St Ives Summer Show 2016

‘St Ives Summer Show’ at Porthminster Gallery

Exhibition: 'St Ives Summer Show’

Location: Porthminster Gallery, Westcott's Quay, St Ives, Cornwall, TR26 2DY, UK

Exhibition Dates: Saturday, 2nd July – Saturday, 3rd September 2016.

Opening Times: 10am – 5pm. Monday – Saturday.

Free admission.

Summer is finally here in sunny St Ives! Come along and join in the fun at our award-winning beachside gallery to celebrate our sizzling Summer Show. With small-scale nostalgia-evoking works about childhood at the seaside by Ann Winder-Boyle, and large-scale peopled beach paintings by Nick Bodimeade – amongst others, there is something for everyone to enjoy this summer.

The Porthminster Gallery is delighted to present its annual ‘St Ives Summer Show’, reveling in the distinctive light, colours and unique character of the famous Cornish coastal town. This lovingly crafted selling exhibition will showcase new paintings, sculptures and ceramics by eight favourite artists selected for their joie de vivre and distinctive artworks:

Ann Winder-Boyle's popular work blends her ink drawings, vintage hardback book covers, and beeswax, with stories and recollections from past and present to create images that at first glance appear to have come from 1950s children's story books. Reflective of a 'lost' age of innocence they can at times be sentimental and amusing, or have a sinister undertone. This new collection does not disappoint, with playful vignettes of life in the Cornish harbour town interspersed with edgier subtexts that demonstrate the trademark 'wit' that has propelled Ann into the spotlight.

Alongside Ann's collaged works, the exhibition will also include her skilfully fashioned wire sculptures and lino-cut prints of children at play on the beach.

Nick Bodimeade's startlingly eye-catching canvases crowded with beach-goers are neither abstract nor representational – shape-shifting between the two genres. Likewise the 'pixelated' figures which populate these large canvases hover and shimmer in a shifting summer heat-haze, coming into and out of focus as if viewed through the zoom lens of a camera. Nick also has a flair for investing each individual figure or group of figures with its own space, place and character within the expertly composed ensemble.

Anne Davies' restrained yet complex St Ives based compositions are inspired by the rhythms, patterns, shapes and colours of the town, its harbour and surrounding countryside, and also by her memories of visiting as a child and later as an adult with her own family.

Anne works using acrylic paint –ideally suited to her painting style of stripping away and drawing into the wet paint – building layers and re-composing until the image has its own narrative, a story of walking through the landscape, recalling the light and movement of the place and its familiar landmarks.

Jenny Hirst's new series of paintings is landscape based, inspired by the west coast of Cornwall. Through these she has explored the ever-changing weather and its dramatic effect on the moods of the sea, the sky and the coastline – the magical light of west Cornwall. Not one to be afraid to experiment and take risks, Jenny incorporates interesting textures into the works by the overlaying of paint and collage here, the addition of an element of drawing there, and by the rubbing and scraping away of paint to reveal layers beneath. Her aim is to capture the essence of a place – an emotional response rather than an accurate representation.

Simon Turner's enigmatic paintings are crafted on found pieces of panel, often using illustrations from educational books from his childhood as their template. When assembled the panels form a narrative of his interests and experiences. This collective process is an integral part of the imagery, with childhood and its relationship with adulthood a central theme in much of Simon's work. A religious upbringing and his later questioning of religious truths also continues to inform Simon's work, alongside his exploration of innovation and its place in society, and how children’s everyday classroom lessons were once philosophical or scientific revelations.

Stephanie Pace's fresh new range of hand-built porcelain 'vessel' forms pays homage both to the aesthetics, design and colour palette of the 1950s, and to the labyrinthine clutter of St Ives' cottages and alleyways. Stephanie uses a combination of different techniques (including sgraffito – incising designs through the surface layers to reveal the contrasting white porcelain beneath) and glazes in several firing processes, to ensure that each piece is individual and unique.

Sarah Perry's expertly thrown and hand-built stoneware and porcelain pots are inspired by the coastal colours and brilliant light of St Ives and are decorated with her distinctive 'trademark' glazes of intense blues, turquoise, and lustrous silver, gold and copper. Since her formal studies at Camberwell Art School in the 1960s under the illustrious studio potters Lucie Rie and Hans Coper, Sarah has enjoyed international success, with her work sold at Liberties, Heals, and The Conran Shops in London, Paris and Tokyo. Collectors of Sarah's ceramics include Paul Merton, Jude Law, Ralph Fiennes and Jonathan Pryce.

Geoffrey Swindell's exquisite and curious porcelain 'vessel' forms are often reminiscent of 'alien' sea creatures, cast up onto a beach – some still alive, some just fragile exoskeletons. Originally a painter, Geoffrey has carried his concern with surface qualities through to his ceramics, crafting objects that are not just simply coated in glazes but which have an essential and inseparable relationship of form, surface texture and colour. The various components for the objects are first thrown on his potters wheel, then cut and trimmed when the clay is 'leather-hard'. Textures are applied using an array of tools, and the 'primed canvas' of the white porcelain surface is airbrush sprayed with overlapping layers of coloured slips, glazes and oxides, before being kiln-fired.

Geoffrey’s exceptional works have featured in many international exhibitions and publications, with solo shows in London and New York.

The work of all eight artists will be available to view in the gallery as part of the exhibition ‘St Ives Summer Show’ at the Porthminster Gallery, St Ives, from Saturday 2nd July until Saturday 3rd September 2016.

Curated by Gallery Director David Durham, all works are available to buy.