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In collaboration with Towner Eastbourne, 'Queering the collection' highlights works by LGBTQIA+ artists in the collection, written by Collectively podcast host and artist Renee Vaughan Sutherland.

Phelan Gibb's Three Graces found me before I found it. I discovered myself in Towner Eastbourne's art collection storeroom staring at it – transfixed. Every time I revisited it – at least a dozen times – the same spell, increasing in magnitude, settled upon me. It was as if time collapsed and some deep all-knowing affection would cocoon me in a close to out-of-body state; I'm looking at myself looking at the picture, I'm watching it be painted, I'm in the image and I pre-date its existence all at once. I never wanted to look away and break the trance-like state it induced.

The Three Graces can feel as though it was created long before its realisation in , but simultaneously it looks radically contemporary. This timeless quality jolted a connection to what a psychic told me a couple of decades ago, that in a past life I was ancient Egyptian royalty. Now, I'm not entirely convinced of reincarnation, but my consciousness (and no doubt my ego) held steadfast to the not