Culture

Molly Hawkins, an award-winning designer, artist, and muralist known for her vibrant murals and playful public artworks, has announced a special artistic takeover this Spring. From April 8th to 13th, the Introduced pop-up space will be completely transformed into Molly’s creative world, filled with collages, shapes, and patterns that spark joy and positivity.

Red, Blue, Up is a major new exhibition of paintings and drawings by Bexhill-based artist, Michelle Roberts. It features a wide selection of Roberts’ works from the last 15 years. Through this detailed yet joyful execution, her works are underpinned by her unwavering precision and control, as she dissects shapes, forms and patterns across canvas and paper.

Now, if I wrote down RX to the good people of Hastings, they might very well think-ah yes, the fishing boats, and their Rye registration. But what if we flipped those letters around and it was XR? The Winter edition’s seasonal cover was by tech-artist Ornagh Lynch, convert and champion of all things Extended Reality.

Mardi-Gras, Carnevale, Pancake-Day… wherever you are or whatever you call it… in the Christian tradition it’s a day to consume all your treats and celebrate before midnight, because from tomorrow (Ash Wednesday) you’ve got to be on your best behaviour until Easter Sunday

As my lemon and ginger tea cools on the table beside me and my interviewees get situated, I look around the space. I’d never been inside Afri-Co-Lab before, and it’s so much more than I’d imagined.

If you’re local to the Hastings area and you haven’t heard of Brook Tate yet, do you even have ears? Whether he is painting, writing, teaching maths, singing or dancing, Brook Tate is a force to be reckoned with: an insanely talented creative and proud human being with the courage to be vulnerable in front of audiences, as well as being unapologetically himself

How our film about the occult side of Hastings told us what it wanted to be about, and we just did what we were told…

It’s the Wednesday morning following Jack in the Green and everyone is exhausted due to five days without water – and what does any sensible Hastinger drink when there’s no water? Beer!

No doubt it seemed like a great idea at the time. But the best-laid acid house plans and all that… On May 6, Marky Souter left his home in Cornwall at 5am to catch an early morning flight out of Newquay to Gatwick. From there, he took the train to Hastings

‘To keep balance, you must keep moving’. It’s Einstein’s words that Maria McErlane quotes in her recent memoir Bumps in the Road, and which are particularly apt for this woman whizzing about our town. 

Deep-rooted in traditional 18th-century celebrations to ring in the beginning of summer, Hastings’ Jack in the Green is much like any other folk festival held in the UK, of which there are many, and yet so often people appear confused, bemused, and stare at me wide-eyed and agog when I explain a typical May bank holiday weekend in our fair town.

At one of the most prestigious buildings on the South Coast is the work of one of the South Coast’s most prestigious painters. In the first floor gallery of the De La Warr Pavilion, Hastings resident and acclaimed British painter, Laetitia Yhap’s exhibition entitled ‘An Ending to a Beginning’, features intricate paintings of fishermen on The Stade Beach in Hastings Old Town.

Meet the new wave of Young Music Promotors on the South Coast. After some turbulent and stormy years for hospitality everywhere, Hastings is fortunate that a new wave of young promoter blood is washing onto the south coast shores

St Leonards on Sea has passed through many incarnations since its Victorian heyday, when Decimus Burton’s glamourous villas brought the fashionable crowd down from London to take in the sea air. Of late, however, it is arguably our ever-growing food scene which is tempting locals and weekend breakers to visit. 

What do you get if you cross ‘90s Britpoppers, an indie rock/post-punk heritage, and an electronica queen with a St Leonards sensibility? You get Aircooled. If that sounds like a joke, it most definitely isn’t.

Poly Styrene is a Punk Icon.Poly Styrene’s image, words and music willLive Forever.Poly Styrene will continue to inspire, educate and excite generations to come. Poly’s daughter, Celeste Bell summed her mother up beautifully in her introduction to the book ‘Dayglo – The Poly Styrene Story’ (Omnibus Press, 2019).

Project Art Works, an inclusive rights-based art organisation in our hometown supports people who have complex support needs in a way that not only helps give them a platform of communication they feel comfortable with, but turns the table on societal norms and is striving to change the generalisation and assumptions around people often invisible from public life.

Born and bred Hastonian, Steph Warren is one of the United Kingdom’s leading authorities on the graffiti and street art movement, having worked with both Banksy and Ben Eine back in the noughties as a young woman at the forefront of a very male-orientated and secretive world. Owner of Stella Dore Art Gallery (previously based in East London, now in St Leonards). I caught up with the gallerist, curator, art and mural facilitator

Is he a mint with a hole? (No, but he does carry them around in his pocket). Is he a German hatchback or a game for posh people on horseback? No! He’s actually a genius Argentinian composer and pianist living in Hastings and he’s one of the loveliest people I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing.

When you think of the word ‘muse’, several people come to mind: a mid-nineties rock band, obviously Kate Moss in all her forms, the Pre Raphaelite poser, Elizabeth Sidall and last but not least, St Leonard’s based Freudian nudie, Sue Tilley.