Sussex Modernism
Over fifty writers, artists, composers, architects and patrons associated with modernism lived in Sussex during the course of the twentieth century. Many were utopian thinkers, who used rural and coastal parts of the county to resist, rather than retreat from, the effects of capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy, and nationalism.
The Sussex Modernism project tells their story, but it is also a provocation to:
- reflect on the capacity of the arts to transform places
- think critically about whose stories are remembered and forgotten
- ask why museums, galleries and universities have spotlighted art made in their localities
- examine how spatially uneven distributions of power have impacted upon cultural history
- explore how art and writing might challenge, rather than strengthen, borders
- decentre the metropolitan focus of histories of modernism
- research lesser-known modernist legacies in local countercultures
- investigate why modernism has become part of a regional brand
- make connections between movements and media that tend to be studied separately
Work on Sussex Modernism has involved collaborations with museums and galleries. Sussex lecturer Dr Hope Wolf curated Sussex Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion (Two Temple Place, 2017) and A Tale of Mother’s Bones: Grace Pailthorpe, Reuben Mednikoff and the Birth of Psychorealism (De La Warr Pavilion, Camden Arts Centre, and Newlyn Art Gallery and the Exchange, 2018-20). Students co-curated 1935 with the De La Warr Pavilion and contributed to a Heritage Lottery Fund project on the Berwick murals. Wolf’s ongoing research is supported by a Paul Mellon Mid-Career Fellowship in British Art and by the Henry Moore Foundation.