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Tate St Ives Conference

Ithell Colquhoun: The spaces between

2 May 2025 at 18.00–20.30
3 May 2025 at 09.00–17.00

Ithell Colquhoun, Self-Portrait, 1929, The Ruth Borchard Collection

This gathering will share reflections on the work of artist Ithell Colquhoun

How can readings of Ithell Colquhoun’s work illuminate the role of individual transformation in relation to a collective movement for change? This event will critically engage with inherent and acquired relationships to place, with topics including artistic ritual, art making as community activity and spirituality and the land.

The event begins with an exhibition viewing of Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds, and welcome evening on Friday 2 May, followed by a gathering at Porthmeor Studios on Saturday 3 May. This event coincides with a gallery wide weekend of performance and music at Tate St Ives to celebrate the last weekend of the exhibition. Attendees will have time to experience writing and making workshops as well as the programme of talks as part of the gathering.

Speakers include Dr D Ferrett, Associate Professor of Music, Sound and Culture at Falmouth University and Research Lead for the Academy of Music and Theatre Arts (AMATA), Dr Amy Hale who has written extensively on Colquhoun, including the recent Sex Magic: Diagrams of Love and contributions from the Canadian writers and academics Astrida Neimanis and Norah Bowman.

Supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

Friday 2 May

17.30 – 18.15: Arrival and registration at Tate St Ives

18.15: Welcome and introductions

With Anne Barlow, Director, Tate St Ives & Dr Sarah Turner, Director, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

18.30 – 19.50: Keynote Lecture with Dr Amy Hale. Colquhoun, Magic, and Visions of a Better World.

20.00 – 21.00: Drinks and nibbles in Tate St Ives Café

Saturday 3 May

10.00: Arrival at Tate St Ives

Self-guided tour of Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds exhibition. Admission free with conference ticket.

11.00 Poetry with Gwenno

Special poetry readings in the Ithell Colquhoun exhibition by acclaimed Welsh-Cornish musician, Gwenno. Additional Last Weekend activities also available.

11.40: Head to Porthmeor Studios.

11.40 – 11.55: Coffee/tea break.

11.55: Welcome and introductions with Dr Sria Chatterjee.

12.00 – 13.30: Session 1

In conversation with Dr D Ferrett: Listening to Ithell Colquhoun: Dark Sound Ecology, Gender, and Cornwall.

Panel: Dr Amy Hale, Professor Shelley Trower, Dr Rupert White.

Guiding Questions:

  1. How does Ithell Colquhoun’s work ask us to listen?
  2. How does her work ask us to listen to Cornwall—its landscapes, identities, cultures, politics, and environmental challenges—in the moment of now?

Sound Essay:

Between the Barren and the Fertile: Sonic Elemental Becomings.

A collective listening experience created by Dr D Ferrett as part of her ongoing research project, Quantum Listening to the Elemental Imaginary of Dark Kernow.

Credits:

  • Recording and Production: Dr Antti Saario
  • Sound and Voice Improvisors: Jessica Beechey, Daniel Ledley, James Scarle, and D Ferrett
  • Ritual Choreographer: Dr Ruth Pethybridge
  • Elemental Being Costume Designer: Nicole Lin
  • Ritualists: Ruth Pethybridge, Katrina Brown, Agnieszka Blonska, D Ferrett
  • Permissions for on-site ritual: With thanks to Mrs Nancy Hall

13.30 – 14.30: Lunch break - light lunch provided

14.45 – 15.45: Session 2

Maria Christoforidou: Black Voices Cornwall in conversation with Libita Sibungu. A palindrome interview responding to five works by Colquhoun, exploring affinities and stimuli through their practices and a POC lens. Recent works discussed include Deep Recovery (2023) by Libita Sibungu and Spontaneous Beings (2022) by Maria Christoforidou.

15.45 – 16.00: Break

16.00 – 17.00: Session 3

Astrida Neimanis & Norah Bowman. Online talk and discussion: Exploring Colquhoun’s work through an ecofeminist lens, addressing crises of misogyny, colonial exploitation of land, and rising fascism. Discussing how Colquhoun’s paintings suggest entry points and tactics for addressing these issues.

Five bursaries are available to support individuals who may not otherwise be able to attend. Each bursary is capped at £300 and can cover the ticket price for the event, travel, accommodation and some other expenses (including childcare).

To apply:

Please email events@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk with *Event Name* in the subject line and include the following information by Wednesday 23rd April 2025.

  • A summary outlining why you want to attend the event (200 words max.).
  • Breakdown of anticipated expenses (travel, accommodation and any other costs you plan to claim for).

Applicants will be notified shortly after the deadline if they are successful and sent instructions on how to claim the bursary amount.

All claims will be reimbursed retrospectively once receipts for expenses are provided.

Please note: You can only receive one travel bursary per academic year. We ask that you book travel as far in advance as possible.

Amy Hale PhD is an Atlanta based writer and critic who has researched Ithell Colquhoun for 25 years. She has written extensively about her life and work, most notably the acclaimed biography, Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully and Sex Magic: Diagrams of Love.

Dr D Ferrett is Associate Professor of Music, Sound and Culture at Falmouth University. Her work explores feminist sound studies, ecocriticism, and the sonic entanglements of gendered violence and environmental crisis. She is the author of Dark Sound: Feminine Voices in Sonic Shadow (Bloomsbury, 2020), founder of ‘Voices on the Edge’ and author of the chapter ‘Witching Sound in the Anthropocene (and Occultcene)’ in The Witch Studies Reader (Duke University Press, 2025). She leads ‘Quantum Listening to the Elemental Imaginary of Dark Kernow’ – a project based on inventing ritual and the biopolitics of the binary between fertility and barrenness. Her most recent projects include voice, field recording and narrative work for In the Company of the Mother Tree, a 360º immersive film poem about Cabilla – a temperate rainforest in Cornwall.

Maria Christoforidou is an Afro-Greek artist, writer and researcher. Her practice explores the political, physical and performative operations of words and images. She is motivated by a hope to create pauses that allow minor stories of sameness, voices, bodies and plant comrades to evade classification, come to rest, undoing unspeakable knots of otherness. She is an art history lecturer at Falmouth University and lives in Cornwall.

Black Voices Cornwall (BVC) is an Anti-Racism Charity striving for racial justice and committed to enabling Cornwall to become an actively anti-racist region. BVC is a multi-faceted Charity which provides many services. They are passionate about empowering the global majority communities to succeed and thrive, alongside encouraging and educating more allies to tackle racism.

Libita Sibungu (b.1987) lives and works in Cornwall. She is a multidisciplinary artist drawing on her British-Cornish-Namibian heritage, to make discursive works that explore — the entangled personal histories, and colonial legacies inscribed in the body and land. Sibungu is the recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award (2022).

Dr Rupert White is founder of artcornwall.org and author of a number of books including 'The Reenchanted Landscape: Earth Mysteries, Paganism and Art in Cornwall' and 'Magic & Modernism: Art from Cornwall in Context'.

Shelley Trower is Professor Emeritus of English Literature at the University of Roehampton. Books include Senses of Vibration: A History of the Pleasure and Pain of Sound (2012), Vibratory Modernism, edited with Anthony Enns (2013), Myth, Mysticism, and Celtic Nationalism, edited with Marion Gibson and Garry Tregidga (2013), Rocks of Nation: The Imagination of Celtic Cornwall (2015), and Sound Writing: Voices, Authors, and Readers of Oral History (2023). Shelley is currently funded by Arts Council England to develop her novel writing.

Astrida Neimanis writes about water, bodies, and weather. Author of Bodies of Water: Feminist Posthuman Phenomenology (2017) and How to Weather Together: Feminist Practice for Climate Change (co-authored with Jennifer Mae Hamilton, forthcoming 2026), they are particularly interested in the intersections between feminism, colonialism and climate crisis. Currently, they are Canada Research Chair in Feminist Environmental Humanities at UBC Okanagan on unceded syilx territory, where they are also Director of the FEELed Lab (www.thefeeledlab.ca).

Norah Bowman PhD, is a queer ecofeminist and anti-colonial poet, scholar, and artist living on unceded Syilx Okanagan lands. Her most recent book, My Eyes Are Fuses (Caitlin Press, 2024) is a poetic ramble that weaves feminist art history, magic, poison, and liberation from patriarchy into an experimental and emotional journey.

Dr Sria Chatterjee is Head of Research Initiatives at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London, where she also directs the multi-year research project, Climate & Colonialism. Sria is currently finishing a book on the relationship between art and the long environmental and agrarian crisis. Her writing has been published widely in academic journals, museum catalogues and public facing venues. In 2020, she founded and led the award-winning digital project, Visualizing the Virus.

This event will be BSL interpreted.

There is wheelchair and step free access to the Borlase Smart Room and an accessible toilet at Porthmeor Studios.

Tate St Ives

Porthmeor Studios

Please use the main entrance to Porthmeor Studios, located at the bottom of the steps to the St Ives School of Painting

Borlase Smart Room

Porthmeor Beach
St Ives
Cornwall TR26 1TG
Plan your visit

Dates

2 May 2025 at 18.00–20.30

3 May 2025 at 09.00–17.00

Supported by

Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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