Newhaven Art Space is an artist led gallery and project venue in the heart of Newhaven at 24 High Street.

Invited artists, curators and educators deliver a rolling calendar of exhibitions, bringing notable artists to the town whilst offering a programme of workshops and events. The space is free to attend and aims to increase access to art and art education, building on the work we have undertaken in the town over the past several years. Newhaven Art Space is kindly supported by Newhaven Enterprise Zone.

Gallery open during exhibitions, Thursday, Friday and Saturday 10 am. – 4 pm.

EXHIBITIONS

Upcoming ‘PAPERWORK’
14 November – 7 December 2024

An installation made from work on paper including Nick Marsh, Helen Turner, Ian Dawson, Kate Osbourne, Alison McKenna, Enzo Marra, Robert Littleford, June Nelson, Laurence Tidy, Nancy Sharpe, Nick Bush, Sam Downer, Edward Liddle, Jo Lamb, Lucy Farrant, Bob Dixon, Lucinda Oestreicher, Helen Savage, Sharon Haward, Judith Alder, Julian Wild, Anthony Stevens, Rachael Adams, Alexander Johnson, Suzanne O’Haire, John Leach, Amy Cunningham, Samuel Herbert, Ginny Buckley, Ian Boutell, Rachel Cohen, Lucy Newman, Sharon Hall, Jeremy Sales, Anne Hardy, Victoria Snazell, Jeannie Driver, Jonathan Murphy, Catherine Wiggett, Fiona Wilson, Jo Sheppard, Robert Moon, Kate Street, Alison Hand, Philip Cole, Geoff Hands, Fiona Robinson, Sara Grisewood, Rod Bason, Joanna Farrow, Caroline Pick, Cathy Hall, Naty Lopez-Holguin, Kim de Paolis, Annabel Tennyson-Davies, Gary Goodman, Sarah Pager, Pat Thornton, Christian Funnell, Esme Curtis-Lundberg, Pam Aldridge

PAPERWORK – List of work

Newhaven Open Call: ‘OUTCOMES’
6 – 22 September 2024

Working with artists and local communities, an exhibition evolving from the OUTCOMES of recent art workshops held in the project space and as a part of Newhaven Open Call 2024. Featuring a variety of artwork that resulted from our experimentations with making projection slides, scanning, 3D printing and casting techniques. Also see the work of Amy Cunningham, Ian Dawson, Sarah Pager and Annabel Tennyson-Davies. This exhibition is supported through National Lottery funding by Arts Council England. Note that this exhibition is open Friday – Sunday.

‘GRADUATE ARTISTS’
20 June – 13 July 2024

An exciting moment to bring the work of graduating artists from University Of Brighton’s Summer Shows to Newhaven High Street.

Kat Tweg – Archie Nash – Helene McCarthy – Polina Smirnova – Esme Curtis-Lundberg -Olivia Guillot

‘COLLECTION’
16 May – 1 June 2024

An opportunity to look closer at the working practices of Newhaven based contemporary artists.

Helen Turner – Isobel Smith – Rachael Adams – The Baron Gilvan – Nick Marsh – Christian Funnell

Curating from the collections of work we found in artists studios, an exhibition evolving from an idea to exhibit work in progress.

‘WINTER WELLBEING’
1 & 2 March 2024

An exhibition of outcomes from a collaborative, week long, art residency held in Newhaven Art Space which was supported by Sussex Community Development Association. The artists taking part attend our wellbeing sessions, each on their own path of working towards and maintaining good mental health. Taking part in the project each developed ways to respond to the winter theme with their own ideas and content, exploring materials and processes. The work evolved through a sustained daily commitment with the guidance and mentoring given by professional teachers and artists.

Sculptor Karla Black presents newly commissioned work in the gallery. This is an exciting and unique opportunity bringing critically acclaimed contemporary art to our High Street.

More familiar with creating sculpture on a large scale in commercial galleries and large institutions, Karla has been generous and adventurous in accepting our invitation to work in the gallery here, including with our community groups.

“Artist-run spaces are the best most serious dedicated places where all that matters is the art, and everyone knows what it is and what it is for and they all work together in its service. These galleries are so important for lifting up communities and their artists.”

Karla is pioneering in terms of how a sculptor works with materials and tradition to both explore and express themselves and ideas. Her work can surprise and challenge yet offers each of us a personal experience. She responds to a space and its light. There is beauty and sensitivity in the unpredicabilities of the raw state of materials that she chooses to use and she works with the knowledge that time will alter these.

“when you think about what an art material is, its pretty ridiculous to say that certain things are conventional materials because some factory mixed them up and they are sold in a shop with a label on them ….. You can put anything on your body and smear anything you want onto a bit of paper; it just depends who’s the boss of that.”

Karla has presented recent major solo exhibitions at Modern Art, London (2022); Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2021); Des Moines Art Centre, Des Moines, Iowa, USA (2020); Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt (2019); The Power Plant, Toronto (2018); Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium (2017) and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2015). In 2011, Karla Black was nominated for the Turner Prize. In the same year, she represented Scotland at the 54^th Venice Biennale.

Karla has created a print to accompany the exhibition, limited to 29 signed copies and printed on Somerset 330 gsm paper available from the gallery, priced at £95.

The New Art Gallery Walsall is currently presenting a major and comprehensive exhibition of her work.

Karla studied sculpture at Glasgow School of Art and is represented by Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Germany; Modern Art, London, UK and Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan, Italy.

This exhibition has been made possible by Arts Council England. We would also like to thank local business, King and McGaw and Abyss Brewing of Lewes for their help.

Previous exhibitions…..

‘ART CAR BOOT FAIR’ Kings Cross, London
September 2023

‘HOUSE AND HOME’
17 August – 9 September 2023

An exhibition of art made in response to the theme “House and Home”. The exhibiting artists were drawn from our local community and all attended an art education programme delivered for those disadvantaged through circumstance. The exhibition was also on Lewes District Council’s ‘Artwave’ trail and was curated by Helen Turner and Nick Marsh together with the Newhaven Art Project’s wellbeing group. This exhibition was made possible through Arts Council England, Sussex Community Foundation and Ian Askew Charitable fund.

‘WINDOW ART’
January – May 2023

Over the winter Newhaven Enterprise Zone commissioned five Sussex based artists to exhibit their work in the window of Newhaven Art Space, engaging the High Street community with visual art. The artists included Nadine Feinson, Nick Marsh, Abigail Norris, Sarah Pager and Helen Turner.

‘BIG’
10 – 17 December 2022

Since 2018 Newhaven Art Projects have delivered an informal and creative Art Education programme to communities in Newhaven.

The individuals that have attended sessions are on varied and personal journeys, often employing Art to help with wellbeing. 

Over time the students have been taught by several different artists, working with a range of materials, processes and approaches. They have learnt skills in drawing, printmaking, collage and painting and taken part in the Newhaven Open Call, curating their own exhibition within that event.

The work in this exhibition was a very small selection of what one group have done with us. Some had never made a painting before, none of them have worked on a large scale. Students have been challenged both emotionally and physically and the resulting paintings demonstrate their ambition and tenacity. They have also found that these experiences allowed them to discover personal expressions. 

The art programme has been supported by local businesses of the Newhaven Enterprise Zone and we thank them for their generosity. Their willingness to support us in the town demonstrates insight and an understanding that cultural activity helps change people’s lives. We will continue to bring people together through art in Newhaven whilst offering opportunities to those disadvantaged through circumstance. 

Exhibiting artists: Kerry Brennan, Nic Chumley, Hazel Jordan, Laura Mustoe, Diane Quinn, Tracey Robinson, Barbara Stevens, Rio Sullivan

‘THE WASTE MAKERS ON CORNUCOPIA STREET’
3 November – 19 November 2022

Newhaven Art Projects commissioned artist Ian Dawson to curate ‘The Waste Makers on Cornucopia Street’ which transformed the Newhaven Art Space venue into an exhibition and workshop environment…. 

Taking its title from Vance Packard’s pioneering book ‘The Waste Makers’ from the 1960’s, which exposes the demise of the environment through the growth of disposable consumer goods, the exhibition asked us to think about themes around waste and how we might interpret, rework and re-examine them. 

How do we arrive at waste? Is it matter out of place? What is the difference between dirt and waste? And what is digital waste? Searching for new perspectives on this subject brings a set of diverse artists together to discuss their work in relation to waste. 

The exhibition presented work from North America and India, representing the globalised nature of waste. From the global south, the Compound 13 lab presented the work that this experimental art space has made through working with citizens from the informal settlement, Dharavi, the centre of the recycling trade in Mumbai. 

From North America, Migueltzinta Solis challenges ideas about how the cornucopia of the West creates both a belonging and un-belonging and how we might repair broken communities that have previously been laid to waste. Each artist represented in the exhibition brought a different and thoughtful response to ‘matter out of place‘.

Exhibiting artists: John Walter, Donna Mitchell, Jasone Miranda Bilbao, Aqui Thami, Louisa Minkin, Sharmila Samant, Ben Parry, Compound 13 Lab, Migueltzinta Solis, Andrea Mason, Amanda Jobson, Ian Dawson. 

We think, at Newhaven Art Projects, that it’s important that this exhibition was here as the Newhaven Energy Recovery Facility dominates our local skyline. Building upon those very same themes that this facility undertakes with everyday materials, the show focused on restoration and rehabilitation whilst re-iterating the impact of lifestyle and resulting waste on our diverse communities. 

‘FROM THE STUDIO’
29 September – 15 October

This exhibition brought together to Newhaven four artists who have established their art practice whilst being based in Sussex. 

As an artist led gallery it is significant to be celebrate their commitment to art, their careers as artists and their studios over a significant period of time. 

Sculptor Hermione Allsopp collects objects and furniture, de-constructing and re-creating them into a new form. The discarded and thrown away become the artists materials which, existing as something else, and carrying collective memories, raise questions around the value of rejected objects. Process and acts of making are central to Hermione’s practice as is an ongoing investigation into the structure of things, their material property and contexts. 

Mikey Cuddihy’s work sits at an intersection between the political and the decorative. Starting with the act of drawing, she explores aspects of intimacy and the body through linear, biomorphic forms. These may then be transcribed into paintings, motifs and assemblages, using paper – plain and painted, alongside text and imagery from the newspaper which is cut, stapled, pleated, gathered and embellished. Her work often has a playful, sexual ambiguity to it and references clothing or objects: pillows, skirts and fans. Individual works are sometimes arranged together in groups, on a mantelpiece, the floor or the wall, often using domestic props, to elevate and display.

Joe Packer’s paintings could be described as invented landscapes with a psychological element, evoking the memory of a place, whilst at the same time, having evolved through a making processes that is not pre-planned or prescriptive. The paintings occupy a kind of hinterland; between abstraction, where the brushstrokes are non-referential, and figuration, where the spaces depicted allude and relate to landscape. These paintings are images that aim to visually function in a self-contained way, with an inner life of their own. 

With the use of the ‘local’, the quotidian and vernacular, Nick Bush searches for a spot to place a work in a history of landscape painting. His studio practice is informed by regularly working directly in the landscape but there is no prescribed route to achieving the outcomes. He seeks to bring the memories of place and experience to the canvas and this enables him in developing a relevant and new, poetic landscape asindividual forms arise as decisions are made on how to animate the painting.

Thanks to Phoebe Wingrove for gallery photography.

‘LIFTOFF!’
1 September – 17 September 2022

‘LIFTOFF!‘ was the inaugural exhibition of contemporary art in Newhaven’s new gallery and project space featuring work made by the founders of Newhaven Art Projects, Helen Turner and Nick Marsh, who work from their studios in Newhaven and explore the language of painting and the tensions created between the realms and boundaries of abstraction and figuration. They are equally focused on creating opportunities for artists and communities to connect and work with each other through art and creativity.

NEWHAVEN ART SPACE
24 HIGH STREET, NEWHAVEN, BN9 9PD

Gallery open Thursday, Friday and Saturday 11 am. – 5 pm.
* additionally open on Sunday 3 September