Installation: Sven Berlin – Drawings from The Dark Monarch

Please enjoy these informal installation shots of our exhibition of 27 of the 32 drawings made for The Dark Monarch by Sven Berlin. Executed c.1955, these drawings were used as illustrations for his notorious roman-à-clef The Dark Monarch in 1962. The work was a thinly-disguised and irreverent portrait of St Ives, its artists, and others who lived and worked in the town. Among the loosely disguised cast of artistic characters were W. Barns-Graham, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Bernard Leach, Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron, Bryan Wynter and many others. The novel was withdrawn soon after publication, when legal action was taken by four of the local ‘characters’ in the book. This is the first time that the original drawings made for the novel have been exhibited.

You can view the individual works in the exhibition by following this link to the gallery website.

Brian Rice & Graham Rich: Installation

Please enjoy these informal shots of our two current solo exhibitions, running side-by-side in the main gallery: Brian Rice – Recent Paintings and Graham Rich – A Different Kind of Space. Individual works can be viewed on the gallery website using the links above.

Alice Mumford / Composite Shadows / Installation

Our Alice Mumford exhibition opened with a very lively Private View on Saturday evening, and the show has been visited and enjoyed by many visitors since we opened the doors on Monday. The exhibition runs until 7 Oct and coincides with the St Ives September Festival. We hope you enjoy the installation shots above, you can also view individual works on the gallery website here.

ALICE MUMFORD Composite Shadows

PRESS RELEASE

16 Sept – 7 Oct 2019, Belgrave St Ives
Private View Sat 14 Sept 6 – 8pm

“The passing of time is explored by Alice Mumford in a new body of work that looks at the painting and history of the shadow. Ambiguous time, elongated time and the spatial elements of time are explored in these paintings.”

The Sea View, Summer Afternoon Light, Perranuthnoe
Oil on canvas; 100 x 100 cms

Belgrave St Ives is pleased to announce an exhibition by the painter Alice Mumford. In her previous exhibition, Mumford asked the viewer to study and celebrate with her the importance of colour and how it can be used to picture the everyday ordinariness of life but also its wonder. This time she is asking us to look at the passing of time that is present in a painting by offering a series of still-life and landscape works that play with shadow planes through the study of open windows, roof tops, laden tables and Cornish sea-scapes. In one of her painting courses (she is regarded highly as a teacher of painting), one of her students asked her, “What time of the day do you think Bonnard painted this?” Alice and other people in the group couldn’t decide. Alice then reflected ‘Bonnard makes composite shadows like a composite character in a book. These paintings are not made from one moment but from a whole day or time, from being in a place.’ She has worked towards the exhibition with this reflection as a focus.

Alice Mumford’s studio during her work towards Composite Shadows

Mumford is a painter who is entirely committed to her craft. Following training at Dartington, Camberwell, Southwark and Falmouth Colleges of Art, she has become one of the most accomplished painters currently working in Cornwall. After early successes with Cobra & Bellamy, Julian Lax and Badcocks Gallery, Mumford has been represented by Belgrave St Ives since 2005, during which time she has established herself as a pre-eminent painter of still life interiors that draw heavily on her own domestic life. Sansom & Co published a first monograph of her work in 2015. (Copies are available at the gallery.)

A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition with a forward by the artist.

A special event to accompany the exhibition will be held Friday 27 September at Borlase Smart Room, Porthmeor Studios in St Ives. The artist will be in conversation with Dr Ian Massey, discussing the history of shadows and what composite shadows are.

#ArtStives #CompositeShadows @belgravestives

Cider and Melon Pieces on a Hot June Day
Oil on canvas; 61 x 76 cms

NOTES TO EDITORS

For further information and images, please contact Richard Blackborow:

Belgrave St Ives, 22 Fore Street, St Ives, Cornwall TR26 1HE

richard@belgravestives.co.uk    tel. 01736 794888

 

ENDS

Part Earth: Part Flower; Painting with Plants and Porcelain

PRESS RELEASE: New Ceramic and Plant Exhibition:

REBECCA HARVEY AND POLLY CARTER
Part Earth: Part Flower; Painting with Plants and Porcelain
16 Sept – 7 Oct 2019, Belgrave St Ives
Private View Sat 14 Sept 6 – 8pm

Part Earth: Part Flower; Painting with Plants and Porcelain is an exhibition by ceramicist Rebecca Harvey and heritage horticulturalist Polly Carter. It explores the interconnectedness between earth and flower in the vein of Zen philosophy.

On entering the gallery during the St Ives September Festival, a series of especially made new porcelain works by Rebecca Harvey will greet you. Part of a site-specific installation of vessels, displayed with flowers by Polly Carter, these small vessels arranged on dishes will become interchangeable.

Work towards Part Earth: Part Flower

It was a quote by Virginia Woolf that drew Harvey and Carter truly together. It is based around a formative experience that occurred in the garden of Talland House in St Ives where Woolf and her painter sister Vanessa Bell spent her childhood summers. Looking at a flower in a border in the garden she remembers thinking:

“That is the whole…. I was looking at a plant with a spread of leaves: and it seemed suddenly plain that the flower itself was part of the earth, that a ring enclosed what was the flower; and that was the real flower; part earth; part flower. “

During this summer Harvey has collaborated with St Ives based gardener Polly Carter to bring this exhibition to fruition. They have worked together to incur a deeper connection between the vessels and their intended or suggested use, which is that of displaying flowers. The collaboration extends to a creative and experimental approach to the display of the work; the relationship between the vessels and flowers and how visitors experience the gallery space has been considered using a Zen like approach.

Whilst Carter has been growing the plants used in the exhibition during the summer and autumn, Harvey has been ‘kinking’ the rim of her vessels by hand, creating offerings for stems to fall naturally in place without too much effort or thought and so each material connects. In addition she has been creating glazes, and with Carter, investigating plants and glazes so the viewer will have their senses stimulated.

Rebecca Harvey studied at the Royal College of Art. Her pottery has evolved from her interest in 18th century Creamware and Japanese ceramics. A warm, soft satin glaze envelops the calm but strong forms in a smooth, rich, tactile surface. She was honoured by a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust in 2005 and is a dedicated teacher. She is also known for her publications on glazes and ceramic tableware. Her work can be found in both public and private collections.

Polly Carter has a background in curating contemporary art exhibitions and re-trained in heritage horticulture when moving to Cornwall from Brighton in 2013. She has planted a Tudor knot garden and Medieval herb garden at Pengersick Castle in Praa Sands, is currently renovating the garden at Talland House in St Ives and is the kitchen gardener for Porthminster Café St Ives. She also passionately gardens a few secret and special gardens in the famous town.

#ArtStives #PartearthPartflower @belgravestives

NOTES TO EDITORS

For further information and images, please contact Richard Blackborow:

Belgrave St Ives, 22 Fore Street, St Ives, Cornwall TR26 1HE

richard@belgravestives.co.uk tel. 01736 794888

ENDS

—

A Distant Isle; Wilhelmina Barns-Graham in Lanzarote

PRESS RELEASE                                                                                         

New One-Person Exhibition:
WILHELMINA BARNS-GRAHAM (1912 – 2004)
A Distant Isle; Wilhelmina Barns-Graham in Lanzarote
10 – 29 June 2019, Belgrave St Ives
Private View: 8 June 6 – 8pm

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s Lanzarote series is a remarkable and significant body of work from the latter part of the artist’s career, the extent of which is still to be fully assessed. This is the first exhibition to look solely at the artist’s response to the unique topography and geology of this volcanic island. Barns-Graham returned to Lanzarote annually over a 5-year period (1989 – 93) to work in this formidable landscape, the resultant paintings and drawings demonstrate the artist’s interest in natural structures and her deep-rooted analytical observational skills.

Timanfaya Mt. Fuego 1989  Acrylic on paper; 36 x 49.5 cms

Barns-Graham was born in St Andrews, Fife, on 8 June 1912. Determining while at school that she wanted to be an artist, she set her sights on Edinburgh College of Art where she enrolled in 1932 and graduated with her diploma in 1937. When Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, known as Willie, moved to Cornwall in 1940, the artist’s drawings and paintings started reflecting the patterns, natural and man-made, of place, be it of Cornwall, the Scilly Isles, Switzerland’s Grindelwald Glacier (1949), the quarries and ravines of Tuscany/Sicily (1953-1955) or the rocky edge of the Balearics (1958). Her (later) studies of Lanzarote are some of the finest examples of this geological investigation. In 1951 Barns-Graham won the Painting Prize in the Penwith Society of Arts in Cornwall Festival of Britain Exhibition and went on to have her first London solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in 1952. Barns-Graham was included in many of the important exhibitions showcasing pioneering British abstract art in the 1950s and she exhibited consistently throughout her career, in private and public galleries. Important exhibitions of her work were held at Tate St Ives in 1999/2000 and 2005. The publication of the first monograph on her life and work, Lynne Green’s W. Barns-Graham: a studio life (2001; 2^nd updated and revised edition 2011), did much to engage critical and public perceptions of her achievements confirming her as one of the key contributors of the St Ives School, and as a significant British Modernist.

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham in Lanzarote   Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust

Lanzarote is an extraordinary place. The island is dominated by evidence of substantial volcanic activity, the last eruptions being very recent in geological terms. Well-documented eruptions took place in the Timanfaya area between 1730 and 1736, when lava and ash covered around two-thirds of the island burying many villages and fertile agricultural land in the process. It is thought that over thirty volcanoes erupted at this time. A century later, in 1824, there was a further eruption in the same area.

La Geria (Vineyard) 1989  Acrylic on paper; 56.5 x 75.5 cms

Untitled [Red Chasm] 1994  Gouache on paper; 56 x 75.5 cms

Belgrave St Ives represents Wilhelmina Barns-Graham on behalf of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust. The artist established the Trust in 1987 and the trustees have continued to advance awareness of her life and work, while using her legacy to support young people and other individuals to fulfil their potential in the visual arts. Belgrave St Ives Gallery specialises in Modern British and Contemporary Art with an emphasis on work produced by artists associated with Cornwall from the 1930s to the present time.

A fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Geoffrey Bertram is available.

Lava Movement, Lanzarote 1993  Pencil and wash on paper; 21 x 29 cms

Untitled [Church, Masdache, Lanzarote] c1989   Oil pastel on paper; 57 x 77 cms

For further information and images, please contact Richard Blackborow:

Belgrave St Ives, 22 Fore Street, St Ives, Cornwall TR26 1HE

richard@belgravestives.co.uk

tel. 01736 794888

ENDS

St Ives Exhibition 2019

Our flagship exhibition of works by artists associated with St Ives Modernism opens on 6th April. This annual exhibition offers collectors the chance to buy over 100 accessibly-priced works by most of the key names in post-War St Ives art, as well as presenting quality works by some less well known artists working in St Ives during the period.

Above: Dennis Mitchell Breage 1969 Bronze

Over 50 artists associated with the St Ives School are included, such as: Robert Adams, John Barnicoat, W. Barns-Graham, Romi Behrens, Sven Berlin, Sandra Blow, Bob Bourne, Henry Cliffe, Roy Conn, Tom Cross, Bob Crossley, John Emanuel, Michael Finn, Clifford Fishwick, Terry Frost, Jeff Harris, Patrick Hayman, Isobel Heath, Adrian Heath, Barbara Hepworth, Patrick Heron, Rose Hilton, Roger Hilton, Inez Hoyton, Bryan Ingham, Peter Lanyon, Jeremy Le Grice, Margo Maeckelberghe, William Marshall, June Miles, John Milne, Denis Mitchell, Ben Nicholson, Kate Nicholson, Breon O’Casey, J A Park, Victor Pasmore, Bryan Pearce, Jack Pender, Douglas Portway, Peter Potworowski, Tommy Rowe, William Scott, Michael Snow, John Wells, Karl Weschke and Bryan Wynter.

Key sculptural works

Michael Snow Landscape Construction 1986
Oil on canvas board with metal construct; 32 x 28 cms (perspex box)

John Milne Resurgence
Bronze; Edition of 2/9
Literature: ‘The Sculpture of John Milne’, Peter Davies, 2000, pages 38 and 89

Tommy Rowe Two Forms Roskestal
Bronze; Edition 1/9

Paintings, highlights 

Patrick Heron 5:15 p.m. June 11 : 1984 (with charcoal) 1984
Oil and charcoal on canvas; 41 x 51 cms
Signed, titled, dated and inscribed on the reverse (also titled on canvas overlap) Exhibited: Patrick Heron, Barbican Art Gallery, London,1985, cat. no.64

Kate Nicholson Haystack in Cumbrian Fields c1950s
Oil on board; 99 x 91 cms
Signed on artist’s label on reverse

Breon O’Casey Untitled
Acrylic on paper; 33 x 50 cms
Signed and dated

Sought after prints

Victor Pasmore Points of Contact No.26 1974
Lithograph; 49 x 51 cms
Frame size: 101.5 x 76.5 cms Signed with monogram
There is a copy of this print in the Tate Collection

Ben Nicholson Abstract Composition 1935/36
Screenprint, 66.5 x 80 cms (sheet)
From the ‘Penwith Portfolio’ of 1973 Printed by Stanley Jones at The Curwen Press Signed in pencil on reverse Edition of 90

William Scott Blue Still Life 1975
Frame size: 80 x 100 cms Printed at Curwen Studio, London Published by Editions Electo Ltd, London Signed in the stone with the publication line

You can view more works here. A full coloured catalogue is available on request.

For further information and images, please contact Richard Blackborow:

Belgrave St Ives, 22 Fore Street, St Ives, Cornwall TR26 1HE

richard@belgravestives.co.uk

tel. 01736 794888