
Free entry
Find out more
Melissa Gordon at Towner Gallery
Artist, curator and writer Melissa Gordon’s new series of large-scale paintings drift woozily between figurative and abstract art. Photos, texts and silhouettes slip over or under pools of painted colour as Gordon explores art histories and notions of authorship.
Liquid Gestures references overlooked female artists such as drip painter Janet Sobel and Dada poet Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, spotlighting the gender inequality that has seen their artistic contributions eclipsed.
16 Oct 2021 – 30 Jan 2022
Free entry
Find out more
—