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It is all change at Margate’s Turner Contemporary this week, as the new autumn exhibitions go on show. What’s On found out more.
Turner and Constable - Sketching from Nature
A major showcase of works by the gallery’s namesake, JMW Turner, along with pieces by John Constable and other contemporaries will be unveiled this week.
Bringing together 75 paintings from London’s Tate Collection, the exhibition explores the practice of sketching and painting in the open air, an approach which became increasingly fashionable during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
These rarely shown works, radical for their time, demonstrate artists’ efforts to reflect direct experience of their environment, rather than a concern for careful composition.
The exhibition is organised around six principal landscape themes, reflecting interests and subjects common to artists of the period – sketching from nature, the city, the picturesque, the Thames, rivers and coasts and rural nature.
These themes are explored in the works of artistic rivals Turner and Constable, as well as George Stubbs, John Sell Cotman, John Crome, William Henry Brooke and Francis Danby, among others.
Dorothy Cross - Connemara
Contemporary Irish artist Dorothy Cross is famous for bold pieces including Sapiens - two skulls on a tripod - and Shark Heart Submarine, consisting of a model submarine and a shark’s heart in a jar.
Her work may seem a million miles away from that of conventional painters JMW Turner and John Constable, but all three share the same source of inspiration – the natural world.
Dorothy’s latest exhibition at Margate’s Turner Contemporary is predominantly influenced by her home in Connemara, a rural area on Ireland’s west coast.
The most comprehensive UK solo exhibition to date of her work, it will feature sculpture, film and photography that delves into the relationship between living beings and the natural world around them.
Many of her works incorporate items found on the shore, including boats and animal skins.
One newly commissioned video explores a rarely accessible sea cave near Dorothy’s home, while another crawls through Margate’s Shell Grotto.
It will also include photographs of the Connemara coast, drawing connections to Turner Contemporary’s coastal setting in Margate.
Platform: Kent Graduate Showcase
An exhibition of work by up-and-coming new artists will also go on show at the Turner Contemporary this week.
Platform will showcase the work of seven graduates from three Kent universities – Louisa Love, Linda Simon and Harry Tomkins from the University for the Creative Arts, Charlotte Smith and Daniella Turbin from the University of Kent and Hannah Allison-Finucane and Rachel Johnston from Canterbury Christ Church University.
The exhibition will include a wide range of media including printmaking, painting, sculpture, installation and performance.
All the work has been submitted for the Platform Graduate Award, a regional honour organised by Contemporary Visual Art Network South East.
The winner will be announced in November.
Turner Contemporary is open from 10am to 6pm, Tuesday to Sunday and bank holidays. Admission is free. Call 01843 233000.
