The Autumn 2024 Exhibition at the Tremheneere Gallery went really well, with artists talks and a fabulous review by the film critic Mark Kermode in the St Ives Times & Echo.
David Westby, artists talks in the upper gallery.
EXHIBITION | Autumn 2024
Saturday October 12th to Sunday November 3rd
The Autumn show is one of Newlyn Society of Artists’ twice-yearly exhibitions at the Tremenheere gallery. Autumn 2024 presents a cross section of members’ most recent work. Thought provoking and diverse, there is no house style in the NSA. The visitor can expect to see high-quality work reflecting the wide range of practice within the membership, where the nature and challenges of contemporary life can find an artistic voice.
The Opening Party is on Saturday 12th October 2.00 to 4.00pm. All are welcome.
On Sunday October 20th a group of participating artists will be at the gallery from 2.00 to 3.30pm to talk to visitors about the ideas and processes involved in their practice. If you can’t make the talks, there will be one or two participating artists at the gallery every day. They will be happy to answer any questions.
The gallery is open every day 11.00 – 4.00pm (Except Monday)
Entry to the gallery is free.
It’s been great having the involvement and insight of an artist from another discipline working with us on ‘Where the line Breaks’, our Spring show at Tremenheere. Award winning poet Katrina Naomi suggested the title for the show and curated it alongside the NSA’s Catherine Harvey Jefferson and Carlos Zapata. On Sunday afternoon, Katrina read the poem commissioned by the NSA in response to the show. After her talk about the process of writing it and some questions and discussion, the audience asked her to read the poem a second time, to great applause. The poem is called ‘The Golden Mbira, Or How to Really Look.’ It’s beautiful and thought provoking and the event was a lovely ending to Katrina’s collaboration with us. A video of Katrina’s reading will go on the NSA website in due course, but copies of it are available to read at the gallery. It’s a great show and it closes this Sunday 21st April. Don’t miss it
The Golden Mbira, Or How to Really Look
This place is changed
irrevocably, having taken on colour, brag & quirk
from a quicken of kerbs to a flurry of fields
something dirty made to shine
A gappy marriage of earth & air
We keep to boundaries
so much of our lives but I met a Celtic poet
who used 12 years to write
his Gaellic-Gallic-English mash-up of Sweeney.
Here, on a white wall, that same dedication, dare I say
obsession – as in words, as in art –
in the searching, the searching, in the whirring
of wire into gold, noting dates, lanes, time
This artist has been searching for two years
so far, offering a reminder to really look
Poets talk of looking aslant –
I consider how the artist Julia sees a dead cartridge
next to a bird
A musicality of form
even if birds no longer sing
let us believe
a woodpecker once made love to a buzzard
Poets might do well to write in art’s texture
that ability to recognise an individual
feather – to know the shaft of a hen pheasant
I long for specificity
as I long fervently for warplanes to stop
Such a failure in our inabilities
The gold keys bristle in empathy
try to take to the skies on a promise, a message, a promise
Their musicality cannot yet be played
though thumbs thrust to the mbira
We’re at the edge
each feather a lost shoe
in our wandering
Let us return to the oaky nest
where all birds are lovers
where an oak pretends to die
Others are not so fortunate
I’ve heard swallowing oak leaves
can extend a life –
a certain bitterness, guaranteed
What is it we might look for
in our long or short lives?
I stumble over dull metaphors
It’s good to see the humble
gleam from streets & hedges
in our rural/urban construct
How we wish for one but live in the other
I would like to be still
yet keep searching
Some things – such as love & compassion –
are hard to locate
Harder still, it seems, is peace
Katrina Naomi
‘Where the line
breaks’
NSA Spring Exhibition 2024
Friday March 29th (Good Friday) to Sunday April 21st 2024.
The Newlyn Society of Artists (NSA) will be bringing together two distinctive art forms in its upcoming spring show. Katrina Naomi, a distinguished poet (winner of numerous awards and Chair of the Society of Authors’ Poetry & Spoken Word Group) will collaborate with the NSA to select and curate the show. She will be also be writing a specially commissioned poem.
More than fifty works will be exhibited by the NSA’s nationally and internationally recognised artists. They will embrace all media, ranging from painting, drawing and print, to film, sculpture and 3D installation. And visitors should expect the unexpected! The Newlyn Society of Artists is known for its commitment to pushing the boundaries of creative expression: recent exhibitions have explored the possibilities of augmented reality and virtual experience.
Julia Giles, Chair of the NSA, said ‘We asked Katrina to suggest the theme of the show and I hope that visitors will enjoy our responses to a poet’s challenge. I’m looking forward to seeing what the perspective of a poet will bring to the process of putting the show together’.
Commenting on her involvement, Katrina Naomi said, ‘I always really enjoy what NSA does… so to be invited to write in response to the spring NSA show is very exciting. Line breaking vitally distinguishes poetry from prose. It leads to disruption and surprise. These feel like good issues for visual artists to be responding to…’
Katrina will give the first reading of the specially commissioned poem to mark this landmark collaboration, followed by a short talk. This Penzance based poet is due to publish her fourth full collection, ‘Battery Rocks, in July 2024.
Five artists will be talking about their work at the gallery on Saturday April 6th 2.00 till 3.30 and Katrina will be making her presentation on Sunday April 14th 2.20 till 3.00. Please book on Eventbrite. Entry to the gallery and tickets are free.
For more information about Katrina Naomi and her work please go to her website
Biography – Katrina Naomi www.katrinanaomi.co.uk
Newlyn Society of Artists Showcase 2023
Saturday 14 October to Sunday 5 November.
Tremenheere Gallery, Tremenheere
Sculpture Gardens, Gulval, Penzance, Cornwall TR20 8YL
The Showcase is one of the NSA’s twice-yearly exhibitions at Tremenheere. Drawn from our membership of almost 100 professional artists, this exhibition aims to present a slice of lively and thought provoking art created in Cornwall in the 2020s. There is no house style in the NSA. The visitor can expect to see high-quality work across a range of media reflecting the wide diversity of practices and interests within the membership where the nature and challenges of contemporary life find an artistic voice.
On Saturday 21 October a group of participating artists will be at the gallery from 1.45pm to talk to visitors about the ideas and processes involved in their practice. The Artists Talks will be followed at 3.00pm by a presentation by Dr Virginia Button with ‘Some thoughts on the Artist’s Society in a Rural Community’.
This will offer a critical perspective on the function of a Society such the NSA for the contemporary artist, their work and the Society’s relationship with the community in which it is located.
Entry to the gallery is free. If you would like to attend the artists talks and presentation on the 21 October, please book via Eventbrite. By scanning the code on the poster with your mobile phone you will be redirected to the Eventbrite online page. Tickets are free.
Newlyn Society of Artists Established in the late 19th century by an influential group of Landscape and Social Realist painters, the NSA exists today as a group of almost 100 contemporary artists who live in West Cornwall or have a close connection to it. They work across a range of disciplines from painting and sculpture to performance and the moving image.
The NSA is run by an annually elected committee and continues to seek new opportunities and welcome new membership applications. In 2017, the NSA began an exciting new partnership with Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, whose new, contemporary gallery space is now their new home, and the venue for twice yearly NSA exhibitions.
Ginny Button is an art historian, writer, curator and academic, with expertise in modern and contemporary British Art. Formerly a curator at London’s Tate Gallery and Tate Britain, she curated the Turner Prize for much of the 1990s before moving to Cornwall in 2001, where she worked at Falmouth University, initially as Course Leader MA Curatorial Practice, then as Head of Art and Director of Falmouth School of Art.
Saturday 1 April to Sunday 23 April 2023
11am-4pm (closed Mondays)
Open Bank Holiday Monday
Tremenheere Gallery
Gulval, Penzance TR20 8YL
Opening event: Saturday 1st April 2-4pm
Art is Technology – The Newlyn Society of Artists Spring ’23 Show Engage
Article by Kate Reeves-Edwards
NSA collaborative Immersive Technology Project
Over the past nine months, five NSA members have had the opportunity to work with Professor Tanya Krzywinska, a Research Professor working with Immersive Games and Technologies at Falmouth University. They have been given support to create augmented and virtual reality dimensions to their own work. This will be exhibited as part of the launch show for two new apps created by Tanya and NSA member Professor Penny Florence for Tremenheere Gardens, as well as being part of the NSA show.
The two Tremenheere apps are funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the work with the other 5 NSA artists is part of Falmouth and Exeter Universities’ Immersive Business outreach project https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/immersive-business funded by European Regional Development Fund.
Newlyn Society of Artists members Michelle Ohlson, Andrew Litton, Simon Averill, Kate Walters and Pat Wilson-Smith have been developing pieces of work using Augmented Reality so that while a work might hang on the wall, other versions of it can be seen through a phone app. Kate Walters has created a piece using Virtual Reality which can be experienced using a headset so that the viewer feels inside the actual work.
The Newlyn Society of Artists always produce shows which inspire and excite. We are particularly pleased to be part of this new development in technology which opens up the art world in just the same ways in which Passmore Edwards aspired to do. We hope that you enjoy it!
Please click on the link Additional Information to read more about the artists and the work.
This show is dedicated to Passmore Edwards, who was born 200 years ago and who promoted education and accessibility to the arts for those who could not otherwise afford it. To do this, he invested in and built schools, hospitals and galleries around Cornwall and the south, including notably Newlyn Art Gallery.
communal earth painting workshop
for Newlyn Society of Artists at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens
with Peter Ward
Thursday 13th April 2023 (1100 – 1430)
Saturday 8 October to Sunday 30 October 2022
11am-4pm (closed Mondays)
Tremenheere Gallery
Gulval, Penzance TR20 8YL
Opening event: Saturday 8 October 2-4pm
“The map is not the territory” is a phrase coined by the Polish-American philosopher and engineer Alfred Korzybski. He used it to convey the fact that people often confuse models of reality with reality itself.
As visual artists, our work is a continuous modelling/depicting/mapping of the various realities which we perceive and within which we live. This theme offers the chance for NSA members to make explicit some of the issues which we face as artists, as well as to explore some of the potent questions around identity and community, boundary and belonging in our world today.
This is a rich theme for NSA members and we hope that this will produce an exciting and nuanced exhibition.
Newlyn Society of Artists is one of the longest-surviving and most prestigious groups of professional artists in the UK. The NSA currently has close to ninety members, including artists working across all disciplines from painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture and film. At least twelve have been Royal Academicians. All members are either living in or strongly connected to Cornwall’s extraordinarily active and vibrant contemporary art scene.
Click on the link to view the list of artists and their work, including the title, medium and price.
Dear Friends and Members,
The NSA is delighted to announce an upcoming exhibition, Memory, at Tremenheere Gallery.
This spring the Newlyn Society of Artists, one of the longest-surviving and most prestigious groups of professional artists in the UK, will be holding its new exhibition at Tremenheere Gallery from Saturday April 9th to Sunday May 1st.
The title of the exhibition is Memory, but it is an open show for members to exhibit whatever current work they are producing.
The NSA has close to one hundred members, including artists working across all disciplines from painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture and film. At least twelve have been Royal Academicians. All members are either living in or strongly connected to Cornwall’s extraordinarily active and vibrant contemporary art scene.
Memory brings together work which challenges and inspires, which is often radical and always thoughtful – we hope that you enjoy it.
Please join us for the opening event, Saturday 9th April. We look forward to seeing you.
Memory
Newlyn Society of Artists’ Spring exhibition 2022
Tremenheere Gallery, Gulval, Penzance, Cornwall TR20 8YL
Sat 9 April – Sun 1 May 2022, 11am-4pm (closed Mondays)
Opening event: Sat 9 April, 1-4pm
www.nsanewlyn.com | www.tremenheere.co.uk
@NewlynSocietyOfArtists
@tremenheere
This autumn, Tremenheere Gallery presents a landmark exhibition
celebrating 125 years of the Newlyn Society of Artists. The NSA was Founded in 1896 and is one of the longest- surviving art organisations anywhere. It currently has close to ninety members, and includes artists working across all disciplines from painting and printmaking and sculpture to film, all of whom either live in West Cornwall or have close links with the area.
Please follow the link to continue with the Press release NSA125 Past, present, future
Read more:
Artist’s Connections: Each Exhibitor was asked to write a short paragraph explaining their inspiration for the artwork shown, specifically how it connected with the history of the NSA.
Inventive Century – Drift Magazine. Words by Mercedes Smith
NSA 125 Feature for Drift Magazine | October 2021 Issue 15
16 October to 7 November 2021 Tremenheere Gallery,
Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Gulval, Penzance, TR20 8YL.
