Galleries - March 2013

Narrow Escape Normally this magazine doesn’t review past shows but, given what an atmospheric exhibition Vaughan Grylls put on at the Landmark Arts Centre in January, for once I’m going to break the rules. Grylls, who emerged as a photographic montage and installation artist of some distinction in the late 60s and has had a substantial career since, was showing4 recent pieces, one of which in particular, ‘Grandmother’ told a remarkable story in a touching and original way. Briefly, as a baby in a pram in 1943, Grylls had been rescued by his granny from a Dornier 217 bomber strafingeverythingthat moved alongthe Fosse Way where they lived – pulled up the front steps as the bullets hit the family house. 70 years on Grylls came across a huge cache of family photographs and revisited this wartime story, heard just once from his parents, in the only way that seemed appropriate to him, as a giant photomontage. Constructed (photos pinned to white sheets – washing?) to simulate the exact head-on, full-scale profile of a Dornier 217 and with the self-same pram parked in front (echoes of Eisenstein’s Potemkin Steps), the effect was remarkably moving– history, autobiography, family and personal myth all wrapped in resonant visual motifs and in a way that also made you really examine the 1000 or so individual images that formed it. As a 1943 baby myself I really identified with it . . . Cornish Temple Many craftsmen and artists contributed to the architectural gem now known as Two Temple Place . Built as a home-cum-office for William Waldorf Astor at the end of the 19th C., it boasts wooden carvings, cedar panelling, decorative metalwork and a hammer- beam roof, as well as stained glass windows by Clayton and Bell, who made the windows for Truro Cathedral. It is therefore fitting that the Bulldog Trust, which now manages the building, should choose a Cornish theme for the second of their annual exhibi- tions showcasingpublicly owned art from around the UK. ‘ Amongst Heroes’ focuses on the period 1880-1920 when artists were drawn to Cornwall by its spectacular scenery, light and a way of life scarcely touched by the industrial revolution. A unique opportunity to savour not only pilchards and bearded fishermen from members of the Newlyn School – ‘The Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach’ by Stanhope Forbes and ‘The Tuck Boat‘ by Percy Craft for example – but also miners and other sons of the soil. The discrepancy between surroundings and subject makes this one of the more rewardingexhibitions in town. In addition, Sennen Cove’s Round House and Capstan Gallery has trans- formed Lord Astor’s former bedroom into a pop up gallery shop offeringthe best of contemporary Cornish art and craft. SD 10. GALLERIES MARCH 13 From left: E gon Schiele ‘Standing Boy’ 1910 from a private collection at Rchard Nagy Ltd, London Paul de Monchaux ‘Stony Ground’, 2008 at Piper Gallery. Vaughan Grylls ‘Grandmother’ installation at Landmark Arts Centre Collin Cassell Ceramics at the Roundhouse and Capstan Gallery Jean Gibson, Breakout II at S&D Gallery Michael Sole ‘Burton Bradstock’ at GX Gallery Emily Patrick ‘Magnolia, Schubert & Striped Pot’ at Gallery 27