Out of Hours: Brink

Thanks to our special relationship with Towner, we are pleased to be able to enjoy an exclusive out of hours viewing of one of Towner’s current exhibitions, Brink – curated by Caroline Lucas.
Caroline Lucas – politician, cultural advocate and environmental campaigner – took on a new challenge last autumn: curating her first ever exhibition for a major UK gallery. Caroline is an active campaigner on a range of issues and has consistently been voted the UK’s most ethical politician. A patron of various arts projects over the years, she currently supports Kollektiv Gallery, ONCA Gallery and Firecracker Theatre Company.
Selecting from the 5000 works in Towner’s permanent Collection, Caroline’s choices reflect and resonate with her passions and interests, from her environmental work, issues of climate change and effects on our landscape, to her love of living in Sussex.
We’ve invited five Blue Monkey Network members to select works in the exhibition which hold a particular interest or resonance for them. The five will talk about the work from their own very unique perspectives as artists.

Our five presenters are:
Steve Johnston is a painter/printmaker whose practice forms an inquiry into some of life's big issues - love, marriage, religion, faith, nature, growth, death and decay.
Beatrice von Preussen is a printmaker, illustrator and writer. Working closely with the Earth Sciences department at the Natural History Museum gives Beatrice a unique view of the world. She has recently held an exhibition of work, which was inspired by her experiences in the Arctic and Antarctic, and printed on the world’s southernmost and northernmost presses. Beatrice aims to encourage curiosity about nature and to inspire us to go out together and explore the world around us. She is also working on a series of non-fiction illustrated books for children.

Anne Barrell is a ceramicist interested in how we look at the world and how we bestow meaning on objects. There is a history to the medium of ceramics which is linked to our industrial heritage and to our domestic lives. There is an element of the souvenir in her work, not just of a place, but of a time. Inspired by all things to do with the sea and shipping, by our British maritime heritage, and by modern British artists, Anne works in a painterly way, using the ceramic decoration technique of sgraffito.

Claire Shoosmith is an artist and educator with a degree in Sculpture from Central St. Martins and an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art. She works across many mediums to create her work and uses clay in an experimental way exploring the alchemy and happy accidents of the material. Much of her work has investigated how we negotiate and make sense of specific environments, in particular examining our communication with and behaviour towards others, looking at the choreography of human interaction.

Stephanie Grainger uses drawing, animation and visual metaphor to enlighten the darker sometimes forgotten aspects of life, often personalising social injustices. Her work, throws light onto forgotten facets of culture or topics encouraging the viewer to reflect more meaningfully on themes by making personal, sometimes light-hearted connections. Steph is an active member of Now we are 7 and one half of collaborative partnership Grainger Burnside, who mix analogue and digital techniques to create stories using hand drawn animation in combination with digital creation, motion graphics and music.

6-8pm. Blue Monkey members FREE. Non-members £5

Refreshments will be available (contributions welcome) or feel free to bring a bottle.

For more information visit https://www.townereastbourne.org.uk/event/blue-monkey-network-out-of-hours-brink/