Immortal Apples, Eternal Eggs

with The Ingram Collection

at Hastings Contemporary

20 September 2024–16 March 2025
Roberts Institute of Art

This autumn, join us at Hastings Contemporary for a major new exhibition exploring the rich and complex genre of still life.

Immortal Apples, Eternal Eggs is a meeting of two of the UK’s most significant collections — The Ingram Collection and the David and Indrė Roberts Collection — and will include work from artists including Phyllida Barlow, Louise Bourgeois, Sir Anthony Caro, Patrick Caulfield, Michael Craig-Martin, Dame Elisabeth Frink, Sarah Lucas, Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson.

The exhibition juxtaposes world-class contemporary sculpture, video and installation alongside traditional still life painted works. It aims to challenge assumptions about this familiar genre, inviting new perspectives and asking viewers: what really is still life?

More than 50 artworks will be on display, created by more than 50 artists over the past 100 years.

Roberts Institute of Art

Sarah Lucas, Grace, 2006. Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London. © Sarah Lucas

Roberts Institute of Art

Michael Craig-Martin, Portrait (Yellow), 2006. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian. © Michael Craig-Martin


The exhibition will begin with a dramatic and theatrical display in the gallery’s largest space, placing large-scale sculptures by Cathie Pilkington and Ai Weiwei alongside paintings by artists including Ansel Krut and John Armstrong.

The show will progress thematically, journeying through trace and absence, wildness and cultivation, production and consumption, and magic and transformation, while also delving into still life’s darker undercurrents of death, violence and exploitation with works by Lonnie Holley, Gabriella Boyd and William Turnbull.

Hastings Contemporary

Hastings Contemporary champions modern and contemporary art. An ambitious programme of temporary exhibitions showcases work by important Modern British artists, internationally celebrated artists and emerging practitioners, often in Kunsthalle-style displays throughout the building. The gallery has developed a reputation for its focus on painting. Innovative programming, partnerships and collaborations support a commitment to outreach, learning |and participation. The award-winning building is located on the town’s historic fishing beach among the net huts and working structures of the fishing fleet.

The Ingram Collection

The Ingram Collection is one of the largest and most significant publicly accessible collections of Modern British Art in the UK. Through its programme of loans and exhibitions, the collection works in partnership with galleries & museums, innovative spaces, and new artistic talent to bring art to the widest possible audience. Founded in 2002 by serial entrepreneur and philanthropist Chris Ingram, the collection spans over 100 years of British art and includes over 600 artworks. More than 400 of these are by some of the most important British artists of the 20th century, amongst them Edward Burra, Lynn Chadwick, Elisabeth Frink, Barbara Hepworth and Eduardo Paolozzi. The main focus of the collection is on the art movements that developed in the early and middle decades of the 20th century, and there is a particularly strong and in-depth holding of 20th century British sculpture. The Ingram Collection holds a growing number of works by young and emerging artists, and in 2016 established The Ingram Prize, an annual purchase prize created to celebrate and support the work and early careers of UK art school graduates.

Image credits

Nigel Cooke, More Ideas, 2010. Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery. © Nigel Cooke

Cathie Pilkington, Singerie, 2004. Courtesy the artist. © Cathie Pilkington. Photo: Graham Chalifour

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