Biography
The Towner Art Gallery, now Towner Eastbourne opened in 1923 following the death of Alderman John Towner who left 22 paintings and enough money to establish a city art gallery and has been a member of the Contemporary Art Society ever since. In 2009 the gallery relocated from its original manor house to a contemporary building designed by Rick Mather Architects. It offers a new vision for the future of the collection. Its exterior was painted in many bright colours by German-born artist Lothar Götz, commissioned by the Brewers Decorator Centres, to mark its 10th anniversary in the new buidling - Dance Diagonal is expected to decorate the Towner until at least 2024.
The gallery holds a varied collection of works with a strong focus on landscape, including paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby, Thomas Jones, Alfred Wallis, Edward Wadsworth, Christopher Wood, Eric Ravilious and Peter Lanyon.
The modern collection has notable works by Vanessa Bell, David Bomberg, Alan Davie, Henry Moore, Victor Pasmore and Pablo Picasso. Many recent acquisitions of contemporary work have been in the areas of photography and moving images and particularly through the Contemporary Art Society's Special Collection Scheme (1997-2004) with the aid of Lottery funding from Arts Council England, including notable pieces by Wolfgang Tillmans, Julian Opie, Roni Horn, Tacita Dean, Anya Gallaccio and John Akomfrah, whose moving image triptych, Vertigo Sea, 2015, jointly owned with the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. reflects on diaspora, colonialism, migration and identity. Other installations feature in Towner's recent acquisitions with The Forked Forest Path, 2004 by Olafur Eliasson that preceded his Weather Project at Tate Modern and in 2017/18 from the Contemporary Art Society's Collections Fund at Frieze scheme of a multi-media and multi-sensory piece by the South-African artist Dineo Seshee Bopape, Sedibeng (it comes with the rain) which evocatively addresses the topics of politics, race, spirituality, gender and sexuality.
