Still life, 2023, is a newly commissioned public artwork by Adam Moore at the end of Eastbourne Pier. Commissioned in partnership with Eastbourne ALIVE, in celebration of the Turner Prize 2023. Plan your visit with this interactive map! 

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Still life is an intervention on Eastbourne pier combining image and text with the piers’ unique architecture, choreography, and changing ambience. A digital photograph of the horizon, viewed from the platform upon which the work is printed, carries the last two lines of William Ernest Henley’s 1875 poem Invictus. Henley’s Invictus (Latin for unconquerable) has rippled across the 20th and 21st century quoted by political figures from Winston Churchill to Nelson Mandela, cited in literary works by authors CS Lewis and W.E.B. Du Bois, even ringing out in the lyrics of Lana Del Rey and The Weekend’s 2017 single Lust for life.

Following the death of his father this spring, Adam found the last lines of Henley’s poem penned in his father’s diary. In Adam’s handwriting the same words dance over a summer morning scene with two slight but intentional edits: the word ‘master’ has been substituted for ‘guardian’, and ‘captain’ has been replaced with ‘safeguard’. While acknowledging the necessity for perseverance and determination in adversity, what can be interpreted in Henley’s poem as the British ‘stiff upper lip’, this public artwork encourages you to pause and to consider yourself neither a ‘master’ nor a ‘captain’ while facing life’s challenges, but the custodian of your future and the caretaker of your life throughout changing circumstances and seasons.

Observing people in Eastbourne drawing close to the expanse, Still life is Adam’s accompaniment for those nestled in seclusion upheld at the end of the pier engaged in the phenomenon of drawing close to the sea and the sky, whatever the weather, dedicated in loving memory to his father, Maurice Moore 1942 — 2023.

With thanks to Ricochet and Tom Pope.