Exploring “the beauty and fragility of our planet” - Eastbourne exhibition

Spokeswoman Nicola Jeffs said: “Towner Eastbourne and Emma Stibbon have devised an ambitious exhibition that explores the beauty and fragility of our planet.

"Stibbon’s solo exhibition, her first large-scale show at a major UK institution, will look at the warming environment of the polar regions and the impact this is ultimately having on the changing UK coastline. For a number of years she has been observing and recording the precariousness of the polar ice sheets and glaciers and the profound effect that ice melt is having on global sea level rise. Melting Ice/Rising Tides will be a culmination of this work, making important connections between the apparent remote extremes of our planet and our local environment.

“The exhibition will feature as its centrepiece Cliff Fall, 2023, a monumental and ambitious wall drawing and installation representing the rock falls that are an increasingly common occurrence on the UK coastline. Alongside it will be shown a selection of Stibbon’s large-scale drawings and prints depicting vast ice fields and towering bergs, made in response to recent field trips to Svalbard in the High Arctic, and the Weddell Sea, Antarctica. The exhibition’s narrative around coastal movement, change and erosion, will be completed with a range of new drawings of the sea and coastline of Sussex.

“Stibbon’s work is provoked by the wonder and drama of nature but underpinned by contemporary anxieties about our precarious future. Her work is grounded in research gathered in the field, recording observations through drawing, photography and film, which is then developed into larger scale works in her studio. The physical materials of site such as chalk, carbon and ash, are often brought into her drawings or used as her drawing media, evoking the elusiveness of the subject in the material fabric of her work.

“The show will create an immersive experience for the viewer, aiming to act as a stark reminder that the seemingly remote events of polar ice sheet melt is directly connected with the changes that we are witnessing in our local, more familiar UK landscape.”

Also at the venue is Maria Amidu: Future Collect Commission from May 4-September 8.

“Maria Amidu is the third artist in iniva’s Future Collect Commission partnership programme. Future Collect is a three-year programme designed to create a dynamic new model to transform the culture of commissioning and collecting within museums.

“The exhibition centres around 26,778,780 minutes, a new paper and text-based installation and accompanying sound piece which explores the dialogue between paper and writing.

"Featuring over 1,000 sheets of laser-etched handmade abaca fibre paper, the work evokes a sense of absence and longing.”