COASTAL REVIVAL
Tate St Ives reopens in style with a duet of hymns to the sea
Standing on the edge of the ocean, overlooking Porthmeor Beach in the heart of a traditional fishing community, Tate St Ives has always been intimately linked with its location. It is fitting, therefore, that the gallery should reopen after an 18-month hiatus with a pair of exhibitions, collectively titled ‘The Studio and The Sea’, that celebrate the importance of place, history and our connection with the landscape.
The first showcases the work of a British artist who brings the ocean into the studio in the most literal of ways. Working on the shore, Jessica Warboys uses natural elements to create her large-scale paintings, allowing the waves to lap across the raw canvases and then throwing over pigments to form patterns that are shaped by the movement of the sea, wind and sand. Her specially commissioned Sea Paintings, made on Cornwall’s Zennor coast, will hang in galleries at Tate St Ives that overlook the bay, providing a dramatic backdrop to a display that illustrates the breadth of Warboys’ artistic practice, complete with objects, sculptures and a film series inspired by the fantastical settings of pagan history.
Moving from the outside in, the focus of the second exhibition, ‘That Continuous Thing’, will be on the ceramics studio, where tradition and innovation collide. From the rise of artisan pottery in the UK and Japan during the 1910s to the Californian clay revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, right up to the radical experimentation of young British artists working today, the show will chart the evolution and enduring appeal of ceramic art. Look out for pieces by the 2016 Turner Prize nominee Anthea Hamilton and a new series of sculptures by the emerging talent Jesse Wine, who reinterprets the work of leading ceramicists from throughout history. fh The first phase of Tate St Ives reopening (www.tate.org.uk) begins on 31 March; both exhibitions run until 3 September.