Edge

Edge: Where the Land Meets the Sea is a major new exhibition exploring the fundamental connection between land and sea, and the vital role both play in sustaining life on our planet.

In an era of profound environmental change, Edge challenges conventional ideas of separation and presents the coastline as a dynamic zone of exchange, where rivers, soils and oceans converge.

Co-curated with The Land Gardeners, who presented the acclaimed exhibition SOIL at Somerset House in 2025, this ambitious, gallery-wide exhibition brings together modern and contemporary artists to examine these interconnected living systems, and their shared futures.

Inspired by Hastings Contemporary’s unique location on a shingle beach, Edge marks the first of two landmark exhibitions supporting the gallery’s mission to focus its exhibitions and public programme on ocean futures and sustainability. Its companion exhibition, Horizon: Where the Sea Meets the Sky, will open in autumn 2027.

The edge is a place where terrestrial and marine systems meet: where rivers transport the materials and histories of the land into the sea, and where complex networks of fungi, microbes, water, carbon and nutrients sustain interconnected forms of life.

Bringing together art and ecological research, the exhibition explores the human impact and processes that shape these environments, from biodiversity and regeneration to erosion, extraction and adaptation, revealing a powerful interdependency.

Through painting, photography, film, sculpture and installation, Edge invites visitors to explore these impactful and often unseen connections, bringing together more than 40 works from artists including Wolfgang Tillmans, Cornelia Parker, Gillian Wearing, David Nash, Charmaine Watkiss, Maggi Hambling, Duncan Grant, Aimee Parrott, Nancy Cadogan, Emma Tennant, Mike Perry, Cedric Morris, Tanoa Sasraku and Therese Oulton.

Image above: Wolfgang Tillmans, End of Land 1, 2002 © Wolfgang Tillmans, courtesy Maureen Paley, London. Towner Eastbourne