May Exhibition Launch

Join us for the launch of our three new summer exhibitions: "Fragile Earth" works of Sally Baldwin; "Gaps - Spain 2019" works of Robert Mountjoy; "Paean to the Sea" works of Katie Jamieson.

These three exhibitions consider the spaces around us, their surprising resilience, inevitable decay and a juxtaposition of strength and fragility to be found in the most unexpected places. In “Gaps”, Robert Mountjoy presents a view of the historic Andalucía that in abstract forms captures the vibrancy and strength of its aging architecture today. Against this, Katie Jamieson’s “Paean to the Sea” explores natural landscapes as they reclaim abandoned industry, decaying structures gently laid to rest by delicate hands. And finally, Sally Baldwin’s “Fragile Earth” considers the other half of this relationship, presenting delicate and ephemeral works that reflect a vulnerable world in which the cracks are not just seen in the health of our planet, but in society as a whole.

Paean to the Sea

Since childhood I have found myself drawn to the oceans, rivers and lakes, and the industrial landscapes that have infringed upon them. I am fascinated by the juxtaposition of these two opposing worlds, and the beauty in the abandoned and decaying architectural structures as they are reclaimed by nature. I have always swum in open water; each immersion reawakens me to a connection and relationship with something greater than myself; this is the same connection I feel when I paint.  This exhibition is a meditative offering to the littoral landscape in all its impermanence and fragility. The works attempt to capture the raw, ephemeral energy of the water, the erosion of the manmade structures that inhabit it, and the marks and remnants that are left behind.

Fragile Earth

Fragile Earth is a body of work evoking natural forms such as trees, pods, flowers, insects, sea life, water. The materials used - recycled paper, handmade paper, silk waste, silk, cotton scrim - are ghostly, white and ephemeral, suggesting delicate, fragile, finely balanced and vulnerable landscapes.  The work had its origins during the first lockdown when it felt as if the world as we knew it was collapsing – not only was the environment under extraordinary threat, with climate change and habitat loss demonstrated clearly all around us, but our society too was crumbling because of a rampaging virus.  I started a project called ‘Disintegration/Things Fall Apart’ and was very pleased to be awarded Arts Council England funding to help in its development. Initially my idea was for the pieces to form a white and ghostly landscape, a reminder of what we once had but have now lost. However as the work progressed I decided a better name would be Fragile Earth as I felt it was more optimistic, and reflects my belief that we can still reverse this decline if we work together globally and locally to switch to a circular, carbon free economy, and to protect endangered habitats.  Some of the issues faced by the environment are evoked in the pieces. Plastic Everywhere: Ocean is part of a series that shows how our love affair with plastic has infiltrated every area of our planet including our seas ‘Ghostly Gum’ refers to the massive loss of primary eucalyptus forest, and all the species they support, in the Australian bushfires of 2019/20, and to the vast numbers that are felled every year for agriculture and land clearance. I like using pod forms, as they represent nurture, protection, and new life, and by making them in delicate materials such as chiffon, or lacy scrim dipped in paper pulp, I am indicating that these forms too are fragile and in the balance.

Gaps - Spain 2019

In September 2019, Robert Mountjoy took an unscheduled trip to Spain, visiting Andalucía and its historic sites. He took a sketchbook and a camera and came back full of new ideas, minimalist forms and textures, but most of all colours— reds – both intense and bleached out, with deep yellows and dusty grey/blues.  He spent some weeks playing with figurative landscapes based on the drawings, but felt he was not producing anything new or exciting. Looking back through his photographs, he found a batch where he had accidentally nudged camera settings to wide angle and continued to shoot before noticing the mistake. The resulting images showed views through narrow streets from one plaza to another with ‘barrel’ distortion… and these resonated with a series of abstract collage sketches he had been experimenting with.  The artist adapted and scaled up some of his collages; overlapping convex sided lozenges and painting them with the hot dry colours and textures recalled from the recent travels. Working on HDF or canvas boards, he built up layers of colour and texture over hard edged forms with contrasting gaps. He showed two of the first paintings in the Penwith Gallery, St Ives with the South West Academy 2020 Exhibition. He destined another four to the 21 Group Exhibition that year, also at Penwith. The colours became more intense as the series continued and the stripped-down forms less architectural. Three of the later paintings in this sequence was included in the SWAc Reflection 2020 Exhibition. Four paintings were shown with the 21 Group at the Limekiln Gallery, Calstock from April to June 2021, two at the Artizan Gallery in Torquay and six more at the September 2021 Exhibition in St Ives.