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Events
held during 2001
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General
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We also presented an exhibition on the work of the Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
This was not intended as a fund-raising activity, but we managed to raise about £50 to send to this hospital which is doing vital work to improve the lives of some of the poorest women on earth. |
March
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The first exhibition in March was given over to David Spencely who has been working at Hypatia Meeting Place for some weeks now. The exhibition of his work was based on the 2001 eclipse in Africa. |
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We then presented the first of a series of exhibitions based on 100 Victorian women. In this series we shall honour 100 women who lived at the same time as Queen Victoria. They will be poets, novelists, American women, artists and crafts-women, and social reformers. We chose 100 as it is 100 years since Queen Victoria died. This first event celebrated the lives and work of 20 Victorian women poets. In addition to well-known figures such as Emily Bronte and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the show featured women poets from India, Japan, Russia, and Spain. Programme Director, Jacqueline Pritchard, says "In 1846, at the age of 27, Queen Victoria visited Cornwall. She took a boat around the bay and travelled across to St. Michael's Mount. She visited the smelting works in Penzance, and was also brave enough to make the descent into the Restormel iron mine. "With such a courageous woman on the throne it is perhaps not surprising that the Victorian age saw women writers emerging from obscurity. They began to be seen and heard in ways in which few previous women writers could have hoped for." . |
A British
Jewish poet |
April
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In early April we presented an exhibition, entitled 'Drawing on Friendship', on the theme of the artist and the model. For ten years, Wendy Barritt and her model, Jenny, worked together, producing powerful, fascinating images and text. We are pleased to be able to show the result of their fruitful friendship. "An intimate record or survival, of grief and anorexia, witnessed through the relationship of artist and model. A selection of powerful images and writings from a period of over 10 years of friendship between two women". |
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We also exhibited a new work by Trevor Burston. His triptych painting commemorates the life of his late wife, Hazel Berriman Burston, the former Director of the Penlee House Art Gallery and Museum. |
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The
Hazel Burston Memorial Window
The
Memorial Window, the work of artist Sue Kinley, was dedicated to the
memory of Hazel in a short ceremony on Sunday 8th April. The cost of the window was met by Hazel's family, friends and admirers. |
May
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From the second week in May, beginning 14th, Denny Long presented an exhibition on the lives of Tibetan nuns living in exile in India. |  |
June
This is the month in which the Golowan (St. John's Eve) Festival takes place in Penzance. The town was decked out with flags and the Mazey Day processions wended their ways through huge crowds in the streets.
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The Trust's main contribution to the celebrations was to present an evening entitled Miraculous
Women It took place at the Queen's Hotel, whose sponsorship of the evening was greatly appreciated, and was attended by a keen audience of over 100. The lively debate was chaired by Dr. Melissa Hardie, and the main speakers were Dr. Mary Willes (Quaker), Dotty Lapham (Buddhist), Rev. Helen Poole (Christian) and Pat Adams (Humanist), all of whom spoke 'from the heart' as well as the head. The generosity of spirit of each shone through their very different presentations. And their examples encouraged several members of the audience to contribute important observations of their own in subsequent discussion. A follow-up to this evening has been requested by many. |
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Screens...screens...screens........ From 18th June until 6th July we presented an exhibition of handpainted contemporary room screens, mini screens and paintings. Sarah Goldbart and Nik Strangelove from Marazion are Create Ltd. and screens are their speciality.
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July
The pioneering spirit of American women is being celebrated in our exhibition for this month. From frontier to drawing room, American women frequently led the way.
Most of the exhibits come from the Hypatia Trust Vera Wagner American Studies Collection.
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The image on the left is of a woman sawing logs for the stove, and is taken from 'Pioneer Women - The Lives of Women on the Frontier' by Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith. To the right is a picture of Melissa Dalton Middleton, the great-grandmother of Melissa Hardie. |
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August
discerning eye - an exhibition of black and white photographs by Nik Strangelove
Monday
20th August - Friday 31st August
Monday - Sunday, 10 a.m - 5 p.m.
Through his eye the viewer sees figures in a variety of moods and places, details emphasised into lives of their own, scenes empty of all but the forms created by light and shadow.
Strong tonal contrasts and unusual viewpoints which create surprising shapes and spaces are two of the features of the work on display. A particularly striking example is the photograph of the railing descending a flight of steps. This unremarkable piece of urban street furniture becomes an unsettling arrangement of vertical, diagonal, zig-zag lines and squares challenging the viewer's sense of space and perspective.
In addition to alerting us to the drama in the contrast between light and shadow, the photographs make us aware of the amount of textural variety there is in the world around us. And last, but by no means least, what quiet humour there is for those who take the time to look, as the photograph of the pigeons on the grass reveals.
The exhibition opens the viewer's eyes to the strangeness, variety and intensity of the world we pass through each day, looking but perhaps not seeing.
More information on Nik's work, paintings and photography, can be found on www.studiostrangelove.com
September
The Victorian period saw women breaking ground of all kinds. Although many of them may not have seen themselves as Reformers with a capital letter, the fact that women began to be seen in public spaces began a process of change which women have inherited.
Our September exhibition looks at social reformers of all kinds. This will be the last exhibition in the series on 100 Victorian women.
October
john and andrea garrihy
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John has retired from teaching Art to paint full-time, and his paintings demonstrate his passion for colour and explore a variety of themes such as circus artistes, landscape and still life. The works he exhibited at The Meeting Place celebrated active women, a theme particularly apt for the venue. |
Andrea has taught in the South West and runs sculpture workshops for adults and children, as well as researching, writing and lecturing on women sculptors, past and present.
Last year, for a "Year of the Artist" residency, she produced life-size figures which appeared on the streets of Corsham in Wiltshire and then on Blue Peter.
In the Winter, as captain of the UK team, she carves snow in International Snow Sculpting competitions, but this is not something she can practise in Penzance.
For the Hypatia Meeting Place exhibition she chose some of her wooden puns, nuts and knots.
November
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Thanksgiving is usually a time of celebration. This year, the events of 11th September have made it difficult to think in terms of celebration. The Hypatia Trust, with its sister organisation, Hypatia-in-the-Woods in Washington State, USA, has been keenly aware of the horror resulting from that dreadful event, and the subsequent military action undertaken in Afghanistan. However, the Trust felt that it could not let the occasion pass without some acknowledgement and on Thanksgiving Day it held a series of talks with question sessions throughout that day. Three speakers were on the platform: Dr Alan Kent, author of The Literature of Cornwall, who spoke on the regeneration of the Cornish/Celtic identity; Jane Costin who presented, Beauty and Beastliness, on the importance of tale-telling and symbolism; Jacqueline Pritchard, International Advisor at Hypatia Trust, who spoke on her experience of living in Afghanistan and working at Kabul University, and her hopes for the future of that country. Claire Bradley, a spokeswoman for the Trust said, "It might seem, at first sight, that these were three unrelated topics. In fact, there were strong links between the subjects: constructing identity and the importance of symbolism in that process; who tells fairy-tales and what do they tell us, and, in the case of the women of Afghanistan, the right to tell their own story, be seen and be educated. All in all it was a fascinating series of talks as was proved by the lively question and debate sessions which followed." This was a fund-raising event for members and friends of the Trust in support of RAWA, Revolutionary Afghan Women's Association, with whom The Hypatia Trust has been in contact for some while. Dr Melissa Hardie of The Trust said, "I am delighted that the event was so well received, and even more delighted that we raised enough money to fund a RAWA teacher for a year. The work that RAWA has been doing for the last 20 years in the refugee camps in Pakistan and in dangerous circumstances inside Afghanistan must not be allowed to wither away or be forgotten." To find out more about RAWA click here. |
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The title of this small exhibition was intended to shock us into thinking about what we are doing when we use an expression like "flaming women". Put in the context of Witchcraft, the apparent levity in the choice of title operates to heighten our awareness of the misogyny in such expressions as well as the terrible effects of this misogyny in the past. Although it was not only women who were persecuted, tortured and put to death for witchcraft, it was, nevertheless, women who were the main targets of the witchcraze. |
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November is the month of bonfires and fireworks, but centuries ago a bonfire was not such a cause for celebration for many women. Our exhibition examined women, witchcraft and burning over the centuries, and was the work of students from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, U.S.A., who visited Cornwall in June. They studied in the Jamieson Library and in the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle. The picture shows Helen Duncan, who was one of the last people to be tried under the Witchcraft Act of 1736. The most shocking aspect is that she was actually convicted in 1944, and the concept of witchcraft was not removed from our legal system until 1951. |
December
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Following the great success of its group exhibition at the Mariners Gallery in St Ives, PAN, the Penwith Artists Network, held another exhibition of its work at the Hypatia Meeting Place. The exhibition was a stimulating mix of Art and Craft, the joint exhibiting of which reflects the group’s desire to break down the barriers between these two disciplines. The artists and crafts-people showed paintings, prints, collages, silk-work, felt goods and photographs. Not all the works were hung on walls. There were free-standing screens for floor or table, handbags, scarves, cushions, hangings, as well as exciting works by the painters, printers, and photographers in the group. |
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