Undersea

Spanning four centuries and diverse cultures, this show of more than 7o works, including paintings, prints, drawings and objects, explores the mysteries and myths of the world beneath our oceans

Tom Anholt, Deep Dive, 2022. Courtesy Josh Lilley, London. Copyright Tom Anholt and Josh Lilley. Photo: Gunter Lepkowski.

Hastings Contemporary, Hastings
29 March – 14 September 2025

by CHRISTIANA SPENS

The third exhibition in a trilogy of shows about the mysteries of the sea, Undersea at Hastings Contemporary follows Seaside Modern (2021) and Seafaring (2022) to reveal enigmatic, hypnotising depictions of the ocean, and life within it. Curated by the art historian James Russell, it presents more than 75 artworks – including paintings, prints, drawings and objects – drawn from an array of cultures and movements, over the course of four centuries. The result is an enveloping, mystical vision of the sea that transcends place and time, grasping at a universally fascinating subject which happens to be on the doorstep of the gallery.

Klodin Erb, Mermaids #14, 2023. Image courtesy of the Artist and Bernheim Gallery. Photo: Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich. © Klodin Erb.

Within Undersea, the works are grouped in loosely defined themes; in one section, works inspired by mythology are presented, particularly the spectre of mermaids. Surrealist Paul Delvaux’s painting A Siren in Full Moonlight (1940) presents an unusually benign, friendly mermaid, seeming not to be luring sailors to their death but washed up, resting perhaps, in a little town not unlike Hastings. She sits admiring her scales, luminescent, the scene eerie and quiet. The Swiss painter Klodin Erb’s mermaids are more mystical, in swathes of bright turquoise, wound up with waves and other sea creatures, but still seeming enchanting rather than dangerous – but then perhaps that is the charm of sirens.

Kelechi Nwaneri, Mami wata, 2021. © Kelechi Nwaneri. Courtesy the Artist and Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery.

In another painting, the mermaid’s head resembles that of a goldfish, with human legs kicking behind; less enchanting, perhaps, but not a threatening spectre, simply a strange one. In Mami Wata (2021), the Nigerian painter Kelechi Nwaneri portrays the African goddess and water spirit, who balances snakes and waves, her own gaze python-like, seeming to embody all these elements at once. Alongside Nwaneri’s work is Chioma Ebinama’s Piscean Dream IV (2024), which uses watercolour and ink on handmade paper to create a flock of sirens dragging a centaur-like creature to his watery grave; here, the mermaids are more deadly.

Taiso Yoshitoshi, A Woman Abalone Diver Wrestling With an Octopus, c1870. Source: Wellcome Collection.

At times, the work moves above the surface of the water, revealing the mythologies of people living by the sea, often in some conflict with it. In Taiso Yoshitoshi’s woodcut collage, A Woman Abalone Diver Wrestling With an Octopus (c1870), we find a caricatural scene of a woman with a knife being enveloped by an octopus, for example, and in Christopher Wood’s Ulysses and the Sirens (1929) sailors are at pains to avoid the nude sirens, this time lacking scales, but seeming to be part of the waves themselves. In each of these scenarios, the sirens or creatures personify the entrancing and yet deadly lure of the sea itself, and all that is unknown about it.

Christopher Wood, Ulysses and the Sirens, 1929. Photo: © Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge.

In another section of Undersea, the artists take a more scientific approach, recording creatures and their marine environment carefully. The British artist Nicola Bealing creates an underwater still life in Dead Man’s Fingers II (2020), featuring coral and the darkness of the seabed. This is shown alongside the Greek artist Yiannis Maniatakos’s  delicate, evocative views of the seabed, which he researched by diving underwater. Another highlight is Michael Armitage’s Octopus’s Veil (2016), in which waves seem to lash against trees, an octopus caught in the surf.

Elsewhere, marine organisms are collaborators as well as subjects; in Sea Sculpture (c1725), we can inspect ceramicware that has been lost at sea and then colonised by corals. Sea creatures pop up throughout the exhibition, as objects of wonder, such as in Charles Collins 1738 painting Lobster on a Delft Dish, and in the work of a group of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, including David Bosun, Doris Gingingara, Victor Motlop and Alan Palm. In Motlop’s elegant linocut Karkal Kula, figures sit and fish. Bosun’s intricate linocut Gelam Nguzu Kazi shows a whale and seals, capturing the magical depths of the ocean and its inhabitants.

Nicola Bealing, Cowrie Rock with Teeth, 2020. Oil on panel. Courtesy the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.

There are also more absurdist, lighthearted works, such as Fish in Human Situations (1832) by George Cruikshank and An Old Crab and a Young (c1956) by Edward Bawden, which recollect the idiosyncrasies and oddities of seaside town entertainments, often at odds with the sublime mystery of the sea so close by, and the various cultural relationships with it. As Leah Cross, director of programmes at Hastings Contemporary said of the show: “This exhibition explores the undersea world and its denizens, both real and imaginary, through artists’ eyes. The sea is a cultural space shared by many nations and peoples, and to reflect this, the works on display cross borders, traditions and histories, and celebrate the pleasures of difference.”

The sea is so often a border between countries and continents, between islands and mainlands, and so to see the ocean as a connecting force rather than an isolating one is refreshing, even if these works also show the many ways we can respond and relate to the ocean. Like the sirens that sailors and artists half-see, perhaps imagine, on the edge of the world as we know it, the sea beckons us so gently and sweetly, that we can almost forget everything else it contains.