Hastings Contemporary presents Mackerel sky, mackerel sky, never long wet, never long dry, a solo exhibition by British artist Sophie Barber (b.1996) in the town where she lives and works.

With intimate three-dimensional ‘cushion’ canvas paintings and large-scale works, Barber’s approach mixes humour and popular culture with folklore and the surreal, playing with the possibilities of scale, reference and materiality.

Her visual world is filled with echoes of her environment: bird shelters, tents, beaches, and the region’s ever-shifting skies. In the new work made for this exhibition, Barber also returns to her long-held interest in the stories and structures of art history, referencing artists she admires, including Georgia O’Keeffe, David Hockney and Vincent van Gogh.