Metal, dowel rods, cardboard and acrylic on canvas in deep, white painted timber frame
64cms x 64cms
2022
The coast of the British Isles is littered with shipwrecks
of almost every type, and the coast of Cornwall because of its location and topography,
inevitably has its fair share.
Although born in Devonport, the untutored painter Alfred
Wallis is often considered as ‘Cornish,’ as for most of his life he lived in St
Ives, the fact that he lived in St Ives was fortuitous, as it was there in 1928
that the painters Ben Nicholson and Cristopher Wood ‘discovered’ him – had he
been living elsewhere, it is quite possible that he might have remained
unknown.
His various paintings on the theme of the Wreck of the
Alba, graphically depict that eponymous steam propelled vessel as it was
quite literally being overwhelmed by massive waves at Porthmeor Beach on 31st
January 1938. Despite the valiant efforts of the St Ives lifeboat, which itself
capsized and was washed on to the rocks, five members of Alba’s crew were lost.
Most of the remains of the vessel have been washed away, but the boiler is
still discernible at exceptionally low tides.
Vastly different, from Wallis’ powerful and expressive
painterly recollections of an event, the aftermath of which, he almost
certainly witnessed, are the incisive, mostly black and white photographs of wrecks of mainly, but not
exclusively, sailing craft around the coast of Devon and Cornwall taken since
1869 by successive generations of the Gibson family of the Scilly Isles.
Wreckpiece, is different again, and although
essentially an abstraction, allows for an imaginative response in the viewer,
the various elements of its composition perhaps ‘standing in’ for objects,
rather than imitating them in meticulous detail. The piece of found, weathered
metal, for example, is visually interesting and plays a key part in the
composition, but at the same time may serve to represent a piece of marine
wreckage – possibly a remnant of a boiler, or a prow and the broken cylinder,
possibly a funnel.
The intersecting rods are essentially an abstract,
sculptural construct, serving to hold the image firmly in place, but may also
serve as co-ordinates, indicating the location of a shipwreck.
George Taylor
April 2022
