It is the light that makes St Ives so special. Like Constable’s Suffolk, or Felton Road’s Central Otago, in this part of Cornwall’s coast its brilliance and clarity is immediate. It attracted artists and early photographers in the 1870s, and the arrival of the railway a decade later guaranteed its popularity.

Building the gallery only began in 1991 on the site of a former gasworks overlooking Porthmeor beach and the Atlantic ocean. Its architects, David Shalev and Eldred Evans incorporated the shapes of the past, putting the very striking rotunda as the gallery’s dominant feature. It opened in June 1993, and in the next two decades attracted so many visitors that a decision was made to extend and refurbish. The original architects worked on the existing building, and Jamie Forbert Architects created the extension; work was completed in 2017. 

[With exception of the above photo, and the final one of a brown-surrounded window on the ocean, all the photos are displayed as slide shows – so please use the arrows, or swipe across to see them all]

The white building, its metal rails and meticulous attention to small details recalls art deco style – so often a feature of well-resourced mid twentieth century seaside developments – and here executed on a scale which seriously impresses. 

I loved the building almost as much as I loved the Hepworth exhibition, Art & Life which was in its last week in Tate St Ives. (See also my previous blog on St Ives which includes our visit to the Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, in the house in which she lived from 1948 until her death in 1975) 

Barbara Hepworth was comfortable working in so many different media, as the examples of her work in the slides (above and below) show. The exhibition is beautifully curated and spans most of her working life, and includes pieces in glass, metal, wire, bronze, plaster and wood, many with her characteristic circles and holes, integral to the shapes. 

She could draw, of course, and paint. Some of a series called Hands are on display, in which there are a collection of surgical professionals, preparing to operate. In 1948 she was invited by the surgeon working with one of her children, (who spent many months in hospital and endured several operations) to capture some of the drama – and trauma – of the operating theatre. These are photos 7 and 8 in the slide show below. I gather one of this series can still be seen in the Royal College of Surgeons, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. 

The final photo, above, is of David practising a skill I have never achieved: sleeping soundly in an upright position.  He first demonstrated it in the Royal Academy many years ago after an equally demanding warm afternoon at an exhibition. And on that occasion he had only a bench – without arms or back rest! 

Below is Porthmeor beach and the ocean on a sunny April day from one of the landings of the Gallery.

The Hepworth exhibition: Art & Life is now showing at Towner Eastbourne until 3 September 2023