Image: Towner Eastbourne
Towner Eastbourne is presenting 'Spirals Gathering, Time Breathing', an immersive installation by Danish artist Cecilia Fiona, in its ground floor gallery. The exhibition, which draws on microbiology, quantum physics and processes of transformation, is open until 1 November and is free to attend. According to Towner, Fiona has created new sculptures and paintings for the installation, placing the work at the centre of the venue’s summer programme.
The exhibition is part of a wider month of activity at Towner, which also includes the long-running 'Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism' in Galleries 2 and 3, plus a run of talks, workshops and gallery-based events. Towner’s August mailing also notes that the museum’s Make Space studio is open daily during the summer holidays, while Yoga in the Gallery sessions are being staged in Fiona’s exhibition on Thursday evenings. Sunday morning yoga sessions take place in 'The Ravilious Collection' on the first floor.
Fiona’s exhibition is presented as an installation rather than a conventional display of separate works. Towner describes it as an immersive environment built from new sculptures and paintings, with the artist drawing inspiration from scientific and transformational ideas. The gallery text does not elaborate further on specific individual works, but frames the project through Fiona’s interest in the relationship between material form and change.
An in-conversation event will offer another perspective on the artist’s practice. On Saturday 10 October, Cecilia Fiona will speak with writer Jennifer Higgie at Towner from 2.00pm to 3.00pm. The talk is described as taking place on the occasion of Fiona’s exhibition, and attendees are told that the conversation will cover the exhibition and her wider artistic practice, with 15 minutes at the end reserved for audience questions. Tickets are priced at £10, with concessions available.
The event listing also situates Higgie as a writer and host of the BBC Radio 3 essay series 'Artists and the Spirit World'. Fiona, meanwhile, is identified by Towner as a Copenhagen-based artist who works across sculpture, painting and performance. The museum says her performances embody the biomorphic forms that appear in her paintings, while her sculptural works expand the landscapes and narratives created through her imagery.
Towner’s broader autumn and summer listings show how the exhibition is being folded into a sequence of public programmes. A workshop called 'Folklore, myth & magic' with artist Rowan Corkill, scheduled for 26 September, is explicitly inspired by Fiona’s work and asks participants to explore costume as something that sits between sculpture and painting. The gallery also links Fiona’s installation to its yoga sessions, describing the Thursday evening classes as taking place in 'Cecilia Fiona: Spirals Gathering, Time Breathing' from July. The exhibition remains on view through 1 November at Towner Eastbourne.
