By Jane Buttery
As we count down to the TURPS | Hastings 2025 exhibition, set to open from 3rd to 6th July at Rye Creative Centre, I find myself reflecting—not on the past, but on the electric anticipation building among we painters. This year’s cohort is poised to bring something fiercely personal, quietly radical, and undeniably painterly to this East Sussex space.
For those unfamiliar, TURPS is unlike any other art programme I’ve encountered. Founded in London by painters for painters, it’s a deeply peer-driven environment that values risk-taking, dialogue, and material exploration over institutional polish. Through its various off-site programmes—including TURPS Correspondence, Off-Site, and the now firmly rooted TURPS | Hastings—it continues to offer a space where painters grow through mentorship, shared critique, and uncompromising honesty. turpsbanana.com
This year, our group spans the creative triangle of Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, and Rye, gathering monthly at Electro Studios in St Leonards for group crits, and hosting mentors such as Matthew Burrows, Geraldine Swayne, and Paula MacArthur in our studios for one-to-one tutorials. It’s a strange alchemy: solitude and community, intuition and analysis, all unfolding across twelve months of rigorous painting.
Personally, I’ve pushed deeper into abstraction—something I might not have had the courage to do without the quiet prompts from peers like Anna Jury, whose graphic sensitivity has inspired me to edit more brutally. Then there’s Soma Bognar, whose layered figurative worlds seem to unfold over time like novels, and Adrienne Hunter, whose chromatic boldness constantly reminds me that colour is form, and not just decoration.
We’re all working in our own corners, but there’s a shared momentum. You can feel it in the group messages, in studio visits, in the way we talk about failure like it’s just another material. This is the spirit we’re bringing to Rye Creative Centre in July: not a polished showcase, but a cross-section of painterly practice at its most alive.
And while I can’t reveal too much, I will say this: the 2025 exhibition won’t follow trends or tidy narratives. It will be a room full of individual voices in dialogue—sometimes clashing, sometimes echoing, always rooted in the act of painting itself.
If you’re curious about the future of painting—not just what it looks like, but how it grows—come visit us.
🖼 TURPS | Hastings 2025 Exhibition
📍 Rye Creative Centre, New Road, Rye TN31 7LS
📅 PV: Wednesday 2nd July, 5 – 8pm; then 3–6 July 2025
🕒 Daily, 10-4.30PM
🎟 Free entry
Whether you’re a fellow painter, a collector, or someone simply drawn to colour, gesture, and experimentation, this show is for you. And if you’re considering applying to the next TURPS cohort? Come and see what a year of painting, talking, failing, and growing can look like.
See you in Rye.
— Jane Buttery