Western Morning News (Saturday)
New season brings strong artworks
THE spring season gets underway at both The Exchange in Penzance and its sister venue, Newlyn Art Gallery this weekend.
Continuing its New Voices strand of programming, which gives a platform to members of the community not often heard through the curation of works selected from the Arts Council Collection, it is showing Simple Truths at The Exchange, and Captured Beauty at Newlyn Art Gallery.
Both exhibitions draw on the extensive catalogue of more than 8,000 pieces of contemporary art in the Arts Council Collection.
The artworks for Simple Truths have been chosen by dads from the WILD Young Parents Project, from their allotment in Pengegon, Camborne. On each visit to the plot the dads were asked to select a piece of work that they related to in some way, and which they’d mark with a Post It note and a comment.
Their selections were printed and pinned to the shed walls and over the weeks that followed, were discussed and whittled down to the selection seen in the exhibition, including paintings, photographs, and sculptures, by David Batchelor, Maeve Brennan, Shezad Dawood, Laura Ford, Seamus Nicolson, Richard Patterson, Liv Preston, Bob Robinson, Caroline Walker, and Bedwyr Williams.
Showing at Newlyn Art Gallery, Captured Beauty has been curated by Abi Hutchinson from Black Voices Cornwall. Works from the
Arts Council collection include paintings by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Denzil Forrester, Ryan Mosely, Mowbray Odonkor, and Caroline Walker, photographic portraits of Britain in the 70s and 80s by Vanley Burke, Tarik Chawdry, and Colin Jones, alongside other artists using photography such as Sunil Gupta, and Ifeoma Onyefulu.
Captured Beauty also includes artists and makers based in Cornwall; Ore Ahmeed, Leona Campbell, Sigourney Hutchinson, and Catherine Lucktaylor, as well as drawings of migrants from Africa and Asia on their way into Europe, by Nectarios Stamatopoulos.
In addition to the main gallery exhibitions there is a display of work by the gallery volunteers at The Exchange. At Newlyn Art Gallery, Artificialia, new work by Bridgette Ashton, explores questions of replica and reimagining. A display case of what appear to be elaborately presented geological specimens, reveal themselves as imitations of minerallike objects. An integrated digital work incorporates the physical qualities of the sculptures into a virtual, tactile experience, inviting interaction from the viewer.
There is also a new series of work by Hannah Waldron, an artist working predominantly with weaving, showing in The Picture Room. Both venues are open Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 5pm. For full details of exhibitions see newlynartgallery.co.uk or call on 01736 363715.