Highlights: Selected Artworks from Southampton's Fine Art Collection - with Dr Alastair Eales

Dr Alastair Eales is leading an illustrated talk on the permanent collection at Southampton City Art Gallery on Sunday 29 November, from 2.30pm to 3.30pm. The session draws on Highlights from the Collection (2026), the catalogue published to mark the gallery's reopening, and opens up a permanent collection described as one of the UK's finest civic art collections.

Eales has worked with the collection as an art educator for more than twenty years, and the talk is built as much on art history as on behind-the-scenes insight. He'll share stories behind selected artworks, the lives of the artists, and the history of the gallery itself. The reopening also frames the collection around questions of art, social power, and who has the right to speak.

Among the works the gallery houses are Abraham Solomon's First Class, the Meeting and Second Class, the Parting, first exhibited in 1854. Eales is also a socially engaged artist and researcher who runs community art projects through Trinity Art Group, a creative collective supported by the charity Trinity Winchester.

The talk runs from 2.30pm to 3.30pm at the gallery on Commercial Road, Southampton, SO14 7LP, and tickets are £8.00.