Tate St Ives

Tate St Ives Welcome to the official Tate St Ives page Book your tickets for Tate St Ives and the Barbara Hepworth Museum & Sculpture Garden online 💙🌳

Happy birthday to Brian Wall, born on this day in 1931! 🎉 Brian Wall was Barbara Hepworth's former assistant, who went o...
04/09/2026

Happy birthday to Brian Wall, born on this day in 1931! 🎉

Brian Wall was Barbara Hepworth's former assistant, who went on to become a successful sculptor in his own right.

As a child he experienced the Blitz during World War II before being evacuated to Yorkshire, and after returning to London following the war, he left school as a teenager to work as a glassblower. He went on to serve as an aerial photographer in the Royal Air Force, before beginning his artistic career as a painter in the early 1950s.

In 1954 Wall moved to St Ives, then home to a thriving community of abstract artists including Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Patrick Heron and Terry Frost. He worked as Hepworth's assistant from 1955 until 1960, and during this time began constructing wood reliefs and sculptures painted in primary colours. Wall returned to London in 1960 to become Head of Sculpture at the Central School of Art, remaining there until 1972, when he emigrated to California, where he has lived ever since.

📷
Brian Wall, London, 1966. Photo credit: Chris Ware.
Brian Wall working on Barbara Hepworth’s Meridian, Sculpture for State House, 1958–1960, St Ives, 1959. Photo credit: Photograph Studio St. Ives © Bowness, Courtesy of Hepworth Photograph Collection.
Brian Wall, Untitled, 1959 - on display at Tate St Ives.

Gallery wander ✅ Lunch with a view ✅ Panoramic ocean views ✅ An afternoon at Tate St Ives = perfection!Photos by John He...
04/09/2026

Gallery wander ✅ Lunch with a view ✅ Panoramic ocean views ✅
An afternoon at Tate St Ives = perfection!

Photos by John Hersey Studio and Luke Hayes.

Long before St Ives, Barbara Hepworth was learning to carve in Rome 🇮🇹 Barbara Hepworth and John Skeaping had married in...
03/09/2026

Long before St Ives, Barbara Hepworth was learning to carve in Rome 🇮🇹

Barbara Hepworth and John Skeaping had married in Florence in May 1925, while both were spending time in Italy early in their careers.

It was here that Hepworth deepened her understanding of carving. She learned to work with marble from Italian master carver Giovanni Ardini, who told her that marble could change colour in different people's hands 🗿

The idea stayed with her, carving wasn't about forcing a material into shape, but understanding its particular character and working with it.

That sensitivity to material would remain central to Hepworth's practice for decades. Look closely at the stone, wood and bronze works at the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in St Ives and you can see how profoundly she responded to the materials she worked with 🌳

📷 Barbara Hepworth with John Skeaping at the British School in Rome, c.1925–26. The Hepworth Photograph Collection © Bowness.

What if you could live inside a rock, a tree or even a cloud? 🤔 In her 2009 series Prehistory Revisited, Aleksandra Kasu...
02/09/2026

What if you could live inside a rock, a tree or even a cloud? 🤔

In her 2009 series Prehistory Revisited, Aleksandra Kasuba imagined fantastical places to live, tucked into rocks, trees, Petra, Stonehenge and the clouds ☁️

The idea went back decades. In the 1960s, Kasuba saw an exhibition that challenged conventional ideas of architecture, looking instead at how people around the world had created buildings and shared spaces in different ways.

Kasuba returned to these ideas in Prehistory Revisited, drawing on natural forms and imagined dwellings to explore what architecture could be.

📍 See Prehistory Revisited in Aleksandra Kasuba: Shelters for the Senses at Tate St Ives.
📆 Until 4 October

📷 Aleksandra Kasuba, 2019:
Prehistory Revisited. In Rock
Prehistory Revisited. In Baobab
Prehistory Revisited. In the Clouds
Prehistory Revisited. In Petra

See what local pupils have made for Tate St Ives... 💙 It's the last month to see Blue Prints for the Loggia 👀 Year 10 st...
01/09/2026

See what local pupils have made for Tate St Ives... 💙

It's the last month to see Blue Prints for the Loggia 👀

Year 10 students from St Ives School, Cape Cornwall and Hayle Academy joined artist Peach Doble on Porthmeor Beach for a day of land art, impermanent sculpture and mark making. Driftwood, seaweed, shells - whatever the beach gave up became the tools for three large-scale cyanotype artworks.

Each school's taken their original home, but all three prints are hanging in our Loggia entrance - come and see how well those blues match the view.

⚠️ Don't miss them, they are only on display until 4 October!

The project is part of our young people’s programme Create Club, led by artist Peach Doble and supported by The Mildred Fund.

📷 Ian Kingsnorth

What's on at Tate St Ives and the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden this week...🔷 Explore Aleksandra Kasuba: ...
31/08/2026

What's on at Tate St Ives and the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden this week...

🔷 Explore Aleksandra Kasuba: Shelters for the Senses, see paintings, mosaics, sculptures and architectural designs spanning seven decades of visionary work. Until 4 October.
🔷 Discover Halima Cassell's intricately carved geometric sculptures, where light and shadow bring every surface to life. Until 27 September.
🔷 Don't miss the final Tate Tape Tours of the summer at the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden today at 10.30–10.50, 11.00–11.20 and 11.30–11.50.
🔷 See Cyanotype prints by local school children, displayed in our Loggia gallery entrance until October.
🔷 Dive into stories of art on the Cornish coast with daily talks in the collection galleries.
🔷 Experience work by Cornwall-based artist Ro Robertson, exploring the coastline as a space for creativity.
🔷 Step into the world of Barbara Hepworth, visit her home and garden and join daily talks from our team.
🔷 Soak up the views from our rooftop café, perfect for lunch, coffee and cake.

Find out more on our website.
Open daily 10:00–17:20 (last admission 17:00) 💙
Cornwall resident? Get our £10 Locals Pass. Free for Tate Members and under 19s.

Photo by Luke Hayes

After hours. At sunset. With just 20 guests. 🌅 🥂For one evening, a small group of just 20 guests will have rare after-ho...
30/08/2026

After hours. At sunset. With just 20 guests. 🌅 🥂

For one evening, a small group of just 20 guests will have rare after-hours access to the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Beginning at 18.00, explore Hepworth’s studio and garden with a Tate Guide, discovering more about her life and work, and the planting she created around her sculptures.

Then, settle into the garden with a glass of fizz and watch the sun go down over St Ives Bay.

A rare chance to experience one of St Ives’ most extraordinary spaces after hours.

📍 Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden
📅 Sunday 20 September
🕕 18.00–19.30
🎟 £75 / £70 for Tate Members
👥 Limited to just 20 guests

Book tickets online:
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/barbara-hepworth-museum-and-sculpture-garden/sunset-tour-with-fizz

📷 Rikard Osterlund, Kirstin Prisk and John Hersey

30/08/2026

Have you spotted the 'Walker'? 👣

Look closely as you move through Aleksandra Kasuba: Shelters for the Senses and you’ll see this little figure appearing in the first section.

Known as the "Walker", the figure acts as a kind of alter ego, walking through life and reappearing across Kasuba’s work.

Next time you visit, keep an eye out 👀

🎟️ Aleksandra Kasuba: Shelters for the Senses is at Tate St Ives until 4 October.

Look closely at the couple in the foreground of Christopher Wood's The Fisherman's Farewell.They're not fishermen at all...
29/08/2026

Look closely at the couple in the foreground of Christopher Wood's The Fisherman's Farewell.

They're not fishermen at all - they're fellow artists Ben and Winifred Nicholson, painted with their young son Jake. Wood painted them in disguise as a Cornish fishing family, a quiet nod to the friendship the three artists built while painting together in Cornwall in 1928.

You can see work by both Wood and the Nicholsons on display at Tate St Ives.

Christopher Wood The Fisherman's Farewell, 1928 © Tate.

Follow the winding paths through the sculpture garden to reach the greenhouse. The sculpture at the back of the greenhou...
29/08/2026

Follow the winding paths through the sculpture garden to reach the greenhouse. The sculpture at the back of the greenhouse is Sea Form (Porthmeor), 1958.

Porthmeor is the beach close to Hepworth's studio in St Ives, and just in front of Tate St Ives. A critic thought this sculpture 'seems to belong to the living world of the sea.' The curling top lip of the bronze echoes a breaking wave, while the green and white patina of the inner surface recalls the colour of the sea and surf.

At Porthmeor, Hepworth watched the changing tide, the movement of sand and wind, and the footprints of people and birds. For her, the rhythm of the tides was part of a natural order that humankind belongs to as well.

See this work at Hepworth's former home, now the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden.

© Bowness. Photos © Kirstin Prisk and Rikard Osterlund.

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