Ravilious & Co - Exhibition at the Towner Gallery

It's great when things come together. I'd been planning on going to the Ravilious & Co. exhibition for a while. As it is at the Towner Gallery it was a good excuse to visit Eastbourne and catch up with my brother. Then I had an even better idea - I'd go and stay with him for a couple of nights and celebrate his birthday at the same time. That way I'd have a whole day in Eastbourne to do my own thing while he was at work. So, that's what I did.

I'd seen a Ravilious exhibition a while ago at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and loved it. This time it was like all my favourite artists of that time came together - Edward Bawden, John and Paul Nash and I found another great artist - Tizah Garwood (who married Eric Ravilious). Her satire prints made me smile - a sort of modern Hogarth, but more subtle. On show were block prints for book covers and inserts, posters, paintings, fabrics, ceramics, wallpapers, photos and tools of the trade. I'm beginning to know a lot about these artists and was able to give out a bit of information to a couple watching the video about Morley College and the bombing of it destroying the murals painted by Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious. As a sometime student at Morley I was able to tell the couple where the college was and that you can see the replacement murals done by Edward Bawden in the refreshment hall where the originals were, though these are different to the originals. All that's left of them are the sketches and photos.

There was so much to take in at this exhibition and I was amazed at the pieces. I was also pleased to see so many works by John Nash. I feel that his work is overshadowed a little by his brother. Both are extremely good artists, and war artists at that (Paul going on to work as a war artist in the Second World War).

There were other artists of this period who all worked together including Enid Marx, Barnett Freedman, Thomas Hennell, Douglas Percy Bliss, Peggy Angis, Helen Binyon and Diana Low.

Ravilious sadly died tragically in Iceland during the Second World War.

This was one of the best exhibitions I've been to in a long time. Being among all these brilliant works was like coming home. I knew a lot of the works from exhibitions and classes I've taken (Morley Gallery also had an exhibition about Edward Bawden a while back) but it was great to find new things I didn't know about like the fabrics and wallpaper, and other artists Ravilious worked with. So if you are down on the sunny south coast soon go along to Eastbourne and visit the Towner. The exhibition is on until 17th September.

Oh and here are few pictures from a stormy looking Eastbourne that day.

Devonshire Park - home of Eastbourne Tennis