Celebrating the gallery’s 15th anniversary this spring, Turner Contemporary has announced that David Hockney will create a new work for the Sunley Window.
Measuring seven by ten metres, Hockney’s work will transform the gallery’s iconic floor-to-ceiling window in the Sunley Gallery overlooking Margate’s beaches and the North Sea. It will be the first time a major work by the artist will be exhibited in Margate.
Marking the beginning of spring, Hockney’s window depicts a sunrise in Normandy based on a work he made during 2020, the year he spent there producing a body of work responding to the changing seasons, weather and light.
Originally made as an iPad painting, the work reflects his long-standing engagement with digital technologies.
Hockney’s Normandy paintings have been widely celebrated for their immediacy, optimism and close attention to the natural world.
Hockney has frequently acknowledged his admiration for JMW Turner, particularly Turner’s radical treatment of light, atmosphere, and landscape. Installed on the site of the former boarding house where Turner stayed in Margate, Hockney’s sunrise aligns two artists through a focus on light, the seasons, and the experience of looking.
Clarrie Wallis, Director, Turner Contemporary, said: “Hockney’s sunrise, painted in Normandy in 2020, suggests renewal. Installed in the Sunley Window, it enters into a quiet but powerful dialogue with Margate’s own skies and sea.
Illuminated at night, the work becomes a point of light on the seafront—one that encourages looking, long after the gallery doors have closed.”
The installation coincides with a major exhibition at Serpentine by David Hockney titled A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting. The Sunley Window will offer audiences outside the capital a rare opportunity to encounter work by Hockney.
David Hockney: Sunley Window can be viewed from April 1 to November 1.
I very much look forward to that!
I’m not exactly the world’s biggest fan of art, but I saw some of David Hockney’s work at Salts Mill in Saltaire a few years back and quite liked some of it.
“Celebrating the gallery’s 15th anniversary this spring, Turner Contemporary”. How time goes by, all that taxpayer’s money wasted over the years and nothing productive to show for it. I am not against art, I just feel like any hobbie or interest, it should pay for it’s self. But we all know, if our money haven’t been used against our will. This monstrosity would never have been built.
No Turner Centre, no revitalisation of Margate as an “art scene “ and before that gets a bucket load of criticism, like it or not there really was no alternative –
Much to my surprise I really enjoyed the Hockney immersive expo at Kings Cross recently – a real feast for the eyes.
There has been NO “revitalisation” of Margate. It’s all smoke and mirrors, achieved by a combination of those in cloud cuckoo land (Emin, Madonna, Time Out, The Guardian) and endless funding (Arts Council, Crowd-Funding and other scroungers). If so, how come we have a nearly empty high street (notably missing any art supply shops), closed theatres and rotting shelters? Of course, you can claim that house prices have rocketed, but you can say the same thing about Birchington or Minster.
We’d have an empty high street regardless – internet shopping has swept away the need fit shoppers to visit a shop and Westwood cross has sucked the life out of it as well. This stores that do exist don’t want small cramped old buildings they want new larger units like WX and the like.you only have to see how busy the old town and its cafes and bars are at the weekend even in January with an influx of younger people. There are also a lot of small digital business who do not need subsidies or grants that are based in and around. Sure the high street looks a mess, but imagine how the whole town would look without the cafe and art scene – it would basically be shut down.
Why are the High Streets in Broadstairs, Birchington, Herne Bay and Deal largely thriving then?
Lovelys in Northdown Road is an excellent art shop, and nearer to where most artists live in Cliftonville than the High Street. Granted that art-based regeneration can’t solve all of Margate’s problems. It’s unrealistic to expect it to, but the art scene is on of the main reasons I moved to Margate twelve years ago. Art is not a hobby, or an optional extra to many of us. It’s a vital part of a civilised society. It also brings like-minded visitors who spnd money. So it’s a win even if you personally can’t get into it.
It’s usually the people who didn’t live here earlier who claim it has been “regenerated”. Fact is, it was so much more thriving up until 2004/2005 with the double whammy of the opening of Westwood Cross and the closing of Dreamland (and one of the best pubs in Margate was demolished for the art gallery).
Average annual visitors to the Turner – 375,000 – 400,000. Annual visitors to the pub previously on the site – ? Which brought more prosperity to the town? You can’t compare an international standard art gallery to a pub, no matter how good the pub is. I agree with you that the opening of Westwood Cross and closing of Dreamland were detrimental. Today’s Dreamland is a pale imitation of what it used to be, but Margate’s traditional visitors declined when foreign holidays became affordable. They aren’t coming back. What we have now is new visitors who want to see the art and who want good restaurants and are prepared to pay for them. That’s good, but Margate also needs to provide secure well-paid jobs outside of the service sector before there’s general improvement. That’s a job for politicians and business people, not artists and art lovers. It’s not their fault that people’s needs are not catered for, and they are not standing in the way of these things happening.
The pub wasn’t subsidised by millions, and I’m sure the average visitor spent more than they do in the free-to-enter art gallery.
As for good restaurants, there are almost certainly far more in Broadstairs than there are in Margate.
And, in a way, art and artists ARE standing in the way of Margate progessing – as for nearly 2 decades, art has been the default solution to everything.
A start would be a stronger police presence, with a zero tolerence to drugs. Everytime I go through Margate (including today, when I cycled round the coast from Birchington to Broadstairs) the place reeks of dope! Very off-putting to decent hard-working folk like me.
They have small local communities far enough from out of town stores that still have loyal generally older, and wealthier silver surfer communities is part of it not the main reason.
Westwood Cross is nearer to Broadstairs than it is Margate, and at a population of over 25,000 it isn’t exactly a village.