Jerwood Gallery relaunches as 'Hastings Contemporary'
Saturday 6th July 2019
The Jerwood Gallery, of which Quentin is the first Artist Patron, officially relaunched on 2 July as independent gallery 'Hastings Contemporary'. The Gallery, built and opened in 2012 on the historic seafront at Hastings in East Sussex, has in recent years established a reputation for innovative and exciting exhibitions, many inspired by the collection it held from the Jerwood Foundation.
Now that it has become independent of the Foundation, Hastings Contemporary is continuing to build on relationships with contemporary artists and is setting out to become a beacon for modern and contemporary art on the South Coast.
As a long-standing supporter and Patron, Quentin Blake says, 'What I could never have imagined is that someone would build an art gallery at the end of my road' - in reference to the fact that he has a home in Hastings, within sight of the gallery. He has created many works specially for the gallery in its previous incarnation, including the ground-breaking exhibition 'The Only Way to Travel' (2017) which featured many large-scale works, some of which were created in situ using a hoist. His latest series of much smaller works, in a nod to the new mantle of Hastings Contemporary's new look, is titled 'The New Dress', showing characters in home-made clothes made of cardboard and string.
Much of Hastings Contemporary's display space is given over to a large exhibition of the work of Israeli-born Danish artist Tal R, titled 'Eventually all Museums will be Ships'. The first major public gallery exhibition of the work of Roy Oxlade (1929-2014) 'Shine Out Fair Sun', together with a show of works from both Roy Oxlade and his teacher David Bomberg (1890-1957) complete the line-up of work that will be on show from the public opening on 6 July until October 2019.