Dineo Seshee Bopape in Eastbourne

For three years the Contemporary Art Society’s Collections Fund at Frieze has annually enabled the acquisition at Frieze London of a major work for the collection of a selected regional museum.

In 2017, the work acquired was a complex installation by Johannesburg-based artist Dineo Seshee Bopape, which went on view at the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne this summer.

Towner Director Joe Hill reveals how local audiences responded to Bopape’s installation, and how the artist’s distintive and expanded iterations of the idea of land finds a new context within Eastbourne’s collection, which has historically been rich in landscape art. Caroline Douglas explains how the Collections Fund at Frieze forms part of a mission to help UK museums enrich their collections, which CAS has been pursuing since 1910. Bopape herself reflects on being “tickled” that this work now resides in a place that she “had never heard of before... a beautiful place”, adding that “it’s amazing that it will stay beyond me.”

The CAS Collections Fund art Frieze returns to Frieze London for 2019, acquiring a work for the collection of Nottingham Castle Museum. The acquisition will be announced on 2nd October.