Art and Ice Cream

The East Sussex Open is an annual exhibition, at Eastbourne’s Towner contemporary art museum, to showcase artists from across the county. Based in the largest gallery space in the area, the ground floor Exhibition Halls, it always provides a wide and interesting mixture of artistic forms; and the 2014 selection, ranging from traditional painting to large installations, does not deviate from this stimulating breadth of media.

Having to entertain the kids for the whole day on Saturday, I gambled on children’s intuitive appreciation of art to help me navigate this year’s collection. Whilst I was taking in Susan Crossett’s watercolours of rural landscapes, and Tom Banks’ eerie dark and depopulated St. Leonards’ street scenes, the kids were fighting over who should wear the headphones to accompany Flats, Gallit Shaltiel’s stop motion animation of a man trapped in a concrete structure.

It is perhaps a given that moving images and three-dimensional pieces will appeal more to younger minds; but whilst I was drawn to David Jones’ video installation, Jacob’s Ladder, an endless loop of empty London Underground escalator advertising frames, and the humour of Sam Carvosso’s Sculpture Falling on Lemon, the children were studying photographer Alex Currie’s urban landscapes, in particular the “sausage of snow” covering the stairs of the M61 Rivington services.

When it came to the installations in the centre of the gallery space, the children all enjoyed Anna Gonzalez Noguchi’s Tsumumi: To Wrap, a scarlet binding between the two main gallery pillars; but it was her arrangement of a chair, table, armbands and coffee cup that prompted a furious debate between the kids on the nature of conceptual art. The middle one was particular fervent, and a little too Daily Mail for my liking, in his questioning of the artistic nature of the piece; and when the oldest offered the suggestion that the title, Support, meant that it was about things we need to get by, he was still not satisfied.

The youngest came to the rescue by dragging us off to see contributions by two artists from Project Art Works in Hastings. Albert Geere is an 80-year-old artist with profound learning difficulties, who has lived in institutions since he was two. The primary geometrics of his painting Storm, Sky, House had especially appealed to her seven-year-old eyes. Then there was an exhibit in the name of Andrew and Eden Kotting. I had first come across this father and daughter team after reading an Iain Sinclair essay about them in the London Review of Books in 2006. I had then seen Andrew's 1996 film, Gallivant, documenting a coastal journey around Britain by his grandmother and seven-year-old Eden. Eden was born with Joubert Sydrome, a rare neurological disorder, and has collaborated with her father on a number of projects. Now 26, Eden’s series of canvases on show at the Towner – Stargeezers - depict religious zealots gazing at the heavens and is accompanied by a short film, shot by her father, showing Eden at work.

Wrapped up in the film, I had let the kids give me the slip but I quickly found them again, at the making table in the foyer, expressing their own artistic talents; fairies, war and Daleks abounded. The debate about Gonzalez Noguchi’s installation was still raging, so we took it across the street to the Favoloso ice cream parlour and worked our way through four large helpings of support.

The East Sussex Open runs at the Towner contemporary art museum until 14 September 2014. Entry is free.

Austerity Art

Sometime in 1974, when I was 11 or 12 years old, my dad took me to a new restaurant in Woolwich, south-east London. He had read about it as it was the only British outlet of a chain that was huge in the United States and, as we were passing through Woolwich on one of our regular Red Bus Rover trips around London that we took on Saturdays when Millwall were not playing in the capital, he decided we should give it a try. I have no exact memory of what we ate that day but I do remember my dad’s words as we left the restaurant: “Well, that was terrible; it’ll never catch on.” Typically, he was half right. It was terrible, but it did catch on. We had, of course, just visited the first McDonald’s in this country.

Where my dad was most at home eating when we went on a Red Bus Rover – a very early version of the Oyster card but for buses only – was at Jolyon on the corner of the Strand and Duncannon Street, opposite Charing Cross station. It was one of a chain of cafeterias that were successors to the Lyons teashops, or Corner Houses as three of the central London branches were known, that had dominated high streets for the previous 70 years. Struggling to maintain the demand for large-scale affordable dining that had grown out of the war-time canteen culture, the 1970s saw a make-over that relied on formica, brown geometric patterns and a funky renaming to reflect the founding father, Joseph Lyons. The re-launch failed and by the end of the seventies the Lyons name was most well known as a brand of ice cream. The restaurants never regained their place at the forefront of British life that they had occupied before, during and after the Second World War.

Just how integral Lyons teashops were to the post-war cultural landscape can currently be seen in an exhibition, The Lyons Teashops Lithographs: Art in a Time of Austerity 1946-1955, at the Towner gallery in Eastbourne. Facing a drab period where rationing still held sway and raw materials were prioritised elsewhere, J. Lyons & Co found an imaginative way of sprucing up their restaurants and illuminating the lives of their customers: they commissioned a series of large lithographs, from artists of the day, to cover the walls of the teashops. Over three series, in 1946, 1951 and 1955, 40 separate prints were produced by leading artists such as L.S. Lowry, John Nash, John Piper and David Gentleman. Most of the contributors had worked as official war artists, documenting daily life on the home front in a time of conflict, so the shift to peace time adversity was a natural one.

All 40 prints are on show at the Towner, along with some original sketches and paintings that informed the lithographic process carried out by commercial printers Chromoworks of Willesden. Depicting life in post-war Britain, they present a fascinating example of the power of public art. The most successful at the exhibition are those, such as People by Barnett Freedman and The Railway Station by Edward Arrdizzone, that provide a glimpse of the grind of the time – the crowds and careworn faces of that austere post-war world. East Sussex features with Edwin La Dell’s view of Hastings from East Hill and Clifford Frith’s brooding The River Rother at Rye. But for me, nestling next to each other in a corner of the gallery, the contrast between Carel Weight’s melancholic and autumnal Albert Bridge and the spirited and energetic Herne Bay Pier by Anthony Gross, shows the true resilience of ordinary people in an age of austerity.

Perhaps that resilience explains why the streets are not filled with people throwing bricks in protest at our current age of austerity - but it does not explain where the response of art is now. I cannot imagine the fast food heirs to Lyons embarking on a similar project - corporations regularly sponsor art exhibitions, but that is merely advertising. What J. Lyons & Co did was to directly commission, oversee and exhibit these artworks to enrich the lives of the ordinary people who drank their tea.

The Lyons Teashops Lithographs: Art in a Time of Austerity 1946-1955 is at the Towner gallery, Eastbourne until 22nd October 2013. £5.50/£4 concessions.

Hang On A Minute...

This coming weekend sees the start of the artist Richard Wilson’s ‘Hang On A Minute Lads, I’ve Got A Great Idea’ at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill. Following Anthony Gormley’s ‘Critical Mass’ in 2010, there is now the chance to experience more rooftop art. This time, in homage to the conclusion of the 1969 film ‘The Italian Job’, you get to see a full sized-replica of a coach balanced precariously on the edge of the building’s roof. The title of the exhibition is the film’s final line, delivered as the camera zooms out to the panorama of the Italian Alps leaving the Mini-driving heisters balanced on the fulcrum of a dilemma against a pile of gold bullion. Wilson’s obsession with the film, and its iconic use of Mini Coopers, Michael Caine and football supporters abroad, has led to the work being commissioned as part of the British Cultural Olympiad; the exhibition runs until September and is free.

There is also an open invitation to Friday evening’s launch party, with music throughout the building from DJ Stephen Mallinder. When I saw that name I also thought “hang on a minute”; then it came to me: Stephen ‘Mal’ Mallinder, founder member of Sheffield Dada-inspired electronic industrialists, Caberet Voltaire. It also sent me scurrying to a box of 7” singles where I found their ‘Extended Play’ EP, their first release on Rough Trade from 1978. Including ‘Do the Mussolini (Headkick)’ and an esoteric cover of the Velvet Underground’s ‘Here She Comes Now’, this EP, together with another 7” in my box - the first Mute Records release from the same year, The Normal’s ‘TVOD/Warm Leatherette’ - signalled independent music’s move away from the rama lama of landfill punk. I’m sure Mallinder - now relocated to Brighton from Sheffield, via Australia - will be playing equally adventurous music on Friday; and it’s good to see that there is room for avant-garde musical experimentation in the British cultural landscape as well as your run of the mill coach hanging from the side of a building.

Near Pavilions

Built in the first half of the twentieth century, reclaimed from physical decline at the start of the twenty-first and providing independent entertainment in an inspiring setting today. That opening sentence perfectly describes both the Hailsham and De La Warr Pavilions: two venues, 10 miles apart in East Sussex, that are worth visiting for the buildings, let alone the high standard of art, live music and film they make locally available.

The Hailsham Pavilion was built as a cinema in 1921 and opened with a packed performance of Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Kid’. It was a cinema until 1965, when it began twenty dismal bingo years that were ended with purchase by developers (oh, how very 1980s) who left the building empty and decaying. Rescued by determined campaigners and councillors, it reopened as a cinema in 2000. Ninety years on from that Chaplin picture, it is a joy to watch a film here today.
The elaborate classical façade gives way to a plush, warm interior that transports you back to the days of the music hall and the picture palace. Staffed by enthusiastic and knowledgeable volunteers, the 200-seat capacity is small enough to be intimate but large enough to provide the communal experience very often missing in the ‘viewing booths’ that good films are relegated to in multi-screen cinemas. New releases are a couple of weeks behind the greedy, soulless multiplexes but with cheaper seats and better ethics and aesthetics, this local independent cinema is the one to support.
Its regular music performances have made the Hailsham Pavilion something of a staple of the folk music diet. Folk royalty such as Peggy Seeger, Norma Waterson and Eliza Carthy have performed in recent years, as have the Oysterband and Fairport Convention; and Sussex legends the Copper family gave a memorable performance in the run-up to last Christmas that left me warm, festive and fuzzy.

The De La Warr (pronounced Delaware) Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea was built in 1935 to a design by leading modernist architects Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff. Commissioned by Herbrand Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr and socialist Mayor of Bexhill (sounds very incongruous), the building is a stunning beacon of sweeping art deco lines and industrial concrete, steel and glass. A major regeneration project in 2005 rescued the building from neglect and inappropriate alterations and established it as a contemporary arts centre.
The large gallery spaces have attracted exhibitions by high profile artists such as Grayson Perry, Joseph Beuys and Anthony Gormley, as well as lesser lights and emerging talents. Chris Petit and Iain Sinclair’s 2009 film installation was a particular highlight: a 12-screen musing on another south coast slice of art deco 5 miles east along the coast at St. Leonards, ‘Marine Court Rendezvous’ was a dream-like surveillance of life in a modernist behemoth.
The highlight of the De La Warr though, is the 1,000+ capacity performance space that is increasingly attracting popular and/or leftfield musical acts. I have been to excellent gigs by Band of Horses, Richard Hawley and The Fall (twice) here; what makes it so good is the sound and size of the auditorium and also the enthusiastic response of the performers and the audience to the quality of the venue. Any venue that brings the mighty Fall to my doorstep must be good; for Mark E. Smith to come back, it must be incredible. Don’t go to gigs in Brighton or London, just go here.