Why contemporary art proved such a draw for a beautiful Arundel gallery's autumn exhibition launch
An Arundel gallery launched its autumn exhibition alongside a local charity’s 2026 Christmas card collection. The High Sheriff of West Sussex Gary Shipton – whose themes include supporting the arts – officially opened the event in Tarrant Street. Here he gives his impressions of the occasion:
Zimmer Stewart's annual tradition, The Autumn Mixed Exhibition, has returned to the Tarrant Gallery – and like the best artist's palette it mixes new paintings, prints, ceramics, and sculpture with streaky smudges of genius.
As Director James Stewart – who has curated more than 150 exhibitions since 2003 with an emphasis on emerging and established contemporary artists – prepared to open the door for the launch celebration, he admitted he had no idea how big the turnout would be on such a night of brutal weather.
Rows of glasses – arranged like miniature paint pots on a side table – contained only the colours of burgundy and pale honey. They were not designed for oils, only potentially the well-oiled guest.
Above and beyond, the artwork was powerful and potent; unhesitating in its vibrancy and command.
To one side, a selection of Christmas cards in support of the wonderful Walberton-based Sussex Snowdrop Trust were neatly displayed. Powerful in quite a different way – for their sale will help to fund the local charity’s life-changing and vital work.
The Trust of course is far more than a charity. It is a family. It provides ‘Nursing Care at Home’ for local children who have a life-threatening or terminal illness, and the wonderful Di Levantine - their Chair and Co-founder – was there to support the event.
James need not have paused to reflect if there were too many glasses. There were too few. Arundel turned out in force to support not just charity and exhibition, but a man who himself has been an architect of the town’s cultural life for more than two decades.
James Stewart is an accountant who changed career in 2003 having moved to Arundel a few years earlier. The town's rich cultural and historic heritage was the perfect place to set up a new contemporary art gallery boasting as it did many resident artists, the annual Arts Festival and Gallery Trail and proximity to London and the South East.
He has been a town councillor and mayor but above all else has been an enduring force for good in the town.
The new exhibition features, among the nine artists, the extraordinary confident rich lines and hues of Matt Bodimeade’s oil paintings on canvas – created on site in an area of the South Downs which he knows well. The area around South Stoke and Offham was his playground as a child and first work place as a farm hand in his teens.
As the programme notes proclaim, ‘in most of Matt Bodimeade's works there’s central motif: a wall, a track, a river or a railway - evidence of man's work on the land. It is no coincidence that this division to slice the landscape apart; the fields and woods suggest work, movement and energy, shaped like plough blades, discs, or saw teeth on either side of the central divide.’
Arundel complete with railway, river and castle slices through the Arun landscape with the rigour of a palette knife – and these strong, streaks of light and life are the branding running through so much of Matt’s work.
Galleries are an essential ingredient of the high street scene and never more so than in Arundel. It was a pleasure to be invited to open this exhibition and see how strongly and proudly the community responded.
[] The High Sheriff of West Sussex is an independent, non-political, and voluntary royal appointment. The office represents the Crown for matters relating to the judiciary, law, and order, while acting as a high-profile champion for local communities and voluntary services. It is entirely unpaid. Separately, Mr Shipton is the Editor At Large of SussexWorld and its sister newspapers – reflecting his involvement with the titles dating back nearly half a century.