Fair Ground 2025
13 November – 19 December
But since man’s heart is small,
Ordains for each one spot shall prove
Beloved over all.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground – in a fair ground –
Yea, Sussex by the sea!
– Sussex, Rudyard Kipling (1902)
Fair Ground is our annual exhibition of new art in Sussex. Now into its sixth year, the exhibition presents work for sale by six contemporary artists: Katherine Allen, Michael Bishop, Freya Croissant, Gabriel Langlands, Tom Scotcher and Agnes Treherne. Works include large-scale landscape paintings, prints and drawings exploring memory and quiet observation, and figurative works capturing intimate, domestic moments.
Also on view are works by painter and designer, Kathleen Walne (1915–2011), who spent the latter part of her career living and working in Brighton. Celebrated for her luminous interior scenes, still lifes and portraits, Walne’s works are held today in public collections including Towner Eastbourne, and Salford Art Gallery. Her vivid compositions reveal a particular sensitivity to pattern and texture, often using textiles to shape and define space. Spanning the breadth of her career, the selection includes early self-portraits from the 1930s and depictions of millinery students, drawn from life at Brighton Art School in the 1980s – a testament to Walne’s lifelong interest in costume and design.
The title, Fair Ground, is taken from a musical stanza in Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem Sussex (1902), in which he describes the county as ‘beloved over all’. A hymn to the beauty of place, Kipling saw his enchantment with Sussex as deeply rooted in an understanding of locality – a belief that the houses, hedgerows, green rolling hills, seafronts and woodlands were all integral parts of connecting real people to their historical pasts. Each of the selected works in Fair Ground speak to Sussex as a place of visual poetry.
Works for sale from £225.00. Please contact art@glyndebourne for sales and more information.
