A Tate trip
With a holiday to Cornwall planned, we took the opportunity to finally get to the iconic Tate St Ives and the Barbara Hepworth Museum. An inspiring show featuring a colourful collection of artists from the Casablanca Art School greeted us at the Tate. And we were lucky enough to see Hepworth’s garden in full bloom.
Situated just off Porthmeor Beach and with stunning views of the Atlantic Ocean, this former gasworks seems at first, like an unlikely place for the Tate. But the longer you stay in the town the more you notice the nature of ‘the light’. It has an abstract quality, crisp and bright – apparently due to the fact it’s surrounded by water on three sides. It’s this light that has brought artists to the area since the Victorian era. Tate St Ives was established to promote local artists as well as finding links with art movements from around the world.
Paint installation by Sol LeWitt | Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #1136. ARTIST ROOMS, Tate and National Galleries of Scotland © The estate of Sol LeWitt
Coinciding with our trip was a retrospective of the Casablanca Art School, members of which were creating art around the same time as some of St Ives’ most famous artists in the 1960s and 1970s.
Following Morocco’s independence, the Casablanca Art School paved the way for a new generation of socially engaged, modern artists creating abstract ‘new wave’ paintings, murals, typography and graphics.
Left — Malika Agueznay: Composition 1968 Relief and acrylic paint on board
Right — Mohamed Melehi: Flamme 1976, Cellulose paint on wood
Crop — Mohamed Melehi: Untitled 1983, Cellulose paint on board
Mohammed Chabâa: Untitled 1975, Acrylic paint on media
Left — Mohamed Hamidi: Untitled 1971, Acrylic paint on paper on canvas
Right — Mohamed Melehi: Untitled 1969, Acrylic paint on board
A collection of graphic design, posters and publications from the Casablanca Art School
One of the artist that the Tate represents in its permanent galleries is Barbara Hepworth who lived and worked in St Ives from 1949 until her death in 1975. Just a short walk around the corner from the gallery is the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden which the Tate took over the management of in 1980.
The studio and garden feature a variety of Hepworth’s sculptures, many of which are in the positions that the artist placed herself. The garden was laid out by Barbara Hepworth with help from a friend, the composer Priaulx Rainier and provides the perfect background for viewing her work at its very best.
“In the contemplation of Nature we are perpetually renewed our sense of mystery and our imagination is kept alive, and rightly understood, it gives us the power to project into a plastic medium some universal or abstract vision of beauty.”
The Casablanca exhibition is on until 14 January 2024 and The Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden is open all year round.
