David Nash: 200 Seasons
This exhibition is a major survey of Nash’s career from the late 1960s to the present day, exploring his unique contribution to British sculpture and the international Land Art movement.
Past exhibitions
Film London Jarman Award
2019 Shortlist
Discover works that explore new digital practices, experimental animation and fresh approaches to analogue filmmaking in this screening of cutting-edge artists’ films in the Towner Cinema.
Allan Grainger: Downland Gloaming
Night walks over the old chalk paths and byways of the Downs, along with the work of the artist Eric Ravilious and the poetry of Edward Thomas are the main inspirations behind Allan Grainger’s series of photographs, Downland Gloaming.
TEN: Towner curates the collection
To celebrate Towner's tenth anniversary in the Rick Mather designed building new Eastbourne's seafront, a group from Towner's team who have worked and volunteered at the gallery since 2009 have curated an exhibition from works in the permanent collection that have been acquired in the last ten years.
Dineo Seshee Bopape: Sedibeng, it comes with the rain
Sedibeng, it comes with the rain is an immersive installation set in an environment of reflecting and refracting light, on a floor strewn with feathers, metal abstractions, letter charms, bags of healing herbs, images of ripe fruits and flowers native to Africa, the work explores notions of fertility, land, resistance, Afro-diasporic spiritual aesthetics and practices. Bopape has exhibited work across the globe, including at the 10th Berlin Biennale and Palais de Tokyo, Paris. This will be the artist’s first major solo presentation in England.
Phoebe Unwin: Iris
This exhibition, which includes new works, takes its name from the artist’s late maternal grandmother and reflects on the ideas surrounding how the iris works, moving from the intimate and unspoken to the communal, stretching to different times, reflective of the nature of painting itself.
Eastbourne Arts Circle Sculptural Commission
Towner Art Gallery and Eastbourne Arts Circle have commissioned a new work by Sussex artist Helen Turner to be displayed in the gallery’s window this summer. The commissioned work will be situated in the window that faces visitors as they arrive at Towner and is seen each season by thousands of Eastbourne residents and visitors. The commission also coincides with the launch of Eastbourne’s new Devonshire Quarter plaza and recently renovated Congress Theatre.
The Weather Garden: Anne Hardy curates the Arts Council Collection
Anne Hardy’s work derives from places she calls ‘pockets of wild space’ – gaps in the urban space where materials, atmospheres, and emotions gather – using what she finds there to manifest sensory and unstable installation works that fully immerse you. Hardy brings this approach to her selection for Towner, envisioning the gallery space as a shifting impermanent landscape, a meditative environment shaped by local weather data, which has been translated into gently fluctuating light.
Carey Young: Palais de Justice
Towner presents the first UK exhibition of Carey Young’s Palais de Justice (2017) which was filmed surreptitiously at the Palais de Justice in Brussels, an enormous and ornate 19th Century courthouse designed to depict law in terms of the sublime. Contradicting the familiar patriarchal culture of law, Young’s camera depicts female judges and lawyers at court. Sitting at trial, directing proceedings or delivering judgments, female judges are seen through a series of circular windows in courtroom doors.
Figure Study II: Joe Hill curates the Towner Collection
Our new Director Joe Hill curates a personal response to Towner’s renowned collection. His diverse selection spans a period of one hundred years and rather than presenting a themed selection, Joe aims to examine how the selection process itself can further an individual’s understanding of place, perception and aspiration through its collections.