Shoreline Exhibition at West Pier Centre
We're showing a new solo exhibition by photographer, John Brockliss featuring over 30 original colour and monochrome marine landscape photographs. The exhibition will run until January 2021 with prints available to buy. West Pier Centre is open Saturdays & Sundays, 11am-4.30pm West Pier Centre, 103-105 King’s Road Arches, BN1 2FN. These opening and closing times are weather dependent. The Centre won’t be opening if it’s pouring!
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Rampion Visitor Centre
Rampion offshore wind farm has a newly opened visitor centre in the same stretch of arches as the West Pier Centre. The Rampion exhibition is fascinating and highly informative and well worth a visit. It includes a virtual reality trip up a wind turbine. Rampion funded the Photoworks ‘Seas, Shoots and Shores’ project mentioned below.
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Written by Kathryn Ferry – who has given a successful talk in the West Pier Centre - and published this year by Unicorn, this book is described as ‘a history of the British seaside in 100 objects.’
But how do you go about choosing 100 objects to provide a history of British seaside resorts? Kathryn’s approach is partly chronological. The first five objects are Scarborough Spa, Medical Dissertation (Brighton’s famous Dr Russell again), Modesty Hood, The Dipper and the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. The final five objects are Clevedon Pier, Blue Flag, Tate St Ives, Southwold Pier and Seafront Sculpture. In scale the objects range from Stick of Rock and Comic Postcard to Blackpool Tower and Midland Hotel.
One hundred objects is about the right number but I would have been tempted to add just a few more. As places of pleasure the seaside generates important memories. These are marked in various ways including commemorative benches and seats celebrating loved ones who enjoyed particular views or places and the grander more imposing war memorials found on many sea fronts.
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The book’s colourful cavalcade of seaside objects rightly highlights the popular – seaside things and seaside characters that we and our parents - and earlier generations before them across almost three centuries - have enjoyed (or, as with Landlady and Knitted Swimsuit, sometimes endured). Kathryn wears her seaside knowledge lightly and her words combined with some great illustrations result in a lively, informative and accessible book.
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Seaside Delights
Pier lovers are delighted by the seaside more generally. Despite the unprecedented upheavals of the year so far, there have been some magnificent seaside resources posted online. Some of the best include:
Art UK
The June newsletter for Art UK, the online home for the UK’s public art collections, was a themed issue called ‘We do like to be beside the seaside’. The many fascinating stories included:
· Art and the British seaside: |
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The West Pier image used to sell Brighton, early 20th century Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
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The British Library
A British Library summer newsletter was about ‘Fun Beside the Sea’. The resources included an impressively brief and accurate account of the rise and fall of British seaside resorts beginning with two Brighton connections - Dr Russell and his famed A Dissertation on the Use of Sea-Water in the Diseases of the Glands (1752) and Sake Dean Mohamed, the Indian surgeon, who introduced shampoo baths to Britain and Brighton.
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Photoworks
Photoworks, the only organisation with a national remit for photography in England, has partnered with the Ropetackle Arts Centre in Shoreham and the Marine Conservation Society to work with students and teachers from five West Sussex schools to produce an online exhibition about pollution in the sea and along the coast. ‘Seas, Shoots and Shores’ has a distinctive local flavour and is well worth a view:
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Thanks go to Fred Gray who edited this issue of the newsletter.
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Brighton West Pier Trust · West Pier · King's Road · Brighton, East Sussex BN1 2FL · United Kingdom
Press Contact: hello@westpier.co.uk t: 07768900072
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