Tate St Ives

The ceramics studio has always been a place where tradition meets experimentation. Spanning 100 years, this exhibition explores the diverse forms, energies and locations that define the modern studio. Ranging from the rise of studio pottery in the 1910s to a number of new commissions by a young generation of UK-based artists, That Continuous Thing – a quote from the American artist Peter Voulkos – traces the changing shape of the ceramics studio over the last century.

Opening with exchange between Japan and the UK in the 1910s and ’20s through the emergence of studio potters such as Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada (who moved from Japan to St Ives in 1920), William Staite Murray and Dora Billington, the exhibition leads on to the Californian ‘clay revolution’ of the 1950s and ‘60s, with sculptures by the pioneering sculptor Voulkos and his students, including Ken Price, Rudy Autio and Ron Nagle. A specially commissioned series of ceramic sculptures by the young British artist Jesse Wine will be included in response to the display. The final section of the exhibition, developed with artist Aaron Angell, recalls artists working in London in the ‘70s and 80s, celebrating the experimental work of Gillian Lowndes, Richard Slee and other ‘hand-building’ contemporaries. These will be shown alongside a presentation of works by a number artists – including Anthea Hamilton – made over the last three years at Angell’s London-based Troy Town Art Pottery, which he describes as ‘a radical and psychedelic workshop for artists’.

Suitable for

• Family friendly

Website

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-st-ives/exhibition/continuous-thing-artists-and-ceramics-studio-1920-today

Jessica Warboys will fill the sea-facing galleries at Tate St Ives with specially commissioned work, alongside films, sculptures and large-scale paintings. Her work is informed by personal or collective memories – historical, mythical or fictional – and this solo show will consider her use of symbolism, form and her approach to landscape.

Warboys often employs natural elements in making her works. The exhibition will feature specially commissioned Sea Paintings, which will immerse the galleries overlooking Porthmeor Beach, in floor-to-ceiling colour. Made on the Zennor coast, near St Ives, these enormous unframed canvases have pigment applied directly on them before being submerged in the waves. They are a physical document of Warboys’ collaboration with the sea, but will provide a backdrop to several new sculptures in the lower gallery. An installation of objects that reoccur across Warboys’ practice in film, performance and exhibitions, will be designed for the showcase. New forms and paintings will be also included in this one-off playful installation.

A suite of films made in the UK, will be presented in the final room: Pageant Roll 2012, made in the ancient landscape of the Cornish moors; Boudica 2014, which explores both the historic character and her namesake, the Boudicca Way in Norfolk; and a new film, Hill of Dreams 2015, which has been specially commissioned by Tate St Ives, Casa Masaccio San Giovanni Valdarno, Italy and Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway. It draws from Welsh fantasy writer Arthur Machen’s book of the same name, a semi-autobiographical novel written in 1907 that relives his childhood memories of a rural Gwent, where Warboys too was born a century later. The films highlight her enduring interest in landscape, pagan history and often overlooked historical figures.

Website

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-st-ives/exhibition/jessica-warboys