EASTBOURNE.- Caroline Lucas is the Green Party’s first MP, currently representing Brighton Pavilion, and has served as an MEP and as Leader and Co-Leader of the Green Party. This Autumn she takes on a new challenge: to curate her first ever exhibition for the walls of a major UK gallery.

Caroline curated an exhibition in East Sussex, at Towner Art Gallery, the largest gallery on the South Coast. The exhibition takes place from 14 December until 10 May 2020.

Selecting from the 5000 works in Towner’s Collection, Caroline’s choices reflect and resonate with her passions and her interests, from her environmental work, the impact of climate change and its effects on our landscape, to her love of living in Sussex.

Towner has collected and exhibited contemporary art for almost 100 years. The Collection is best known for its modern British art – including the largest and most significant body of work by Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) – and a growing collection of international contemporary art and moving image works. Since the arrival of Director Joe Hill in 2018, Towner have presented a series of exhibitions where the Collection has been guest curated, giving visitors the opportunity to see many of the works in a new light or from a different perspective.

Caroline is an active campaigner on a range of issues and has consistently been voted the UK's most ethical politician. ​She patron of many and varied arts projects over the years she currently supports organisations such as Kollektiv, ONCA Gallery and Firecracker Theatre Company but has never curated an exhibition before.

Caroline Lucas commented, ​“I’m very excited to have been invited by Towner to be a guest curator. It has already been a real treat to lose myself for a few hours in their extraordinary Collection, even though I now have the challenge of selecting artworks for the exhibition. It will be a very hard choice but one I am hugely looking forward to.”

Head of Collections for Towner, Sara Cooper, added, “​We are thrilled to have been able to invite Caroline to curate an exhibition from the works in our Collection. Caroline is a passionate advocate for a range of issues related to the environment and climate change and we hope that viewers will see both our Collection and the wider world around them in a new light through the selection of art works that Caroline has chosen. Alongside Caroline’s curated display, we will also be exhibiting David Nash’s 200 Seasons, so there will be a dialogue for visitors between the two exhibitions through a shared environmental interest.”