ERIC WARD ‘About St Ives’: Installation

Gull Rock in September

One Side of the Bay

Rear Gallery Return

Front Gallery looking towards Rear Gallery

Morning Light at St Ives

The Other Side of the Bay

Heavy Surf at Porthmeor Beach

Two Paintings, Two Walls

A Kitchen Still Life

Rear Gallery

Poor Weather at Godrevy

One in the Front, One in the Back

In the Corner

Morning Tide at St Ives Harbour

Entering the Gallery

Gallery Overview

By the Store

Far End

 

ERIC WARD ‘About St Ives’ opened with a Zoom Private View on Saturday 13th June and runs until 4th July.

Following the easing of some government restrictions protecting us against the coronavirus, the gallery is now able to admit visitors to view the exhibition. To maintain social distancing and hygiene measures to ensure safety for visitors and staff, access will be controlled. We shall be operating limited opening times throughout June, so please contact the gallery to confirm the gallery is open or to make an appointment to view.

Interested in art from an early age, Ward is a natural painter working in the tradition of the Realist, plein air painters, and can often be seen painting in St Ives using his trusted pochade painting box. Eric began painting in 1985 at the St Ives School of Painting and has been an active member of the St Ives Society of Artists for many years.

As well as examples of his signature views of St Ives, for this exhibition we asked Eric to consider views of St Ives painted historically by some of the artists that have inspired him, including Arnesby Brown, William Cave Day, John Anthony Park, Leonard Richmond, Borlase Smart, W.H.Y. Titcombe and Terrick Williams, and to reinterpret those views in his own style.

Please view individual works in the exhibition by visiting the gallery website here.

Jessica Cooper & Sarah Woods – Artist notes, Portraits & Gallery Tour

Today the gallery has opened two exhibitions:

Jessica Cooper ‘Reflecting Images‘ &
Sarah Woods ‘The Edge of the Land‘
4 – 20 May online only, view catalogues on ISSUU @ https://issuu.com/belgravestives

Jessica Cooper in her studio

Cooper The paintings in this exhibition are informed by three specific places and periods of time. A number of the works are executed on canvas –a support and surface with which I am familiar –representing safety, in a certain sense. The others employ wood panels –something of a voyage into the unknown –leading to experimentation and the highlighting of a certain abstraction in the work. These latter works are left unframed, imbuing them with a sense of freedom, breathing space and a lack of restriction. These important qualities are echoed thematically in the subject matter of some of the paintings.The abstracted trapezoid shape that appears in a number of the works originates in a section of a bridge/walkway leading to a beach on the Los Angeles coast. Like the bridge, the shape represents a link, and can thus be found reappearing in paintings regardless of the particular subject. Other objects or shapes in the works have become more isolated, in one sense, or perhaps connected by the space between them, in another. My usual colour palette has shifted to become more limited and muted, with subtle tones and the exploration of different shades, in particular yellows, pinks and browns, which are broadly new to me.Using drawings, photographs and memories, these works have taken a longer time to execute than formerly, using thought, reflection and the re-reading of contemporaneous notes to take myself back to specific times and places, and then using the resulting feelings to create a new sense of purpose and calmness in the work; perhaps an authority, even.

Sarah Woods in her studio.

Woods I find most of my inspiration in the simple forms of the coastline surrounding the studio, often towards Zennor and to the North Cliffs of Cornwall. There’s a feeling of openness when you reach the coast that brings balance and calm. The rhythm of the landscape can restore and influence us, as well as bring a focus to the way we work within the environment.This collection of paintings and prints brings attention to the process of making, the method of mark making, and the act of repeating a single movement to represent minimal and balanced observations. The paintings focus on the simple notion of repeating a single mark. Every element is worked by hand, and each piece features a sewn line between the canvas, often suggesting the landscape in the form of a diptych. As each tone is layered, I visualise the landscape in areas of light and dark, similar to the method of mark making in my drawings and prints. The lines of an etching signify something meditative in the landscape. A methodical process of observing and drawing the coast, reflecting the balance that being beside the water brings. The motion of the water seems to echo the methodical lines of my drawings with focus on movement, feeling and repetition. Something structured but also intuitive is reflected in the process of working on a print. Each print begins with a sketchbook drawing that is slowly worked into an etching, and printed to a limited edition in the studio. When working with a plate my practice of printmaking focuses on the movement of ink and the direction of hand-drawn lines, becoming familiar with the marks that are unique to each piece.

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You can tour the exhibitions in our 3D virtual gallery space. This gives you a great way to visit Gallery 1 on the fly! It will also help you see the work in context, as the work is framed and sized. Click here and make a cuppa while it loads and then you can take your time and explore.  And don’t forget you can find full details of the exhibitions on the front page of our website too.

PRESS RELEASE – Jessica Cooper & Sarah Woods – About their exhibitions at Belgrave

4th MAY 2020
TWO PERSON EXHIBITION
JESSICA COOPER Reflecting Images
SARAH WOODS The Edge of the Land
4 – 30 May 2020, Belgrave St Ives

Jessica Copper and Sarah Woods have created a body of work that can perhaps help us a little in this period of isolation. Their paintings and drawings hold unique lines, rhythms and meditative qualities and offer us that intangible beguiling quality that one seeks from being near to the coast.

Spring is arguably the most beautiful season in Cornwall. The cliffs and hinterland are full of colour from the abundant flora, and the extra lines of light that gravitate towards you, from the sunny hue of the water’s edge or through the interior space of a window, are unparalleled. However, this spring more of us can’t see coastal views and dreamy interiors, we just have to remember, reimagine or carry on dreaming them. Cooper and Woods’ work is restorative; they produce a sensitive quality of line, deal with the moods of coastal landscapes and seek a meditative or at least a reflective response to each piece of work they create. They help us reconfigure.

Sarah Woods Across the North Cliffs 2019
Acrylic on hand-sewn canvas; (diptych) Each canvas 101.5 x 101.5 cms

Cooper, a respected and well-known painter due to her paired back style and dedication, has looked back on her practice to create a new body of work for this show. She has studied the landscape and the still-life images she has created in the past, which has specifically brought her to look at three places and three periods of time. The first circulates around imagery from Porthmeor Beach, St Ives, the second is a counter space to this cliff and beach space, a frenetic Los Angles neighbourhood that she visits and works in, where the mid century interior is often present. The final space is the interior of her brother’s home in which a body of her work hangs. She explains ‘she realises there is a link to the LA interior and its materiality, and her childhood home with views to the sea’.

Jessica Cooper Air and Space and Knowing that I Love You 2020
Acrylic on canvas; 61 x 61 cms

Encompassing these spaces of time, Cooper gives you room to breath as you view coastline such as the famous chapel perched ceremonially above Porthmeor Beach. However, just when you might feel calm and comfortable and at home, she offers still life’s that are teetering on the edge of what seem hills or valleys or an abstracted void for you to start questioning or loose yourself in, but then there’s brush-marks, wood panelling and a palette of translucent colours that transport you to what might be light filled rooms, blossoming plants or breezy places to lie and rest.

Jessica Cooper (b.1967) Reflecting Images 2020
Acrylic and pen on canvas; 81 x 86.5 cms

Woods, like Cooper, focuses on time spent in the calmness of an ordered studio as much as in the landscape. However, whereas Cooper’s work encompasses the still life as well as the landscape and mixes those two genres at times together, Woods work manifests solely in the representation of landscapes through prints and paintings. As she paints she visualises the landscape in areas of light and dark, similar to the method of mark making in her prints. The canvas of each painting is hand stitched and stretched, and each tone is layered; the structure and process of the work, not just the subject, is balanced. She says the rhythm of the Cornish landscape can restore and influence as well as bring focus to the way she works within the environment.

Sarah Woods From Blue Hills, St. Agnes 2020. Edition of 35
Etching on Somerset Satin paper; 40 x 28 cms (plate) Sheet size: 50 x 35 cms

A painter and printmaker, Woods is working from an historic studio in Newlyn, Cornwall. Woods graduated from Falmouth University in 2016. Since then she has maintained a critical focus, honing her printmaking and painting skills through making and exhibiting. She finds most of her inspiration in the simple forms of the coastline surrounding the studio, often towards Zennor.

For most of her life, Cooper has lived and worked in West Penwith, Cornwall. This is her base though she travels widely, particularly to California. She draws inspiration from these coastal locations. She studied at Falmouth College of Art and Goldsmiths University of London graduating in 1989. Cooper is a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists, Penwith Society of Artists, and is an elected RWA. She has exhibited widely including at The Exchange, Penzance and Tate St. Ives.

#ArtStives #lockdownart @belgravestives

You can read more about their exhibitions and see a 3D virtual tour of their work here

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

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