Terry Frost

10 Oct 2015 — 09 Jan 2016

Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange

On the event of his centenary, this exhibition across both our galleries, celebrates the career of leading modern British painter, Sir Terry Frost (1915–2003), bringing together paintings, collages and sculptural forms from public and private collections across the UK. Looking at Frost’s work through ideas of performance, construction and colour, the exhibition takes a fresh perspective on his practice over six decades. It spans chronologically from his arrival in St Ives in the early 1950s, to then moving to Leeds, followed by teaching in Coventry and California as well as the Universities of Newcastle and Reading and finally his return to Cornwall in the 1970s, setting up a home and studio in Newlyn till his death in 2003.

Living in St Ives during the 1950s, Frost was part of a close circle of emerging British modernists working with abstraction, including Roger Hilton, Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon and Bryan Wynter. The exhibition will highlight key paintings and collages from Terry Frost’s formative periods working in Cornwall and Yorkshire, including paintings from his breakthrough Walk Along the Quay series, begun in 1950. These tall, thin canvases are evocative of the seaside town of St Ives. In contrast are the large-scale paintings such as Blue Winter 1956 and Orange and Black, Leeds 1957, painted in response to the Yorkshire Dales, after his move to Leeds.  These works are presented at The Exchange.

After discovering acrylic paint while teaching in California in the 1960s, Frost became increasingly interested in colour as a presence or character in itself. Looped and heaped weights of colour seemingly bulge from his canvases, sometimes becoming three-dimensional in his collages or sculpture. In 1970 Frost developed a range of ‘soft sculptures’ including stacks, spirals and loops, made from painted canvas tubes filled with polystyrene balls. Suspending these arcing forms from the walls and ceiling, or bundling them together, he sought to bring out colour in all its intensity without hard structure or flat surface – as a brushstroke in space. The exhibition will feature a re-commissioned series of these little-known, strikingly contemporary three-dimensional works. These works are presented at Newlyn Art Gallery. The lower gallery will feature Green Below, one of the last works made by Frost. It will be accompanied by striking prints that Frost made with Hugh Stoneman from 1992 onwards.

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Image Credits

Terry Frost, 1915-2003, Green Below 2003. Private collection. © The estate of Sir Terry Frost. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2015

Terry Frost, 1915-2003, Yellow Moonship 1974. Estate of Terry Frost. © The estate of Sir Terry Frost. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2015

Terry Frost, 1915-2003, Autumn Rings Andeuze, September 1971, 1983. The Collection: Art and Archaeology in Lincolnshire (Usher Gallery, Lincoln). © The estate of Sir Terry Frost. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2015

The exhibition is organised by Tate St Ives in collaboration with Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange and Leeds Art Gallery.

Venue:
Newlyn Art Gallery Find on Map
The Exchange Find on Map

Open: TUE - SAT, 10.00 - 17.00

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Terry Frost, 1915-2003, Autumn Rings Andeuze, September 1971, 1983

Event

Daily Guided Tours: Terry Frost

10 Oct 2015 - 09 Jan 2016

Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange
Terry Frost, 1915-2003, Yellow Moonship 1974

Event

Curators’ Talk: Terry Frost

29 Oct 2015

Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange