Littleford+Adams

Marine Workshops, Railway Quay, Newhaven

Border: After Ravilious responds to Newhaven’s unique industrial and maritime landscape: to the port as a border, overlooked by the Fort at Castle Hill, with its ancient history as a site of defence.

Littleford+Adams have deep-mapped* the town of Newhaven. Centering on the harbour and spanning into the surrounding tracks and chalk paths of the downs (Glynde, Firle, Cuckmere) to uncover, beyond simple landscape or history-based topographical recording, the landscapes stories, memories, traces, and sound.

Their 2022 project In the Footsteps of Ravilious examined the sense of place of the Sussex landscape, made familiar by the artist Eric Ravilious over 80 years ago. Ravilious’ war-imagery and documents portray a harbour port town operating while crowded with ships, troops and stockpiled ammunition; powered by a hive of military and blue-collar industry against a backdrop of fear, the threat of invasion and defence of its borders. He documented the 19th century fort’s concrete reinforcements and the coastal and sea defences.

Walking in the very same footsteps of Ravilious, artists Littleford+Adams have responded creatively to a renewed sense of ‘border defence’ in a post-Brexit industrial working harbour and port (the gateway to Europe). They document the same locations, the landscape and the sea during a period of political, industrial and personal state of flux.

*A deep map is a map with greater information than a two-dimensional image of places, names, and topography.

Walk Talk Look: Walking Workshop

13, 21 & 23 September 2023

Supported by Creative Newhaven

A sideways look at Newhaven through the eyes of Artists and Writers. Less instructional, more conversational. From Fort to Port (Marine Workshops), trail including Ravilious views + Towner billboard contemporary artists. Led by writer Gretchen Heffernan and artist Pat Thornton