Jane Dallaway

  • Dragons at the Royal Pavilion

    13 August 2026

    The dragon in the entrance hall, the first dragon we see on the trail

    I used my Brighton museums membership this afternoon and visited the pavilion. It’s a place I’ve been to most years at winter time to enjoy the decorated trees. I haven’t been in summer for years, if ever.

    The head of a big green dragon

    A dragon disappearing down the basement steps

    A pink and gold dragon's tail appearing out of a toilet

    At the moment there is a dragon exhibition and trail which was really playful and amusing. I can’t help feeling that someone had a lot of fun setting this up.

    Crace and Jones background artwork for the Chinoiserie decoration

    A fragment of the design for the carpet in the Saloon

    There are some lovely pieces of dragon related art in the upstairs gallery including a drawing created by the Craces and Jones sometime in the early 1800s for the pavilion, and a surviving fragment of Robert Jones’s design for the carpet in the Saloon.

    I’ll be back to see the trees come December and will keep an eye out for any dragons that are still hanging around!

  • Watching the partial solar eclipse

    12 August 2026

    We joined lots of other Brighton residents at the seafront to watch the partial solar eclipse. We found a spot on Hove Lawns and sat for a while, surrounded by happy people: families, friends, organised groups. Almost every group had some kind of viewing mechanism with them. I saw a lot of repurposed cereal boxes, a decent amount of solar glasses (us included), a few CD-based viewers and a lot of colanders.

    Crowds gathered on Hove Lawns for the eclipse, silhouetted against a hazy sun over the sea

    Crowds spread across Hove Lawns with Brighton's i360 tower and seafront buildings behind

    Great to see the partial eclipse. Even better to feel the sense of community. Everyone gathered for one thing, and for once it was a natural phenomenon.

    A blue crescent-shaped lens flare beside the hazy sun, echoing the eclipse's crescent shape

    This is the best photo I got, and it’s the lens flare that is the interesting bit, showing the crescent shape of the sun. Rarely would a photo of a lens flare be something I’d enjoy looking at!

    Holding up the homemade pinhole viewer, cut from a page of my notebook

    A tiny crescent of light projected through the pinhole onto the notebook page below

    Just before leaving the house I pierced a sheet in my notebook with a pin and used it to view the eclipse. It worked well enough, and I enjoyed the simplicity.

  • Henry Moore and more at Wakehurst

    12 August 2026

    Henry Moore's Mother and Child: Block Seat sculpture in the foreground with Wakehurst's Elizabethan mansion behind

    A friend mentioned that she’d seen a news piece about some Henry Moore sculptures being at Wakehurst. This sounded intriguing, so it got added to my list. Yesterday another friend and I paid a visit. Lovely to see the sculptures. Lovely to see them in an outdoor space. I very much love a sculpture garden and these worked in the same way. The ability to walk around them. To see them from different angles. And to see them respond to their environment.

    Three bronze Wilde Leute figures by Paloma Varga Weisz standing in the meadow

    The first sculpture we came across wasn’t a Henry Moore, it was one of the “and more” in the exhibition’s title. This featured three of Paloma Varga Weisz’s Wilde Leute characters.

    Henry Moore's bronze Reclining Figure sculpture on a stone plinth

    Henry Moore's dark bronze Reclining Connected Forms sculpture set among long grass and wildflowers

    I was disappointed that there was no map or list giving an indication of how many sculptures there were, or where we’d find them. We managed to find all four Henry Moores. When I checked the webpage later, I discovered we missed an entire artist as we didn’t make it down to the Nothofagus Beech tree collection. It was a hot day so we limited our explorations.

    Wide view across Wakehurst's meadow with Rana Begum's colourful Mesh installation visible in the distance

    My friend and I enjoyed Mesh, by Rana Begum, because it seemed to change shape and colour depending on where in the gardens we were. We got up close to it to see the simplicity of its design, reminding us that effective doesn’t always mean complex. This followed on from a piece by the same artist I saw in Pallant House last month. More artist continuity in action. Love it!

    The sculptures are there until next year, so perhaps a revisit is in order when it’s cooled down.