Art Installations: Eastbourne ALIVE is launched to coincide with Turner Prize 2023

With Towner Eastbourne in East Sussex hosting Turner Prize 2023,  the seaside town with its coastline along the English channel has also taken the opportunity to launch Eastbourne ALIVE, funded by Arts Council England.

The interior of Eve de Haan's "It's Nicer to be Nice," an urban healing garden within a pink shipping container,
filled with pink sand and plants, where the public are invited to enter and enjoy a moment of contemplation; 
commissioned by Hive Curates for Engield Winter Lights.
This is located right at the heart of the Eastbourne town centre, outside The Beacon shopping centre.

The wide-ranging cultural programme encompasses art installations at public buildings and the reanimation of underused spaces through public art, dance and music events.  The full Eastbourne ALIVE programme is run throughout the Turner Prize 2023 exhibition period, from September 2023 to April 2024.

Michael Rakowitz's winged bull, entitled "The Invisible enemy should not exist (Lamassu of Nineveh)" outside the Towner Eastbourne.  It has been placed in Eastbourne, by the courtesy of the Mayor of London, after it stood guard on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth in London where it was originally commissioned.  Rakowitz reconstructed the Lamassu using empty metal Iraqi date syrup cans to clad an underlying steel armature.

The public artworks and interventions are installed across the town, including outside the Towner Eastbourne, the Eastbourne Pier and the sea front, in community spaces such as the Eastbourne Library and the Winter Garden events venue, and cafes, outside shopping centres and  by artists including Nathan Coley, Michael Rakowitz, Helen Cammock, Martyn Cross, Eve De Hann, Nadina Ali, Tarek Lakhrissi, Adam Moore, Flo Brooks, Madeleine Pledge, Liz Wilson.  Among the artists, Cammock won the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2017 and in 2019 was the joint recipient of The Turner Prize. 

Adam Moore's Still Life at the end of the Eastbourne Pier, commissioned by Devonshire Collective. It is an intervention combining image, text and Eastbourne pier's unique architecture, choreography and changing ambience.  It shows an image of the horizon, captured at the artwork's location, carrying the last two lines of William Ernest Henley's 1875 poem Invictus.

Nathan Coley's "I Don't Have Another Land" is lit up above the Eastbourne Library.

Internationally renowned Coley was shortlisted in the 2007 Turner Prize. His text sculpture, "I Don't Have Another Land", found on the top of the Eastbourne Library facade, was inspired by graffiti found on a wall in Jerusalem in the early 2000s. The work is part of the Towner Collection.

Multi-disciplinary artists of Rottngdean Bazaar has also commissioned Existence Proof at Devonshire Collective's VOLT Gallery on Seaside Road.

Nadina Ali's Love, Empathy, Respect, Dignity.  The artist from Marseille uses bold and colourful typography to address topics about social justice and representation, and to make art and creativity accessible to as many people as possible.

 

For this artwork in the arcade on the Eastbourne Pier,  Rottingdean Bazaar use one of the arcade's Skill Cut Winner machines, in which a player must cut a string with an automated blade to release the prize, a giant plush teddy bear.

Sarah Dance, Project Director of Eastboure ALIVE said, "Eastbourne ALIVE is a celebration of the Turner Prize being hosted in Eastbourne, and represents a huge opportunity for Eastbourne.  Through a wide range of projects and interventions we hope to create a lasting legacy for the town, with the arts and culture embedded in its vision for the future."

For the duration of Eastbourne ALIVE,
VOLT gallery at Seaside Road features a new window commission
made by Rottingdean Bazaar in partnership with
photographer Annie Collinge.

Eastbourne ALIVE are also working with a range of creative organisations across the town, including Devonshire Collective, Compass Arts, Talent Accelerator, Coastal Schools Partnership and Sussex modern.  Rottingdean Bazaar has 

All photos by Lucia Carpio.