Antony Penrose
Are you local to Sussex?
I was born in London, but my parents, the Surrealists Roland Penrose and Lee Miller, moved to Farleys Farm in 1949, when I was about 18 months old. I’ve travelled a lot, but Chiddingly has always been home.
Henry Bond
As a Goldsmiths alumnus and former YBA, your name is strongly associated with London. Why and when did you move to Sussex?
I came on a weekend trip to Hastings just after Christmas in 2023, after my divorce. And I liked it so much, I extended the weekend to go on property viewings. Within a week I’d found a flat to rent on the seafront. It really suited me, so in May 2024 I bought it off the landlady.
Nicoleta Carpineau
Are you local?
I’m originally from northern Transylvania, but I have lived in Brighton since 2000, meaning I’ve been here longer than I was in Romania. My son Rumi, who is now 21, was born here. So yes, I am local! But I feel I have two homes.
Pascal Dowers and Paulina Anzorge
What do you think of Brighton and Sussex’s cultural offering?
It’s both very, very good, and it’s very, very bad. Brighton’s music scene is so excellent and getting better all the time, with an amazing variety of great artists visiting and basing themselves in the city, and performing in a wide choice of venues such as the Green Door Store, Prince Albert, Concorde 2, Hope & Ruin, Dome and Brighton Centre. Meanwhile the visual art scene has been in a spiral of decline since we both arrived, not just due to a lack of funding but a lack of quality, too.
Zoe Lyon
What brought you to Sussex?
We’ve been here 20 years. We’d had enough of London, and were coming down to Brighton so often, visiting friends who’d moved down, it just seemed like a natural choice. And it was the best choice I ever made.
Charlotte Colbert
What attracted you to Sussex?
Sussex was the last county to convert from paganism to monotheism – it’s full of magic, eccentrics, free-thinkers, artists, musicians and rebels.
Richard Norris
How did you come to live in Lewes?
I have a friend from Lewes I met at university in Liverpool, Dinah Loeb, and I visited her in the mid-80s, going to the Gardeners Arms and feeling strange undercurrents going on (the pub hasn’t changed a bit since then). I came down again to visit Dinah when I was finishing off the lyrics for the first Grid album, realising I had an affinity for the town, which I equated with the creative process. Quite a few years later Sarah [his wife Sarah Norris, director of Women in Art] and I had a bright orange 70s camper van; we used to park next to The Snowdrop pub…
Nathaniel Hepburn MBE
Congratulations on your award of an MBE in the New Year’s Honours List.
It was a wonderful surprise, and I think it’s an important honour for the sector, for the importance of culture within our community. So I was very happy to accept it on behalf of Charleston and the work that we and others are doing to create this extraordinary cultural life for people who live in and visit this great county.
Jon Tutton
Where do you live and how did you come to live in Sussex?
I live with my wife, the artist Sarah Young, by Worthing seafront and we spend our working days in Brighton. I moved down from Manchester to attend the University of Sussex in the late 1980s, on the basis that it was by the sea and sufficiently far away from my home town. As soon as I arrived, I felt at home.
Helen Cammock
Are you local?
I’ve lived in Brighton since 1989. I came to University of Sussex aged 19 from Somerset because Brighton felt like a safe space for me to start finding out who I was.
Maggie Scott
How did you end up in Sussex?
I was born in London and lived in Notting Hill until I was ten, when the family moved to Hampshire.
Andrew Graham-Dixon
How long have you lived in Sussex and what brought you here?
I’ve lived in Nutley for ten years. My parents bought a house there when I was about four or five. I moved back when they passed away, and I took on the farm and the ancient woodlands. In theory it’s a manor house, but it’s really two houses that are knocked together that used to be a workshop and a forge.
Andrew Churchill
Where do you live, and when/why did you move to Sussex?
I live in Yapton, near Bognor Regis and Arundel. I first moved to Brighton in 1999. We put on some exhibitions in a room above a bookshop, and then I got my first position working for Pallant House Gallery in 2000. I’ve been in West Sussex for around 20 years now.
Sue Tilley
How did you come to be Lucian Freud’s model?
I knew someone who modelled for Lucian, and they introduced him to me and Leigh Bowery, who was my best friend, and he asked us both to sit for him. I used to go early in the morning, for the best light – at 6am in the winter – and stay for six or seven hours. Just lying on the sofa, or sitting on an armchair, naked.
Semiconductor
Can you describe your artistic practice in fewer than 20 words?
Research driven space-time animations, which explore the physical nature of the material world, fundamental reality and our place in it. (Space-time is one word isn’t it?!)