Event information
Date: Saturday 1 June – Friday 20 June 2025
Time: 11am – 5pm daily
Venue address: School House, Morvah, Pendeen, Penzance, TR20 8YT
This joint exhibition explores the synergies and differences in approach of St Ives based ceramacist Julie Harper, and artists Hani Mroz and Shelley Thornton.
All three are deeply inspired by their natural environment and instinctively draw from this in their respective disciplines. Birds, boats and beaches feature extensively.
Julie Harper lives in St Ives, Cornwall and is surrounded by the sea, which provides the inspiration for her work. She aims to capture some of the wonderful seascapes and tones of Cornwall in her hand painted porcelain pictures. She uses porcelain clay as its delicate nature is ideal for her work. Her pictures, bowls, vases and platters are often decorated with cottages, harbours, fishing boats and the sea. Her work reflects her deep regard and love for Cornwall.
Hani Mroz lives just outside St Ives. She has lived in Cornwall for most of her life and finds West Penwith to be a place of magical land and seascapes. When she walks the moors and coast paths, there is an atmosphere of mystery and past times which is visceral. When she paints she is always trying to capture this. Her favourite season is Winter for the light and drama of it all. She uses recycled materials such as cardboard and wood in her paintings and frames and recently has been using mostly oils.
Shelley Thornton also lives in St Ives, Cornwall, and brings her bold and colourful abstract painting style to life through a series of unique collections. Directed by the landscape around her and driven by the feelings, interpretations and stories that run through our day to day world, Shelley’s works express a moment of time, life and colour. Her artworks evoke a deep sense of place and the passing of time, and represent a strong melding of the seeming dichotomy of the city vista and the coastal environment. Shelley’s home of St Ives, Cornwall, is a unique and special place where the light reflects from the waves like no other. Many of Shelley’s collections draw from this magical landscape. Texture and symbolism surface within the blocks of colour to tell more comprehensive stories. Shelley often combines salvaged materials such as sand, salt, cement, brick and rust. These natural or industrial mediums bring their own histories to bear on the reading of the artworks – providing fragments of memory to her creations.
