Towner Lates
Summer Edition
Event
Music meets visual art at Towner’s new after hours series
Friday 31 July
6.00pm to 10.00pm
£5 advance/ £10 on the door
+14 unless accompanied by an adult
Live Music | Artist Workshops | Film | Food | Exhibitions
Towner Lates' summer edition features music from big long sun, whose 8-strong live band bring their psychedelic art-pop compositions to Towner’s Studio 1, along with Gilroy Mere performing a new album inspired by the works of Eric Ravilious.
Throughout the rest of the building, explore site-specific interventions and drop-in workshops by multidisciplinary artist Ruby Campion and dancer and choreographer Yanaëlle Ritter. Enjoy food and drink by Light and immerse yourself in artist films curated by Devonshire Collective’s Volta Artists’ Moving Image.
Ticket price includes free entry to Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism, which will be open until 8.00pm alongside two free exhibitions The Ravilious Collection and Cecilia Fiona.
Live Music (Studio 1, Ground floor)
Big Long Sun. Photo by Bill Redshaw.
big long sun +
big long sun
Called ‘one of the most effortlessly inventive groups on the UK circuit’ by culture magazine Far Out, big long sun bring their art rock, frenzied folk pop to our Studio 1 space, along with dreamy projected visuals.
Spearheaded by midlands-born, Brighton-based poet, painter, filmmaker, baker and musician Jamie Broughton, the band have released two acclaimed albums and an EP in little over 12 months. In that time, their 8-strong line-up has formed and hit up The Great Escape, toured the UK, performed a live session for BBC Radio 6Music (New Music Fix) and journeyed across seas for debut European dates at Left of The Dial.
With radio backing this year from Huw Stephens, Steve Lamacq, Deb Grant, Emily Pilbeam, Giles Peterson, Amy Lamé (BBC Radio 6 Music) and John Kennedy (Radio X), as well as press support from the likes of UNCUT, Electronic Sound, Rough Trade, Notion and Far Out, big long sun are wasting no time in charging on ahead.
Gilroy Mere +
Oliver Cherer is back under the alias Gilroy Mere with new album Furlongs, inspired by Eric Ravilious.
In early 2025, Ollie was diagnosed with cancer and had to travel to Brighton Hospital for radiotherapy treatment. Taking the daily 40-mile train ride from St-Leonard's-on-Sea and through the Downs, Ollie filled the journey making music.
Joining Ollie to play the new collection of songs in a special performance at the summer edition of Towner Lates will be a line up including:
Riz Maslen: an electronic artist who has been releasing records for many years as Neotropic and has performed as part of Future Sound on London and Aircooled among others.
Helen Edwards: a classically trained clarinetist with years of orchestral experience. Helen also occasionally plays with Aircoooled.
Hutch Demouilpied: a musician, composer and sound designer based in the UK. Her recent film scores include Daughters of the Late Colonel selected for Cannes 2026 in the prestigious Quinzaine des Cinéastes.
Darren Morris: a producer, pianist and film composer. He has worked with Massive Attack, David Holmes, Steve Mason and Ashley Beedle with whom he is a member of Black Science Orchestra.
Maria Marzaioli: a musician, composer and sound artist inspired by locations, landscapes and the stories a place has to tell. They issue records as YOU&TH and in 2011 undertook a two and a half month long sound exploration of the Glastonbury festival site. Maria has worked with Porridge Radio, Joanna Gruesome, Crayola Lectern and Dez Dare amongst others.
"Cutting through the landscape that Ravilious had painted 90 years earlier, the muted colours and undulations became textures, tempos and modulations.Many of the pieces on this record were inspired by specific paintings that were already familiar to me, while others are reactions to the landscape gently swooshing past the windows of the train and which I knew from walking its footpaths with an ordnance survey map in hand" - Gilroy Mere on new Ravilious inspired album, Furlongs
Bella Spinks +
Bella Spinks is a musician, singer-songwriter, composer and choir leader, known for her ability to craft emotionally rich, evocative music that tells powerful stories. Whether through her solo performances or collaboration, her work is rooted in a belief that music can both tell stories and bring people together.
Bella released her debut album in 2018 and currently runs two choirs in East Sussex. In 2025, Bella performed her own solo work accompanied by a choir of 40 to a sold out Unitarian Church in Brighton. Bella is currently developing a piece of musical theatre about the ban on women's football in 1921.
Bella Spinks
Gilroy Mere
Workshops and Interventions by Ruby Campion and Yanaëlle Ritter (Across the building)
Ruby and Yanaëlle take inspiration from the small and under-acknowledged organisms in our ecosystems to explore themes of mutual aid, interdependence and interconnectedness.
With collaborative movement and making practices, they invite you to notice the processes and exchanges which occur when we see ourselves both as moving parts of a whole, and as a whole formed of smaller parts.
Ground floor: Body of…
Collective bodies: make and move a multi-person puppet together. How might systems, those natural or community-based, work like a body? How might smaller actions connect and respond to eachother to make up a whole?
First floor: Odd-jobs Printmaking
Create monoprints to honour the small, strange and under-acknowledged beings supporting the foundations of natural life. Think microorganisms, creepy-crawlies and other living things with valuable roles rarely appreciated, and often othered. Imagine how these small exchanges culminate in big outcomes. Cut out and collage your prints into a collective piece and see the small create the whole.
Second floor
Living Sculptures
Re-enact Comrades in Art artist Betty Rea’s sculptures using infinity scarves and working in pairs. What would your own two-people sculpture look like? How might two individuals move as one?
Dance performance
What if sculptures could dance? Watch Betty Rea’s works come to life and grow in size.
More about Ruby
Ruby is a multidisciplinary artist and facilitator, interested in impermanence, transformation, and substance.
Their work is a social, spiritual, and environmental practice, focused outside conventional gallery spaces, connecting to the land with site-responsive projects, and sewing seeds of community growth. They use sculpture and storytelling to reimagine historical and mythological ways of relating to each other, material, and the world around us.
They completed a residency with Newhaven Artspace in 2025 titled ‘Homescar’, engaging with the landscape and with local community about their relationships to the coastline. They worked with Yanaëlle Ritter co-developing and facilitating ‘How Sussex Speaks’ Towner Family Days 2024-25, and currently work with trans and disabled communities on their co-faciliated ‘Body as Myth’ workshop series.
More about Yanaëlle
Yanaëlle Ritter is a Belgian British contemporary dance artist based in Eastbourne. She dances in parks, on beaches, in galleries, on stages, and teaches dance to children, teenagers and adults across London and Sussex. Since graduating from London Contemporary Dance School in 2015, Yanaëlle has built a portfolio of outdoor and site-specific dance works. Her walking tour of Eastbourne: ‘The Performance Path’ included short performances along Lother Goetz’s Dance Diagonal artwork.
In 2024-25, Yanaëlle co-led Towner’s Family Days with Ruby Campion. She designs and delivers events and community projects with Company Concentric, and often collaborates with musicians like laouto player Miltos Boumis, composer Owen Ho, or experimental bands Afrit Nebula and Column258.
Film - Towner Cinema
A looped playlist of films will screen throughout the evening at Towner Cinema, curated by Devonshire Collective’s Volta Artists’ Moving Image. Films to be announced shortly.
Exhibitions
Our three exhibitions will be open late and completely free for you to enjoy: Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism, a solo exhibition by Danish artist Cecila Fiona and The Ravilious Collection.
Work by Ruby. Image courtesy of the artist.
Performance by Yanaëlle Ritter. Photo by Jeff Pitcher.
Photo by Rob Harris
Cecilia Fiona, Birth and black holes, 2026. Photo by Jan Søndergaard. Courtesy of the Artist and Niru Ratnam, London.