Date/Time
Date(s) - 13/01/2021
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

London Art Explorations are off to the seaside! Join Gail Astbury, public art enthusiast as well as practitioner in her own right, investigating artwork displayed in outdoor settings beside the sea.  One of a series of explorations around Britain’s coast.

Whether it is the retro charm of British seaside resorts or the latest art gallery installed on the promenade, the British seaside has (with a lot of help from COVID) become hugely popular. Since the turn of the millennium, the seaside has attracted some serious art institutions as well as becoming outdoor galleries for mega-structures and often unusual objects, frequently passed off as art.  Concurrently, coastal towns have been re-invigorated by festivals of temporary works, the most notable being Folkestone’s Triennial, in to which we dipped our toes back in November.

Continuing our seaside journey, we will be exploring artworks along the coast from the mouth of the Mersey around Morecambe Bay, and Blackpool, where Gail Astbury has fond childhood memories; seeing how these peripheral seaside towns are being affected by a new wave of incoming artists and art. From romantic escapism to tragi/comic social commentary, where do you stand?

And as the tide sweeps in and out, artworks now encroach the beaches, sited beyond the traditional promenade.  Our feature image is “Another Place” by Antony Gormley on Crosby Beach Photo credit: By Nilfanion – Wikimedia UK, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47631007

• Held on Zoom using Google Streetview and may be recorded too. It will take approximately 60-70 minutes, and there will be a chance to ask questions during the tour. Unfamiliar with Zoom? Find out more here
• Try before you buy? watch Gail Astbury at the Award-winning Urban Tree Festival
• Bookings will close within 30 minutes of the start of the event
• Range of ticket prices – scroll down to book – including free tickets to NHS & Key workers
• Don’t want to pay via PayPal? – don’t worry, you can pay by credit card – check here to see the steps you will encounter when you book.
• Joining instructions are sent via e mail within 3 hours of the start – the email will include a link to the virtual tour (please check your junk mail folder, just in case…).

Once on the tour, you will be sent a pdf that will include a hand drawn map by Gail and list of artworks, so when restrictions are eased you can retrace the tour. WALKERS WARNING: much of Britain’s coastline is treacherous, the route we follow keeps close to the coast, but distances are further than our usual neighbourhood explorations, so we have had to resort to cycling (or even travelling by bus, train or boat!).

Can’t get enough of Gail’s art explorations? Join us on the 27th January as we visit London’s Kings Cross

Can’t join on these dates / Missed your chance to join – send us a note via our Get in Touch form as if we have sufficient sign ups we may run these tours again.

What participants fedback about Gail’s walkshops when walked in October 2019:

Bookings