The Porthminster Gallery is celebrating the long-awaited arrival of spring with a curated show of new contemporary artworks by selected gallery and guest artists.
Surface Spray, oil on canvas, by Amy Albright
First Blush: Spring Collection opens on Saturday (30th March) and also marks a return to the gallery of sculptural jewellery by Cornish and British makers.
Award-winning Cornish artist Amy Albright is among the gallery artists. She takes inspiration from south Cornwall’s coastline in her atmospheric, layered oil paintings. There, the ethereal, half-imagined, half-real boundaries of land and water merge, to give the viewer a sense of calm serenity, albeit one tinged with a lurking air of mystery and the unknown.
A Walking Place II, monoprint by Andrew Bird
Derbyshire based Andrew Bird — another gallery artist — is best known for his captivating abstract paintings of Cornish coastal landscapes. Here, though, his lesser-known printmaking practice is in the spotlight with a new series of unique hand-made monoprints charting his distorted geometry of the landscape and nature into abstract vocabularies. He has this in common with notable key artists associated with the St Ives Movement — Ben Nicholson, Patrick Heron, Victor Pasmore, and Barbara Hepworth — examples of whose original prints also feature in the show.
Dome pendants, in oxidised silver with gilt, by Hannah Souter
Showing for the very first time in Cornwall, and among the guest artists, is Cambridgeshire-based silversmith Hannah Souter. Her sculptural fine jewellery is inspired by delicate organic structures —especially of seed pods and buds — found in nature. By combining subtle surface textures with contrasting finishes, Souters’ unique silver creations include 18ct gold detail, freshwater pearls, and semi-precious beads.
Cornish ceramicist Rhiannon Petrucci’s hand-built and pit-fired Cornish stoneware clay Goddess vessels and Earth Mother statuettes celebrate the divine femininity of this seasonal time of birth and rebirth, fertility, and re-awakening.
Award-winning Cornwall-based contemporary jeweller Stacey West’s sculptural jewellery collections are inspired by north Cornwall’s rugged coastline. The Interlocking Strata collection encourages the wearer to interact with moveable, interlocking textured glass and metal elements, caged within a hand-crafted sterling silver structure. The Found Treasures collection plays with the idea of finding something beautiful (gemstones) emerging from an otherwise unremarkable material (pewter and silver).
Works in the show range in price from £55 to £2,500. The show runs at The Porthminister Gallery, Fore Street, St Ives, until 8th June.
