Join artist Simon Carter, Firstsite Director Sally Shaw and architect, planner and writer Hana Loftus for a special conversation exploring the ideas, influences and inspirations behind Simon Carter: From the Landscape.

Working in and responding to the landscapes of Essex, Carter’s practice explores our relationship with place and the ways in which the world around us shapes how we see and experience it.

Simon Carter 

Simon Carter is an Essex-based artist and curator. He studied at Colchester Institute (1980–1981) and then North East London Polytechnic (1981–1984).

In 2013, he collaborated with artist Robert Priseman to form the artist-led group Contemporary British Painting and then the ‘East Contemporary Art Collection’, the first dedicated collection of contemporary art for the East of England, which is housed at the University of Suffolk, Ipswich.

Simon is President of Colchester Art Society and has been Artist-in-residence at the University of Essex and Firstsite, Colchester. He is represented by Messum’s.

Sally Shaw

Sally Shaw MBE has been Director of Firstsite since 2016, leading the gallery to national recognition, including winning Art Fund Museum of the Year 2021.

She has curated exhibitions with leading artists including Sarah Lucas, Grayson Perry and Lubaina Himid, while championing emerging and regional talent.

Previously, she held senior roles at Modern Art Oxford, the Mayor of London’s cultural team and Art on the Underground. Sally was awarded an MBE in 2020 for her services to the arts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hana Loftus 

Hana Loftus is an architect, planner and writer who has lived in north Essex for the last two decades.

In collaboration with Maddie Persent, she was commissioned by Firstsite for the exhibition Into the Orchard in 2025. Her first book, Sixteen Acres, will be published by Profile Books in March 2027.

About ‘Simon Carter: From The Landscape’ exhibition

For more than 40 years, Frinton-based artist Simon Carter has walked, drawn and painted the landscape around him.

“From the Landscape” brings together this long relationship with the Essex coast and countryside in an exhibition that asks us to look at painting in a different way.