Cornwall Museum and Art Gallery: An Pobel, Heather Rothney

 This exhibition is running until the 30th November 2025

Although I am not Cornish, I have lived in Cornwall for a long time and am married to a Cornishman.  I really appreciated the viewpoints offered in this exhibition.  The exhibition tells the story of eight people, with the full stories online and excerpts and photographs in the gallery.  I really appreciated Seamus' observations that Cornwall is a complex place, you get to know your tiny bit, but your bit may be very different to someone else's bit.  That tourist's who say they know Cornwall very well and come here every year, don't know Cornwall really, because it's impossible even as someone who has lived here their entire life to truly know Cornwall.  It's a big county.

I felt that for those that live locally, the exhibition was full of validation, things we can relate to.  Its great to see different perspectives and expand your own.  For those that don't live here full time, the tourists and the second home owners...  I hope it was eye opening.  Cornwall is very popular and it is everything you see on TV but it is also so much more and the glossy version is out of touch for many.  It takes me back to Simon Reeves series, where he visited the food bank in Camborne.  There is a poor side to Cornwall, with towns that the tourists never visit, unless they are lost.  There is a richness too.  Catrina describes this very well when she says Cornwall is a poor place that rich people like to visit.  That said, Catrina is clear that she loves it here and doesn't want to live anywhere else.

Chris talks about the pressure on Cornwall.  The pressure on people, on communities.  How he is lucky to live somewhere that still has community but that many places no longer do.  Locals cannot afford to live there and they are empty over the winter when the second home owners leave.  Community can not survive the scale of tourism and it's too much right now.  Chris wanted to remind visitors that Cornwall is not a playground, that people live and work here.  I see this all the time, when I visit tourist areas, people walk in the roads, peer in people's windows and sit on their garden walls.

While the museum has a page for this project, with the stories, I don't know how long it will remain after the exhibition finishes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Box: Journey's with Mai

This exhibition runs until the 14th June 2026 Sir Joshua Reynolds is one of the greats of British painting and will be a name familiar to many.  I had no idea he was born in Plympton, just outside Plymouth though.  He is a major 18th century European painter and the leading portrait artist of the time.  He was one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Art and its first president. Portrait of Omai is considered his best work and a timeless masterpiece that is one of the best pieces of British art.  In 2022 the portrait was up for sale and in danger of leaving the UK with a hefty expected value of £50 million.  It was place under a 12 month exportation bar.  The National Portrait Gallery started a fund to raise money to buy the portrait and the Getty Museum asked to jointly purchase the painting so that it could be shared between both.  In March 2023, the exportation bar expired with only half of the required amount raised and it was announced that pro...
Read more

KARST: Discord and Harmony, Beryl Cook and Others

This exhibition runs until the 18th April This was my first visit to this lovely little gallery but it will not be my last.  The exhibition was inspired by the work of Beryl Cook and included several of her works.  Other artists had been selected for inclusion based on some sympathetic aspect of their work to Beryl's.  Some of these were obvious but others needed a little more digging I think.  This made for a diverse and thoughtful exhibition with plenty of fun pieces. It's always interesting, visiting a show put together with various artists.  So many artists have a body of work that speaks as a whole as they develop a style, their own language and explore a theme.  Individual pieces do not always make as much sense by themselves, unless you have a knowledge of that artist and their work.  Putting pieces of work together from different artists changes what they have to say and understanding their relevance is an interesting thing to work out. This ex...
Read more

RAMM: Exeter's Fine Arts Gallery, Highlights from the Collection

This exhibition runs until the 9th August 2026. This one room changes regularly to give an insight in to the fine art collection.  This is a pretty impossible task as the collection contains over 7000 pieces including paintings, prints, drawings, watercolours, miniatures and sculptures.  The current display includes only around 30 pieces, so highlights is definitely a good term for this display. Looking around the room, the pieces are split in to a few different categories, beginning with portraits.  One portrait is called a Man in a Red Suit and shows a man of colour wearing a red suit.  The artist is unknown and it dates from around 1740 to 1780.  A huge amount of research has been conducted on this painting and yet there are still no clear answers.  It has been credited to Sir Joshua Reynolds and I can see why but it may also be by Allan Ramsay.  Nobody knows who the sitter is either, even though attempts have been made to link to two different free...
Read more