A new independent gallery launches this week on the UK's south coast called Hastings Contemporary (the space was previously known as the Jerwood Gallery but the gallery parted ways with its main sponsor, the Jerwood Foundation, earlier this year). An anonymous donation of £250,000 has enabled the relaunch, which is due to take place on 6 July with exhibitions dedicated to the Copenhagen-based artist Tal R (6 July-13 October) and the late British painter Roy Oxlade (6 July-6 October). The illustrator Quentin Blake also presents a series of new drawings (6 July-6 October).
“We want to encourage new ways of looking, contrasting historic works with todays artists, showing works in a range of media, and celebrating both national and international practitioners,” says Liz Gilmore, the gallerys director. We have picked out five key works to see and savour at the new space.
Hastings Contemporary brings to the fore in the exhibition Shine Out Fair Sun the late UK artist Roy Oxlade who died in 2014. “His work reflects his everyday life living and working alongside his wife and fellow artist Rose Wylie on the south-east coast, not far from Hastings,” says a gallery statement. A yellow utensil is shown here alongside a grey female form in a typically Primitivist-style work.
Oxlades work is overlooked, so this exhibition gives old and new followers an opportunity to (re)assess the work of the artist, writer and teacher. Oxlade creates expressionistic scenes, transforming domestic settings and objects. “Painting to me is like a room of the imagination,” he said, alluding to his instinctive approach. Crucially, Henri Matisse influenced how he saw and depicted the world.
Another display includes paintings and drawings by the late UK artist David Bomberg who taught Oxlade at Borough Polytechnic alongside fellow students Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. Both men believed that objects and places should anchor works; Oxlade was influenced in particular by Bombergs idea of the “spirit in the mass” which the younger artist defined as the “actions of the artist in response to the physical world of nature and things”.
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