We recognise a way of working that deeply embeds the gallery in the life of our communities offers a means of developing important, hyper-local impacts made possible through national and international partnerships. We aim to explore the relationships our communities have with others outside our own locale, and how we are shaped by those from other places.
Our programme of partnering young people from the LBTQIA+ community, WILD young parents, the Social Prescribing network, schools, Black Voices Cornwall, and others with national collections over the past five years created work that has local connection and resonance.
Hew Locke’s Armada (Newlyn, Summer 2025) explores the entangled histories of international trade and the movement of goods, as well as the movement of people, and has resonance for Newlyn’s peripatetic visiting and resident fishing community.
Libita Sibungu (Lizard’s Mirror, The Exchange 2025) will be immersed in the lived experience of women and families of colour within the Black British, and specifically Cornish rural experience, considering displacement and the relationship of ancient African and Celtic mythologies and rituals connected to sacred stones.
Abigail Reynolds’ Lease is a two-part solo exhibition across two contrasting spaces that a traces human relationships to the Cornish landscape, delving beneath the pictorial to trace near-forgotten histories that are subterranean and littoral.