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The latest work added to Towner Eastbourne’s permanent collection is a painting by Sussex-based artist Sophie Barber, titled Meet me there, where the sun goes down and the moon comes up. The piece was selected by Towner’s Collections and Acquisitions Committee (C&A Committee), which was formed in 2024 and made possible thanks to Art Fund’s Reimagine grant. Comprising young art professionals, the committee was launched to diversify the voices involved in making decisions about the gallery’s collection, as well as to provide career and skills development opportunities to under-30s through transparency of working processes and practices.

Through regular meetings with Towner’s curatorial team, visits to artist studios and art events including Frieze art fair in London, the committee selected Sophie Barber from a list of collectively proposed artists. The work was then acquired through Alison Jacques Gallery with support from Art Fund and the Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund. The choice of Barber’s painting subsequently inspired the co-curated exhibition Gathered Around the Sun, bringing together works from Towner’s collection in dialogue with the newly commissioned piece by Sophie Barber.

Sophie Barber (b.1996, Hastings, UK) is a painter who draws directly from the world around her, reproducing natural and manmade fragments in an attempt to preserve and process their forms. Moving between humour and popular culture, folklore and the surreal, her works explored shifting skies, coastal thresholds, the pull of local memory, and open up dialogue with artists she admires, including Claes Oldenburg, Georgia O’Keeffe, David Hockney, and Vincent van Gogh.

Gathered Around the Sun (7 February to 8 March 2026) was curated by eight members of Towner Eastbourne’s Collections & Acquisitions Committee. It celebrated Barber’s work by placing it in conversation with existing works from Towner’s collection, exploring how domesticity and wildness are entangled. The result was a collaborative curatorial vision in a space in which the committee was invited to make all the decisions. Additional works included the first presentation of Guard by Jodie Carey since its acquisition by Towner, alongside paintings and works on paper by Harold Mockford, Eric Ravilious, and Frances Hodgkins.

The exhibition left a positive mark on the gallery, with audience feedback praising the committee’s choice for the acquisition, the overall curation of the show and the opportunity created by Towner. One visitor described the show as “An uplifting, inspiring exhibition – well thought out and curated by the committee. Commendable Towner making this possible for them and us” while another commented on the “Great selection of work to complement Barber’s piece. It’s evident how much care and thought went into organising the exhibition.”

The C&A Committee is currently working with an external evaluator to reflect on its initial aims and the resulting outcomes of the past two years. The findings so far have shown that taking part in the C&A Committee has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for all the young people involved, leading to growing self-confidence and professional skills, increased knowledge about the employment opportunities available in institutions like Towner and a greater understanding of the processes around putting on an exhibition and acquiring new works for a gallery’s collection. Members of the committee have enjoyed tangible career benefits with individual members taking on permanent employment and a trustee role at Towner as well as paid work opportunities at other visual arts venues in Sussex.

Towner’s Head of Exhibitions and Collections Sara Cooper said:

“When we established the Collections and Acquisitions Committee with support from Art Fund, we were excited by the prospect of creating new skills and career development opportunities, while opening up the Collection to fresh curatorial perspectives and ideas. The project has exceeded all expectations. Committee members have gone on to take up roles within the Towner team and on our Board of Trustees, while the committee has also curated an outstanding exhibition that presented the Collection in dynamic and unexpected ways. Through the bold decision making process of the committee we are delighted to have acquired Sophie Barber’s work, thanks to support from Art Fund and the ACE/V&A Purchase Grant Fund. I’m confident it will become a much-loved highlight of the Collection for years to come.”

Artist Sophie Barber said: “Towner has been a constant in my career as an artist from leaving school in Hastings, exhibiting in Towner’s East Sussex Open and in the 2025 exhibition Sussex Modernism, to now having just closed my major museum exhibition at Hastings Contemporary. My work draws connections between past and present, landscapes far and near, and the climate crisis intimately and at large. My work Meet me there, where the sun goes down and the moon comes up imagines the horizon as a place for painting to play, and demand urgent attention to our shared experiences with Mother Nature. I’m delighted that this acquisition is so close to home. Thank you to the young people on the Collections & Acquisitions Committee for their selection of my work, this is a powerful statement from the institution to place decision making in the hands of future leaders in the Arts”.

Maddie Lock, Collections & Acquisitions Committee member said:

“I thought that if I was a kid now and visited an exhibition with work on the wall by an artist from Eastbourne or Hastings, it would just make such a difference to me, the feeling that I could do it too. So, I think that’s what I really wanted to be reflected in this acquisition - creating a space where local people can feel bigger than just being from a small seaside town.”