Coastal Currents - art, art and more art

Outside 10 The Lawn, St Leonards-on-Sea

 Coastal Currents Arts Festival is now in its fourteenth year.  It's a two-week celebration of visual arts and performance, open studios, exhibitions and events.  And believe me, it's quite difficult to cover everything, even if you live here.

I decided to opt for some of the open studios - partly because of an enjoyable time I'd had last year, partly because we'd been invited to a couple and it seemed a good idea to sample more.  Our neighbours Bob and Claire Humm had asked us round to their house to have a look at what they had been up to.

Outside the Humms' house - no, the figure with his head in the stone is not real

Bob had constructed a diminutive cinema in the form of a compartment comprising six doors, with two cinema seats, one behind the other.  A little claustrophobic, but fun.  A screen showed a film of Claire in one of her Jack in the Green costumes, inspired by folklore.

I followed this up this weekend with a trundle round most of the 22 locations in Saint Leonard's where artists had opened their studios to the public.

Studio at 7 The Lawn, St. Leonard's

 At 10 The Lawn - a slightly dilapidated but beautiful Decimus Burton house - various works had been brought together in the back garden, and I interrupted the various artists over a late lunch.  A few doors away at No. 7 the studios of Nick Snelling and Adrienne Hunter were also in the back garden.  I then found myself in basements, industrial units, and rooms at the top of concrete staircases that might once have been offices.  Artists' resourcefulness never ceases to amaze. Between studios I stumbled on an exhibition entitled "Garden in the Garage", where a group of artists had taken over a large and empty space perfect for exhibiting their conceptual pieces with the theme of the garden.  It was great.

Garden  in the Garage

With some of the studios I was aware immediately that the work wasn't for me.  No criticism there - it's a question of taste.  You're then faced with the awkward question of how to leave without appearing boorish.  I came to the conclusion that a polite "thank you" without further ado was the only way to keep going without being caught up in insincere chitchat.  But if anyone has any better suggestions I'd be interested to hear.  It was a little sad on some occasions, when the artist had obviously been waiting, bored, for an hour or so without anyone crossing the threshold.  But with so much to see, I'm afraid that niceties were sacrificed.

No such scruples were necessary at Studio VII in Shepherd Street, where I spent a very happy time looking at the work of the seven artists exhibiting.  Lynne Bingham does mixed media pieces, a number of which were perspex cases in which old books had been placed with sections cut out and small objects inserted.  I'm not sure what that was about, but I liked them a lot.  Suzie Watts is another mixed media artist, working mainly in bronze and iron, whose small pieces packed quite a punch.  Another member of the group had done some rather fine ceramic bulls.  I'm sorry there isn't another day to go and see them again.

Antony Mair

Lynne Bingham's "Moral Essays"