‘Sussex Modernism’
Towner, Eastbourne, 23 May–28 September 2025
Hope Wolf, Sussex Modernism, Yale University Press, New Haven and London 2025
Julian Freeman
1 ‘Sussex Modernism’, part of the exhibition, including (centre) Ivon Hitchens, Day’s Rest, Day’s Work, 1960, University of Sussex (see Pl 2); (l/h corner) Jacob Epstein, ROM, 1910, Amgueddfa Cymru-Museums Wales; and (foreground), Jacob Epstein, Maternity, 1910, Leeds Museums and Galleries. Photo Rob Harris
Sussex Modernism? As a catch-all exhibition title it sounds tidy enough but it’s a misnomer, as its curator, Hope Wolf, acknowledges. As a survey of most of the visual creativity in the county since the end of the nineteenth century it prompts many forensic questions of its audience, not least, ‘Why Sussex?’ And, ‘To what end?’ It’s therefore unsurprising that it leans heavily on Wolf’s 2025 book of the same name, an extensive and fascinating investigation. Fortunately, the key features of the text are well represented in the galleries and, for those who want more, that information is generally freely available, so long as the generic title is set aside, for what has passed for modernism in Sussex has taken many forms.
The show at the Towner (Pl 1, Pl 2) is fundamentally changed after a London dry run at Two Temple Court back in 2017, and the passage of time has permitted Wolf more speculative approaches to her themes, and further opportunity to open them up visually. The last extensive exhibition of art in Sussex, ‘The Sussex Scene’, was developed and shared in 1992–3 by Penny Johnson and Timothy Wilcox (respectively, Directors of The Towner and of Hove Museum). It covered the period from c1880–1980 and was accompanied by an erudite catalogue essay by Norbert Lynton, but was exclusively two-dimensional. Although the present exhibition goes over some of the same ground, Wolf’s inclusion of sculpture, craft, photography and film has helped to create a major shift in focus, while in the process leavening the visual emphasis of the ‘Sussex Scene’ on Brighton-based activity in favour of a cross-county overview.
Perhaps the exhibition’s most important qualities lie in its physical arrangement and, particularly, in its restrained selection, for although it could have been an over-stuffed, over-hung blockbuster, it isn’t, yet neither is it generally short on quality.
2 Ivon Hitchens, Day’s Rest, Day’s Work, 1960. Wax and oil on four panels, 365.6 × 731.5 cm. University of Sussex
Somehow, the idiomatic, thematic breadth of Wolf’s survey manages to overcome Rick Mather’s uncomfortable gallery spaces to deliver concise and mostly successful chronological displays. Some of these work better than others, but in its emotional range the show is variously sensitive, demanding, disquieting, or downright aggressive, chip-on-the shoulder. The ‘off-the line’ informal presentation of several groupings is refreshing, with sufficient wall- and floor-space allowed for thought, useful when certain exhibited groupings deliver synopses of the subjects of some (but not all) of Wolf’s less familiar thematic book chapters. Some, such as Edward James’s fantastic ideas for West Dean, are simply untranslatable in visual terms outside a lecture theatre or a much larger display; others, such as the presence in Sussex of poets such as Scawen Blunt, are more easily accessible in text than through the exhibited artefacts. Nevertheless the display clearly demonstrates the main strands of the attraction of Sussex for individuals who were – or remain – in some way at odds with the rest of the world as they saw it.
Although Sussex may have been ‘the nearest far-away place’ from London, by no means all of those featured were ‘out-of-county’ escapers. Of particular note in this regard is the fine group of watercolour seascapes of the English Channel by David Jones, made at Portslade in the later 1920s and early ’30s, as the artist developed what would become In Parenthesis. In the book and in her wall text, Wolf offers compelling emphasis concerning Jones’s choice of vantage point and his search for ‘a reasonably sheltered position’ from which to view the world. It is a phrase that might also have been appropriate for others whose work is displayed.
Throughout the exhibition Wolf and the Towner manage to match and catch the remarkable range of responses to Modernism. The book reveals far more on this, but the exhibition’s final room takes the viewer back to the notional beginning of the survey, at Pett Level, between Hastings and Winchelsea, where Jacob Epstein made preparatory work for Rock Drill, and where, some 70 years later, David Bowie and friends filmed the video for Ashes to Ashes. Every year in between reveals situations in which pursuit of an ideal, or its rejection, or some indelicate intellectual balancing occurred in Sussex, when small groups and individuals, female and male, elected to follow artistic pursuits or to initiate challenges to the artistic status quo. Although the inhabitants of Charleston, Chiddingly, Ditchling and Lewes are present in person or in the background, Wolf presents them in the spotlight with lesser-known individuals. Her ability to tease out lesser-known threads to render her topics (and human subjects) with greater clarity is a winning characteristic, and because the exhibition is on show at the Towner, it is appropriate to close by noting her excellent section on the toxic antagonism in pre- and post-war Eastbourne caused by different and well-meaning attempts to add modern work to the Towner’s collection. Plus ça change.
Nevertheless, seemingly small events can nag at the subconscious. Why did Epstein (and Gertler before him) choose Pett Level as a retreat? Or Wadsworth move to Maresfield? What made Elgar move to Sussex (apart from air-raids)? And, though she doesn’t mention them, what does Wolf know about the attraction of West Sussex for John Ireland and Arnold Bax?