LIVING STONES
31st January - 7th February 2025
Borlase Smart Rooms, Porthmeor Studios, St Ives, Cornwall
Oliver Raymond Barker, Jonathan Michael Ray,
Andy Hughes, Louise McClary

This gathering of artworks by four contemporary artists based in Cornwall explores animisms of rock and other lively geophysical forces. The works have emerged from the artists’ travels and ‘field research’ involving walking, climbing, and on-site experimentation with materials in different environments. Whilst the environmental references and artists’ aesthetics vary, these works transmit the vibrant life of geophysical matter through processes that trouble taxonomies. The multivalent works disturb borders separating life and non-life; human and non-human; deep pasts turbulent presents and speculative futures. In this way, they answer calls from eco-critical thinkers for artists and animists to help us reorientate perception to embrace more-than-human modes of being and imagine the world ‘otherwise’.

Our exhibition is timed to coincide with the launch of the retrospective exhibition; Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds at Tate St Ives. We wish to celebrate Colquhoun’s relevance and invite fresh dialogues between her work and contemporary art.

Lizzie Perrotte (exhibition curator).

Oliver Raymond Barker
Anatomy of Stone, 12 x 16 inches, chemigram, 2021.

In this era of environmental predicament often referred to as the Anthropocene or Capitalocene, there has been an upsurge of popular interest in geological matters. This manifests in the desire to think at scale; to embrace time and existence beyond familiar human dimensions; and to assimilate the real possibility of another Earth cycle of mass extinction.

Our Living Stones exhibition takes its title from an 'animist guide book' to Cornwall published in 1957 by artist Ithell Colquhoun. Colquhoun provides a touchstone for this show of work by four contemporary artists that responds to the vitalism of geological forces. Works in different media have emerged from the artists’ travels and ‘field research’ involving walking, climbing, and on-site experimentation with materials in different environments. Our exhibition is timed to coincide with the launch of Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds at Tate St Ives (Jan 2025) to celebrate Colquhoun’s current relevance and invite fresh dialogues with contemporary art.