Silent Companions

Amy Dury brings a new solo exhibition, Silent Companions, to The Regency Town House from Wednesday 21 October, running through to Sunday 1 November. It's a collection of large-scale works that continue her fascination with figures from the recent past.

That's the thread that runs through the show. Dury describes looking back into the recent past as "an act of remembering and nostalgic misremembering, with photographs and film becoming the vehicle which constructs stories about ourselves." She goes on to say that our history "instructs, seduces and tethers us," and that she uses paint to examine those emotive memories, which she feels reflect current themes and tensions in contemporary life. It's that tension between the personal and the wider world that sits at the heart of the work.

The venue itself plays a part. The Regency Town House is a grade 1 listed terraced home in Brunswick Town, built in the 1820s and run as a heritage centre and museum by staff and volunteers through The Brunswick Town Charitable Trust. For Dury, it provides both inspiration and the scope to show work on a larger scale than you might find in a smaller gallery.

It's a local connection, too. Dury is a Brighton-born artist whose figurative painting and portraiture explore innocence, freedom, friendship, connection and family. She's also known for something quite different: she was the first British woman to swim the English Channel, and later created a 3m-high mural at Hove Lagoon to mark the feat. Her work has been shown solo in the UK, New York and Berlin, and she completed a major Hermès commission in Paris that was displayed along the Champs Elysée.

Silent Companions runs from Wednesday 21 October to Sunday 1 November, open 11:00am to 5:00pm, or by appointment. You'll find it at The Regency Town House, 13 Brunswick Square, Brighton & Hove, BN3 1EH.