The Heseltine Gallery will be open for public viewings at the times listed below.
If you have any queries regarding the Heseltine Gallery please email: [email protected]
Chapel Gallery and Link, Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro, TR1 2SJ
Tuesday 30 January – Saturday 18 May 2024
In the early 1980s David Heseltine, then Head of Art at Truro School, found himself frustrated that the independent status of the school barred it from borrowing artworks from the Cornwall Council Schools Art Collection. He was convinced that the school should begin its own Collection in order that generations of students might learn from looking at the real thing. Today, the Collection encompasses nearly 300 artworks representing a veritable A-Z of late 20th and early 21st century artists, the majority of whom lived and worked in Cornwall and some of whom attained international recognition.
The Collection is rarely seen, and it is only the second time that the Collection has featured in an exhibition at the Royal Cornwall Museum in forty years. The exhibition draws from David’s unique personal archive and anecdotal reminiscences that amplify the personal generosity of the many artists whom he visited in their studios who either gifted to the Collection or whom he purchased from. Iconic artworks from the St Ives and West Penwith/Newlyn halls of fame and Falmouth Art School tutors and alumni range across the widest of subject matter and spectrum of media as befits a ‘living’ teaching resource.
The Collection is unusually well gender-balanced and alongside Patrick Heron, Terry Frost, Peter Lanyon, Bryan Pearce and Breon O’Casey you will find works by Kate Nicholson, Margot Maeckelburghe, Daphne McClure, Sandra Blow and Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham as well as discovering artists whose work you might not know so well.
The Museum is open Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 4pm (admission charges apply when entering the Museum)
Please keep an eye on our Facebook and Instagram pages for details about our upcoming shows…
EXPRESSIONS OF AN INTIMATE ECOLOGY PETE WARD 2023
For the last 17 years Peter Ward has been at the forefront of earth pigment research and painting in the UK. His journey began in North Devon, looking into the locally significant pigment Bideford Black and has since expanded, including contributions to national and international exhibitions, projects and publications. This exhibition brings together all aspects Peter’s expansive interdisciplinary creative practice with hand foraged and processed earth pigments from Devon and Cornwall for the first time. Peter is currently based in West Penwith, Cornwall. As apart of this exciting exhibition at The Heseltine Gallery, Pete Ward will be working with A-Level students from Truro School on their Cape Cornwall Artists Residential, as well as offering a variety of explorative public talks and workshops.
The Heseltine Gallery invites you to preview ‘Repurpose’. To use something for a different purpose to the one for which it was originally intended.
A collaborative exhibition, designed and curated by Truro School A-Level Art Students, with guest artists Sophie Capron and Jackie Hollingsbee.
Preview: Thursday 13 October, 6 – 8pm.
‘Repurpose’ is open at the weekends in October and November 10am -4pm 2022 (excludes 29 and 30 October).
Showcasing works from across the Senior School, including A-Level and GCSE pieces, the exhibition is open for viewing on Wednesday 29 June 4pm – 5.30pm.
Bookings are not required.
The exhibition will remain open for viewings on:
Thursday 30 June ~ 4pm – 5pm
Friday 1 July ~ 4pm – 5pm
Monday 4 July ~ 4pm – 5pm
Tuesday 5 July ~ 4pm – 5pm
Wednesday 6 July ~ 9am – 10.30am
Preview
Public Viewing
In 2018 a small group of former heads of Art decided to come together with a collaborative purpose to exhibit and work together. From this idea The5 which has 4 members decided to invite on occasion a 5th person to exhibit with us to enable fellow creatives to have the opportunity to show work that they may not have access to, hence. The 5…the power of numbers! We have had several Fine Artists, a Poet, Silversmith, and illustrator to date joining us at our exhibitions.
@the5collectivecornwall
We are so delighted to reopen the Heseltine Gallery doors this weekend with this wonderful collaboration of artwork by an amalgamation of Cornish artists, students and parents.
We invite you to visit ‘Breathe’ and view the inspiring creative works responding to the lifting of ‘Covid’ restrictions. Saturdays and Sundays at the Heseltine Gallery, 9th October- 14th November.
The Heseltine Gallery’s current exhibition, Depiction – the human form, previewed on Friday evening. The group exhibition represents the human form and features works from the Truro School Collection alongside selected artists, Claire Armitage, Yolande Armstrong, Kathleen Cottell, Una d’Aragona, Julia Giles, Paul Hoare, Sarah Keyworth, Jason Lilley, Andrew Litten, Clive Matthews, Colin Mier, Mike Newton, Amy Oliver, Kathy Spedding, Volker Stox, Rebecca Turk-Richards, Anne Wallace, Pat Wilson, Mike Brett, Lizzie Stevens, Georgina Phipps, Winnie Lyn, Rosina Goss and Nicola Marsden. Artists from the Truro School Collection include Mary Mabbutt, Naomi Frears, Peter Lanyon, Andrew Lanyon, Sheila Oliner, Julian Opie, Rose Hilton, Eileen Cooper, Ray Exworth, Partou Zia and Karl Weschke.
Depiction is open for viewings on Saturdays and Sundays 10am-3pm and Wednesdays 5pm-8pm. Free entry.
With special thanks to: The Heseltine Guild Members, Yolande Armstrong, Una d’Aragona, Mike Newton
22nd January – 5th February 2020
An exhibition in memory of former pupil Jayne Callaghan is on display in the Heseltine Gallery.
Jayne was born in 1968 and sadly passed away in 2018. She left Truro School in 1986.
Jayne’s twin brother, Mark Callaghan, commented: ‘It is such a pleasure to be able to share Jayne’s art collection publicly for the first time, and to have been given the opportunity to hold Jayne’s memorial exhibition at the Heseltine Gallery at Truro School. Jayne loved her time at the School with so many happy memories’.
It was during her time at Truro School that Jayne developed her awareness and interest in art. David Heseltine, who introduced Jayne to artists such as Patrick Heron and Sir Terry Frost, among others, primarily nurtured this interest.
Mark added: ‘The works Jayne collected in later life represent the artists who connected Jayne’s love of Cornwall with her love of impactful forward thinking art. All the artists included have a strong connection to the Cornish coast and the sea, which Jayne loved so much. Sir Terry Frost was renowned for his use of the Cornish light, colour and form, capturing the brightness and atmosphere of some of Jayne’s favourite places. He was a favourite of Jayne’s and most strongly represented in her collection. Frosts works are filled with both colour and light; his unique visual language portrayed what he described as “a state of delight in front of nature”’.
Recognised as one of the leading painters of his generation, Patrick Heron was another favourite of Jayne’s. His works explored every day themes such as the landscape around his home in Zennor, the sky and the Cornish coast. Through the exploration and use of colour and light, Heron’s non-figurative painting resonated with Jayne and a shared appreciation of seeing Cornwall through the principles of colour and form. ‘Sharp Purple and Orange in Emerald’, painted in 1966 was a favourite of Jayne’s for this reason.
Bernard Irwin
18 October – 27 November 2019
Bold colour, striking abstraction and a commanding presence typify the paintings of Bernard Irwin. They invite us into an abstract world convincingly evoked through colour and line. Much of their power lies in the finely balanced relationship between the spaces of the often very brightly lit flat colours, which lend an artificial feel to foregrounded shapes, and the endless spaces they occupy – fluid, airy spaces created with multiple washed layers of paint.
These unexpected images surprise and delight, they are lyrical, quirky, sometimes humorous, with influences that range across the poetry of Rilke and William Carlos Williams, music [especially piano], gardens and Greek myth.
The spectacular Summer Student Show will be available for viewings on Wednesdays 5 – 8pm and Saturdays 10am -3pm throughout the summer holidays and showcases student work from all year groups (Pre-Prep to Sixth Form).
Ashley Hanson
Journeys through the real and the imagination…
22 March – 22 May 2019
The Spring exhibition at The Heseltine Gallery, Truro, showcases the glorious colour of one of Cornwall’s leading painters, Ashley Hanson. His sensuous, enigmatic, canvases, painterly responses to place and the novel, blur the borders between fact and fiction, abstraction and figuration. A selection of paintings from his Cornish, ‘City of Glass’ and ’20 Books=20 Paintings’ series, will hang alongside works from many of the artists who inspired him – Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron, Terry Frost – from the Truro School Collection.
A former architecture student who switched to Fine Art after being enraptured by a Peter Lanyon exhibition in 1978, Ashley Hanson is a prizewinning artist with an extensive national exhibition record including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, National Open Art, and The Discerning Eye. Recent exhibitions include Wells Art Contemporary and ‘Discovery: Contemporary Art Perspectives from England’ in New York.
The Heseltine Gallery is open for public viewings on Saturday 10:00 – 15:00 and Wednesday 17:00 – 20:00
4 – 15th March 2019
The Whale Song Scroll
Nine bands and solo artists from record labels Bella Union, Transgressive, and Lost Map Records, amongst others, passed an imaginary musical baton, each set of artists creating a track that only responded to the track that had gone before.
The initial band Landshapes brought the project to conclusion when they also made the tenth and final response.
The Whale Song Scroll used the abstraction of dance and physical movement to translate the sounds into gesture, then gesture into a purely visual medium.
Over a year in planning and making, the scroll is an artefact 10m in length, and uses traditional materials such as ink, gesso, and gold leaf to capture the essential dynamism of each track.
4 – 15th March 2019
The Heseltine Gallery is open for public viewings on Saturday 10:00 – 15:00 and Wednesday 17:00 – 20:00
