AN ARTIST who has never been afraid to cross frontiers and venture into unexplored territories in search of shape and truth, St Ives-based Naomi Frears is now showing several of her smaller works in The Picture Room at Newlyn Art Gallery, writes Frank Ruhrmund.
A new space within the gallery which offers works for sale by some of Penwith's most highly regarded artists, the first works to be shown there were by the late Roger Hilton, all profits from sales will support the gallery's education and exhibition activities.
One who came to settle in St Ives shortly after having spent almost two years crossing the world, accompanied by her husband-to-be John, travelling a total of 25,000 miles on their Yamaha XT 550-2 motorbikes, for the past six years Naomi has occupied one of the historic Porthmeor Studios and the work she has created there – although mysterious and enigmatic and often difficult to fathom – has long since ensured her a place as one of Penwith's leading artists.
Talking about her methods of working, she says: "In order to find what I'm after I need to get completely lost. Colour, composition and subject matter change radically many times. Figures appear and disappear, change sex, are bold and looming one day and pushed to the margins the next.
"Each time one of these impulsive changes is made, I think I'm nearly there. When I do reach that point where a work feels right, I can delude myself that I couldn't have made that piece of work without all those rejected images lying under the surface."
Just how many lie under the surfaces of the nine small works she is presenting here is impossible to tell, but in reference to them she adds: "While my larger, but not always my more serious paintings, are being developed, I make smaller works on a long trestle table covered with pieces of paper, linen and sketchbooks in the middle of the studio.
"Surrounded by half-finished canvases I try to work things out. I might become preoccupied with scale, drawing, pattern, colour, composition. I rarely show these works which, while they couldn't in any conventional sense be described as studies, really show how I'm thinking. A figure or structure I want to introduce in a painting will sometimes appear first in miniature drawn or painted over an existing drawing or print – one thought over another. There's something both exciting and quiet about simply sitting and working on such an intimate scale instead of the restless pacing backwards and forwards that accompanies other work made in the studio."
All of which, needless to say, is worth bearing in mind when viewing Naomi's new works in The Picture Room where they can be seen until July 9.
The remainder of Newlyn Art Gallery is given over to Down There Among The Roots, a two-person exhibition consisting of Phoebe Cummings' site-specific installations and Chris Watson's sound recordings.
In the dark Lower Gallery the only light illuminates Phoebe's miniature landscape The Nature Of Power made in unfired clay. A landscape filled with Malaysian Isonandra Gutta trees from which gutta percha sap was extracted in the 19th century and which proved an ideal insulation for the submarine telegraph cables that extended from Cornwall to the rest of the world, it is washed by Land's End, a combination of two sound recordings by Chris Watson captured by submerging hydrophones at the point where the ocean breaks upon the land and burying equipment into the earth beneath a series of wires.
The Upper Gallery plays host to Phoebe's Border, an intriguing installation constructed from sifted cement powder and unfired clay, "comprised of small exquisite scenes and life-size fragments informed by specific details from the Cornish landscape such as engine house chimneys and sub-tropical plants".
This is accompanied by Chris' Something In The Air, a soundscape which blends sounds from Australian and Cornish landscapes.
Worth noting that the Studio Café also gets in on the act with some original telecommunication artefacts lent by Porthcurno Telegraph Museum.
There is also a chance to tweet in Morse Code on the computer or to engage with the interactive sound work by a young artist from Newlyn's Art Exchange Club.
Down There Among The Roots, which has been co-curated by Lauren Bishop, Eugenia Demeglio, Claire English, Olivia Gray, Emma Harnett, Katherine Scott and Camilla Stacey, students of MA Curatorial Practice at University Falmouth in collaboration with Newlyn Art Gallery, can be seen there, admission free, 10am to 5pm, Monday to Saturday, until July 9.
article copyiright THE CORNISHMAN