Tate | New Tate St Ives to open on 14 October 2017
NEW TATE ST IVES TO OPEN ON 14 OCTOBER
ST IVES, CORNWALL, ENGLAND
Tate St Ives exterior visualisation
© Jamie Fobert Architects
On 14 October 2017 the transformation of Tate St Ives will be complete, marking the end of a four-year building project that will have doubled the space for showing art, adding almost 600 square metres of galleries and creating spectacular new studios for learning activities.
For the first time, Tate St Ives will be able to give a permanent presence to those iconic 20th century artists who lived and worked in the town, demonstrating the role of St Ives in the story of modern art.
This will be combined with a new programme of large-scale seasonal shows, beginning with British sculptor Rebecca Warren’s first major UK exhibition and continuing next summer with a retrospective of celebrated painter Patrick Heron.
MAJOR EXHIBITIONS OF REBECCA WARREN AND PATRICK HERON
PLANNED FOR FIRST YEAR
On 14 October 2017 the transformation of Tate St Ives will be complete. A four-year building project will have doubled the space for showing art, adding almost 600 square metres of galleries, and created spectacular new studios for learning activities. It will finally give Cornwall’s most popular gallery enough space to accommodate the quarter of a million visitors it welcomes each year – over three times the number for which it was originally designed – who bring £11 million annually to the local economy. For the first time, Tate St Ives will be able to give a permanent presence to those iconic 20th century artists who lived and worked in the town, demonstrating the role of St Ives in the story of modern art. This will be combined with a new programme of large-scale seasonal shows, beginning with British sculptor Rebecca Warren’s first major UK exhibition and continuing next summer with a retrospective of celebrated painter Patrick Heron.
The new gallery, sunk into the cliff alongside the original building, will offer artists and curators a column-free space lit by six huge skylights. Designed by the award-winning Jamie Fobert Architects, it will allow Tate St Ives to stay open all year round for the first time, without the need to close each time the exhibitions change. With a public garden on its roof, connected to the cliff above and the beach below, the new building will also add a collection care studio, loading bay, staff offices and visitor facilities. Clad in handmade ceramic tiles with a blue-green glaze, the building is designed to reflect the changing colours of the sky and sea.
Exciting new spaces for learning activities and events have also been created to meet growing demand. Evans and Shalev, the architects of the original Tate St Ives building, have returned to add a new space for hands-on workshops and family activities, a ground-floor studio for visitors to explore archival and digital material about the art on display, and a spectacular glazed studio on the roof terrace with views out over the sea. The existing galleries have also been fully refurbished and are being integrated into these additions.
The original building will now be dedicated to a display exploring modern art in St Ives and its relationship with the wider world. It will offer a chronological overview of 20th century art from the perspective of St Ives, including British and international artists from Ben Nicholson, Peter Lanyon and Barbara Hepworth to Piet Mondrian, Naum Gabo and Paule Vezelay. The new galleries for seasonal exhibitions will open with a major survey of Rebecca Warren, renowned for her exuberant, roughly-worked clay sculptures. In 2018, these spaces will be used for an exhibition of women artists inspired by Virginia Woolf, a retrospective of Patrick Heron’s vibrant paintings, and a specially commissioned project by contemporary artists Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer.
EXHIBITIONS & DISPLAYS
Thanks to the additional space provided by the new gallery building, Tate St Ives will be able to offer both a large-scale display about St Ives’s place in art history and a seasonal programme of modern and contemporary exhibitions. The former will be located in the original suite of galleries, designed by Evans and Shalev as a space to showcase the art created in St Ives. The latter will occupy the new, flexible gallery designed by Jamie Fobert Architects, allowing both aspects of Tate St Ives’s programme to be staged together for the first time.
MODERN ART AND ST IVES
FROM 14 OCT 2017
Ben Nicholson 1924 (first abstract painting, Chelsea)
c.1923–4
For the first time, Tate will be able to dedicate spaces to exploring the history of modern art and St Ives, giving key British artists a permanent presence in the town where they lived and worked. This new display will follow those artists across the 20th century, revealing their relationships to international art histories. From the unique perspective of St Ives, visitors will be able to bridge geographical and chronological boundaries and discover new connections through familiar artists.
National and international figures relating to the practice of modern British art in the town will be covered in depth – from Ben Nicholson, Peter Lanyon and Barbara Hepworth to Naum Gabo and Mark Rothko. Links to the wider story of British art will also be highlighted, such as the work of Keith Vaughan and William Scott.
Far from being an isolated or self-contained community of artists, St Ives will be celebrated as a point of connection in a global network of ideas and debates about art and its place in the world. Additional international artists such as Piet Mondrian and Paule Vezelay will allow the history of St Ives to be expanded and reframed in light of new research and recent acquisitions. For example, the display will also reveal shared legacies across the globe, forging links with international figures such as Chinese artist Li Yuan-chia.
REBECCA WARREN
14 OCT 2017 – 7 JAN 2018
Rebecca Warren Come Helga 2006
The new Tate St Ives will open with the UK’s first major solo exhibition of sculptor Rebecca Warren (b.1965). A significant British artist, Warren’s exuberant, roughly-worked sculptures and neon vitrines engage with the canon of art history. Warren first came to prominence in the 1990s and exhibits widely in Europe and the United States. This new exhibition will draw connections between her practice to date and the geographical context and artistic legacy of St Ives.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
JAN – MAY 2018
Eileen Agar Angel of Anarchy 1936-40
This exhibition of work from the 1850s to the present day will take as its premise the life and writings of Virginia Woolf, English author of modernist classics including To the Lighthouse and the pioneering feminist text A Room of One's Own. Woolf's work and its influence will act as a prism for exploring feminism and post-feminism in modern art and the treatment of themes like domesticity and landscape. Works by over 35 artists will offer unexpected perspectives on the complexities of Woolf’s groundbreaking cultural achievements. This relationship is reinforced by the exhibition’s location in St Ives, whose lighthouse was the inspiration for Woolf’s famed novel.
PATRICK HERON
MAY – SEP 2018
Patrick Heron Azalea Garden: May 1956
In summer 2018 Tate St Ives will stage a retrospective of acclaimed British artist Patrick Heron (1920–99), the first major show of his work for 20 years. Central to debates in modern art in the mid-twentieth century, Heron’s international roots in both Paris and New York placed him between the two competing stories of European and American art. This was played out in the rich aesthetic sensibility of his paintings. The exhibition will stretch from Heron’s early work in the 1940s to his late career, showing the full evolution of his vibrant abstract language. Making use of the gallery’s expansive new spaces, the show is approached as an immersive exploration of his vision, encouraging the viewer to enjoy the simple act of looking. The exhibition will also include a number of large-scale paintings which would not previously have been exhibitable at Tate St Ives, offering a unique opportunity to explore this modern master’s sense of scale, colour and composition.
NASHASHIBI/SKAER
SEP 2018 – JAN 2019
Nashashibi/Skaer Why are you Angry? 2017
Contemporary British artists Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer will premiere in the UK an ambitious new 16mm film that retraces Paul Gaugin’s fêted journey to Tahiti. The exhibition will include an exploration of the mythology surrounding Gauguin and his time in French Polynesia. Visions of the tropics by Gauguin will be shown alongside his predecessors, such as William Hodges and Edward Gennys Fanshawe who accompanied Captain Cook to the South Pacific, as well as Nashashibi/Skaer’s new film. Together these works will address the way art has represented the exoticised woman and colonised lands.
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