I was brought up on the West Coast of Scotland, where we know a thing or two about ice-cream. An adopted dynasty of Italians, the Nardinis, had (and I believe still have) the monopoly on the ice-cream outlets of my hometown Largs, and as a people we were so keen on our ice-cream that we were as likely to be seen with a ’99-er’ cone (what has a half chocolate flake got to do with the number 99?!) in a January hailstorm as in the July sunshine.
Cornish ice-cream seemed to me – at that time – something that Mum bought as a cheap ‘standby’, and economical alternative to a (gasp) whole family-size carton of Nardinis, which was a massive, and rare, treat. The Cornish ice-cream was invariably bright yellow, very soft, and tasted like margarine. It came from the supermarket and in one flavour – Cornish – only.
My first trip to Cornwall recently has - you'll be glad to read - expanded my appreciation of the place many times over.
At first I couldn’t quite get over the fact that Penwith sounds like just a comic mispronunciation of Penrith. Of course Cornwall’s bizarre place names are part of its charm, as all the Nibthwaites, Crosthwaites, Slappersgates and Backbarrows are in the Lake District.
I travelled to this far-flung county at the kind invitation of the Newlyn Art Gallery to do a bit of R & D...
Cumbria and Cornwall: From afar they seem broadly comparable – tourist-dependent economy, a far distance from the UK’s main cities, a conservation and heritage-minded public profile, dying industries (farming and fishing). Both counties have their diehard supporters in rose-tinted spectacles (is there a Friends of Cornwall?)...
However, in Cornwall I was struck by how a surprising number of dynamic, ‘can do’ people we met had jettisoned any reliance on the public funders or officially sanctioned ways of doing things; or had found imaginative ways to get round legislation or rules: One guy – a fish merchant whose pilchard-salting factory was had up by EU health and safety police – had turned it into a ‘living museum’ and this apparently meant that his product wasn’t bound by the same red tape. He continued his line of business until the bottom fell out of the Italian pilchard market (I’m not kidding – it did, didn’t you hear?) and now the museum was being converted into flats as he plans to go off fishing with his mate Rick Stein.
Another retired civil servant was restoring a lugger (a traditional kind of local fishing boat) to working order so that it could actually be used as a viable fishing vessel, not a museum piece.
Everywhere we went people - whether they were fishermen or business entrepreneurs - lamented the crippling rules of politicians and the EU. Most got on with it anyway and sadly I think this little shred of fight is what generally marked them out from the Cumbrians I tend to meet. One exception here is Carol, an incomer who fairly recently took on a nearby holiday let / tearoom business. She runs the excellent tearoom on an honesty / ‘pay what you think is right’ donation system, even corralling visitors into digging her garden in return for tea. Naturally this goes down with the various authorities like a lead balloon. I hope they’re not, but I fear the days of her business are numbered.
Anyway back to Cornwall:
The Newlyn gallery staff were a tad – and rightly - preoccupied by an eruption of discontent amongst their membership: the gallery is still has a membership with a say, a precarious situation for any progressive contemporary art organisation operating in the vigorous demimonde of en plein air painting that is Cornwall. During our visit, wherever we went people voiced ill-informed and at times downright bigoted opinions about what was going on at the gallery, the mental health of the exhibiting artists, their own rightful ‘ownership’ of the space as tax payers (surely that’s like me saying that I have a say in who Kendal NHS trust admits for kidney dialysis? Me, I’m happy to trust the appointed...)
The director James is a really nice guy and certainly didn’t strike me as spoiling for a fight, but like most contemporary art curators, he is more used to public apathy than this.
I know a bit about this scenario – a long time ago I worked at Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop, a place with its fair share of revolting members. In fact, after my time there a successful coup was indeed orchestrated and various staff thrown out.
I asked my boyfriend Adam (he’s the director of Grizedale Arts) for a bit of advice: Grizedale had an – ahem – ‘tricky’ membership, when he joined seven years ago. But the contexts are so different: GA’s members were generally reliably apathetic to the new wave GA, though a few were nostalgic for the days of Ken Dodd in the Theatre in the Forest (they still call the office for his next gig) and Andy Goldsworthy in the leaf mould.
So Newlyn’s very vocal besmocked bourgoisie are a different kettle of fish as they clatter about the prom with their easels: I left wondering if a New Newlyn School of Contemporary Art Appreciation, Tolerance & Debate was needed.
Count me in as a speaker.
