Tom Hasson on Sussex’s hidden treasures: Carolyn Trant’s Keep frieze

Most people will encounter Carolyn Trant’s etched concrete vision of Sussex, if they do at all, through a car window, catching only a glimpse of it as they travel past The Keep in Moulsecoomb. Others might notice it from a bus, or from a pavement set back beyond five lanes of traffic. It’s remarkably easy to miss.

And while this artwork doesn’t demand attention, it’s worth making the effort to spend some time with. What first appears as a sequence of disconnected images becomes something to be read as it delivers a message about who history belongs to, and the stories that make a place what it is.

The work was commissioned for The Keep’s opening in 2013, with a brief to create an artwork that reflected the building becoming the home of multiple archives: East Sussex County Council, Brighton & Hove City Council and the University of Sussex’s Special Collections, including the internationally renowned Mass Observation Archive. It is a building devoted to collecting the many voices that have shaped Sussex, ensuring that everyday lives sit alongside nationally significant stories, becoming an equal part of the county’s shared memory.

Trant created an artwork that traces a journey across Sussex, bringing together familiar fragments of the county’s landscape and identity in a procession of recognisable forms. The Hastings net huts rise beside rope, fish, anchors and seaweed. Hop plants recall the county’s agricultural past, while a forge and ironworking tools acknowledge its industries. Dew ponds, sheep, birds and the Long Man of Wilmington appear alongside a lighthouse, church, viaduct and clusters of buildings, linking coast and countryside in a continuous landscape.

Even Victorian bathing machines make an appearance in the distance, a subtle nod to Eric Ravilious, whose own depictions of them have become icons of British art.

This panorama of Sussex is framed by the same symbols that appear at either end of, and enclose, The Keep’s logo, overlaid with a tree-like form that reveals within it a map of Sussex. It’s a visual metaphor for the archive’s purpose; the image seeming to grow beyond the logo itself, suggesting that Sussex’s stories cannot be contained by a single symbol, signifier, or even a building.

That approach feels entirely at home within Trant’s wider practice. Best known for her woodcuts, she has long worked through strong silhouettes, carved lines and carefully balanced compositions. Although this commission was realised in etched concrete rather than wood, the relationship between the two processes is remarkably close. Trant first developed the imagery before specialist makers transferred it into the concrete, carving the surface much as a woodblock would be cut for printing. The result feels less like a departure from her practice than it is an extension of it, translating the visual language of printmaking into architecture.

Etched concrete was a relatively new process when The Keep was built, and one they were keen to employ in their commission. It gives the building a permanence appropriate to an archive while providing unexpected nuance. Its surface catches the changing light throughout the day, and across seasons, so that different parts of the work reveal themselves depending on where you stand and at what time of day: distinct each time you return to it.

Although described as both a mural and a frieze in The Keep’s own records, Trant’s work is perhaps better understood as the latter. Historically, occupying the upper bands of classical buildings – think the Parthenon in Athens, or the Arch of Constantine in Rome – friezes were used to tell stories through a sequence of connected images. Trant adopts that same language here. Rather than illustrating a single event though, her frieze tells the story of Sussex itself, inviting visitors to read the building before they enter it.

Speaking about the commission, Trant described The Keep as ‘The People’s Archive’, and how she had wanted that idea to run through the work. Rather than celebrating great individuals, it gives equal weight to ordinary places, working landscapes, and shared experiences: communicating the idea of belonging without the need for written explanation. Public art often commemorates the past. Trant’s frieze does something subtler. It welcomes people into the stories held within The Keep by reminding them that those stories begin outside its walls: in the fields, coastlines, villages and everyday lives of Sussex itself. The archive preserves those histories; the frieze ensures they are already part of the conversation.