The Moonshore Festival 2023

The Moonshore is a long weekend of photography events presented by Picnic.

This years programme includes workshops, talks, exhibitions, and a photo-book meet-up. The festival begins with a launch event at the Sailing Club on St Leonards seafront with a chance to meet and learn more about what’s on offer. The Moonshore's name is pulled from the depths of local history, from Bulverhythe beach which under the right tide conditions reveals a hidden submarine forest from time to time. So this year's theme, most aptly for our first festival, is the sea. Bringing into focus the environment which has such a huge presence in St Leonards, Hastings, and East Sussex.

The workshops are free, and are aimed at early-career photographers, young adults and teenagers. Most will take place outside along the foreshore itself. The work created by the participants in these workshops will then be run as an exhibition along the upper promenade on the seafront.

We look forward to meeting you and hope you enjoy The Moonshore.

This programme is funded by The Foreshore Trust.

FRIDAY

WEEKEND BREAKDOWN:

FRIDAY 4TH AUGUST - HASTINGS + ST LEONARDS SAILING CLUB

11:45 - 14:30 - A Psychogeographical wander with Rachel Poulton

12:00 - 17:00 - “Bastard Countryside meets the Moonshore” Workshop with Robin Friend

16:00 - Eva Voutsaki in Conversation with Ben Smith

17:30 - Robin Friend in Conversation with with Ben Smith

18:30 > 22:00 - Moonshore celebration!

19:00 > 21:00 - Moonshore Seafront Exhibition ft. Nick Waplington, Maya Brasington, Simon Roberts, Ben Osborne.

SATURDAY 5TH AUGUST - PICNIC

11:00 - 17:00 “The Paper Addicts” Workshop with Eva Voutsaki

12:00 - 17:00 “The Rubber Duck Experiment” Workshop with Jack Latham

17:30 - A talk with Rachel Poulton

18:30 - Talk with Jack Latham

SUNDAY 6TH AUGUST - PICNIC

11:00 - Photo Book Meet Up

16:00 - “Dübener Heide Forest” Laura Pannack Window Exhibition

Workshop with Rachel Poulton

Photographer and writer, Rachel Poulton will be facilitating a workshop exploring spirit of place, eternal landscapes, intuitive walking and how they can influence photographic practice. Rachel will introduce the concept of psychogeography and briefly explain how the idea inspires her work before setting off on a psychogeographical wander ourselves. She will lead the group on an intuitive walk from the Hastings and St. Leonards Sailing Club to bulverhythe cliffs, recording the experience as we go. Images created will reflect the mood, ambience and relationship between the photographer and the environment. Participants will choose a sequence of images that represent their observations, these photographs will be part of a seafront exhibition later in the year. 

As you walk, “be alert to the happenstance of metaphors, watch for visual rhymes, coincidences, analogies, family resemblances, the changing moods … Walking makes for content; footage for footage” (Robert Macfarlane)

Please complete the short form below and we will contact you to confirm your place. Places are very limited so booking is essential, and there is no guarantee of a place.

https://forms.gle/HN4ZxFFjrUPYkwTo8

11:35 - 14:30 PM - Hastings & St. Leonards Sailing Club, Marina, St-Leonards-On-sea Tn38 0BU

The Bastard Countryside meets the Moonshore - Workshop with Robert Friend

In this photography workshop, we will explore the theme of "moonshore" while incorporating ideas of where nature interacts with the built environment and how it survives in unexpected places. What I like to think of as the “bastard countryside”. When I was first starting out as a photographer I came across Robert Adams and the New Topographers movement – it was a lightbulb moment for me and my practice. They were interested in the mundane, the edge of town, periphery landscapes. Not the typical pure landscapes of the likes of Ansel Adams and others where no human-made objects can be seen.

 A quote from Robert Adams:

“If you get close to a clear-cut, where a forest is cut down, you’re reminded of a battle scene. Everything is torn to pieces. My pictures of these places are a mixture of something close to despair and a desperate attempt to find basis for hope”.

My project Bastard Countryside was all about the collision between humans and nature in the British countryside. The images depicted landscapes disrupted by pollution, decay, and remnants of war and industry. The title, featured in Victor Hugo's, Les Misérables. In it described the city of Paris as an "amphibian" stretching into the countryside, devouring everything in its path and spitting it out to create new hybird zones that were both nature and human. I see this in keeping with how Robert Adams and the New topographers saw the world. A collision of two worlds give birth to something new.

 So let’s apply these ideas and way of seeing to St Leonards and it’s coastline. Let’s explore the beauty, resilience, and human impact on the shoreline and illustrate this dynamic relationship.

12AM - 5PM - Hastings & St. Leonards Sailing Club, Marina, St-Leonards-On-sea Tn38 0BU

Materials, equipment and snacks will be provided, but attendees will need to submit images in advance to studio@pic-nic.uk

Please complete the short form below and we will contact you to confirm your place. Places are very limited so booking is essential, and there is no guarantee of a place.

https://forms.gle/au7pF6xXivAFzZZL7

If you would prefer a different way to register interest, or have a question please contact Joe directly:

Email: studio@pic-nic.uk

In conversation with Ben Smith Featuring Eva Voutsaki, Robin Friend

Ben Smith of “A Small Voice Podcast” will be sitting down and talking to Robin & Eva on Friday 4th for a discussion about each of their practices.

Robin Friend was born in London in 1983, but spent most of his childhood growing up in Melbourne, Australia. He now lives in the town of Lewes with his family, Seren, Dusty and Rocco. He has a BA from the University of Plymouth and an MA from the Royal College of Art. Friend’s project Bastard Countryside was published by Loose Joints in 2018. In the same year he collaborated with Wayne McGregor to create and direct Winged Bull in the Elephant Case for BBC Live - an audacious dance dramatisation of the journey of the National Gallery’s art collection during the second world war.

Eva is a photographer and educator based in Brighton, UK. Her studies include a BSc in Law, an MA in Photography, a foundation in Art Therapy and a PGCE in Further Education. She has created her own workshops on Subjective Photography and autobiographical storytelling and delivers them internationally. In 2014 she was invited from ISSP, as one of the 6 international experts, to deliver a workshop as part of the Contemporary Self Portrait Project. Her teaching includes elements of Art Therapy.

16:00 PM Eva / 17:30 Robin - Hastings & St. Leonards Sailing Club, Marina, St-Leonards-On-sea Tn38 0BU

Moonshore Seafront Exhibition Opening - Featuring Simon Roberts, Nick Waplington, Ben Osborne, Maya Brasington

Opening of The Moonshore Seafront exhibition with an evening event to celebrate - details coming soon!

Simon Roberts - The Celestials

Simon Roberts (b.1974) is a visual artist based in Brighton, UK. Widely recognised for his large-format, tableaux photographs of the British landscape, his practice also encompasses video, text and installation work, which together, interrogate notions of identity and belonging, and the complex relationship between history, place and culture.

Simon’s project “The Celestials” was created in response to satellite images released by NASA during the Covid Pandemic and the European Space Agency showing a dramatic drop in nitrogen dioxide emissions. The skies were clearer, bluer, the earth was breathing again. The Prussian blue of the cyanotypes, a colour that is not found in nature, but is brought about by a chemical reaction that produces ferric ferrocyanide, evoke an otherworldly, dreamlike intensity that is augmented is several cases by layering multiple negatives. This degree of abstraction speaks of the essence of what many people went through during the coronavirus lockdown: our altered states and perspectives, collective uncertainty and deepening awareness of the interconnectedness between us and the natural world. When exhibited, the unique cyanotypes are accompanied by a series of over-scaled digital Cloud Negatives of the cloudscapes based on those used to create the original cyanotypes.

Nick Waplington - Comprehensive

London and New York-based artist Nick Waplington uses photography to capture the complex and

far-reaching aspects of our lived experience. He rose to prominence in the early 1990s with Living Room

and has since become known for his unfiltered depictions of people and places, and the sociopolitical

backgrounds that define them.

From the chaos, violence, and euphoria of riots, protests, and free parties to the surreal, hypnotic quiet of

his large-format landscapes, Waplington’s work (in all its messy humanness) transcends stereotypes and

confounds expectations, and this book is no exception. Including never-before-published images, offering

new insight into both well- and lesser-known projects, as well as Waplington’s painting and artistic

practice.

This is the most extensive survey of Waplington's work to date, and includes previously unpublished

photographs, as well as paintings, sketchbooks, and other artworks that complement his practice.

Ben Osborne - The Sea Dreams of the Moon

The Sea Dreams of the Moon is a series of black and white images of jellyfish that seeks to draw parallels between these mysterious and ethereal sea creatures and the nature of dreams. Suspended in monochromatic stillness, like dreams, these strange and glowing forms emerge to temporarily light up the darkness, before fading back into the depths.

Maya Brasington - Magic Isle

Maya Brasington is a multidisciplinary artist using photography to investigate the complexities of family and mixed identity, as well as broader themes of the Caribbean diaspora. Part of an ongoing enquiry into self-identity, Magic Isle explores how descendants of immigrants often construct a magical, and perhaps unreal, imagination of the distant 'homeland'. By blurring the lines between myth and reality, this work brings attention to the role of the image in identity formation and memory. Working in collaboration with my family, I look to reimagine family narratives through the reworking of archival imagery in response to new conversations and personal experiences. Combining found imagery, family photographs, and new photography, ‘Magic Isle’ is realized as an imagined photo album that reconnects the past with the present to serve as a homage to my Bajan heritage.

19:00 - 21:00 - Hastings & St. Leonards Sailing Club, Marina, St-Leonards-On-sea Tn38 0BU

“Dübener Heide forest” Laura Pannack - Window Exhibition Opening

We will be celebrating our latest window exhibition from photographer Laura Pannack as the last event of The Moonshore.

‘I learn most when I walk with a camera; about myself and the company I share. I engage, I stop mentally, I listen.’

Laura is London based photographic artist, renowned for her portraiture and social documentary work. She seeks to explore the complex relationship between subject and photographer. Her work has been extensively exhibited and published worldwide. Driven by research-led, self-initiated projects, Pannack seeks to fully understand the lives of those she captures on film in order to portray them as truthfully as possible.

Statement from Laura: Each of these images is constructed from the inspiration I took from the tales within the region of Dübener Heide forest in North east Germany that explore the theme of time. I began to make this work as I am terrified of time running out. My age passes and with each year brings a sense of despair, anxiety, and disbelief. It is not just the social constructs of milestone expectations that suffocate me. Not the demise of my fertility or my financial security but a greater responsibility of what I have contributed by living on earth. I find solace in remembering that what we leave behind are the stories we tell. The reproductive nature of storytelling brings hope. Perhaps this is what led me to create imagery from myths and folklore that have stood the test of time. The ones that pass-through generations and establish themselves as the foundations of tradition. By immersing myself in each region and culture I visit for this project I bring an alternative account, one separated from the tales so embedded within the place. My curiosity and naivety bring a fresh approach to myths and anecdotes and helps us experience them as reborn stories that I hope will live on. This work is inspired by multiple tales from the region; mixing fiction and reality to paint scenes that evoke nostalgia and emotion.

SATURDAY

The Paper Addicts - Workshop from Eva Voutsaki 

The Paper Addicts or from Image to Zine.

The workshop will be an introduction to bookbinding techniques such as concertina, pamphlet and Japanese binding. The participants will learn and practice bookbinding in a fun and constructive environment. Once confident with paper and its’ creative possibilities, the workshop will focus on editing and sequencing a group Zine about the Sea in Hastings. Any images, either shot by the participants, family archives and found imagery, words and found objects should be submitted by the 30th of July, 5pm.

File specifications: 300 dpi, 2500 pixels long side

Please complete the short form below and we will contact you to confirm your place. Places are very limited so booking is essential, and there is no guarantee of a place.

https://forms.gle/raphavtzu4JEPwqBA

11:00 - 17:00PM - Picnic, 40 Marina, St-Leonards-On-sea Tn38 0BU

Unseen, Exploring the Hidden Landscape with Rachel Poulton

Rachel is a writer and photographer whose interests lie with our connections to the past and place. Her work examines philosophy, inner and outer landscapes, myth and reality, the past and present and the borderlands between.

Rachel is the author of The Little Book of Philosophy (Summersdale) and Get to know: Philosophy (Dorling Kindersley). Her photographs have appeared in national newspapers including The Times, The Observer and the Idler magazine. She teaches art and philosophy and is  the founder of Unseen Press - a small independent press, designing and publishing limited edition books, zines and pamphlets. 

Rachel also runs philosophy, photography and zine making workshops in galleries and public spaces around the country.

17:30PM - Hastings & St. Leonards Sailing Club, Marina, St-Leonards-On-sea Tn38 0BU

SUNDAY

Photo-book Meet-up

For the final day of Moonshore we will be holding a Photo-book meet up for photographers to showcase their photo books and to take part in an open discussion about their practice. If you would like to get involved and showcase your own Photo-book please contact Joe at: studio@pic-nic.uk