Galleries - July 2014

The sense of more adventurous gallery openings and programming, so apparent in Pip Palmer’s survey of Cornwall (which follows), seems to be spillingeastwards over the Tamar into Devon and beyond. Long gone are the days of twee local ‘views’ and arts and crafts knicknacks, replaced by galleries, often even in comparatively remote rural locations, all showingnationally- based and recognised artists. White Space Art, in the beautiful small town of Totnes west of Exeter, demonstrates this trend, their current mixed Summer Exhibition with at least two artists, David Brayne and Louise Balaam, also in the rather bigger summer show up at the RA and a number of younger ones like James Tatum (powerfully expressive landscapes) and Helen Wood (extraordinary constructions of entomological subjects made from marbled papers) that are well on the road to higher things. Meanwhile the region’s flagship public gallery space, the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, which underwent a major refurbishment a few years back, has been mountingsome intriguing fine art exhibitions of late, of which their present show ‘Detached and Timeless: Contemporary Artists inspired by nature and spirit of Place’ is a good example. Drawn from their own holdings and supplemented by major pieces from the Arts Council Collection, a number of the artists shown here – Peter Lanyon, Roger Hilton, Patrick Heron,Terry Frost amongthem – found dynamic inspiration in the West Country landscape. Venturingout of the city and southwards down the Exe estuary to Topsham, we come to another excellently-run commercial space situated on the picturesque quayside, The Art Room. Owner Deborah Wood administers it almost like a small private arts centre with talks by art historians and curators augmenting a changing programme of solo shows by distinguished regional and national artists. The current shows, of the well-respected Cornish-based figurative painter Richard Sowman and North Hampshire-based ceramicist Emily Myers, are cases in point. Myers, a new name to me, looks a real find with her wonderfully- swirlingand furrowed porcelain vases somehow reflectingher local downland landscape. Meanwhile, movingfrom the wide Exe estuary east alongthe Jurassic coast proper to Budleigh Salterton, we find the Brook Gallery followinga very different, though certainly no less resourceful approach. The focus here is on top-line 20th C. and contemporary printmakingand their latest exhibition (from 12 July), ‘The Biggest Names in British Art’, includingKitaj, Freud, Hockney and Riley, gives an idea of their ambitions. Now, travellingeastwards again along the A35 coastal road, divert into the small market town of Axminster and make for the Marle Gallery, a really substantial and handsome contemporary space holding some six exhibitions a year. You might just catch the Society of Wood Engraver’s’ 76th annual (to 5 July) but, failingthat, you’ll find a summer show that lends a good notion of the range and quality of the mostly young-ish graduate artists new owners Pat and Lynsey Adams are presenting– painters Sylvia Paul and Vicky Oldfield, ceramicists Francoise Dafoyard and Laurel Keeley and printmakers Brenda Hartill and Neil Canningamongst them. After lunch, perhaps at Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Canteen just round the corner, it’s back on the A35 to Morcombelake in Dorset, where Artwave West has become a significant fixture with its intelligent focus on a group of artists exploringthe interplay between abstraction and figuration, finding a good followingof collectors. With artists of the nationally- recognised calibre of Kate Giles, Heather Duncan, Ross Loveday, Amy Albright, Kathy Little and Suchi Chidambaram, you can see why. A few miles further east and we arrive at the buzzingartistic centre that Bridport has become over the last decade or so. in Cornwall & The West Country