MELANIE STIDOLPH
6 - 29 OCT 2022

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

'As it is seen' finds a visual and poetic language for the artist’s experience of involuntary childlessness through two bodies of work.

A series of photographic works titled 'Last Summer' present scenes outside the artist’s direct experience. The works show families with young children at the edge of the sea. They focus on how we arrange ourselves and signal to others when they are in unfamiliar territory. These photographs look at the shape of groups and how togetherness is demonstrated through gestures and distance, our sense of which is heightened now after coming through the pandemic.

Stidolph says:
The slow observational process of creating the work is a form of healing; as I took the first shot of what has become a series, I realised it was the first time in a long time I could look long enough to compose a photograph, rather than look away from a family scene I could not recreate in my own life.

The exhibition launches Stidolph's first photo book: 'Endless Reproduction' which shares a perspective of a journey to being childless not by choice.

From the Epigraph:
2022. Cornwall, home. Twenty two years after having children became a focused ambition. I spent years in the mind of my imagined near future - trying to will an increasingly distant life closer to me, whilst trying to hold myself in the present.

The exhibition is accompanied by a free publication featuring an essay about Stidolph’s practice by writer Lizzie Lloyd ‘A body, in parts, interjects’ commissioned by Cultivator Cornwall, a response to the work ‘Endless Reproduction’ by Paola Paleari, curator and writer, and an interview with the artist by Stefanie Braun, freelance curator, commissioned by Photomonitor. Click here to view a digital version of the publication.

PUBLIC PROGRAMME AND RESOURCES

Download the exhibition publication here

GALLERY TALK / As it is seen
SAT 22 OCT 3PM
An informal conversation between Melanie Stidolph and artist and academic Mandy Lee Jandrell

Mandy Lee Jandrell is Director of the School of Art and The Institute of Photography at Falmouth University. She is an internationally exhibiting artist working with installation, photography and moving image. Her work has been shown in The Royal Academy, The South African National Gallery, The Whitechapel Gallery, The Serpentine Gallery and The Sharjah Art Foundation, amongst others.

Mandy Lee Jandrell and Melanie Stidolph have had an ongoing dialog about photography and have collaborated with each other on a number of projects over the last two decades. Over the course of their careers, both artists have used photography as a way to explore ideas around aesthetics, personal experience and the cultural production of meaning. Over time, the artists have developed a way of interrogating one another's practice, as well as articulating and questioning each other’s ideas and experimental outcomes. Both share a desire to unsettle their existing ways of working and at times disrupt the coherence of the image.

TALK BY YVONNE JOHN
SAT 29 OCT / 3PM
An informal talk and discussion of the themes in the exhibition with Yvonne John.

Yvonne John is a British author and activist for the Childless women of colour. She is a public speaker who has appeared on numerous radio and television programmes, including BBC Radio 4’s ‘Woman’s Hour’. She is known as the leading voice for the women of colour’s experience around infertility, as well as creating an inclusive space for black women and women of colour to openly talk about their childless journey.

Yvonne is a graduate of Gateway Women's Plan B Mentorship programme. Gateway Women is a support group for women who are childless by circumstance.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Melanie Stidolph works with video, film, and photography. She studied at The University of Leeds & The University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Her work is influenced by experiences of infertility & childlessness and she is drawn to rock pools & mis-using photographic equipment. Commissions include The Photographers’ Gallery & Tate Modern. Solo exhibitions include Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art & Kamloops Art Gallery, Canada. Group shows in London, Madrid, Vancouver and New York. Curated ‘Except The Mirror’ for Format Festival, Derby. Currently exhibiting in Exeter Contemporary Open 2022. She is Curator, Public Programme at Tate St Ives.

www.melaniestidolph.com
@melaniestidolph

Install and event images:
Oliver Udy

Works images courtesy of the artist:
‘Last Summer’
’Endless Reproduction’ book

This exhibition is part of a new programme supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

AMY LAWRENCE & CHLOE BONFIELD
3 - 17 SEP 2022

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

‘A Podium’ is a collaborative exhibition between artists Amy Lawrence and Chloe Bonfield. A theatrical ring occupies the gallery, arranged to host plays, music and discussion groups. Visitors are invited to occupy this space themselves, using the text and props to enact their own performative works.

Giulio Camillo’s ‘Theatre of Memory’ (1519-1544) invites a single spectator to ‘reverse the canonical relationship between audience and stage’. ‘A Podium’ invites the visitor into a similar act, player becoming spectator and vice versa, in a dance of worlds.

An opening performance, a character and costume workshop and a sound and script round table discussion will take place in ‘A Podium’. The artists will also be found to be occupying the space, enacting the narratives that curl and entwine around them and their works.

PUBLIC PROGRAMME

OPENING EVENT
SAT 3 SEP / 2 - 5 PM
A performance by Amy Lawrence and Chloe Bonfield

WORKSHOP / Experimental Play Reading
WED 7 SEP / 2 - 5 PM
A playful and informal chance to read through some short abstract plays and other texts in a small group, with costumes, props and a few musical instruments available.

WORKSHOP / Round Table Discussion
WED 14 SEP / 5 - 7 PM
Chloe and Amy discuss their work and the idea of what a stage, platform, spotlight or podium creates in a group of people. This session includes music making and reading.

CLOSING EVENT
SAT 17 SEP / 3 PM
The Worm + Goblet perform ‘Valley’
The Worm is a multi instrumentalist musician and composer creating contemporary low-fi pastoral early sf/fantasy prog pop music. Goblet will be performing their newish compositions for three recorders entitled ‘Valley’ . This will be the first performance of the work in full.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Amy Lawrence is a multi-disciplinary artist, writer and musician interested in community, craft and history. They create in the realms of fantasy and science fiction, making music and art. In making their work they connect with others while also offering their truest self to the world. Amy also writes short plays, poems and stories, some of which are included in ‘A Podium’. They are preparing some textile backdrops for the room and musical compositions to be performed live during the opening of the show.

Chloe Bonfield is an illustrator, writer and researcher working in London and the South West. Chloe is particularity interested in the Emblemata and how the image and text forms of the Emblem link to the creation of identity, language and culture. Chloe is currently working on a collaborative project funded by Sifting Kunstfonds, Germany, founder and coordinator of Stile funded by Creative Kernow, associate lecturer at London College of Communication and Visiting Lecturer at Falmouth University. Chloe was resident at Unit3 Lostwithiel, Cornwall as part of a Tresorys funded project during the summer of 2022.

This exhibition is part of a new programme supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

70 PLATES DESIGNED BY LOCAL RESIDENTS
20 - 27 AUG 2022

My Jubilee presents 70 commemorative plates designed by local Penryn and Falmouth residents in May and June 2022, in celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee.

Each design features imagery which is particularly meaningful to the person who created it, alongside an outline or silhouette of their profile, in reference to the familiar outline of the Queen’s head on a coin or stamp.

“It is fascinating to be invited to make a souvenir of your own life when commemorative plates are more often dedicated to kings and queens. It reminds us that we are also part of and makers of history.“ Simon Persighetti, participant

The plates range in theme from outlines of local buildings to flowers, seagulls, motorbikes, pets and family portraits. Each plate is accompanied by a short story about the person who made it, their inspiration and their connection to the area.

This project is in collaboration with Katie Bunnell, a local ceramic designer and maker.

www.katiebunnell.co.uk

Find our more about the community design project here

The project is possible thanks to funding received from National Lottery Community Fund.

plate designs from top:
Sue Spring Chapman
Anne Lenney
Katie Bunnell

WILLIAM ARNOLD
1 - 4 JUN 2022

Artist William Arnold brings together multiple strands of several years of practice, alongside works in progress that are specifically concerned with plant-human interactions.

Typologies of overlooked flora, fractal landscapes of leaves and plans for an ephemeral sun monument... the works interrogate the value judgments we make regarding plantlife and our deep entanglements with the vegetal.

William Arnold is an experimental, conceptual and documentary photographer, interested in the layers of human and natural history that comprise the making of the landscape, and the role played by the photograph in documenting time and change—the subjective and objective politics of places and their histories.

His first monograph Suburban Herbarium was published by Uniformbooks (2020) and reprinted (2022) with his work showcased in various publications and periodicals including: The Guardian, New Scientist, De Standaard, Source and Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine.

He lives and works in Cornwall, UK.

www.williamarnold.net

WILLIAM OLIVER
A SOLO SHOW OF NEW PAINTINGS

27 - 29 MAY 2022
10 AM - 4 PM

PRIVATE VIEW
THU 26 MAY / 5 PM - 8 PM
All welcome

Painted in William Oliver’s studio at CAST in Helston 'The Ugly Frog’ features paintings of the Cornish landscape alongside an eclectic mix of different fictional subjects from cowboys to sumo wrestlers.

For William, painting presents a space in which to tell stories, both real and imagined. His work has a dreamlike quality. Distorted landscape depictions portray joy and threat in a kind of tense balance. He is interested in the ways in which he can convey a sense of place and, through it, a sense of interior landscape of the mind.

Inspired by the art of children, William is deeply interested in the ideas explored by Jean Dubuffet in L’Art Brut, or outsider art. This is art as an expression of things that cannot be communicated in any other way: art as its own language.

While painting, William seeks to lose himself and intentionally fall down rabbit holes, revealing thoughts, urges and memories that are outside conscious awareness. Often, tangible objects, such as buildings, express deep feeling and give an insight into the mind of the artist. Throughout his work, the everyday is imbued with a powerful sense of emotional resonance. The language of his work depends too on the silences – the marks that have not been made – and these can be as expressive as what is visible.

www.williamoliver.org

GROUP SHOW
MA Communication Design
FALMOUTH UNIVERSITY
27 APR – 05 MAY 2022

Aren’t we just the worst species you can imagine? You know if you said in the early 90s: “In 20 years, you will have the answer to any question you ever wanted, right there immediately, literally in the palm of your hand, no matter where you are on earth,” you would say “No that’s not possible. No that’s too unbelievable.” And, of course, now it’s true, now everyone’s like (yawns) “Next!” We have these amazing things that just dropped into our laps, and now we just want something new. That’s [our] relationship with the future … You’re scared of what’s coming next, but you also want it. What would you call that kind of relationship? Codependent?
Douglas Copeland 2015

In the wake of the continuous global pandemic, rapid technological change, data overflow, growing political polarisation, conspiracy theories, and an all-consuming digital world, the concept of ‘the self’ as we know it has been radically destabilized.

Using information experience design, this group exhibition from the MA Communication Design (Falmouth University) uses data to describe facets of what it means to be (brilliantly, confoundingly, disappointingly, shamefully, wonderfully...) human, today.

GROUP SHOW
Curated by JAMES MEREDEW
16-20 FEB 2022

Brick by Brick is a photography and mixed media exhibition confronting the current housing crisis in Cornwall.

The artists have been asked to exhibit work on how the crisis is affecting them. Interpretations of their brief has led to work about the changing landscape and characters of Cornwall. Some issues being raised are empty holiday lets, locals being pushed out of their hometowns, unaffordable rent and increasing second homes when many do not have a first. The exhibition aims to share the viewpoint of the crisis through the eyes of the Cornish artists.

EXHIBITING ARTISTS:
Becky Tyrrell
Max Searl
Maisie Marshall
James Meredew
Rosie Kliskey
Sam Arnold
Fran Rowse
First Not Second Homes

GROUP SHOW
BA FINE ART
FALMOUTH UNIVERSITY
4 – 12 FEB 2022

Co-curated with lecturer Simon Clark and students from BA Fine Art.

This exhibition marks the return of the miniature to Gray’s Wharf. Fine Art students from Falmouth University have once again been invited to consider miniature-making in relation to their own practices.

Miniatures are typically characterised as the tiny and the petite. However, what separates the miniature from the generally small? While little things can be synonymous with kitsch and cuteness, the miniature demands a critical consideration of its diminutive stature. It possesses a curious dissonance which stems from its duality of being at once representational yet unfamiliar, mirroring objects from our own reality while simultaneously severing any pre-conceived relationship to functionality.

Miniaturisation opens a door to a strange space of playful and inquisitive absurdity, in which a multitude of human and more-than-human ideas can be channelled and encountered anew.

GROUP SHOW
9 - 18 DEC 2021

The final show of 2021 is a celebration of Grays Wharf tenants and friends.

KATIE BUNNELL
DAVID DORAN
JON DORAN
JESSIE HIGGINSON
KITTY HILLIER
ROSANNA MARTIN
MELANIE MILLER
MEREDITH OWEN
KATE SOUTHWORTH
OLIVER RAYMOND BARKER
ROGER THORP

ROSANNA MARTIN
10 - 15 NOV 2021

Rosanna Martin’s practice explores the relationships between landscape, people and materiality. This exhibition brings together her work from the last few years, including prints and sculptures. Altered topographies, objects and marks left on the land by human activity, as evidenced in the reshaping and replacing of geological and manmade material, evoke intrigue and act as starting points for artworks.

Rosanna spent large parts of her childhood exploring the banks and channels of the upper reaches of the River Fal, where waste china clay once streamed downriver from the western pits of St Austell’s clay country, silting up the creek. Time spent swimming, skating and sliding across this silt - a bright white mud which sparkles with flecks of mica in the sunlight - built an early connection with clay.

This connection has expanded into a process of tuning in to the land, a way of looking at both the broad view and the intricacies of the details. It is through this lens that Rosanna examines the industrial extraction of the Earth’s natural resources and how it has changed the shape of the landscapes we inhabit. Rosanna collects displaced materials from sites across Cornwall and, using the heat of the kiln to mimic natural geological processes, fuses these samples into new conglomerates.

www.rosannamartin.com

first image: Rosanna Martin
all other photography: Oliver Udy

MEREDITH OWEN
12 - 21 NOV 2021

Meredith Owen’s solo show at Grays Wharf has been over a year in the making, a year of most extraordinary circumstances.

During the first lock down, in Spring 2020, the sights and sounds of nature became amplified as traffic, industry and the day-to-day bustle fell away. For many people, the allotted daily exercise became an opportunity to become more aware of their natural surroundings, to take stock and observe the changing of the seasons with a space and time that had not been available previously.

Inspired by this renewed focus on nature, Meredith Owen has created a collection of over 25 landscape works. She has drawn on the past several years of travelling around Cornwall and beyond, sketching and photographing the British landscape across the changing seasons. Presented here is a collection of paintings, from the Helford River in Cornwall to a Scottish Highland Loch, which captures where we sit within our environment and our impact on it.

Owen paints with oils onto ply or wooden boards. She works to create paintings that reflect her perception of our environment and nature's overwhelming beauty, power, and resilience.

“Nature is one constantly changing phenomenon, everything it consists of is worthy of our attention and I wish to celebrate that.”

www.meredithowen.co.uk

KATIE BUNNELL
JESSIE HIGGINSON
ISMINI SAMANIDOU

14 OCT - 6 NOV 2021

Mesh, Loop & Line is a collaboration between textile artist Ismini Samanidou, printmaker Jessie Higginson and ceramicist Katie Bunnell, exploring line and form in the creation of weavings, prints and ceramics. Samanidou, Higginson and Bunnell will create new works in dialogue with each other and co-curate an exhibition to visually speak of their common interest in ‘line’. The three artists have collaborated before, ‘Mesh Loop and Line’ invites them to re-connect, inform, invigorate and challenge each other’s practice while engaging new audiences with explorations across their materials.

In addition to making new work, the artists will also develop workshops for people living with dementia. Jayne Howard, Director of Arts Well and Ellie Robinson-Carter, a socially engaged creative practitioner will help shape the engagement to ensure quality and meaning for participants.

Find out more about the wider project here.

This project was possible thanks to funding received from Arts Council National Lottery, Feast and Cornwall Council.

YVONNE HINGSTON
& invited artists
SHALLAL STUDIOS
16 – 25 SEP 2021

Two Suns and Other Characters is an exhibition of work by Yvonne Hingston and invited artists who have responded to her art.

Yvonne works in a shared studio and, with remarkable regularity, other artists say that some element of her work has inspired their own. This collection of paintings, prints, drawings and film explores the process of being moved by an artwork and carrying that energy into new works.

Yvonne paints a world freed from the chaos and doubt of everyday life. Her lines untangle our messy lives, offering us a dream-like space where memories have lost their detail and become rounder and bolder over time.

Her paintings are populated by characters: dogs, people, birds, flowers, branches, all have personalities and all seem to raise their limbs skywards, illuminated by an approving sun or two. These otherworldly characters invite us in, so that we become lost within Yvonne’s bright lines. Forms appear to melt into new shapes, places and patterns.

This exhibition brings Yvonne’s work together for the first time and invites us to share her way of seeing.

Other exhibiting artists are: Elly Fairs, Lou Brett, Hayley Cave, Phoebe Barnicoat and Michael Brett.

Yvonne Hingston works at Shallal Studios, Krowji.

shallal.org/shallal-studios

RACHAEL JONES
KITTY HILLIER
ROSANNA MARTIN
OLIVER RAYMOND BARKER

2 - 25 JUL 2021

Moving Landscapes was a partnership project between Grays Wharf and Rachael Jones, a filmmaker and researcher who uses collaborative processes to explore alternative recordings of the landscape.

Three artists, Kitty Hillier, Rosanna Martin and Oliver Raymond-Barker, collaborated with Rachael to record circular walks in the landscape; producing audio and visual materials as a starting point for new works in film, photography, sculpture and ceramics.

The artists also developed creative activities for people living with dementia, and their families and carers, to engage with at home. All of the work created by the artists and participants, as well as two new films by Rachael, was brought together in the exhibition.

Find out more about the wider project here.

This project was possible thanks to funding received from Arts Council National Lottery, Cornwall Council and the generous support of people who donated to the Crowdfunder campaign.

photography by Oliver Udy

GROUP SHOW
29 MAY – 13 JUN 2021

Organised by Jonathan Michael Ray and Verity Birt.

Banned under the restrictions of Covid-19, gathering reflects a communal act of intimacy shared between people, site and materials. Local artists will reflect on this theme through their interdisciplinary practice to explore the act of gathering and its value in the aftermath of the pandemic.

EXHIBITING ARTISTS
Simon Bayliss
Verity Birt
Ilker Cinarel
Steven Claydon
Georgia Gendall
Dan Howard Birt
Jonathan Michael Ray
Abigail Reynolds
Tom Sewell
Lucy Stein

Generously supported with funding from Arts Council England and FEAST Cornwall.

photography by Oliver Udy
poster designed by Tom Sewell

GROUP SHOW
EXTENDED DIPLOMA IN PHOTOGRAPHY
TRURO COLLEGE
20 – 21 MAY 2021

sonder – n. the realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

As the title suggests, the themes and concerns in this exhibition are as diverse as they are profound. As we emerge from lockdown, these students remind us that creative thinking is an essential tool in uncertain times.

@trurophotoed

SAMUEL BESTWICK
11 – 16 MAY 2021

An exhibition of moving image based work exploring ideas of looking – at art, at ourselves, at each other.

What does it mean to look at men, what does it mean to look at women? How is looking influenced through sexuality and voyeurism within media? And, as the image-maker, what are the ethics of filming with a camera?

Samuel Bestwick is an artist and filmmaker based in Cornwall. He works across moving image, both analogue and digital, as well as printmaking and photography.

Samuel’s work often explores allegory and mythology, but within a modern context. In doing so, he encourages a re-engagement with the morals that permeate these stories. At the same time, his practice is becoming more retrospective, causing him to look back at his recent art education. His work is shifting towards ways of seeing and by extension, philosophies surrounding the camera itself.

www.samuelbestwick.com

GROUP SHOW
BA(Hons) FINE ART / FALMOUTH SCHOOL OF ART

What is a miniature? A small version of something bigger? Not quite… for while a small chair is still a chair, a miniature chair no longer performs a chair’s nominal function; despite the mimetic resemblance, it is something else entirely. This is the uncanny delight of the miniature – at once familiar and decidedly strange.

As a little thing that can sit so comfortably in our hands, the miniature has an immediately tactile appeal. But its resonances are in no way localised; it can articulate huge, abstract ideas. In Elizabethan times, broaches baring miniature portraits of the monarch were worn as politically strategic pledges of loyalty and support. In the north-west pacific coast of America, a tiny wooden canoe made by the Makah artist Young Doctor in 1900 summons complex indigenous histories and cultures pre-dating European colonisation.

This exhibition showcases a variety of contemporary miniatures made by Fine Art students from Falmouth University. All the works on display have been produced in response to an invitation from Grays Wharf to embrace the critical complexity of miniature-making.

Immediately visible is a giant facsimile of a tiny matchbox table – an eerily oversized iteration of something small that, in turn, makes miniatures of us. Surrounding this is a radically diverse spectrum of work that is at once fragile, provocative, absurd and affecting: Frankenstein’s moth, a dysfunctional Zimmer-frame ready to collapse, skeletal armatures poking out of earth, strange totems to ancient belief; these small things are in no way insignificant.

MARY TRAPP

GRAYS WHARF GALLERY
APR 2021

PUDDLE is a mixed-media exhibition of sculpture and drawing by Falmouth based artist Mary Trapp.

PUDDLE explores slippages between bodies and spaces through water; mopping up ideas of porosity, identity, emergence, and care. Found objects, collected from the shoreline and home, are re-modelled and combined with hand-made objects in latex, glass, fabric, and wax.

Mary engages in a process of collecting, drawing, making and re-making to arrive at objects which describe the body. She sees her sculptural process as performing acts of care where materials are found, carried, wrapped and stitched together in an attempt at nurture.

Grotty and water worn materials are paired with bright synthetic ones. The colour pink predominates and is used to create feelings of inner fleshiness, prompting us to think about these forms as bodies. Porous materials such as foam, fabric and mesh are placed with watertight materials such as glass, plastic and wax.

Mary Trapp graduated with an MA in Fine Art from Plymouth College of Art in 2018. Mary is currently resident in Studio 9 at Grays Wharf as part of a year-long Graduate Residency supported by Cultivator Cornwall. She works between sculpture, drawing and installation. Her practice examines the relationship between body and water.

marytrapp.co.uk

UNDER THE SURFACE
GALLERY RESIDENCY & SHOW

This is the first time Kitty Hillier has brought together her large-scale paintings and sculptural clay objects with film, performance and wall drawings. The installation will grow, move and evolve over the ten days that she is working in the space, so that the room can be read as one large painting.

Kitty Hillier is an artist based in Cornwall whose work is rooted in what’s above and below the surface, with a belief that all things are delicately interconnected. Seemingly tranquil, her paintings are created with layers of shapes derived from close observation of everyday details. They often conjure thoughts of huge sea creatures deep underwater, planetary systems, or the microscopic and atoms of energy that connect all things.

Found objects, temporary structures and bodily clay forms are arranged or balanced together, sometimes as vessels for collected rainwater, bringing to mind the always changing and precarious relationship between humanity and the earth’s elements.

How little we know about the soil, dust, algae, lichen, seaweed, gut, seabed, moon, tide, grasses and fungi. I’m interested in the idea that re-connecting and gaining a better understanding of nature is the key for imagining a better future world in which science, art and a heightened awareness of environmentalism intersect to create a new symbiosis.
- Kitty Hillier

NEW WORKS

We are delighted to present new works by Trudie Moore, made here during her studio residency in September / October 2020.

This exhibition marks the end point of a 6-week period of intensive exploration and experimentation. Trudie has used the residency to push the boundaries of her work and make a collection of larger pieces, amplifying the planes of colour and creating three-dimensional paintings that explore different ‘canvas’ materials: fabric, wood and acrylic.

Trudie has used the space to stretch out and expand in size and concept, yet remains focussed on the vibrance, brilliance and clarity of colour which is at the core of her work. Her use of fluorescents, pastels and clean, pure hues share the energising impact of colour with the viewer. The paintings glow and seem to emit light, sometimes casting it off the canvas and onto the wall. Two-dimensional works explore three-dimensions through sheer veils of paint, heavy edges of applied colour and, at times, even protrude from the wall or sit on the floor as sculptural forms.

TRUDIE MOORE
Studio Resident 2020

Trudie Moore has been the first artist to take up a studio residency at Grays Wharf. Our residencies aim to enable artists to develop their practice by providing a space to explore concepts, experiment with scale and materials, test ideas or take a new direction. The residencies are supported by professional practitioners who help to select artists and carry out practice reviews. We are delighted that our first supportive practitioner was artist Naomi Frears.

Trudie says of the residency:

The light and airy studio has given me both physical and mental space for reflection and deep focus. While I have been on this residency, I have been thinking harder about every move I make, and the intensity of consecutive studio days has enabled more critical thought. The feedback and conversation with Naomi Frears has been so valuable and, combined with the space and time provided, has benefited my work; time spent quietly painting and time spent processing ideas while watching the birds, boats and fish out of the studio window.

www.trudiemoore.co.uk / @trudie_moore_artist

14 – 19 SEP 2020
11 AM – 6 PM

Rory Blair (b. 1990) is a Cornwall based artist whose mixed media works (photography, drawing, film and the written word) build a constantly re-edited world that focusses on the cognitive dissonances and unexpected harmonies found in the present day. The works tread the lines that run along and through narrative, time, memory and emotion.

The title of this exhibition is taken from a sentence in ‘Sweet Thursday’ by John Steinbeck, There’s a hole in reality through which we can look if we wish. Blair says of the exhibition:

This installation explores themes of Time, Memory and Mortality, but it’s also about looking and ways of seeing; questioning what this experience of life is in the modern day as a phenomenon. The mycelial connections in things - the difficulty in imagining where one thing ends, and another begins. In reality there’s none of this, just an infinite flux or continuum or whatever. None of it is fixed or discrete. It all ends up familiar in some way, repeating patterns, a kind of Déjà Vu that’s more like someone else’s memory. In this instance of viewing the works, neither of us will be entirely sure of what’s happening. I’m seeing this equation for the first time too, but hopefully there’ll be some understanding.

Rory Blair’s works record personal experiences with a specificity that nevertheless allows contemplation of the wider human condition. He presents an accumulation of thoughts that are overlaid, that correct, contextualise and revise each other, leading to a cycle of repeating questions.

‘People who look for symbolic meanings fail to grasp the inherent poetry and mystery of the image. No doubt they sense this mystery, but they wish to get rid of it. They are afraid. By asking “what does this mean?”, They express a wish that everything be understandable. But if one does not reject the mystery, one has quite a different response. One asks other things.’
-Rene Magritte

Blair graduated with an MFA from the Falmouth University in 2016, after completing a BA in Photography from the same institution in 2014. His works have been exhibited in Europe, China and New Zealand.

www.roryblair.photography

Tenants & Friends of Grays Wharf

13 - 31 AUG 2020
THU - SAT / 11 - 4
SUN 30 + MON 31 / 11 - 4

Our inaugural exhibition in 2018 featured the work of eight artists who were the first to take up residence at Grays Wharf Studios. In 2020, we’re returning with that number now having grown to fifteen, comprising an even wider range of practitioners from painters and sculptors to illustrators and filmmakers.

As our programme grows and we begin to work with more and more inspiring artists, we’re delighted this year to include previous resident Otis Blease, now an MA student at the Royal Drawing School, as well as renowned printmaker John Howard and abstract painter Kitty Hillier, both of whom are collaborating with us to deliver our exciting new printmaking and abstraction course in September.

As a result, this eclectic show spans a range of disciplines and subject matter, inviting the viewer to engage with a multitude of creative processes. Rather than a themed exhibition, it is a glimpse into the working world behind studio doors and how each artist has developed a language through their unique use of selected media. From large scale expressive canvases to the minutiae of nature through a lens, we hope you’ll take the time to immerse yourself in this journey through the eyes of our many talented friends and tenants.

MAYA RONCHETTI & OLIVIA BRELSFORD-MASSEY*
04 - 25 JULY 2020

A residency and exhibition exploring the science and craft of domestic activities and their relationship to the natural environment through sculpture, performance and playful socially engaging activities.

Ronchetti and Brelsford-Massey’s work has associations with science, food and culture. They explore ideas such as exchange, activation, growth, symbiosis and immersion, combining objects and mixed media to create environments that are interactive and encourage sensorially stimulated thoughts around these ideas.

Allowing the limitations of social distancing to inform their practice, this exhibition explores collective living, sharing, ceremonies, performance and play related to food, plants, myths, magic and stories. The artists seek to connect ideas, activate happenings and create intrigue for themselves and for audiences who are invited to take part, from a safe distance.

In a carefully considered manner, they invite you to creatively journey with them as they explore ‘community’ in a unique era, dense with guidelines and limitations, calling for a rethink in the ways we connect to each other and the environment we inhabit. Ronchetti and Brelsford-Massey began collaborating during the final stages of their BA Fine Art degree at Falmouth University.

They realised that their work had been in conversation for many months without them consciously knowing and it was only when installing their final exhibition that they physically brought their work together for the first time. They describe their degree show as “almost like soup or curry of objects, materials, sounds, smells and movement”. Ronchetti says of that time:

“It felt as if we were almost in a zone or dance during this period of combining and weaving our work into one… As we live together, art talk and discussion hasn’t been at the centre of our interaction but, yet again, our ideas continue to run in much the same direction. It will be an interesting marker to see what we can do in a new space a year later.”

*the artists are from the same household and can therefore work closely together

An exhibition of six journeys on land and sea

In this exhibition six artists, filmmakers, illustrators and photographers all based at Grays Wharf Studios in Penryn have curated individual landscape journeys through visual, written and filmed documentation. From rock pools to footpaths, the exhibition is a distillation of memory, observation and imagination resulting in a display of engineered experience that recreates these journeys through nature and invites visitors to immerse themselves in the process.

Artists :
Catie Close
Jon Denham
Anna Gruber
Georgina Holman
Rachael Jones
Fleur Rampton

Our inaugural exhibition features the work of eight talented tenants who all took up residence at Grays Wharf earlier this year.

Behind closed doors a great diversity of practice takes place here. From global documentary photography and illustration to fine art painting and contemporary ceramics at the forefront of digital research, all the participants are internationally exhibited and hugely experienced in their field. As such, we wanted to celebrate not only their work, but also their leap of faith in bringing their expertise to a part derelict building with only the vague promise of a professional venue to work from!

Although the tenants occupy a range of disciplines, curating this exhibition revealed some intriguing threads that link their work. The scrutinised geologies of Rosanna Martin’s Fragments series seem expanded through a wider lens in Hannah Woodman’s sweeping rocky seascapes, while Jon Doran’s ambiguous forms in misty landscapes echo the abstracting of nature found in Oliver Raymond Barker’s photographic prints. The graphic playfulness of Katie Bunnell’s ceramics, Jessie Higginson’s screen-prints and David Doran’s illustrations belie the intricate processes required to give us this illusion of spontaneity, while illusion is cleverly employed by Guy Martin’s ‘Parallel State’ photographic series to explore the conflation between fiction and reality in a much more turbulent context.

What all the exhibitors have in common is a commitment to their practice that sees them constantly testing its limitations. Even the most established professionals need time to experiment, discover, perfect or fail and a large part of establishing Grays Wharf was to provide contemplative spaces in which to do this.

Our inaugural exhibition features the work of eight talented tenants who all took up residence at Grays Wharf earlier this year.

Behind closed doors a great diversity of practice takes place here. From global documentary photography and illustration to fine art painting and contemporary ceramics at the forefront of digital research, all the participants are internationally exhibited and hugely experienced in their field. As such, we wanted to celebrate not only their work, but also their leap of faith in bringing their expertise to a part derelict building with only the vague promise of a professional venue to work from!

Although the tenants occupy a range of disciplines, curating this exhibition revealed some intriguing threads that link their work. The scrutinised geologies of Rosanna Martin’s Fragments series seem expanded through a wider lens in Hannah Woodman’s sweeping rocky seascapes, while Jon Doran’s ambiguous forms in misty landscapes echo the abstracting of nature found in Oliver Raymond Barker’s photographic prints. The graphic playfulness of Katie Bunnell’s ceramics, Jessie Higginson’s screen-prints and David Doran’s illustrations belie the intricate processes required to give us this illusion of spontaneity, while illusion is cleverly employed by Guy Martin’s ‘Parallel State’ photographic series to explore the conflation between fiction and reality in a much more turbulent context.

What all the exhibitors have in common is a commitment to their practice that sees them constantly testing its limitations. Even the most established professionals need time to experiment, discover, perfect or fail and a large part of establishing Grays Wharf was to provide contemplative spaces in which to do this.