Last Updated on February 15, 2026
Sussex showcases the Best of British this Autumn
To celebrate Eastbourne’s Towner Gallery hosting the Turner Prize this year, Towner Eastbourne, Charleston and the South Downs National Park have organised the Sussex Art Shuttle that takes visitors from Eastbourne, through the Sussex countryside to Lewes and back.
With the aim of making the beautiful Sussex countryside more accessible for those without cars, the bus runs every two hours Friday – Sunday until 17 December. The journey from one end of the line to the other takes less than an hour. Coming down from London, there are trains to Eastbourne station every half hour and the Towner Eastbourne is 10 minutes walk away.
The Turner Prize is alternately hosted between Tate Britain and one of the UK’s art venues outside London. Awarded to a British artist, previous winners have included many a household name from Damien Hirst to Chris Offili, Rachel Whiteread to Grayson Perry. This year’s Turner Prize nominees are Jesse Darling, Ghislaine Leung, Rory Pilgrim and Barbara Walker.
This year’s exhibits have a shared sense of care, a kind of macro/micro lens on issues that have been in the newspapers in recent times, bringing individual stories to life with a great deal of generosity. Issues such as the Windrush scandal, the pandemic, borders of all kinds and unseen labour are discussed with sincerity and humour. Jesse Darling uses a very British vernacular in their sculpture and installation. Football crowd fencing is given legs and a life of its own, a makeshift maypole is made with crime scene tape and faded union jack bunting. Next door, Barbara Walker presents gorgeous portraits of victims of the Windrush scandal. Her large scale drawings are backed against meticulously hand copied documents proving their status as British citizens.
Outside the gallery in the Towner plaza is a replica of an Iraqi monumental sculpture by Michael Rakowitz, one of the series of public sculptures helping to celebrate the Turner Prize’s presence in the area. The sculptures ruminate on the idea of the modern day monument. Rakowitz’s artwork is a replica of the Iraqi winged deity Lamassu that was destroyed by Isis bombing in Mosul in 2015. This version is clad in empty date syrup cans, dates previously being Iraq’s second largest export after oil. The public art, as well as a host of events and workshops have been organised by Eastbourne Alive.
Coming out of the Towner, turn right and walk to the layby to wait for the bus towards Lewes. A hop-on-hop-off ticket costs a very reasonable £2.50 and the bus takes a route through some gorgeous Sussex villages. Stops include the beautiful Seven Sisters National Park, East Dean and Litlington with their lovely flinty cottages. Another stop is Alfriston, home of The Star (a renowned Paolozzi hotel some may remember from the lockdown TV series My Hotel Nightmare). This part of the world, over and around the South Downs, really is very beautiful no matter the weather (especially from the comforts of a warm bus).
Apart from the art, there are also loads of local vineyards to visit in the area. Wine and culture are brought under one umbrella by business-led tourism consortium Sussex Modern, that brings together art, landscape, wine and places to stay to showcase Sussex as a vibrant and contemporary destination. Doing as much as possible in a day isn’t the most relaxing way of experiencing the bus. An overnight stay in Alfriston (or similar, check the Sussex Modern website for lovely places to stay) would make for an absolutely delightful weekend away.
Next stop, the home of the Bloomsbury Group, Charleston in Firle. Artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant lived here from 1916, and painted every available space. Walls, cupboards, tables, even the side of a bath: nowhere was immune to their brushes. Regular guests at Charleston included Virginia Woolf (who was Vanessa Bell’s sister) and John Maynard Keynes, the philosopher, economist and founder of the Arts Council. Their home is largely as they left it, complete with an impressive art collection, personal trinkets and the fabulous art studio.
Alongside the permanent collection at the house, there is also a gallery space, opened in 2018 for temporary exhibitions. There are currently two exhibitions: David Hockney early drawings and prints and new multimedia works by Osman Yousefzada (both until 10 March 2024). Yousefzada’s works examine identity, queer bodies and migration, creating talismanic guardians to protect and guide.
The Hockney exhibition, titled Love Life, features some well known works on paper alongside rarely exhibited works that look at Hockney’s personal relationships. It is an intimate show that allows for quiet reflection in a way that the big blockbuster London retrospectives of Hockney could never achieve.
Back on the bus for ten minutes and hop off at the last stop: Charleston in Lewes, a brand new space in an old council building. It is a bit of an experiment, with Lewes Council perhaps hoping to inject some life back into the town. The first exhibition Bring No Clothes, curated by Charlie Porter, looks at the relationship between the Bloomsbury group and the clothes they wore along with the lasting impact they have had on contemporary fashion designers.
Bring No Clothes showcases artworks from the Charleston archives and Bloomsbury memorabilia and letters alongside contemporary fashion that has been (sometimes very directly) influenced by Charleston and its inhabitants. The exhibition design is scrappy, make-do, much like the Bloomsburys themselves. That doesn’t diminish its quality, or the calibre of work on display.
Upstairs, artist Jonathan Baldock presents a series of sculptures across textile, clay and glass. Baldock’s sculptures are bodily and natural, making strong references to tradition and folklore whilst remaining contemporary. You can see Lewes train station from the entrance to Charleston in Lewes so it is easy to find a train back into London.
It will be very interesting to see what happens next at Charleston in Lewes: will there be more temporary exhibitions, will they be thematically linked to Charleston in Firle, will they utilise the archives further and have a permanent collection of Bloomsbury Group art on view?
There is a real theme of British-ness across all of these exhibitions and excursions. Not the kind to be feared, but rather the unfussy, come as you are, inclusive kind that people can be proud of. The Sussex Art Shuttle is a fun way to get around, chatting to fellow visitors on the way and seeing a little bit more of what Sussex has to offer. It really is worth a visit.
Friday – Sunday until 17 December 2023
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