Richard Ballinger

The Colony
mixed media

The Colony is a reflective installation which considers the way in which an artist works and uses mediums to reach a required piece or body of work. 112 years ago when the gallery was opened there were 112 artists recorded as living and working in the district. Ballinger was curious to find the reason why artists came here. Was it comradeship or the landscape or both? It was certainly the landscape that kept them here.

The artists of that period had limited materials and resources; they would walk with brushes and pencils searching for that perfect composition. Ballinger decided upon a coastal walk from St Ives round to Lamorna, Newlyn and Penzance as the basis for his work, cataloguing the journey with photographs, drawings and collected ephemera. The pull -out snapshots enclose 112 framed drawings representing the colony of artists at the turn of the last century. Collectively they stand proud upright as a memorial to the artist and Cornish landscape.