TOWNER 100 | LET GOD WAIT…

William Nicholson, Judd’s Farm, 1912. ©The Artist’s Estate

The news last summer that the 2023 Turner Prize had been awarded to Towner Eastbourne was met with surprise in certain quarters. Eastbourne? The Turner Prize? The Sussex seaside town was best known to the greater public, after all, as a genteel resort favoured by the older generation, and nicknamed ‘God’s Waiting Room’.

But times are changing fast: Londoners are moving to the south coast, bringing their taste for cultural sophistication with them. And the art gallery – resplendent in its rainbow paintjob by Austrian designer Lothar Gotz, as it enjoys its 100th birthday – has been setting the pace, becoming known for mixing its trademark ModBrit shows with exhibitions by international contemporary artists, such as Melissa Gordon, and Jananne al-Ani.

Towner’s latest offering – The Living Collection – largely harks back to the twentieth century. Their curators have delved into the 5000-plus works in the gallery’s permanent collection, to present a show filled with works by some of the country’s finest Modernists, including Eric Ravilious (an Eastbourne lad), Vanessa Bell, Edward Wadsworth and William Nicholson (whose landscape Judd’s Farm, above, is included).

That exhibition opened just before Christmas, and on February 11 will be accompanied by a sister show – Unseen – showing more recent works from the same collection, by contemporary artists such as David Nash, Tom Hammick, Rachel Jones, Dineo Seshee Bopape and Jem Southam. 

It looks like a good start to what promises to be something of an annus mirabilis for the East Sussex gallery, and for the whole of Eastbourne, blinking in the cultural spotlight, enjoying the welcome shift in its reputation.

Towner 100: The Living Collection, until August 29. Towner 100: Unseen, February 11 – May 14

townereastbourne.org.uk