The Dark Monarch

Tate St. Ives, Porthmeor Beach,
St. Ives, Cornwall
10 October - 10 January 2010

Towner
Devonshire Park, College Road, Eastbourne, East Sussex
January 23 - March 21 2010

MICHAEL AYRTON,
SVEN BERLIN,
NICHOLAS BYRNE,
GILLIAN CARNEGIE,
ADAM CHODZKO,
STEVEN CLAY DON,
CECIL COLLINS,
ITHELL COLQUHOUN,
JOHN CRAXTON,
RICHARD DADD,
HUBERT DALWOOD,
KAYE DONACHIE,
MEREDITH FRAMPTON,
BARBARA HEPWORTH,
DAMIEN HIRST,
LESLIE HURRY,
DEREK JARMAN,
DAVID JONES,
PETER LANYON,
JOHN LATHAM,
LINDER,
GOSHKA MACUGA,
JEREMY MILLAR,
HENRY MOORE,
PAUL NASH,
DAVID NOONAN,
AUSTIN OSMAN SPARE,
SAMUEL PALMER,
SIMON PERITON,
JOHN PIPER,
FAY POMERANCE,
ERIC RAVILIOUS,
EVA ROTHSCHILD,
JOHN RUSSELL,
PENNY SLINGER,
JOHN STEZAKER,
GRAHAM SUTHERLAND,
DAVID THORPE,
MARK TITCHNER,
J W TUCKER,
JOHN WELLS,
KARL WESCHKE,
J D WILLIAMS,
ADRIAN WISZNIEWSKI,
CLARE WOODS,
CERITH WYN EVANS,
BRYAN WYNTER
MADAME YEVONDE

Exhibition Images here...

Reviews:
Frieze Magazine, Issue 128, January-February 2010
Michelle Cotton

Tricks of the light: Weird visions in art, Independent, 5 October 2009 Tom Lubbock

The mystery, myth and superstition surrounding ancient Albion come under the spotlight in this magical show at Tate St Ives, Dazed & Confused, October 2009 Francesca Gavin

Dark Monarch makes its mystical mark on the Tate St Ives, This is Cornwall

Adam Chodzko on 'The Dark Monarch', conceptual art and the nature of place, interview by Rupert White

BBC Interviews with:
Martin Clark
Adam Chodzko
Jeremy Millar

'Nowhere can it be so black as on the edge of a moor, above the western sea, near the rocks where the ancient worshippers used to sacrifice. The darkness of menhirs.'~ D.H. Lawrence, Kangaroo (1923)

‘Everywhere there was a brooding presence over the hills ... emanating desolation, loneliness and destruction: the Dark Monarch who wrecked men's lives, smashed their ships on the rocks and cut off terror-stricken fingers to snatch at the jewels of eternal life.' ~ Sven Berlin, The Dark Monarch, Gallery Press (1962)

The Dark Monarch– which takes its title from the infamous 1962 book by Sven Berlin – explores the influence of folklore, mysticism, mythology and the occult on the development of British modernism. Berlin's novel is a fictional critique of an artist colony.   It captures the topographical forces that tether the dark manipulation of the symbolic forms. Amidst its recalcitrant chapters there is a tension between a progressive modernity and the otherness of a romantic knowledge. It is this tension, focusing on landscape encoded with mystical notions of history as both geological and magical, that the exhibition seeks to traverse.

The Dark Monarch critically examines magic as a counterpoint to liberal understanding of modernity's transparency and rational progress. The exhibition will attend to the ways in which magic's forms of faith and scepticism, revelation and concealment supplement each other. Here, magic is designated a conceptual field- shared with notions as fetishism, witchcraft, the occult, totem, mana and taboo- that was predominantly made to define an antithesis of modernity; a production of illusion and delusion that was thought to recede and disappear through secularisation.   The works exhibited confront the sentimentalist, poetic or voluntaristic tendencies that were once excluded, tendencies that were harnessed by romantic visions that become fundamental to the vagaries of aesthetic ruination. The Dark Monarch contends that magic belongs to modernity revealing the correspondences and nostalgias by which the magical can come to haunt modernity.

Featuring major loans and works from the Tate Collection, by historic and contemporary artists, the exhibition will realign the influence of early modernism, and the reappearance of neo-romantic and esoteric references, on a significant strand of current international arts practice. it will examine the development of early Modernism, Surrealism and Neo-Romanticism in Britain, as well as the reappearance of esoteric and arcane references in a significant strand of contemporary art practice. The exhibition will include a key work by Damien Hirst, the first time he has been shown at Tate St Ives, as well as works by important modernists and surrealists including Graham Sutherland, Paul Nash, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Ithell Colquhoun; Neo-Romantics such as Cecil Collins, John Piper, Leslie Hurry and John Craxton; as well as emerging and established contemporary artists including Cerith Wyn Evans, Mark Titchner, Eva Rothschild, Simon Periton, Clare Woods, Steven Claydon, John Stezaker and Derek Jarman. The Dark Monarch aims to be a constellation that evokes and fuses the real with the imaginary: automatic drawing, stone sculptures, botanical collage, esoteric busts, and appropriated imagery are manipulated with transformative effect across generations of British art. The exhibition will traverse historical points where artists relish in the degradation of the known and the perversion of a rational culture. The exhibition and related events will weave together interconnected fictions that form a landscape of broken connections. Signposting the way will be artworks colluding to form an entropic trail that define a restless territory of romantic knowledge; a knowledge that seeks to confront a lacuna, the absent fiction at the heart of Berlin's novel.

Curated by Martin Clark, Artistic Director, Tate St Ives; Michael Bracewell, writer and critic and Alun Rowlands, artist, writer and Head of Fine Art, University of Reading, the show will be arranged thematically rather than chronologically, representing artists and influences across generations.




The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art


Edited by Martin Clark, Michael Bracewell & Alun Rowlands
Published by Tate, 2009





With essays from Paul Bayley, Toni Carver, Cecil Collins, Ithell Colqhuoun, Ilsa Colsell, Brian Dillon, Ed Halter, Jennifer Higgie, Philip Hoare, Paul Nash, Chris Stephens, Marina Warner and Morrissey.

216 pp plus cover and 8-page jacket, 75 colour & 40 black & white illustrations
Dimensions 230 x 170mm
Paperback
ISBN 9781854378743

The Dark Weekend: Events, Symposium & Performance

Your actions are my dreams , Linder, 2009