Great Yarmouth Artist Jane Hall Unveils New Seaside Seductions Exhibition

Great Yarmouth's quirkiest art gallery plays host to Jane Hall's seaside-themed paintings...

Great Yarmouth Art Gallery

This week sees the launch of a new exhibition of seaside-themed paintings by the Great Yarmouth artist Jane Hall. Taking place at Harvey Wilson's Secret Gallery over the coming three weeks, this exciting new art show sees the popular artist filling Norfolk's most bohemian gallery with her usual mixture of paintings based on the Yarmouth's seafront culture - so think ice creams, fruit machines, amusement arcades, hot dogs, fish and chips and all the traditional British seaside sights.

Artist Jane Hall

Jane will also be exhibiting the latest pieces in her highly successful and collectible 'Postcards From Great Yarmouth' series. These smaller works - each the size of a traditional seaside postcard - take as their subjects some of the lesser known sights of Great Yarmouth. They focus on the back streets and side streets of this quintessential seaside holiday town, capturing the night-time lights in convenience stores doorways, kebab shop windows and takeaway restaurants.

Seaside Seductions runs from 25th of August to the 9th of September 2015 at Harvey Wilson's Secret Gallery, 33a Market Row, Great Yarmouth. The gallery is open Monday to Saturday from 9.30am to 3.30pm, with a special late night opening between 6pm and 9pm on Friday 28th of August.

Jane Hall's Soho Sex Shop Paintings Act As A Reminder Of London's Disappearing History

The closure of numerous Soho sex shops adds extra value to Great Yarmouth artist's paintings.

Great Yarmouth Artist Jane Hall

When Jane Hall started painting sex shops paintings for a solo show at the Reading Room in Soho's Frith Street in 2012, she had no idea how quickly London's changing landscape would trigger the closure of so many of the stores she chose to paint. Established sex shops and strip joints that had been a feature of Soho for years and years quickly began to close their doors. Cursed by crippling license fees, the boom in Internet sex toys and clean up campaigns, these colourful, vibrant and enticing stores were suddenly replaced by endless coffee shops, clothes boutiques and convenience stores.

Soho Sex Shop Paintings

"It's amazing how many of these shops have gone now," says Jane, just back from a trip to London. "Places like Janus, the Private Shop, Trashy Lingerie and Lovejoy's were thriving just a few years ago, but now they're gone forever - and have been placed with something much more bland. In fact, it's bizarre that a place like London doesn't have a booming sex shop industry, because everywhere else I go to in Europe really celebrates that kind of thing. But then we've always been a very prudish nation, so I guess I shouldn't really be surprised."

"It's a shame for me, though," Jane adds, "because sex shops are such exciting things to paint. I love all the neon signage and the seedily erotic window displays, plus the general air of mystery behind the boarded up frontages and rainbow-strip curtains. I guess it's lucky that I painted so many of them when I did, because they appear to be lost forever now. But at least the sex shop paintings still remain as a record of what Soho used to be like."

For more information on Jane Hall's sex shop paintings, visit www.jane-hall.co.uk.