Jude Montague

19 – 29 July 2022
Open daily from 10am until 5pm
Private view 22 July 6.30 – 8.30pm – All Welcome!
The Stade Hall, Hastings, 20 Rock-a-Nore Rd, TN34 3DW

“All together, we are different” is Photopia’s inaugural photographic exhibition that combines a selection of work and practices from fourteen PhotoHastings contributors:

Chris Coombes | Clare Hocter | Derek Cottrell | Frank Francis | Gary Willis | Ian O’Leary | Imogen Bloor | John Hayward | Jude Cowan Montague | Karin Wach | Katie Redfern | Louise Whitham | Patti Webb | Rod Morris.

Photopia artists work together and support each other to showcase engaging, thought-provoking, and professionally presented photography. With the exhibiting line-up it’s going to be an interesting show.

Image Credit: Jude Montague
Information: The Stade Hall and Open Space  |  Chris Coombes – Curator
Catalogues are avaiable from Chris Coombes.
All images ©

Online Gallery

Imogen Bloor

Imogen Bloor

Title of work: From the river to the sea
Thames Path, London
Date: April 2022

From the river to the sea: I’m drawn to the geometries, abstractions, patterns and quirks of everyday urban spaces. Lockdown in London honed my habit of walking: I’d pause, drink in the clean air and quiet, and be lulled in the present. Distilling something from the chaos, artifice and clutter of London, details from the streets, or the interfaces where urban spaces, greenery and waterways meet, became a mindful way of dealing with the constraints of the time. But as horizons expanded, I yearned for the spacious vistas of the sea.

Information: @blurred_imo

Frank Francis

Frank Francis

Title of work: Doggonne
Date: January 2022

Documenting the odd and the ordinary: random observations of everyday life and objects in and around Hastings and beyond. For want of a better label, you could call it street photography.

Information: Frank Francis Website  |  @frankandal

Jude Montague

Jude Montague

Title of work: Montague Armstrong
Date: 2022

Montague Armstrong is Jude Montague and Matt Armstrong. They create original prints and music in their workshop on Kings Road, St Leonards on Sea. These self-portrait cyanotypes were taken early 2022 and printed by Jude Montague. Her print practice is to work experimentally and, in the moment, creating colourful one-off etchings peopled by animals and figures from mythology, memory and daydreams. She is a performer, a writer, a former archivist and media historian. She sings Latvian folk songs and her visual work is influenced by animation and poster art from Poland, Czechoslovakia and other countries in the former Soviet Union.

Her two autobiographical graphic novels are ‘Love on the Isle of Dogs’ and Breakfast in Shoreditch’ and her poetry books include ‘For the Messengers’ about footage from the Reuters television news archive where she worked for ten years.

Information: Jude Montague Website  |  @judemontague_

Karin Wach

Karin Wach

Title of work: Royal Vintage
Date: 2013

I work with the single unedited photograph as my medium. From the multiples of one, rarely two photos I create an abstract image. These constructed images, mounted on board and framed under glass, explore through their formal layout and content the complexity of what can and cannot be captured in a single photograph.

The ruins of Edward III’s Manor House, once an important royal house on the Thames in Bermondsey, have been excavated but kept half hidden for protection under a grassy hill. History peeps out from underneath the edges. Further along the Thames there is Hampton Court Palace with its great formal gardens. The flowers gave no sense of history and the passing of time. Royal Vintage I think, does: the constructed image creates a feeling of old-fashioned lace, a keepsake that holds the memory of something precious long since gone. The flowers photographed are not in their prime but faded.

Information: Karin Wach Website  |  @karinwach8309

Chris Coombes

Chris Coombes

Title of work : Iceland
Date: May 2022

‘I take out my camera, and life just unfolds…’

Do we appreciate life’s free things: beauty, nature, and open space? My photography intends to convey the surreal Icelandic landscape, with its stunning vistas, which are so expansive and beautiful. I elected to capture these images in black and white to strip away the distraction of colour and evoke a sense of space, isolation, and timeless simplicity in the viewer. Iceland welcomes us, but let’s remember that “nature gave, but can also take away”.

Information: Chris Coombes Website

John Hayward

John Hayward

Title of work: Hastings Jack in the Green
Date: May 2022

Hastings Jack in the Green Festival was eagerly anticipated as we had missed the event for two years due to Covid. I so enjoy photographing the cultural events that occur throughout the year in our wonderful seaside town. Another passion of mine is the incredible landscapes and seascapes in our local area. We are very fortunate to live in such a beautiful place.

Information: @john.hayward98765

Ian O'Leary

Ian O'Leary

Title of work: Goat Ledge pirate day
Date: Summer 2022

This image is part of an ongoing section of my work I have identified as Seascape, the majority of the images are taken on the seafront of Hastings and Saint Leonards on Sea. My passion is photographing people and events against the backdrop of the sky and sea.
I love the way the light bounces off the sea and creates this ever-changing scenic backdrop which I try and use to frame the people and the manmade objects to capture a moment of time.

I have been a working photographer for pretty much all of my adult life, mostly as a commercial food photographer. I have always tried to continue with my own projects as well and I am now at a point where I get more opportunity to take my time looking at life.
As a photography student in the seventies, I was influenced by photographers like Cartier-Bresson, Henri Lartigue, Bill Brandt, Don McCullin, Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand and others of that era.

Information: Ian O’Leary Website  |  @ian0leary

Patricia Webb

Patricia Webb

Title of work: The Sea
Date: 2021

Crashing, splashing, waking the ocean ghosts
Leap and spray and dance a watery tango
Rivulets, their repeating flow cuts grooves in the metal
Ebb and flow, build and crash, spray flying

Power and beauty, broiling in the deep
Rising up and rolling to twirl and curve
Water sketches, intricate patterns in the space
Between the metal struts of the pier

Image taken on a stormy day looking under the pier from Hastings

Information: Patricia Webb Website  |  @pjwebbphoto

Rod Morris

Rod Morris

Title of work: After the Storm
Date: February 2022

Light is the starting point for most of my work. Subtle differences in the angle, direction and quality of light completely changes the emotional reading of a scene. The action of light describes the world around us, and the longest part of my creative journey has been spent attempting to recognise its many different voices and to respond to its innumerable atmospheres.

I strive to create images with a resonance, a narrative that extends beyond the frame. There is often a sense of the protagonist, sometimes directly by their presence in a suggested drama, but in others, they are represented by the light itself, at times in the form of a shadow, at other times by the direction or quality of the light.

“The soldier climbs the glaring stair leaving your shadow.
Tonight, this torn room sleeps
Beneath the starlight bent by you.”

Stone is not Stone: Carson McCullers

Information: Rod Morris Website  |  @roadfactoryphotos

Derek Cottrell

Derek Cottrell

Title of work : Repeated pattern, repeated prayer
Date: March 2022

Everyone is on a path, whether you believe that path is given or taken.
Either way, as we look back over our own lives, we will see repeated patterns and responses.

Information: Derek Cottrell Flickr  |  @derekcottrell

Clare Hocter

Clare Hocter

Title of work: Connections
Date: May 2022

Connections – Dungeness. Time alone. Reflection.
“What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well”.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Information: Clare Hocter Website  |  @clarehocterphotography

Katie Redfern

Katie Redfern

Title of work: Into the trees – shinrin yoku
Date: 2022

As we go about our daily lives I notice more disconnection from nature, and distance from its cycles and rhythms. Often this is manifested by being disconnected from ourselves. I discovered the more I began to observe and listen the more reconnected I felt. Journeying freely amongst the immediate environment and capturing this process, letting it unfold naturally and organically without control; allowing my journey to take me where it wanted.

Information: @katie_louise_redfern

Louise Whitham

Louise Whitham

Title of work: Exquisite Photosynthesis – Dusting Bluebelles
Date: May 2021

Mirroring the layers of denial about global warming. ‘Exquisite Photosynthesis’ is inspired by my favourite equation. The equation for life. 6CO2 + 6H2O → C6H12O6 + 6O2.

This means that the reactants, six carbon dioxide molecules and six water molecules, are converted by light energy captured by chlorophyll (implied by the arrow) into a sugar molecule and six oxygen molecules. Photosynthesis one-way and aerobic respiration the other way.

Other works in this series can be seen in full at the ‘Alternative Processes’ Photography Exhibition at Electro studios 24 – 31st October 2022.

Information: Louise Whitham Website  |  @louisewhithamartist

Gary Willis

Gary Willis

Title of work: Planet Wimbledon
Don’t – Look – Up

Date: August 2021

Advertising Art Director now taking snaps for himself rather than commissioning and directing photography for clients.

A two-year-old newbie to Hastings.
Enjoys looking, seeing and snapping.
Usually little sequences.
Anything that catches my eye.
From big skies to ever-changing seas.
Abstract, texture, colour, mono…
Yet sometimes beauty is just under your nose.
The everyday under your feet.
So next time you’re out and about… Don’t – Look – Up

Information: Gary Willis Blog  |  @garywillis.snaps

Supported By

PhotoHastings
Road Factory Films
STADE HALL
Photopia
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