COLLECT | MODERN ART

Media Release: New Exhibitions and Events
10 July 2023

Exhibition: COLLECT : Modern Art
9 September to 4 November 2023

COLLECT : Modern Art

Porthminster Gallery in St Ives, presents this selling exhibition of original signed prints and artworks by pioneering 20th Century St Ives and British Artists, including Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Sandra Blow, Barbara Hepworth, Patrick Heron and David Hockney.

Porthminster Gallery in St Ives, presents this selling-exhibition of original signed prints and artworks by pioneering 20th Century St Ives and British Artists, including Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Sandra Blow, Barbara Hepworth, Patrick Heron and David Hockney.

As well as presenting rare buying opportunities to new and seasoned collectors alike to acquire scarce museum-quality works, this lovingly curated show provides an accessible overview of British Modernist practice for visitors too – particularly for a younger generation who may not be familiar with the often radical and ground-breaking art, philosophies, and practise of this post-war period in British Art – with its Modernist crucible here in St Ives.

Curator and Gallery Director, David Durham, said, “The gallery has long enjoyed a reputation for its unique and creative approach to curating handsome shows of British contemporary artists’ works and their practise – complemented with considered works by key 20th Century St Ives and British names… the new show exemplifies this unique selling point.”

Co-curator and Gallery Manager, Catherine Lewin, said of the new show, “I think this visually striking exhibition beautifully illustrates our passionate commitment to bringing a wider awareness of this increasingly overlooked and forgotten period in post-war British art, and its pioneering practitioners – many of whom are women – especially to a younger audience.”

Works in show by:

The 85 works on show have been curated with accompanying complementary sculptural ceramics, sculptures, paintings and prints by selected leading British artists, including: 

• Mitch Pilkington’s instinctively hand-formed sculptural stoneware ceramics are inspired by the organic, natural forms of dry, sea-worn spirals of shells, collected on beachcombing and coastal forays. Pilkington’s works sit beautifully alongside Barbara Hepworth’s lithograph prints from the early 1970s in the show.

• Anne Barrell’s charming and characterful handmade ceramic wares are inspired by the naïve paintings of the celebrated St Ives artist, fisherman, and mariner Alfred Wallis.  Barrell’s hand-painted works evoke bygone days of sailing boats, masted-ships, fishing boats, safe harbours, sunny coves, and all things to do with the sea and coast.

• Trevor Price’s etchings, engravings, linocut prints and paintings, evoke the spirit of St Ives Modernism through his still life- and Cornish coastal-themed works.  Price is a multi award-winning St Ives-based artist, whose chief influences are the works of preceding artists also with Cornwall connections – Ben Nicholson, and William Scott, whose works hang alongside in show.

•Peter Hayes’ hand-built Raku-fired ‘totemic’ ceramic sculptures evoke a strong sense of the weathered, timeworn traces of ancient ritual, sacred, magical and cosmological custom in a west Cornwall landscape littered with prehistoric menhirs, stone circles, and mysterious fogous.  The universal, archetypal motifs and forms that Hayes celebrates in his work, are echoed in the accompanying complementary works by Hepworth, Frost, and Pasmore. 

• Michael Thacker’s hand-carved freeform abstract marble and limestone sculptures celebrate his passion for the qualities of the stone, which he emphasises by juxtaposing taut polished planes, alongside heavily textured ‘organic’ forms.  Thacker’s sculpture practise is informed by the rigorous training he received as a stone mason at York College, and York Minster, followed by 15 years as a mason and stone carver at Lincoln Cathedral.  There, his mastery of carving medieval foliation, inspired an ongoing with organic forms.  

This must-see exhibition will be on show at the gallery’s main exhibition space at 22 Fore Street, St Ives – close to the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden.

The price range of works in the show: £50 to £35,000.
The gallery offers buyers and collectors the easy and affordable incentive to buy original art up to £2,500 spread over 10 monthly instalments 0% APR with the Own Art purchase scheme.

Press Enquiries:
Catherine Lewin: +44 (0)1 736 795 888 / catherine@porthminstergallery.co.uk

Press-ready images, and text files:
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Listings information:
Porthminster Gallery
22 Fore Street, St Ives TR26 1HE

near the Barbara Hepworth Studio and Garden
01736 795888 | porthminstergallery.co.uk
Open six days a week, Mon–Fri 10am–5pm, Sat 11am–4pm
Admission free

Social Media:
#porthminstergallery
Instagram: @porthmingallery

Notes to Editors: About Porthminster Gallery

In 2017 the award-winning Porthminster Gallery celebrated its tenth year in St Ives, Cornwall. 

Established by art patrons and gallery directors David Durham and Dee Bray-Calvert in York in 1999 as Minster Fine Art, the business relocated to St Ives in 2007 to concentrate its focus on the art of St Ives and Cornwall.  Since then, the gallery has championed the work of more than 90 living British artists through its progressive and expertly curated programme of 160+ shows and has showcased and introduced many young up-and-coming artists to an appreciative local and global collectorship.  

The gallery has also gained a strong reputation over the last 13 years for its impressive shows and changing stock of 20th Century Modern St Ives and British Art. In July 2022, the gallery opened an adjacent second gallery venue, dedicated to showing these works in a first-floor apartment-like space.

Porthminster Gallery won the Cornwall Today readers’ award for ‘Best Art Gallery in Cornwall’ 2014/15 and has been featured in BBC2’s Coast series and more recently in Sky Art’s Tate Walks series.