St Ives Society 'Spring Open' show

St.Ives Society ‘Spring Open’ 2024

The St Ives Society was the one Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson left  to form the Penwith Society in the height of St Ives’ fame when modernism flourished here and in America.

Now two open shows per year provide varied art and useful income for the society which exhibits in the Mariners’ Church.
The opening was crowded, 323 works had been submitted and most it seems were accepted.
Marie Keeling had arranged them, grouping by themes and types, grey- blue abstractions together, a wall of flower paintings, seascapes, geometrical arrangements, plus ceramic vessels and sculpture and a case of delicate jewelry. It’s  a giant installation of what is going on in the local scene. Much the same mix as last time with nothing controversial, nothing overtly political.
A lot of artists do much the same things repeatedly so if you like what they do it’s fine and if not it’s tedious. Many have exhibited here for years but I met a couple who submitted there for the first time and were delighted to be included.
Could any of these artists become famous beyond St Ives?
How does that happen?
Are these local shows similar globally?
Should clear pastiches of the famous such as Basquiat be either not accepted or at the least acknowledged?
Could innovation be encouraged?
Does the variety mirror that in the contemporary art world?
Is it just harmless fun and a welcome outlet for the many who belong to a loose knit community catering to the tourist trade?
As in football there are a few with genius status who are famous worldwide and become wealthy and then the others, in various leagues down to those kicking a ball about in a nearby cul de sac and all of it shows the importance of art and football at every level in our so hierarchied society.

 

Images are Jenny Beavan, .energised water' porcelain, glass and pebbles, £475

and El Matador Del Muerte, 'Hold Fast' concrete, paint and resin, £265

 

Post exhibition remarks-Taking Space in the Crypt October 2023

As we only had a week it would not be possible for an independent reviewer to get anything in the press in time. I suppose if we could find a writer willing to write about it we could put it on social media and that would be very welcome, If anyone would volunteer to do that next time please get in touch. 

 So,despite my bias to liking my own group’s show, I thought I would write something. 

 It’s rather a mystery why some work sells better but it seems naturalistic scenes well observed and carried out with panache are again the most popular -  Sharon Reeves and Clare Hughes being cited. This time Sharon sold 3 paintings off the wall of sand dunes and their grasses. 

  However, to quote Schnabel, ‘ You make the paintings not to sell them. You make the paintings to see them.’

So the more abstract- Pat Wilson Smith, Tracy Flett, were as usual less commercial although all the artists have people who appreciate them and often can only afford cards.

There were interesting and unusual ceramics by myself and Pat.

Then Caroline Marwood had very unusual experimental works combining photos and collaged elements and digital designs based on local observations of landscape.

Kate Cameron had expressionist verve in her intensely coloured works, some set in Spain.

Kerry Grant showed delicate close ups of observed nature in watercolour and other media, emphasising pattern and design.

I had a mix as usual of some more expressionist observations or memories of musicians and some political more conceptual items.

So a good wide range of approaches and you would think something for everyone but there is a limited number of visitors to the show able to buy anything large.
Maybe a campaign could begin to encourage folk to decorate their walls with original art.
I hear some strange people have blank walks and others buy reproductions that attract them and have the seal of being approved by history or by marketing managers.

Artists other than the Big Names do not make much profit and really love to get their pictures out into the world.
Personally I fear when I die my family will throw it all away.

Incidentally Yoko Ono had a show called ‘Big Names’ which consisted of just that - huge names of celebrated artists being carried into a gallery.

Please come and see our next shows in 2024 - to be arranged- and please bring your cash or
 credit card - the small purchases not only add up but are very encouraging.

We have all sold more paintings than Van Gogh did in his lifetime- he sold ONE - which seems very odd when his brother was an art dealer. If it had not been for his sister- in -law after the brother died, those works might have sunk without trace.

At least ours are on the internet and Taking Space have a website to Google.



 

 

Hope and Sewing

‘Skirts of Hope' - Sewing with Purpose.

I hadn't sewn anything for about fifty years but I was drawn somehow to this group via a Facebook

post from 'Doing what we can'.

The idea about the skirts came from some post WW2 activity that women began in Belgium.

This recent incarnation of it is in Penzance, Cornwall, UK. So far all women, a dozen or so meet

in a hall or this time in the open air bandstand in the attractive Morrab gardens.

Three hours sitting in a circle sewing, using appliqué or embroidery, everyone absorbed in making

something meaningful and personal. Some are using inspiring quotations, some utilise fabric that

has significant memories for them.

Whilst working one or two women have brought poetry by themselves or poets they admire, to read

to everyone, which is enjoyable. Otherwise there is all sorts of companionable chat.

One woman has come prepared to tell us about an organisation she is involved in, the

Extinction Rebellion movement that recently held large demonstrations in London to raise

awareness of the crisis of climate change. It seems a town nearby has 150 members and regular

meetings at which 40 are likely to attend. One of their objectives is to use a technique used in

Ireland which resulted in abortions being legalised. This is 'citizens' assemblies'. It's not quite clear

how these are selected. It sounds as if the climate change concerns are provoking a new wave of

involvement in communities.

The whole event is peaceable but despite its hippy look, or maybe even because of it, also

teetering on the edge of rebellious action.

The previous meeting had tea and cake and also a more spiritual dip into a guided fantasy started

with a Buddhist brass bowl sound produced by an implement passed round it's rim. This time some

cards are randomly selected and read out, all emphasising love and hope.

There's no discussion of what happens or the way it's done, it's like a tradition has been

established by core members and the rest of us fit in with it.

A future exhibition of the 'Skirts of Hope' is mooted.

Two policemen arrive, a very rare sight normally, to check us out. Maybe they were out to enforce

the ban on drinking alcohol in the gardens, which I noticed being cheerfully disregarded by two

young men with bottles of beer as I came in. We joke about having dangerous needles and pins

and scissors.

So, are these sorts of gatherings of mostly women meeting all over the world to engage in

therapeutic slow decorative sewing with political and social intent to improve the world?

It's a fascinating phenomenon.

An Axolotl and art at Tate St.Ives 2017

' Misbehaviour ' at cmr gallery Redruth October 2014

'Misbehaviour' exhibition organised and curated by Katya Rosenburg at CMR Redruth - an Artist collective.

October  2014, Wednesday  to Saturday  12-4, free admission.

Members of CMR invigilated.

There was a lot to see in this show, work from 50 artists, from several countries, which is going onto be shown in London.

I felt quite at home looking at it as I am familiar with themed  political work from the 80's when I was part of Brixton Womens' Work shows. There was a mix of printed booklets, video, participatory stuff and purely visual and there were helpful statements from the artists about their contributions. 

I 'd have liked some work hung lower, some statements to make more sense, some information about the Artists and a printed list of them to take away, but in general it looked good, well spaced, easy to get involved for at least an hour and thought provoking. Someone visiting remarked how you see nothing like this in St.Ives, still dominated by what I call 'Penwithy abstraction', it's an invigorating change to be asked to think and for the artists to be involved in current issues such as the London riots.

Amanda Walsh, from Redruth, had obtained cc tv footage of misbehaving, to understate it, which was shown on a large screen, showing bluish video of night scenes of fighting amongst presumably drunken people in our streets and police dealing with the victims of it. There was some middle of the road bangy music which you could have on the headphones and which may help people to keep watching but I preferred it without the music as it seemed more real, less a balletic sort of clockwork orange thing. It was very impressively unpleasant and current and titled 'Tooth and Claw'

 I wished this could have been in a window to bring in a larger audience, but the danger of attracting smash and grab thieves after the telescreen apart from the fact that the windows are reinforced and frosted made this unlikely.

Next to it Alke Schmidt from London had a work painted on top of that furnishing fabric with a chic pattern of eighteenth century ladies and flowery bowers. Contrasting with that image of bourgeois interior design and comfort were figures of hooded youths, out of doors, the dangerous looking lowest rung of today's society, It was called 'Mind the Gap'- a title which I had used myself, here used with subtle power and wit.

More lightheartedly, Catherine Kontz from London , a composer, had a punch card operated musical box. You could make punched holes and feed your own composition in, turning a small handle, and because it was mounted on a small chest of drawers the sound was amplified pleasingly.

 There was more to it, even instructions on how you might misbehave by not following the instructions. I immediately wanted one if these devices to play with at home.

On the floor below I particularly liked the well drawn images of a smoking seagull and a Heath Robinson diagram of scrumping for apples and making and drinking cider.

Also beautifully drawn, and employing the Grayson Perry tactic of enticing with technique to express something serious, was a drawing of a child being detained while youths stole his bicycle.

There was a turning hanging mobile of paper pistols and shrimps, referring to pistol-shrimps and the noises they make.

There were photographic booklets about the notices in our environment, an opportunity to write your confessions of your own misbehaviour or tell lies about it, something about being gay, references to the troubles in Ireland, many surprises to enjoy in fact whilst showing that artists are doing all sorts of things that are relevant to contemporary life.

CMR exists to show this sort of current work and it was well worth seeing.

A Year in My Studio, exhibition at St.Ives Arts Club

  'A year in my studio'

   

  A solo art exhibition at St.Ives Arts Club , Dec 28 to Jan 3rd, 11 - 4 daily, free admission.

Embrace

This is the first year that I have had a studio outside my house. 

It is at White's Old Workshops, Porthmeor Rd.,St.Ives, twenty minutes walk down the hill , past the sea and Tate St.Ives.

There is a group of studios there and the public can drop in to see our work.

When I was at college at Nottingham in the sixties personal space had been abolished, although you could work where you found a temporary space, and when I did my MA in contemporary art, in 2006 at Falmouth, part-timers were given no space there to work in, so perhaps I felt a bit deprived of a personal space, a room of my own as Virginia Woolf said.

At first I began to be influenced by the seascape but I don't think I have become seduced into commercial tourist imagery. I go on as a flaneur drawing people I see , working quickly to capture their movement as they pass. I also draw at performances of music and dance, most  recently of the Moscow City Ballet.

Moscow City Ballet

15 people I saw in the harbour

New this year has been enlarging the original drawings and collaging these onto canvas to keep the spontaneity of them rather than trying to recreate it

I have liked being out in the town, feeling more part of the community of artists, going out to work. I have painted more but done less film - making.  (See Vimeo for examples)

There have been various political themes that I have used. 

Umanets imprisoned in Rothko

I started an online petition to ask for Umanet's two year sentence for scribbling on a Rothko to be altered, and 129 people signed, one of them Katya from Pussy Riot. 

Paintings about this followed, using Rothko-esque rectangles, which then cropped up as windows, relating to a visit to Sitges near Barcelona, and abstract canvasses, which were an experimental surprise.  Then I used this shape again as  grave shapes in the 104 women piece, 'in sorrow and in rage', which I have shown now as a model shrine in memory of the killing of 104 women in 2012 by their partners or ex-partners, inviting people to place a candle, in this case a symbolic one as St.Ives Arts Club is a wooden 

building in which no naked flames are allowed.

Spare room:spare house

The bedroom tax also demanded some response from me and eventually I used the contrast between Van Gogh with his spare room for Gauguin to visit, and our Tory PM, David Cameron with a spare house. It's a sensitive subject here in a seaside town where there are a lot of second homes, empty much of the year and a lot of poor people unable to buy a first home.

Above us only sky 

As a humanist I wanted to also do something about not believing in God and I used some lines from Ono/Lennon as inspiration and figures I had observed either in town or from drawing from tv when they have discussion programmes.

Exhibiting with Taking Space at Helston Museum, I found four people mentioned there from two hundred years ago and made some pictures, copies of which the museum may use in educational work. The most interesting to me is Joseph  Emidy, a freed black slave, who became leader of Truro Philharmonic and wrote music, now sadly lost.

Joseph Emidy

Also a first was getting a ceramic figure cast in resin and iron. I liked this finish better than the bronze.

Dancer

I have exhibited several times in Redwing Gallery shows in Penzance, which specialise in work outside the mainstream. St. Ives is still dominated by what I call 'Penwithy ' abstraction, a lot of atmospheric texture and marks which allude very loosely to the landscape and seascape of Penwith. There aren't many artists here drawing contemporary people or referencing politics or ideas. There is quite a bit of what I find rather flaky symbolism and myth. So I stand out as different.

Eavesdropper

Next?

I want to see Cornwall as a hub for art, not a satellite of London, but I also want to exhibit outside Cornwall.

I have an idea for a sort of humanist tabernacle made in a wigwam, to celebrate creation without believing in a creator and to be a space for reflection.

I have some film clips waiting to be used.

I keep drawing and observing, influenced by feminism, socialism and psychotherapy, and encouraged when some people really respond to my work.

I painted round the corner of this small canvas partly as a joke about the way some artists continue their landscapes round the sides.

5 on the beach

Art needs to be seen or it's like a TV set waiting to be switched on.

   

Camilla contemplates the scope of youth work

Timothy Spall and Whoopi Goldberg at Sennen cove







  



        

Summer Tate St.Ives , first and second looks.

First thoughts on the Summer 2013 show at Tate St.Ives.

The first room is all Marlow Moss. There's a book you can look at but it's out of print, not in the shop. A friend tells me it's quite possible Mondrian got his ideas from Moss, not the other way about. However, maybe he did it better? I don't like the awkward way some canvasses are attached to the frames or the way she has signed several on the front, spoiling the abstract design. Still it's great to see more than the usual one thing by her.

The curved gallery has some grey paintings, one with an attractive splodge of glitter by a woman called RH Quaytman.

Downstairs there are some lovely Hepworths, oddly paired with work by a woman who alters photos and produces old fashioned looking mildly amusing collages of women's hairstyles using shells etc. They are small. 

The blurb on the wall claims similarities in form and 'the spiritual' whatever that means, between Linder and Hepworth, which strikes me as ludicrous.

Presumably it is this artist called Linder who decided to mount the Hepworths on preposterously pompous huge geometrical plinths and hang a horrid white nylon curtain, like something in a temporary clinic, to hide the fantastic sea view. It is inelegant.

It's nice to see the Hepworth maquette with small marble if figures, made from a fireplace, but I want to  walk all round it and there isn't really room.

Hepworth figures with others seen through a window.

There's a ballet in the back room, choreographed by Linder and Tindell, filmed so that it focuses on certain partial views, whereas at a live ballet one chooses where to look so this film is rather frustratingly choosing  for us. I love ballet so I will be back to watch it.

In what sense can Linder be said to have a 'radical, feminist practice' as it says in the booklet? I cannot see any sign of it.

Back upstairs there is a space with three small harlequin designs, said to make 'a highly charged space' a description which makes no sense to me. It's the work of Gareth Jones.

In the next room there is a video by Nick Relph about tartan with lovely colours, overlapping images, and this takes my attention so I look forward to seeing it all through another day.

Next is a room about Heron  and Crysede and some letters he wrote home, textile designs, nice to see.

Last room. Audience participation, we can take up to ten pages photocopied from the artists's library. His name is Allen Ruppersberg. 

(Is it significant that the women artists conceal their gender by not having recognisably women's names?)

 Apparently the whole display , how the boxes are placed etc. was minutely planned and done.

 It's fun to take stuff and think why I am choosing it.  I notice a lot about women poets and also choose an image if the Taj Mahal because I have been there. I am seeking connections between things and with me. I like the idea, wish I'd thought of it.

So, first impressions. A tremendous mixture -the contemporary less than astounding, the old not so very impressive either, apart from the Hepworths, which are shown in a rather perverse way.

Second Look at Tate St. Ives Summer show.

I went in again partly to do some drawings to illustrate my blog.
However, I decided to take the tour. There was only one other person, a woman, and the tour giver was Vicky Leach, who had chosen to show us the four women artists in the show, which I was delighted about.

Moss had wealth but also had the luck to be rescued from alcoholic stupor in a Paris gutter by Netty Nijhoff, a journalist who introduced her to important folk and became her partner and nurturer. They were separated in the war but reunited in Lamorna afterwards.
However, I decided to take the tour. There was only one other person, a woman, and the tour giver was Vicky Leach, who had chosen to show us the four women artists in the show, which I was delighted about.
We spent quite a time in the Marlow Moss room. It seems she was a follower of Mondrian after all, one he met and encouraged. In Cornwall she had not been able to move in the Nicholson / Hepworth circles and probably was cold shouldered partly because she was a lesbian. She changed her name fro Marjorie to the less gendered Marlow and presented herself with a male styled persona.

3D construction by Marlow Moss

Giving the work more time and hearing about the life of the artist made me much more appreciative of her. I wondered if Gluck, another lesbian contemporary, had encouraged her use of frames from which the paintings stick out in relief, as I know Gluck developed a specific type of frame for herself.
Next we turned to RH Quaytman, born 1961, who hid her gender in case it stopped her career progression. It turns out what I saw as decorative surfaces have significance as post 9/11 American images full of references to the twin towers. I now saw the red,green,blue stripes as possible references to t.v. coverage and Vicky suggested the glitter, actually diamond dust, was a metaphor for us all being being stardust.
Lastly we turned to Hepworth , wondering if pregnancy and motherhood had been expressed when they occurred, and seeing possible references to Cornish giantesses. Linder had also changed her name to remove the female gender first name of Linda.
She had been a feminist performance artist, but none of us knew of this.
We agreed that Barbara's keeping her gender clear was more help to women's aspirations and also that we had learnt from and enjoyed the tour

Linder Ballet, drawn from the film.

Before that I saw whole of Linder's ballet video and enjoyed it whilst wondering why the dancers wore strange head pieces as if ready to spin on their heads, which did not happen. They were all very thin and pale with dark 70's style eye make up and men in dark costume, women in muted lemon, pink and brown with a subtle hint of animal print. They moved in complex ways, entwining and climbing over one another, and one amongst an audience seated on the floor, like anaemic, timid creatures from another galaxy, to live electric music a bit like the bbc electronic workshop, Dr Who, tubular bells shades of. The lighting cast long shadows and the overall effect was mesmerising and soothing. An attendant agreed with me that the time of the video, about 25 minutes, should be displayed, and had asked for this to be done along with a photo of Hepworth's 'Family of Man' which was said to have inspired it.

I returned to the video about tartan and fashion etc by Nick Relph. Again no time was given. There are three videos, blue, red and green, shown superimposed as a 'restless collage' which I loved for its rich colours, like succeeding screen prints with snatches of audible sound track and a quote about turning off the mind to just look and enjoy abstract visual qualities. Tartan was referred to as 'saying where it comes from.'

So, there was a link with the three colours in the earlier paintings by Moss and by Quaytman and the three coloured projections, between the fashion in the hairstyle photos and the video and the cloth in the tartan references and the Heron fabric design.

Still rather a baffling show as far as being cohesive goes.

I'd missed my chance to invade the 'family workshop space' by taking so long looking around this time, but it seems invidious to exclude lone people without children from enjoying the art materials.

If you go to see this show I strongly recommend taking a free tour to hear some background and slow yourself down enough to enjoy the art work. Listening and contributing to discussion I find triggers the brain cells into action.