11/02/17
Sussex
Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion
Two Temple Place
28 January – 23 April 2017
As artists continue to be priced
out of even the farthest reaches of London’s boroughs, and many move down to
places on the south coast, such as Hastings, it seems there is something of a revived
rural exodus to mirror that – or, more correctly, those – of the early- to mid-20th
century, when numerous artistic communities established themselves in the
county of Sussex, with guilds, enclaves and retreats. Exemplifying the many faces
of modernism, these various groupings might, at first glance, seem as different
from one another as chalk and cheese, but biographical and conceptual links can
be made, weaving a deft narrative of the period and its protagonists, and this
is precisely what the sixth annual exhibition, in the successful winter
exhibition programme at Two Temple Place, has achieved. The result, Sussex
Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion, brings together painting, film, sculpture,
furniture, music and photography from more than 30 lenders and nine museums and
galleries. What the curator, Dr Hope
Wolf, describes as a “visual cacophony of styles and media” is contextualised
against the late-19th-century interiors of the London venue, making visible the
very style from which many of the artists included sought to depart.
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