|
Badcock's Gallery: An exhibition, The far side...of memory by Marilyn
Browning opens today in Badcock's Gallery, Newlyn. A graduate of
Falmouth College of Art, awarded an Arts Foundation residency in North
Africa four years ago when she shared an exhibition with four other
women artists in Marrakech, she has since exhibited widely from Bath to
London and at various venues in Cornwall. Renowned for paintings in
which shoes of one kind or another are often central features, from
Boxed to Block, Gift to Pink Slipper, they again play a prominent part
in her current show.
She
says: "Somehow shoes have become a trope I constantly return to. They
seem to oscillate as signifiers, but never settle into one single
meaning."
Paintings in which commonplace objects, from shoes to
furniture, come together in a domestic setting, they possess a haunting
quality which intrigues, lends them another dimension, and places them
way beyond the ordinary.
Marilyn Browning reminds her viewer
that Freud referred to the unconscious as opportunist, and she
maintains that it is "in this sense that painting can be understood as
a kind of watching and waiting".
From an empty chair and the
inevitable pair of shoes in a painting actually entitled Watching and
Waiting to a mystical Moth the 23 canvases she is presenting here
certainly provide food for thought as well as considerable instant
visual pleasure.
Admission is free, and Marilyn Browning's
exhibition The far side...of memory can be seen in Badcock's Gallery,
The Strand, Newlyn, until September 26.
Penzance Arts Club:
Monday sees the opening in Penzance Arts Club of My Medley, an
exhibition of recent paintings by Carbis Bay-based Penn Carwardine. A
past president of St Ives Arts Club, born in London she studied at
Hornsey School of Art and came to settle in this part of the world in
the 1970s since when she has exhibited widely throughout this country
and abroad from Camborne to Cuxhaven. Acclaimed for her colourful and
generally cheerful impressions of her immediate environment, from her
studio perched high on Hawk's Point above Porthkidney Beach she enjoys
superb sea views and it is not surprising that her Medley should
include several studies of the Cornish coast. From Wave to Restless
Water, not to mention Sun Lover and Sun Worshipper in which her
subjects, female nudes, not only love and worship the sun but also the
shoreline, she captures and conveys a sense of the power of the sea in
both its still and stormy moments. As well as seeking and finding
subject matter for her compositions from "The dragon-green, the
luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea", which seems to stretch
for ever from her studio window to the far horizon, she also seeks and
finds it in her immediate surroundings, from cats and chickens to the
flowers and shrubs that flourish in her colourful garden. And from Cat
Play to Lazy Day these floral and faunal studies have a different but
considerable charm of their own. As accomplished and accessible as they
are appealing, admission is free to all, the general public and club
member alike, and Penn Carwardine's paintings can be seen in the
Penzance Arts Club, Chapel House, Chapel Street, 10am-6pm,
Monday-Friday, Saturday 12noon-6pm, until September 23.
Aides
memoire: An exhibition by the members of Talking Space opens today in
the Tolcarne Inn, Newlyn. A group of women artists which came into
being in St Ives a dozen years ago since that time it has seen more
than 70 artists come and go as members, a constant change which has
added to the attraction of its exhibitions. Its latest show can be seen
in the Tolcarne Inn, Newlyn, during normal opening hours, until October
5. Worth noting that a long-standing member of the group, St Ives-based
artist Mary Fletcher, who for some while has been commuting from St
Ives to Falmouth while studying for an MA in Contemporary Visual Arts,
is part of an exhibition being held in the Wood Lane campus by students
at University College, Falmouth, from September 8-14. Saturday sees the
opening in Lamorna Village Hall of an exhibition by St Just-based
artist Tim Treagust. An eclectic mix of styles ranging from the
figurative to the abstract but all sharing mutual subject matter, the
landscape of and the sea surrounding Penwith, Tim Treagust's paintings
can be seen in Lamorna Village Hall 10am-6pm, Saturday until Wednesday.
Good to learn that a number of paintings from Still Waters the
exhibition by Joy Wolfenden Brown, now being held at Goldfish
Contemporary FineArt, 56 Chapel Street, Penzance, until September 23,
have been bought for the Anthony Petullo collection of Outsider and
Naive Art in the USA. A reminder that, courtesy of Tate St Ives, there
is a chance to be part of Porthmeor Beach's first "living painting"
11am-4pm this Sunday, September 10, when Tate SuperSunday: Inside Out
in association with Wildworks, invites one and all to "step into the
frame, join in the fun, and Be Art!"
For something completely
different, but well worth looking forward to, and definitely not to be
missed by booklovers of whatever age, sex, shape or size, there is the
Morrab Library's annual Book Fair - rare and secondhand books, plus
postcards and refreshments - in St John's Hall, Penzance, 10am-4pm on
Saturday, September 16.
Article copyright THE CORNISHMAN
 |
