What's on

Following the gradual easing of restrictions, the Town House is expecting to re-open in June and within government guidelines - see: Covid-19 Guidelines for Visitors. 

Upcoming exhibitions in 2021

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Four Below Stairs, group show

My Adopted Family, by Jo Teasdale

Textile Artwork, by Brighton Fashion & Textile School

Reconfiguring, group show

Adjust and Adapt, by Difficult Darkroom Womxn

Brighton MA Photography, by The Iris Collective

This Has Travelled Through The Night To You, group show

Exhibition - Four Below Stairs
group show

Saturday 5th & Sunday 6th June,
Saturday 12th & Sunday 13th June,
11.00am - 6.00pm
Basement Annexe at 10 Brunswick Square
Admission free, Covid-19 precautions must be observed

Having shown in the upstairs grandeur of No.13 in the summer of 2019, Fleur Cowgill, Hilary Kennett and Sharon Fraser Hall, joined by Mark Wilson, will be exhibiting downstairs, in the Basement Annexe at No.10, as part of Artists Open Houses in June 2021. The basement, with its own particular richness of story, provides a dynamic setting. 
See more of their work here.

Exhibition - My Adopted Family
by Jo Teasdale

Saturday 7th - Sunday 15th August 2021,
11:00am - 6:00pm
Dining room, parlour and drawing rooms
Admission free, Covid-19 precautions must be observed

Jo Teasdale comes from a Fine Art background and worked in the arts for many years. Since moving to Brighton she took up photography and hasn’t looked back. Having won Landscape Photographer of the Year - Take a View - 2013, she has gone on to win competitions, been published in books and has had work shown at exhibitions. ‘My Adopted Family’ is her latest major body of work, since being awarded her Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society in 2016.

‘My Adopted Family’ is a photographic project exploring the concepts of family, memories and inheritance. Using cherished possessions collected over time, Jo has created her own family history. This is a personal narrative that invites the viewer to travel through time and participate in the stories that unfold around them.

Jo uses large-scale prints to exaggerate the realness of objects and creative displays to transform the identity and personalities of the subjects. Her abstracts, created from extreme circumstances, produce images akin to Rothko and Blake.

Exhibition - Textile Artwork
by Brighton Fashion & Textile School

Friday 3rd - Sunday 5th September,
10:00am - 4:00pm
Dining room, parlour and drawing rooms
Admission free, Covid-19 precautions must be observed

A display of vibrant and imaginative textile artworks, brought to you by the students of the Brighton Fashion and Textile School.
See more textile artwork here.

Exhibition - Reconfiguring
group show

Saturday 11th - Sunday 12th September,
10:00am - 6:00pm
Drawing rooms
Admission free, Covid-19 precautions must be observed

Artists: Tiffany Barber, Amy Drury, Craig Simpson

Tiffany Barber is a contemporary figurative artist based in Brighton. Born in Scotland she was raised as an athlete & the disciplined nature of her upbringing is reflecting in the meticulously detailed artworks she now creates. Tiffany spent four years Studying at Edinburgh College of Art, a term of which was spent at the Hungarian University of Fine Art. Living & studying in these cities full of classical architecture & sculpture acted as the catalyst for the inspiration behind her paintings.

'Artemis & Apollo's Plague', Tiffany Barber, 60cm x 60cm, oil on canvas

Tiffany chooses to fuse classism & contemporary in her current practice. They aim to provoke a dialogue concerning current social or political issues. Placing mundane objects of the everyday with renaissance sculptures builds a connecting bridge to our realities. The concepts behind the imagery is left open to interpretations, purposefully ambiguous to act as a propeller for debate or discussion. 

Amy Dury is a painter from Brighton who works with both portraiture and narrative scenes. She studied Printmaking at the Glasgow School of Art and is now Head of Art at Varndean College. She was recently asked by the Tate Gallery to conduct a livestream portrait painting session, painting Cornelia Parker, that has been viewed 130,000 times.

'Boys on the Pyre Square', Amy Dury, 200cm x 100cm, acrylic on canvas

She says, "My subject matter is mostly figurative, I am naturally drawn to imagery from the past, especially the 70s and 80s, and the work of British social documentary photographers. Looking back into our recent past is an act of remembering and nostalgic mis-remembering, with photographs becoming the memory which constructs stories about ourselves. 

Craig Simpson is a self-taught artist, originally from Manchester and now living in Brighton. In the five years Craig has been painting he has explored a variety of subject matter though he now chooses to concentrate on figurative compositions.

'Woman in Red Dress', Craig Simpson

Craig is fascinated and takes his subject inspiration from the first half or the twentieth century. You can expect to see paintings focusing on portraits, interior living and jazz musicians. Craig is fascinated by people and feels compelled to paint individuals, he works with vibrant flesh tones to record strong facial expressions.

Exhibition - Adjust and Adapt
by Difficult Darkroom Womxn

Tuesday 14th - Sunday 19th September, 
Tue - Sat 10:00am - 6:00pm, Sun 10:00am - 4:00pm
Drawing rooms
Admission free, Covid-19 precautions must be observed

The womxn: Abigail Evans, Esme Follas-Shell, Ola Teper,
Sofia Smith

Difficult Darkroom Womxn was formed during the turmoil of the first national lockdown last year. The current members of the group: Abigail Evans, Esme Follas-Shell, Ola Teper and Sofia Smith, are all met during their MA in Photography at Brighton and first came together in order to provide moral support for each other as the conditions of our education were changing rapidly. The show will consist of mixed photographic techniques along with presentations of visual research.

Abigail Evans studied graphic design before undertaking a MA in photography at the University of Brighton. Her approach to photography is both playful and serious exploring themes of family, intimacy and belonging, often combining mixed media to create detail oriented fragmentary bodies of work, which are both deeply personal and hauntingly engaging.

Much of her work focuses on how photographic processes can be used and combined with sensitivity to convey intricate human interactions, with recent projects exploring maternal relationships and the materiality of image making. Her current work continues to explore the interpersonal through an eclectic mix of photographic objects, both found and made.

Esme Follas-Shell has an artistic practice rooted inherently in darkroom photographic practices. In the past, her work has explored historic family trauma and the female experience as a photographic subject. In her current work she explores themes of grief, mental health, masculinity and family. She is instinctively drawn to fine art black and white portraiture, printing everything by hand.

Her project is an examination of the natural connections between images she has made of her partner in their shared home, and images of her father as a young man that she has selected from his archive of letters and snap shots collected by him before he passed away almost twenty years ago.

Most recently the work has started examining different aspects of spirituality and belief, surfacing as art which combines gilding with photography. Both creating and re-creating habitual rituals undertaken and influenced by her father.

Ola Teper has background in fine art photography. They work mainly with analogue and darkroom technologies, often meticulously experimenting with the boundaries of representation within the limits of what we understand as photography. Previous work has focused on the intersection of post traumatic memory and the materiality of darkroom process and image making.

Their current project developed from the notions of imagined memory, shared collective trauma and machine vision while using inherited historic photographic equipment and engaging with ontological photographic theories. After repetitive engagement with the machine the project explores the process of becoming a technical ensemble of human and nonhuman parts. Their work deftly conveys complex ideas through application of creativity to conceptual imagery.

Sofia Smith has a background in literature, creative writing and critical theory and came to photography as a mode of storytelling through the organisation Miniclick, of which she is now a curatorial member. She is also one of the founding members of Capturing the Chimera, an arts education organisation that specialises in teaching creative writing and photography.

Her previous work shows an interest in collaborative process, compulsive photographic practices, the act of collection and archival interactions. In the making of images, she is concerned with acts of transportation, exploring the camera with the world, rather than exploring the world with the camera.

Her project Pinner’s Bone makes use of a collection of historical images sourced from one-hundred-year-old medical text books. It explores the ethical questions surrounding the documentation of medical treatment for educational purposes, while engaging with her own personal history of medical treatment. The project aims to examine the intersection between the anticipated female surgical subject and the medical institution by reframing the archival images with collage and print techniques.

Exhibition - Brighton MA Photography
by The Iris Collective 

Monday 20th - Sunday 26th September,
times TBA
Dining room, parlour and drawing rooms
Admission free, Covid-19 precautions must be observed

In this exhibition, members of the Iris Photography Collective explore a range of contemporary societal themes. Some have used the rhetoric of activism, others a more contemplative, reflective visual language, but all inspire us to think about the challenges that face us in today’s complex and divided society.

The photographers

Iris Photography Collective is made up of six photographers, all based in Sussex and all currently studying MA Photography at the University of Brighton. 

Bill Brooks, photographer & printmaker

Torz Dallison, fine art photographer & printer

Elizabeth Doak, photographic artist and educator

Lorraine Edridge, photographic artist

Andy Lloyd, a photographic artist

Syl Ojalla, fashion & fine art photographer

Exhibition -
This Has Travelled Through The Night To You
group show of artworks

Saturday 9th & Sunday 10th October
10:00am - 6:00pm
Dining room, parlour and drawing rooms

more information to follow