Hastings Pier was originally designed by renowned Victorian engineer Eugenius Birch and opened in 1872. The opening was a very grand affair, complete with a celebratory banquet. During the after-dinner speech the Earl of Granville declared: “This pier, if I may so use the phrase, appears to me to be a peerless pier – pier without a peer – except, perhaps, the unfortunate peer who is now addressing you”.
Hastings Pier was sadly devastated by a fire in 2010, and what followed was a passionate campaign by the local community to save the pier. Hastings Pier Charity was formed to manage the reconstruction and operation of the pier for the benefit of the local and wider community, and – following grant funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and other generous organisations, as well as a Community Share Scheme – Hastings Pier reopened to the public in April 2016.
The Pier continues to inspire, entertain and thrill all generations of visitors to this day. Take a look at the fantastic event on offer at Hastings Pier on their website – hastingspier.org.uk
SIREN by Ray Lee
St Mary in the Castle, 7 Pelham Crescent, Hastings, TN34 3AF
£6
Thursday 14 September, 8pm BOOK NOW
Friday 15 September, 8pm BOOK NOW
Saturday 16 September, 6pm BOOK NOW
Saturday 16 September, 8pm BOOK NOW
Capacity limited per session so please book in advance so as not to be disappointed.
Sited within the atmospheric auditorium of St Mary in The Castle, Ray Lee’s award-winning Siren is a whirling, spinning spectacle of mechanical movement, electronic sound and light featuring a forest of large metal tripods, whose rotating arms emit an extraordinary
chorus of pulsing electronic drones.
Silent performers move within the mass of swirling metal, operating their machines and tuning electronic oscillators to change the musical composition while dodging and ducking the spinning arms.
The closeness of the tripods’ tuning sets off a series of amazing overtones that evoke the sense of an ethereal choir. As the audience move freely around the installation the sound
pulses past them creating a hypnotic sound world and a compelling visual image.
Ray Lee is a composer, artist, and performer. He was awarded British Composer of the Year for Sonic Art in 2012. Lee’s work investigates his fascination with the hidden world of electromagnetic radiation and in particular how sound can be used as evidence of invisible phenomena. He is interested in the way that science and philosophy represent the universe. He creates spinning, whirling, and pendulous sound installations that explore “circles of
ether,” the invisible forces that surround us.
ELPIDA HADZI-VASILEVA
Reoccurring Undulation VI, 2017
Shipwreck Museum, Rock-a-Nore Rd, Hastings, TN34 3DW
Private View: Saturday 2 September 6-8pm
Exhibition runs from Saturday 2 September to Sunday 1 October
FREE
The internationally acclaimed Macedonian artist Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva will showcase Reoccurring Undulation VI at the Shipwreck Museum in Rock-a-Nore. Reoccurring Undulation is made from fi sh skin tiles and was originally commissioned for Towner, in Eastbourne, as part of Compulsive, Obsessive, Repetitive (2011).
Reoccurring Undulation VI, 2017 by Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva. Part of Coastal Currents Arts Festival, Hastings UK, September 2017. Image by Alexander Brattell
The material was selected through a process of engagement with the locality, its landscape and history. Membranes and skins are recurring obsessions in Elpida’s work, taking dead waste materials and transforming them through repetition into new artefacts that demonstrate the latent beauty of this discarded matter. Elpida often endures weeks/months of repetitive and nauseating labour to create her work. It is precisely this repetition that creates an imaginative space, opens up possibilities and allows the work to evolve.
Reoccurring Undulation VI, 2017 by Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva. Part of Coastal Currents Arts Festival, Hastings UK, September 2017.
Image by Alexander Brattell
Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva presented Haruspex commissioned by the Vatican, as part of the Pavilion of the Holy See, at the 56th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.
Other recent exhibitions include: Angels and Animal Delights, St John’s Waterloo, London; An Intimate Gaze, Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London; Making Beauty, Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham (2016).
Public collections include The Vatican; Office of Public Works, Ireland; Križanke, Ljubljana; Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Napoli, Italy; Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art; Osten, Skopje, Macedonia and New Hall Art Collection, Cambridge.
elpihv.co.uk
GREIG BURGOYNE
Sunday 3 September from 1pm
On top of Warrior Square Public Toilets (Warrior Square Seafront)
FREE
ISLAND WORKOUT
A durational performance testing relations between body and space
Burgoyne’s practice unites process-led, rule-based repetition, endurance, accumulation and duration.
Burgoyne seeks to test or expand alternative relations between body and site with regard to space and thinking. Be they absurd or beguiling, Burgoyne proposes new dialogues and frameworks that seek to generate a condition of becoming, translation and flux instead of stasis; a site of experience rather than merely location.
The chosen site is an elevated, in-between space; buffeted by the sea and passed by a constant flow of traffic. Burgoyne will seek to immerse us in its island-like status, something of a drifting Raft of the Medusa, whilst acknowledging its position as the roof of public toilet and all that this may evoke.
The performance and subsequent film to be shown in the window of the British Heart Foundation shop located on the seafront will see Burgoyne and his colleagues move back and forth, following the changing, sporadic rhythms of the traffic and tides while emphasising the limits of the space. The static toilet roof becomes a turbulent site, seemingly swaying and rocking as an absurd keep-fit workout of sorts ensues.
Greig Burgoyne was born in Glasgow, Scotland; he studied at the HAK Vienna and Royal College of Art London. Recent projects 2016/17 included Quadraturin La confection Idéale Tourcoing France; Breathing Space in collaboration with La Verita Dance Company Brussels at Centre Culturel Balavoine France; Draw to Perform 3 London; Scapelands DrawingBox Tournai (B); WhiteNoise Centre for Recent Drawing London; GapFillers Briggait project spaces 1+2 Wasps Glasgow; FAX Karst Plymouth curated by The Drawing Centre New York
Projects in 2017 include Embodied Cartographies Fringe Arts Bath; WhiteNoise published by Marmalade Visual theory- launch at RIBA London; Close encounters commissioned by The Stove Network Scotland; P/ROPS Ghent Belgium; State of Line- survey of Contemporary Drawing Artworks 1830 gallery Halifax.
TOM DALE
Department of the Interior
The Masonic Hall, West Ascent, St Leonards on Sea, TN38 0DR
FREE
Department of the Interior is a 6.5m high black leatherette bouncy castle that mocks, with absurdity, both institutional and architectural claims for authority.
It is a sculpture that is simultaneously seductive and repulsive; its form and the space within no longer the preserve of inclusive childish pleasures.
They speak instead of adult power games and BDSM practices that are normally played out in spaces concealed from public view.
In spite of the castle’s tactile allure, visitors are strictly forbidden to enter and bounce, forcing them instead to imagine who or what might have that privilege and why.
Like Franz Kafka’s character ‘K’ – attempting to enter
a fictional castle only to be thwarted by invisible and inexplicable governance – Department of the Interior exemplifies the frustration and futility that governance and bureaucracy often pose at an individual and collective level.
Born in Kendal, a Goldsmiths graduate and former Doctoral researcher at Anglia Ruskin University, Dale’s solo exhibitions include the John Hansard gallery and NIMAC, Cyprus, presented film, sculpture, performance and installation.
Dale has just completed a short film A Cage for Voices for Channel 4’.
Hunt & Darton’s NOT Great British Bake Off
Stade Open Space Saturday 2 September, 2pm
Welcome back festival favourites, the inimitable Hunt and Darton
who will host an interactive and unwieldy bake-off.
Prepare to be totally underwhelmed as the general public go head-to-head for one supreme crap baker to be crowned champion of H&D’s Not Great British Bake Off.
Hunt & Darton as your hosts and adjudicators, have created a ridiculous set of rules and criteria to judge the cake creations. Is your cake tropical or absurd enough, how is it’s movement literacy? What is the concept behind your cream topping?
Join in the baking or the ridiculous judging, build your team or arrive solo, either way join us at 2pm.
There is of course only one winner.
PRIVATE PIER PARTY TO LAUNCH WAVELENGTH IN BOTTLE ALLEY
Hastings Pier – Sunday 3 Sep 6-9pm
Sign up here for an invitation to attend and free fizz first come first served.