BA FIne Art and Drawing at Falmouth 2026

 Falmouth BA show is a fantastic opportunity to see what students have been doing on a huge variety of of courses and I wish it was more advertised.

I saw the BA Fine  Art and BA Drawing shows and that’s such a lot to take in I was exhausted although revived by an interesting lunch, having had to email to make sure the cafe would be open.

There were very young people about along with their parents for interviews and information which reminded me usefully that most of these graduates are also very young. Having done a variety of work over 3 years they present only one project

 Some staff member must have decreed that Fine Art students would not make their identity clear by having their names and statements next to their stuff. Instead you had to find leaflets just outside the rooms which you were asked to put back if you read them. This makes it less likely that names will be remembered  or anything sold - no prices either. Are any art dealers even invited? Business cards disallowed this year?

Is any advice given about how to progress in the ridiculous art world, how to organise an exhibition etc? Or do the tutors as in my day not touch on these subjects?
Hopefully the male staff no longer prey on the students sexually and hopefully they encourage rather than standing in a group around one student tearing into them with criticism until some burst into tears.

In Drawing they had the gumption or funds to make an informative free catalogue with even the names of the staff who run the courses. Here one artist was actually  present - most of the show has not even student invigilators. 

  Matthew  Amos had observed houses where he came from and done small detailed paintings of suburbia, including a butcher featuring a menacingly large English flag. It made a point.
 Students show little interest in Falmouth-   perhaps earlier course work required them to look around where they live?
There is hardly any painting although the shop still sells the materials.

Instead there are a lot of installations. These range from a fridge containing a few melting ice molds of foodstuffs to a detailed construction of a snooker club with a feminist message.
Another  would be feminist thought, wrongly in my view, that she could further this by constructing a sleazy night club booth with neon and a revolving female leg.

There is hardly any obvious politics beyond interest in nature’s importance, one  controversially using young trees taken from their habitat.

One piece, by Farah Bhatti, I found eloquent was a presumably Palestinian floor design with irises made to emerge growing through  its smashed surface - life despite destruction.

 

There are quite a lot of students taking the opportunity for self reflective  examination and here the most powerful was a room with obligatory warning of upsetting content, Inside a slide show clattered relentlessly in the centre showing the clinical notes about the artist , Francesca Pease, who was sectioned and treated for anorexia. Around the outside were expressive drawings showing patients holding hands between  their beds or a circle of naked people.
It was the contrast  between the lively inner life and the matter of fact records kept that was brilliantly poignant.

 

 Another piece I liked , by Amy Higginbottom, was the only one depending on active audience participation and was unfortunately closed when passed - but  it was a Photo Booth using old fashioned developing of film - you could see this done through a window in the shed - and photos from it were exhibited along with a box of slides - oh the nostalgia of past hands on  tech!

And the nostalgia for those happy days seriously playing around with art before working to live usually intervenes - but still a creative basis for life - unhappily now open to fewer from less wealthy families who don’t want to incur huge debt.

Best wishes to them all - as they leave the paradisiacal Wood Lane campus with its palm trees by the sea.

Aleksandra Kasuba at Tate St Ives until October 2026

 Aleksandra  Kasuba is the artist shown at Tate St Ives 2 May  - 4 October.

The show is called ‘Shelters for the senses’ and introduced me to this Lithuanian/American artist, born 1923 and died 2019, four days after her gift of her seventy years creative work arrived to be displayed in the Lithuanian National Museum of Art.

Tate provide a timeline at the start of the exhibition with details of Aleksandra Kasuba’s life. 
She was a princess but the Soviet occupation nationalised the family estate, she then became a refugee from Nazi invasion and from a Munich refugee camp in 1947 went to USA, and ended her life in New Mexico.

 

 

                                    Four Seasons 1957

We see a couple of early examples of Kasuba’s art before the star of the show, the glowing rainbow curved structures which you can walk through. If you arrive at 2.30 you can choose two scents on sticks to enhance the experience.

There follows pictures of this artist’s curved dwelling in New Mexico, which was made as a place artists could stay in for contemplation in the desert surroundings, but from my research is not available for residency  applications.

There is also a soft carpeted structure designed for rest, which you cannot enter, and photographs of a textured outside wall at the New York Twin Towers, which along with the Towers was destroyed by the infamous attack.

I found it a refreshing show, giving me knowledge of an artist new to me, one with many interests, in materials and structures, whose art was all about restorative enjoyment. 

The exhibition raised questions about how artists become known internationally, how Tate obtains their shows, and how very many interesting artists there may be as yet uncelebrated and unknown.

 Aleksandra Kasuba as a  Lithuanian refugee was made welcome in USA

 

 

Two books about Ben Nicholson

 There is a Ben Nicholson on show at the moment in Tate St Ives.

This is what prompted me to read more about him and I found two very different books in the library.

Sarah Jane Checkland wrote ‘Ben Nicholson - the Vicious Circles of his Life and Art’ published 2000.
The title tells her approach and in fact the only photographs included are of people not of the artist’s art.
The author has done extensive research and tells us as much as she can cram in a gossipy journalistic amusing way. 
Ben had a sad childhood and was sent to boarding school.He did not do well at art school.
He was asthmatic so unfit for service in WW1. He married three times and had various lovers, creating triangular relationships that caused Winifred and Barbara a lot of pain, but as the author points out he avoided triangles in his abstract works.
He and Barbara Hepworth formed the Penwith  Society in St Ives which broke away from the St Ives Society in order to promote abstract art.
There are many interesting details about Ben’s life and how abstraction became more popular after WW2, aided by Munnings’ reactionary speech 1949 at the Royal Academy denouncing it as rubbish,  which was  broadcast on the radio. 
By 1950 Nicholson’s work was a global success. He married his third wife, Felicitas Vogler and lived in Switzerland before returning to England.
He was involved  in Christian Science, had some Adlerian psychotherapy sessions, and gave credence to psychic beliefs and astrology.
Overall we get a complex picture of a man who was not very likeable although several women loved him intensely.

In contrast Virginia Button’s ‘Ben Nicholson’2007, in the Tate’s series on British artists, has many coloured photographs of Ben’s work and a narrative stripped back like one of his carefully crafted surfaces. 
Button is far more interested in art than is Checkland, whilst referring to the latter’s book, and gives us more to think about in analysing how Nicholson’s work developed and issues such as truth to materials, political and spiritual connections and how his work fits into art history. Ben responded to Japanese aesthetics and the author finds in his pictures ,which combine references to visually observed landscape and still life combined with abstract form and composition , ’poignant visual poetry. ‘

For clarity and artistic perspective on Ben Nicholson’s work read Virginia Button: for gossip and a critical account of his life it’s Checkland.
In this case the covers sum up the difference.

I saw a retrospective exhibition of Ben Nicholson some years back which showed how clearly he was affected by the work of others, changing his own in response. I thought the period when he was first in love with Barbara Hepworth was the most interesting when his personal life motivated figurative imagery expressed within abstract language - the time from which comes he picture I saw in Tate St Ives.

Huw Marshall , a Scottish artist in Penzance.

 Huw Marshall, an artist from Scotland who lives in Penzance

Huw had a week’s exhibition at Redwing Gallery in Penzance in May 2026 and he agreed to be interviewed by me soon after this in his studio there.

 

I have seen some of his large paintings - very striking, expressionist, full of movement and contrasts of colour and tone, showing figures dancing or moving.

The problem is because I know some details of his life I am expecting certain things and I can’t now tell what would be conveyed if I did not know what I do. 

Does the artist want us to react without knowing - I think so - I think he hesitates to be explicit and uses his art as a therapeutic help - as he says to keep himself sane - in the face of sorrow and protecting his audience from feelings to which he alludes in poetic oblique ways.

Huw told me he has a subject in mind for a new work,  ‘ the distance between two people when one of them is dead’ - a subject I know something about from my own life.

Huw Marshall is from Scotland but has lived in Penzance for years, devoting his time to painting since he retired from being a GP.
His life as a doctor was devoted to helping people and people are his subject.
He knows enough of anatomy to be able to draw figures from his imagination convincingly and he used to go to life classes.

Huw is not concerned with his art career, not expecting or pursuing wide sales or fame or thinking that these would help him, but having a studio at Redwing Gallery provides a safe although austere space for him and he can mix with people there and drink excellent coffee. It’s a community interest company run to help art and music, green issues and veganism flourish and has become the hub where many interesting groups and individuals meet. 

Artists Huw admires include Breughel, Bosch, Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, artists of  the First World War  and the living Glaswegian artist of the war in Bosnia- Peter Howson.

On the wall is a large 12 x 5 foot composition in grey tones based loosely on the Last Supper but with many figures which he refers to with humour as ‘Last orders at the Bowling Club Social’. This has poured out spontaneously in a few days, carried out with 6 inch brushes. It’s not finished yet.

In his recent show there was a similar sized one of three angels, using a limited palette, showing them as strong, interlocking, vivid but calming.
Asked if he believes in angels Huw says he does, as a something that looks after him, whilst he also has a scientific non religious outlook.

He is an artist of paradoxical contrasts who works from the heart and makes a rather wild and strange impression, original and worth seeking out.

His beloved female partner was murdered a few years ago and the tragic intensity of that I think vibrates within Huw’s work.

Newlyn Society of Artists at Tremenheere until April 19th. 2026

 The Newlyn Art Society has its April show at Tremenheere- selected by film critic Mark Kermode, ‘Eye of the Lens’. No theme was set. Open daily 10.30 t0 4.30 with free admission until April 19th

 

I arrived frazzled by tense driving on narrow roads but on leaving after an hour examining the probably 100 exhibits by almost as many artists I somehow felt more equal to the road challenges and coped with getting lost with equanimity so maybe the art had left me somehow slightly braver.

It’s quite hard work taking in such variety although the artists’ statements can help where works baffle. I would have liked cvs or brief biographies also and a photo of the artist.

 

One of the people who use video gets a whole room for their evocative installation using toys and objects from their childhood - Mike Thorpe. Two vases, one with tulips standing up and the other with them collapsed as they decay seemed a metaphor for our brief lives à la Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam- ‘the flower that blooms today tomorrow dies’  - preceded in the poem by ‘one thing is certain and the rest is lies’. The artist’s mother had died when they made this. The sounds of a child’s xylophone add to the solemn sadness and permeate the rest of the show.

Janet McKeown gets her own video screen to show badgers and rabbits on a night recording video with a soundtrack on headphones of busy human chatter contrasting with nature’s quiet woodland activity.

 

The other, silent, video contributions are unfortunately put together on a loop, at least with the times given and with seating but it seems likely most visitors won’t last  out to see them especially as some move at a glacial pace.. The drawn animation by Karen Lorens stands out as it’s fast paced and amusing.

A photo of Ken Turner by Patrick Shanahan also impresses in its precise recording of the artist, now a phenomenon himself as he is aged 99, and Ken has a powerful anguished painting of sorrow upstairs ‘weeping world’.

 

What an odd building the gallery is with no internal staircase so you have to walk up the slope and round to see the upper floor.

I found Phil Booth’s 3d work ‘Lion Hunt - Golden Horse’ baffling but so well made.

The small figures contrasting Stone Age with Tin Can age confronting one another were clearer - but then the title corrects my interpretation as it’s called ‘Bal Maidens and the Tinnie Boys’ by Julia Giles.

 

I liked the way Sally Tripptree had assembled small painted elements into a whole by stitching.

 

‘New year morning ‘by Stuart Ross was wonderfully clear but impossible to photograph without my reflection in the glass. It shows the moon in a clear blue sky.

Many of the NSA artists I am not aware of exhibiting anywhere else, which is where cvs could help, but it makes me think how studded Cornwall and possibly most of the world is with artists, addicted to making art which rarely sells but piles up, often unseen even. 

Later that evening there was art on tv from cave walls in France made 33,000 years ago. No one really knows why those artists made theirs. Their drawings were just as good, as vivid and somehow necessary as what we do now.

Knausgaard 'School of Night'

 The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard.  2025

 

 

I really like Knausgaard’s writing - the simple way it flows, the inclusion of all sorts of cultural references, the surprises in the plots, the introspection and the convincing detail. Not the lack of chapters.

This one is all about a narcissistic man, who deceives himself and  behaves badly.
It’s hard to believe that in the undescribed gap of 20 years he has found a woman who agreed to marry him and have a child.
I believed that he feels close to his little boy and also that he simultaneously and dangerously wants some distance from him.
He lacks insight and foresight but has somehow found great success in life.

As the protagonist, Kristian, is a photography student there is a lot included about this medium and his progress with it.
Along the way  there are many references to Christopher Marlowe and to Faust and a sense of karma.
He meets a strange character called Hans who I expected to lure him into something evil but it’s more complicated  and inexplicable than that.

We do not find out why Kristian is the way he is, alienated from his family, unempathic  towards  the women he meets, old fashioned in his stereotyped views.
It’s unusual for an author  to try to inhabit such an unpleasant character but despite disliking  Kristian I still wanted to read on and find out what fate had in store for him.
It’s shocking to be alongside him, realising how little one knows what others are really thinking.

Like Mephistopheles the author gives and takes away and we the readers, having entrusted hours to the story, are held willynilly in its grasp until we emerge battered by fate.

Wild Thing - a life of Gauguin by Sue Prideaux

 ‘Wild Thing - a life of Paul Gauguin'  by Sue Prideaux, 2024

 

 

Another book on Gauguin, this time covering his whole life and evidently using extensive new research.
It’s also vividly written - a page turner of art history- and has a lot of illustrations.
Sue Prideaux is good at evoking the era and context in which Gauguin lived - whether the decadence of modernised Paris or the colonial impositions on Tahitian culture.

She brings her own insights, such as how Gauguin admired Manet’s ‘Olympe’ and shocked the art world in Paris with his South Seas versions of female nudes and black versions of Christian stories which the Pope had declared forbidden blasphemy.

I hadn’t realised that a stock market crash left stockbroker Gauguin needing to find and fail at other jobs, or that he long wanted to be reconciled with Mette his wife and their children and that he was faithful to her for a long time and unlike Van Gogh did not visit brothels.

It was also a long time before Gauguin became a success as a painter. However Theo Van Gogh, so strangely unable to sell Vincent’s pictures, sold one of Gauguin’s for 300 Francs 1988, which my googling tells me would be £3,000 in today’s money.

It seems his wife Mette was a prominent entertainer of avant garde friends in Denmark. Also Gauguin had a circle of cultural friends in Paris such as Strindberg, and at that time there was great interest in Norway and in symbolism.

The author emphasizes Gauguin’s support of women's rights and his lack of racism and  his practical helping of Polynesian folk against the inequities of colonial rule. He was very interested in the  culture of the islands, where French missionaries were in conflict with a very different attitude to sexual conduct. Gauguin was provided by his local neighbours with offers of their young daughters, with several of whom he formed relationships and had children. The age of consent was both in France and in her colonies only 13
It’s rather a confused picture Prideaux gives where native cannibalism and infanticide  is hinted at and for all the talk of freedom there was an expectation that young women would be sexually available to much older men they scarcely knew, whilst at the same time they were able to leave them and unmarried pregnancy and abortion were accepted.
Gauguin had a lot of health problems, some stemming from injuries during a fight in France, but was not syphylitic - three teeth found of his after he died having been extensively examined by scientists.

Prideaux writes carefully about Gauguin’s art, getting the reader to look again at long known paintings such as one of women on a bench which was in my classroom at my girls’ grammar school in the sixties but turns out to be of prostitutes.

 

Gauguin frequently clashed with the French authorities, wrote articles for a satirical political magazine  and was arrested at the end of his life for libelling an official. He was by now much wealthier and had had built a house he entitled ‘The house of pleasure.’ 

 Gauguin evolved from devoted family man and establishment member however rebellious  at heart to being the wild man in the tropical jungle with a string of pubescent lovers. A great story with the topical problem of predatory male figure in a society that allowed this, and with subject matter he made his own - of a sort of mythic shangrila in which he lived an all too difficult life living on tinned food and sending out his colourful visions of life in a distant place to sell in the western art market.