Artist Mariana Castillo Deball has delved deep into the Towner collection to uncover rarely displayed works alongside familiar and much-loved depictions of the Sussex landscape.
Amongst the considerable holdings of works on paper, Mariana was immediately drawn to Leslie Moffat Ward’s The Long Man of The Downs (1943), a modest print of the larger-than-life hill figure. This print is central to the exhibition and continues Mariana Castillo Deball’s fascination with geoglyphs (large drawings in the landscape) that have informed her upcoming England’s Creative Coast commission.
Deball takes a kaleidoscopic approach to her practice, working between science, archaeology, and visual art, exploring the way in which these disciplines can describe the world.
Her multi-media work arises from the recombination of different languages that seek to understand the role objects play in our identity and history. Her works are the result of a long research process, allowing her to study the different ways in which a historical object can be interpreted.
