Two venues, two contemporary artists yet how different the places and the responses can be. In London, I am at the Hospital, Dave Stewart's trendy gallery, to see an exhibition by Anya Gallaccio; the next day, I am in Bexhill-on-Sea, a recently reopened public space, to view a Jeremy Deller show.

Both Deller and Gallaccio were Turner Prize nominees. Gallaccio lost out to flamboyant potter Grayson Perry in 2003 while Deller went on to win the award a year later. Deller was in the Carnegie International show last year and Gallaccio showed at the Papesse Foundation in Siena. Both artists exhibit at prestigious galleries -- Gallaccio shows with Lehmann Maupin in New York and Deller with the Modern Institute in Glasgow.

When Stewart, who was in the rock group Eurythmics with Annie Lennox, and Paul G. Allen, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., opened the Hospital in 2004, it was described as a great venue for contemporary art. With its seven floors mixing hotel rooms, a restaurant and a recording studio it could be a place where people from all forms of the media could mingle.

On arrival it is hard not to be intimidated as you seem to be entering an expensive restaurant, yet I persevere and walk past the reception. The much publicized gallery is in a small back room.

I enter and see a pile of what looks like sand on the floor. There is also a sign saying ``Do not touch, this piece is dangerous.'' There are two workmen who tell me that you can't see the piece until they turn the lights off but that I have to request they do so. It is only then that I can see a rainbow hovering above the sand.

Colors on Sand

Since the title of the work is ``Chasing Rainbows'' I assume that I got the gist. These are mechanical rainbows, though, with none of the poetry of rainbows in nature. Flat against the sand and small and uninspiring they are nothing like the thrill of finding one yourself in the sky.

Gallaccio has always been interested in entropy, things that wither, rot, melt and disappear. Apples, flowers, ice blocks have been her unconventional materials in the past. I loved her show in Siena where she transported a field inside the manicured palazzo that houses the Papesse. It made me look at the earth of Siena with its cloggy soil in a totally new way. This work, though, is neither transforming nor inspiring.

On the train to Bexhill the next day I am grumpily considering what I will be able to write about Deller's show in the Pavilion. I remember going on an architectural pilgrimage to Bexhill years ago and being dispirited. The building had fallen into disrepair and was boarded up and unloved.

About to become a Wetherspoon pub, the building was saved by a local campaign and a restoration fund. Costing 8 million pounds ($15 million) and taking two years to complete, the renovation was finished in 2005. What a glorious resurrection.

Modernist Relic

The De La Warr Pavilion is one of the few surviving buildings by the great German modernist Erich Mendelsohn. It was built in 1933-35 in partnership with Serge Chermayeff, a younger British architect. The ninth Earl De La Warr, who was socialist mayor of Bexhill in East Sussex from 1932-35, wanted a building that the town would use and where entry would be free.

How inspiring it is to see the Pavilion today. Gleaming white in the sun, with its curved multifloor wing jutting out virtually onto the beach, the building is a symbol of modernism's moment.

What is more heartening is that it is not merely beautiful but also functional and, today, a hive of activity. Housing a 1,000-seat auditorium and two galleries on separate floors as well as a cafe and a restaurant, the Pavilion is attracting large numbers of both local residents and tourists to its totally free programs.

Artist-in-Residence

Deller's work occupies the ground-floor gallery. It is a tough show for a provincial space yet especially apt as Deller was an artist-in-residence here in 1998. In the past, he has seemed to me to be more of a cultural historian than an artist. His works here, such as the recreation of the Battle of Orgreave in partnership with director Mike Figgis, stir historical as well as aesthetic issues.

``The Battle of Orgreave'' (2001) is a meticulous recreation of the 1984 fight between U.K. miners and policemen. The work involved more than 1,000 participants, many of them men who had been involved in the actual event, intercut with Deller's statements about the historical importance of the event.

By recreating it the conflict comes alive in a way that news photographs cannot. Deller is convinced that the current U.K. government would behave in a similar way in the same situation and wants to emphasize this point through the work.

``Memory Bucket''

In a similar political vein, Deller looks at the Bush administration in his film ``Memory Bucket'' (2003). This was the most memorable work for me in the Turner prize show of 2004, looking at both the pro- and anti-Bush camps.

You see the mass public protests on Bush's visit to San Antonio, Texas, contrasting with the laconic comments of the waitress who serves Bush hamburgers in his favorite diner. The film ends with a seemingly endless stream of bats exiting a cave, too endless I feel as I try to sit through the exodus.

I have concerns about the historical anti-aesthetic quality of Deller's work yet that seems to be what is most attractive to the considerable number of visitors in the gallery. It is a very English concern, this love of history, and it is on display all around me as old men explain the history of the mining strike to their younger companions. This is art relating to the public in a direct way and it is impressive to witness.

Mike Anstee

Upstairs, Brighton-based artist Mike Anstee continues to work in situ on a large piece which will eventually be destroyed next month. Anstee's recreations of battle scenes in blue ink are precisely detailed. He has said that he likes visitors watching although he won't talk or break off work when I visit, saying ``I'm inviting them to look through me to the line.''

My preconceptions have been dashed. I had doubted I would enjoy my day in Bexhill but I am captivated. Surrounded by happy punters sipping tea and sitting in the sun regarding the beach, I could be in Nice. I have seen Deller reach an audience that I would have thought impervious to contemporary art.

What a contrast to the Gallaccio show where I was put off by the pretentiousness of the site. That soured me on an artist whose work previously had made me look at the world in a different way.

Anya Gallaccio's exhibition runs through Sept. 16 at the Hospital, 24 Endell Street, London, go to http://www.thehospital.dreamhost.com . The Jeremy Deller show is at the Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea through Sept. 17, see http://www.dlwp.com .

(Karen Wright is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)