Michael Landy ‘LOOK’; Isabel Rock’ Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold’; Sophie Barber’ Mackerel sky, mackerel sky, never long wet, never long dry’. These are three distinct shows at Hastings Contemporary. But what pulls them together is the vision of Kathleen Soriano, Director of Hastings Contemporary. There is continuity from the previous director, Liz Gilmore, but a new voice at the helm is changing the atmosphere at the gallery. Her new era is described as a bit of a rebirth, self-consciously egalitarian, and focused on the local community. Certainly, Soriano’s conversation is focused on presenting the gallery as a resource for Hastings itself.
The core artist in this grouping, from this perspective, is Sophie Barber and her painting show of large and smaller works, ‘Mackerel sky, mackerel sky, never long wet, never long dry.’ Barber’s show is the most interesting in terms of bringing Sorriano’s stated vision to life.
Barber was born and bred in Hastings. She is a young artist, born in 1996, also a young mother. In fact, Barber created this show while pregnant with the still very little baby that she holds during the press conference in this impressive white gallery, dominated by her huge paintings, weighed down with the weight of their paint, somewhat sculptural in scale and format. She tells us that she is not only from Hastings but she has never left the area for any lengthy period, not even to go up to London for college. And her view of art has been filtered by reproductions, postcards and books, and primarily, these days, the small squares of Instagram. Her work displays her interest in reproduction of artwork, painting famous pictures, whether from fine art or photography, and captioning them with phrases that reveal something of her thoughts in relation to the picture giving them an added layer of meaning, a filter through which to encounter her physical creations. It is important to take some time to get inside Barber’s perception, a sense of who she is, to appreciate the significance of her work.
These captions are important. She says, disarmingly, that she created them to distract from the paintings, perhaps make the viewer look less at the art and be less critical. Barber’s paintings are bold, some are huge, but while she is working so boldly, she is also aware of the criticism that might be levelled at her as she paints in a naive style, her craft is somewhat brutal, and her perception of the world is honestly parochial, with her interest in fine art filtered through reproduction. This makes her approach relatable to a generation that recognises that Instagram filter on the wider world. In other ways, her focus is on her own environment. She paints the sunset and says that she heard you were not supposed to paint the sun. So she did. This is the kind of impulse that helps an artist create their own material and stand out. It’s what we look for in artists, a belligerent charisma, a personality we can follow.
It is a positive choice for Soriano to choose Barber as a local artist to exemplify contemporary artists. I hope school visits and younger artists come and see what she has already achieved, as Barber has been exhibited internationally in Europe and the United States and has been included in the acclaimed ‘Sussex Modernism’ (2025) show at Towner Eastbourne.
The other exhibition on the ground floor is Michael Landy’s ‘Look’, featuring drawings and etchings that explore his personal life experiences. The show begins, somewhat obliquely, with the representation of weeds, ripped out at the roots and rendered in the delicate, thin black on off-white line that he returns to. Outlines which show us the details of his observation are fundamental to his approach. He says that growing up, he was known as the child who could draw. And he feels he still is that child, choosing objects from his own family life, particularly from his father, and drawing those in detail. He isolates them from their background and through line (and tone and colour) he tries to put on paper something of their qualities as they appear to him. He is very much about using the visual information of live observation as a way of making that object inhabit another realm. He is finding out and learning through looking, and then he pickles this focused act of seeing on paper.
Some of Landy’s self-portraiture is uncomfortable, particularly the very detailed drawing of his own testicles represented during his own encounter with testicular cancer. Perhaps it’s an important subject for drawing, important in terms of men’s health, important to see. And it is a clue to Landy’s real subject, the internal and domestic life of men, particularly his own father, a worker disabled in an industrial accident. His father’s life as a working man looms over Landy. In part, he is consciously taking authority from his father’s occupational work and his sacrifice in pursuing that heroic path, commenting on the domestic impact of the toll sometimes taken by that way of life. And this approach includes Landy’s self-reflection on his own path of being an artist. At the press view, he voices this out loud. It was, he says, (I paraphrase) what he could do, draw. So he had to use this skill to amplify aspects of the world around him, to represent, through delicacy, this tough male world. I am reminded of an aspect of D. H. Lawrence’s early work, which draws the mining community around him through words, representing its domestic impact while being removed from the coalface (literally), having chosen a different path from the manual worker —the path of words and poetry.
I find Landy’s work moving not only because of the line and character of his pieces, but also because of the undrawn narrative that underpins his selection of content.
Upstairs, we encounter the world of Isabel Rock, which is clearly influenced by illustrators, book illustrators, such as Roald Searle and Ralph Steadman, who use characters from the underworld, like rats, to interpret the modern world and express fear about where we are going. This is a dystopian experience, and the dominant material is acrylic ink with its bright greens, reds, and turquoise, drawn in large-scale on paper. There are sculptures, an installation, and prints (Rock is a printmaker), but it is the drawings that dominate through the theatricality and set building of the different rooms.
Rock’s subject is anxiety about the end of the world, yet her approach is joyous and surreal, drawing on both children’s literature and its illustrative legacy. Her crocodiles and rats seem to be having a fantastic time in their fast cars, with their gorgeous shoes, and her text is embellished with extra curlicues and flourishes. I feel that in her work, she is not scared of the end of the world but is actually almost summoning it in a euphoric dance. Come with me and celebrate this disaster, her characters seem to say. Her work is exuberant in scale. Come and see the crocodiles dance on the relic of civilisation. She believes in creativity and the power of the artist, at least inside their mind. She says, and again I paraphrase, that she was creating art, while for others, real life happened, whereas her work remained an avoidance of real life.
In her own real life, she is an activist who puts her money where her mouth is and spent a month in prison for participating in ‘Stop Oil’ protests. A significant portion of her work here focuses on the prison experience, which can be a rewarding one for artists, as it gives a chance to go deep into one’s own creativity. As a former Koestler Prison Awards judge for painting and drawing, I recognise some of the dominant trends in prison art, in particular the tendency to go out of body and perceive the prison as a whole from an imaginary vantage point above the institution, as a self-contained unit, circled by walls and barbed wire.
Isabel Rock’s show is the outcome of the Evelyn Williams Drawing Award, in association with the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, for which she received the award for her drawing ‘Our Cell’, a biro drawing on paper, along with her accompanying exhibition proposal. Soriano says that Hastings Contemporary is committed to continuing this partnership with Drawing Projects UK and the Evelyn Williams Drawing Award. This reflects the important patronage of the gallery by Quentin Blake.
Michael Landy ‘LOOK’
Isabel Rock’ Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold’
Sophie Barber’ Mackerel sky, mackerel sky, never long wet, never long dry’
Hastings Contemporary
27 September 2025 – 15 March 2026
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