Date/Time
Date(s) - 11/11/2020
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

London Art Explorations are off to the seaside! Join Gail Astbury, public art enthusiast as well as practitioner in her own right, investigating artwork displayed in outdoor settings beside the sea.  This is a first in what we hope to build as a series of explorations around Britain’s coast.

BOOKING CLOSES AT 6.15PM GMT TONIGHT

Whether it is the retro charm of British seaside resorts or the latest art gallery installed on the promenade, the British seaside has (with a lot of help from COVID) become hugely popular.  Since the turn of the millennium, the seaside has attracted some serious art institutions as well as becoming outdoor galleries for mega-structures and often unusual objects, frequently passed off as art.  Concurrently, coastal towns have been re-invigorated by festivals of temporary works, the most notable being Folkestone’s Triennial.

Starting our seaside journey, we will be exploring artworks along the Kent coast from Dungeness to Dover, seeing how these peripheral seaside towns are being affected by a new wave of incoming artists and art. From romantic escapism to tragi/comic social commentary, where do you stand?

And as the tide sweeps in and out, artworks now encroach the beaches, sited beyond the traditional promenade.

If you are yearning for a dramatic walk, then Dungeness won’t disappoint. Misclassified as Britain’s only desert it is in fact a shingle headland.  Unashamedly stark, with a nuclear power station in earshot, there is a bleak beauty to this seascape strewn with wild kelp and viper’s-bugloss. The big open skies and flat rain lashed land has lured artists such as filmmaker and naturalist Derek Jarman and urban dissenter Banksy who reportedly left his mark on a fisherman’s hut.

We’ve adapted to the times and are thrilled to be offering a guided public art tour for all to enjoy from home. The tour will be held on Zoom using Google Streetview (or should that read, beach view) and will be recorded too. It will take approximately 60 minutes, and there will be a chance to ask questions during the tour.

Try before you buy? watch Gail Astbury at the Award-winning Urban Tree Festival

Bookings will close within 45 minutes of the start of the event – after booking, you will receive details of the Zoom meeting vie e mail – the email will include a link to the virtual tour (please check your junk mail folder, just in case…).

BOOKING CLOSES AT 6.15PM GMT TONIGHT

To book, there is no set ticket price on this Virtual Tour – we give you a choice at various price points below – we hope you appreciate the efforts we put in to put these events on – many thanks, Andrew & Gail.

Working for the NHS or as a key worker? – no need to pay for a ticket as we are in your debt, just reserve a ticket below – please make sure you do as we won’t know to whom we need to send joining instructions.

Don’t want to pay via PayPal? – don’t worry, you can pay be credit card – check here to see the steps you will encounter when you book.

Once on the tour, you will be sent a pdf that will include a hand drawn map by Gail and list of artworks, so when restrictions are eased you can retrace the tour. WALKERS WARNING: much of Britain’s coastline is treacherous, the route we follow keeps close to the coast, but distances are further than our usual neighbourhood explorations, so we have had to resort to cycling (or even travelling by bus, train or boat!).

Can’t get enough of Gail’s art explorations? Join us on the 28 November for New York’s Highline

Can’t join on these dates / Missed your chance to join – send us a note via our Get in Touch form as if we have sufficient sign ups we may run these tours again.

Featured image: Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage at Dungeness. Image credit: By User:Jasper33 – Own work by the original uploader, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49120883

What participants fedback about Gail’s walkshops when walked in October:

Bookings