With work by Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada, Michael Cardew, David Leach, William Marshall & Janet Leach
The Leach Pottery was established by Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada in 1920. Since that date around 120 potters, students and artists from around the world have worked and trained here including Michael Cardew, Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie, Norah Braden, David Leach, Michael Leach, Janet Leach, Bill Marshall, Richard Batterham and Warren Mackenzie.
The current exhibition focuses on six of these potters chosen for their particular contribution to the Leach Pottery.
Formed as an aid to education and now numbering in excess of 150 works this collection provides a varied and comprehensive view of post war artistic activity in this country.
Cornwall and Brittany have long had a close relationship, reflected in twinning of no fewer than 35 towns. Nowhere is this closeness more keenly felt than the far west of Cornwall, whose relationship with the equivalent area of Brittany – Cornouaille in Finistère – dates back to the prehistoric past and really came to the fore when art colonies developed in each area.
In celebration of these links, Penlee House Gallery & Museum has been working with the Musée Départemental Breton in Quimper to stage an exhibition that will be shown at both venues. Opening at Penlee House on 24 March, Another Cornwall / Gens de Cornouaille(s) focuses on the artistic links at the turn of the last century, between c.1880 and c.1930. During this period, the art colonies in St Ives and Newlyn were populated by artists who had come fresh from the parallel colonies in Brittany, to the extent that Stanhope Forbes famously described Newlyn as ‘a sort of English Concarneau’.
The influx of some of the greatest painters of their age into Brittany and West Cornwall meant that the lives of the indigenous communities in both places were captured for posterity. This selection of paintings shows not only how artists from the Breton and Cornish colonies produced similar work, but also how the lives of the local people on both sides of the Channel had much in common.
The exhibition includes works by some of the most renowned Newlyn School names, including Stanhope and Elizabeth Forbes, Albert Chevallier Tayler, Harold Harvey, Walter Langley and Frank Gascoigne Heath - though many of the works themselves may be new to Penlee visitors, being largely rarely shown Breton subjects. Alongside these are works by some of the leading French artists of their day, though their names are less familiar to a British audience: painters such as Henri Guinier, Alfred Guillou, Jean-Alexis Morin and Achille Granchi-Taylor.
Large sea- and landscape based acrylic painted constructions by the London artist Brian Plummer – showing for the first time in St Ives, Cornwall – supported by collectable signed prints by the influential St Ives artists Ben Nicholson and
Barbara Hepworth, and complemented with a specially curated show of constructed ceramics by Regina Heinz, Peter Hayes and Carina Ciscato
Painter, sculptor, poet, and author, Patrick Woodroffe is best known for his fantasy science-fiction artwork. A variety of works will be on display, spanning his career from the early 60s to the present day.
Open: Tues-Sat (excluding Bank Holidays) 10am-4.45pm
An art exhibtion from Christine Allen
This exhibition will feature depictions of earth in the Cornish landscape; water with seascapes and riverscapes and air with skyscapes including sunsets and sunrises. Crafts also feature with raku fired pots and burnt turned wood.
An eight-week evolving programme of screenings, events and debates. The first three weeks present a video programme and talks exploring the themes of ‘extraction’ leading up to the four-day international Penzance Convention (17th to 20th May)
