Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and Fashion

Charleston Lewes Southover Road, Lewes, East Sussex, United Kingdom

Catwalk creations by the likes of Dior, Fendi and Burberry alongside never-before-seen Bloomsbury portraits and personal items, including Virginia Woolf’s handbag, embroidered by Vanessa Bell. This exhibition, at Charleston’s new Lewes hub will run in tandem with the first UK survey show of leading British contemporary sculpture, installation and performance artist Jonathan Baldock.

Jonathan Baldock: through the joy of the senses

Charleston Lewes Southover Road, Lewes, East Sussex, United Kingdom

This neo-pagan spectacular by leading contemporary artist Jonathan Baldock fills the top floor of the brand-new Charleston in Lewes arts hub with colourful large-scale sculptural works. Expect nature motifs, mannequins, and lots of tongues, made with fabric, paint and ceramics. Wonderful!

David Hockney: Love Life

Charleston Firle, Lewes, East Sussex

Experience rarely-seen early drawings by one of the most popular and recognisable artists of our time, David Hockney (b.1937). From a box of matches on a table to bunches of spring onions and leeks, David Hockney’s works exemplify his ability to find beauty in the more intimate and seemingly ordinary aspects of life, encapsulating Hockney’s […]

Small Wonder Festival

Charleston Firle, Lewes, East Sussex

This celebration of the shortest forms of writing – from short stories to essays, song writing, poetry and journalism – brings us four days of discussions, workshops and family events, featuring leading and emerging voices across literature, journalism, the arts, environment, language, culture and more. Names to look out for include William Boyd, Jeanette Winterson […]

The Faces of Bloomsbury

Charleston Firle, Lewes, East Sussex

This exhibition showcases ten Bloomsbury works sourced exclusively from private collections. These works include a recently discovered portrait of Vanessa Bell painted by Duncan Grant, and an experimental portrait by Bell of her friend Molly MacCarthy. These works will only be on display for this ten week show, and tickets are limited, so book ahead […]

Dorothy Hepworth and Patricia Preece: An Untold Story

Charleston Lewes Southover Road, Lewes, East Sussex, United Kingdom

Bloomsbury fringe member Patricia Preece was the wife of Stanley Spencer, and a much lauded mid-century painter in her own right. Or was she? Her marriage to Spencer was never consummated, and there is intriguing evidence that most, if not all, of her exhibited work was painted by her long-term lover Dorothy Hepworth.  

Charleston Festival

Charleston Firle, Lewes, East Sussex

The annual festival of art and ideas returns to its bucolic home turf for its 35th edition on 16 May, bringing with it a list of speakers as exciting and illustrious as ever. Speakers include Succession creator and Peep Show co-creator Jesse Armstrong, the inimitable Grayson Perry, journalist and broadcaster Emily Maitlis, and comedy legend […]

Charleston Festival of the Garden

Charleston Firle, Lewes, East Sussex

One of the biggest inspirations for modernist art of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant was the garden that surrounded Charleston: both were keen gardeners, transforming the muddy, overgrown patch of land they moved into, in 1916, onto an imaginatively structured, richly scented, brightly coloured paradise (with quite a lot of help from Maynard Keynes). Charleston […]