Modern & Contemporary Art
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.
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
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
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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; 2nd 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
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
tel. 01736 794888
With one long weekend left to see the Pearce exhibition, we thought we’d share texts and other context related artwork we have on show. Consisting of oil paintings, drawings by Bryan, the exhibition also includes work by Leonard Fuller (who led the St Ives School of Painting in the 1950s attended by Pearce) and work by his mother and artist friends.
From the 1970s, with the help of other St Ives artists, Pearce produced a series of etchings. Also, under the direction of fellow artists and master printmaker, a number of silk screen stencils based on his oil paintings were produced. Sympathetic to the original paintings these limited edition prints are signed by Pearce.
Pearce remained largely uninfluenced by other artists although is mother was a good amateur artist. Often paired with the earlier local Naive artist, Alfred Wallis, although with different temperaments, both are genuine ‘Outsider’ artists with a similar matter-of-fact freshness and singularity of view.
Peter Lanyon Standing Stones 1951.
Sheet size: 55.5 x 38 cms Signed and dated Registration Proof
Peter Lanyon
The harbour, the coastguard, or the bridge over the railway happen to Bryan Pearce who is a native of St Ives. All these things have an activity which is not only seen, there, is evidence in every painting of an awareness which is more direct, the knowing which a man will have for land or sea or craft. When this understanding is linked to the kind of play which is common in child art, the combination is called Folk Art. If a category is necessary, Bryan Pearce is nearest to this.
His art emerges at a time when sophistication is disintegrating St Ives painting, and a self-conscious group of artists is mourning the decline of a fictitious ‘St Ives School’. Bryan Pearce takes a walk to Carbis Bay, returning by the cliff path to paint what has happened with a blue sea and green grass and side-seen house and around corner looks, that have been avoided in the quaint and pretty concept of picture postcard St Ives, and exploited in boutique primitivism. Because his sources are not seen with a passive eye, but are truly happenings, his paintings original.
Theory and speculation usually put distance between the event and its descriptions, and the painting is subjected to stretching by miles of elastic works, so that the acts of observing, making and communicating are all studies out of context. These paintings may be subjects of analysis to some people but that activity is not going to make the paintings more understandable. It is necessary to accept these works as the labour of a man who has to communicate this way because there is no other. It is then possible to celebrate the facts and not the theory.
Catalogue introduction
St. Martin’s Gallery, London 1964
Denis Mitchell and Kate Nicholson
Sir Alan Bowness
These enchanting sunlit paintings are mostly of St Ives—the boats in the harbour, the fishermen’s cottages and gardens, the parish church that ones sees below Bryan Pearce’s studio window. It is a serene untroubled world that reflects the natural innocence and delight of a man who has found relief and rehabilitation through painting. For Bryan Pearce has suffered since childhood from a crippling mental illness (phenylketonuria) that has made normal communication impossible for him, and in Peter Lanyon’s words he ‘…has to communicate this way because there is no other.’
Catalogue introduction
New Art Centre, London 1966
Mary Pearce (Pearce’s mother) and Leonard Fuller (Pearce’s teacher)
H. S. Ede
If anyone is in need of peace, trust and joy, they will find it in the work of Bryan Pearce. He gives with his whole being, totally free of sophistication and totally altruistic; he paints as he breathes. These stones which form a pier, this blue which surrounds a ship, this island and lighthouse, this road, church, window, flowers in their pot, a thousand visual things, are the deep unconscious quality of this interior life and his immediate contact with his close friend God.
I know of no artist with whom I can compare him in this direct simplicity and devotion save Fra Angelico who would place one colour against another with assurance and tenderness, and yet, so it is said, when he painted the body of Jesus, he closed his eye in humble knowledge of his own frailty
Bryan Pearce has this inward vision, undisturbed by greed, desire of worldly achievement, concern with his own personality and much else; and such wholeness lives in the his absorbed loved, expressed he know not how.
It isn’t at all as a naïve painter he should be classed, or even perhaps as a ‘painter’—he really knows little of technique—but as an individual actively happy in reproducing the beauty of the visual works and his instinctive entrapment in it. I am grateful to him for this unhindered vision which is the deathless source of art.
Catalogue introduction
Falmouth Art Gallery. Cornwall 1982
Breon O’Casey and Barbara Hepworth
Always beginning a painting with a feint pencil outline and gradually blocking in areas using a personal palette of colours, a sense of order and calmness, bathed in the ambient light of western Cornwall, pervades Pearce’s work.
People are revelling in our Spring Half term exhibition – it’s full of painting and prints of different scales that you can dive into. You can keep seeing more. We are open 10-530pm from Monday to Saturday and you can ask to see Gallery 2 for a sneak peak at uncatalogued works.
