THE St Ives and Newlyn Societies of Artists have always gone their own way since coming into being.
They have had their differences, as the art critic Charles Marriott is quoted as saying in Marion Whybrow's splendid St Ives: 1883-1993: Portrait of an Art Colony: "Between the two places there was a gay interchange of compliments: at Newlyn they said that the St Ives artists were always talking about each other, and at St Ives they said that the Newlyn artists were always talking about themselves."
While a cynic might say, nothing changes, at the same time there have long been artists who have been members of both societies. A fact which makes the hosting by the St Ives Society of Artists of the exhibition Uncharted Landscapes by the Newlyn Society of Artists, now being held in the Mariner's Church, St Ives, not quite so surprising as it may at first seem.
Among the early visitors to be signed in at St, Ives Arts Club in August 1890, were Elizabeth and Stanhope Forbes. Just what they or any other artist from a century or so ago would think of the works on view in this exhibition is anybody's guess, but it's more than likely that they would find a considerable amount, from Margot Maeckelberghe's Vermont and Daphne McClure's The Cross on the Hill to Bernard Evans' Sennen Beach and Rose Hilton's Towards St Ives, to interest them.
An exhibition which begins, in a manner of speaking, with Ian Penna's powerful Immeasurable Mass, a mine cap plug complete with brass plate and pillars which as well as reminding one of Cornwall's past mining industry is also an essay in space, dark and light, and ends with his Rabart's Time Piece, carved from solid acrylic paint, in between these two striking sculptures there are any number of uncharted, not to say unexpected and unusual landscapes to be enjoyed.
Curated by Denny Long and Phil Booth and comprised of works from 40 members of the Newlyn Society of Artists, the exhibition lives up to its declared promise of "embracing all approaches to the subject both in terms of concepts and ideas, and includes a wide spectrum of responses from work which engages the landscape directly through to that which comes to the subject with a more elusive purpose".
In other words, whatever floats your boat, whether painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, drawing, mixed media or installation, it's all here.
Every viewer will have his or her own favourites, and I came away feeling that with such works, to name but a few, as Robert Jones' Pine Trees, St Ives, Ken Turner's Slate Quarry, Michael Calver's Theory of Emblems, Richard Ballinger's Improvisation, Bernard Irwin's Night Garden, Julia Giles' Beach Mark, Delpha Hudson's I, Margrit Clegg's St Ives, Cornwall, Rod Walker's Trewidden Night, Nik Strangelove's Monterey, Mexico and Volker Stox's digital print Chimera Six, which makes the illustration for the exhibition poster, this is an exhibition which not only "engages the landscape" and the viewer but also emphasises the Newlyn Society of Artists' enterprise and the St Ives Society of Artists' generosity.
Uncharted Landscapes by the Newlyn Society of Artists can be seen, courtesy of the St Ives Society of Artists in its gallery in Norway Square, St Ives, 10.30am to 5.30pm, Monday to Saturday, 2.30pm to 5.30pm Sunday, until September 3.
article copyright THE CORNISHMAN