Towner Eastbourne has confirmed its 2026 exhibition programme including a new public art commission, exciting contemporary art and an in-depth show on the anti-fascist Artists International Association, bringing to light how British artists came together during the Second World War.

Highlights include Poppy Jones – 28 March to 31 May 2026

A spokesman said: “Sussex-based artist Poppy Jones will present her first institutional solo exhibition at Towner Eastbourne in spring 2026. Best known for her timeless still life paintings, Jones will debut several new works that focus our attention on the subtle poetry of the everyday. Working on a scale that feels true to life, subjects range from closely cropped sections of clothing and glowing reading lamps to small fruits and cut flowers fading from full bloom to inevitable decay. Often photographed in the artist’s home, these images invite deeper considerations of memory, life, death, and the passage of time.

“Jones works on cotton, silk and suede canvases cut from her own garments or from vintage clothing sourced online. These materials are often true to the images themselves as well as being connected to her life.⁠ Fingerprints visible on the suede surface of works such as White Tulips (Friday) and Last Days (both 2023), resemble smudges on touchscreen devices – an intentional reference to image sharing in the digital age.”

The year continues with Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism, 7 May to 18 October 2026.

“Spanning the years from the Great Depression through the Second World War and beyond, Comrades in Art is set to be the most in-depth exhibition on the anti-fascist Artists International Association (AIA) ever staged. It will bring to light the largely untold story of how British artists came together to respond to a world in crisis. The exhibition will highlight the political pressures that shaped modern art in Britain, showing how artists put aside stylistic differences and united on an extraordinary scale to oppose fascism and fight for cultural freedom and democracy. The exhibition has been made possible through extensive new archival and collection-based research by curator and author Andy Friend, whose work was recently published by Thames & Hudson in his book Comrades in Art: Artists against Fascism, 1933–1943.

“The book centres on the AIA, founded in the 1930s in response to economic hardship and rising political extremism, by a group of young, underemployed artists and designers led by Misha Black and his friends Cliff Rowe and Pearl Binder. Within two years the AIA had won the allegiance of some of Britain’s best-known artists including Henry Moore, Vanessa Bell, Laura Knight and Augustus John and held a major exhibition Artists Against Fascism and War in Soho Square. In 1937 they staged the first British Artists’ Congress, foreshadowing many progressive post-war developments, even as they organized against the prospect of renewed global conflict.

“The exhibition will highlight the life and work of 11 members of the founding generation of the AIA: Peggy Angus, Pearl Binder, James Boswell, James Fitton, Margaret Fitton, James Holland, Percy Horton, Peter Laszlo Peri, Betty Rea, Cliff Rowe and Nan Youngman. Their work will be shown alongside works by prominent AIA exhibiting artists including Ithell Colquhoun, Dame Laura Knight, Paul Nash and Lucien Pissaro, who supported the organisation and its campaigns for peaceful and cultural development and international understanding.”

The spring will also see a public art commission from Rana Begum which will be situated on the seafront end of shopping and hospitality street Victoria Place.

“The work will comprise of eight tall, vertical panes of toughened coloured glass that protrude from the ground in a zigzag formation. The interaction between the natural light and the glass will cast geometric reflections and shadows, creating playful interventions in the surrounding environment.

“The work will evolve with the changing natural light, transforming across the days and seasons, capitalising on Eastbourne’s open skies and the multiple angles of sunlight offered by the seafront location. The planes of glass will act as a sundial, with the coloured geometry shifting as its shadows expand and contract, painting the surroundings and the bodies of passersby. This new work will form part of a series of works by Begum that began with her 2018 work No.814, installed at Frieze Sculpture Park, Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery and Albion Barn. It will be the largest in the series to date.”