Previous Exhibitions
Work from these collections may still be available. Please contact info@kurtjackson.com for any enquiries.
Kurt Jackson
The Cornish Seal
March 16 - August 10 2024
A normal, almost everyday experience for anyone who spends time on the Cornish coast, seals seem to pop up whenever we look out to sea; are they looking for us?
“I decided to spend the last few years dedicating as much time as possible watching, studying and trying to understand them – their form and movement, their haunts and habits and in turn create a body of work inspired by them.” – Kurt Jackson
A Seal's Story
Sharing Our Seas
March 16 - August 10 2024
Seals are sentinels bringing stories about the state of our seas – but will we listen?
This exhibition is presented in partnership with Cornwall Seal Group Reseach Trust.
A Seal’s Story explores the life and death stories of the grey seal and the Trust’s efforts to conserve and protect these playfully endearing mammals.
Kurt Jackson
The Fowey
Septmber 2 2023 - February 24 2024
Kurt Jackson has spent well over forty years working on, next to and along many different watercourses; painting and drawing, following and observing these dynamic and enigmatic waterways.
For this exhibition, Jackson focuses on one of Cornwall’s most iconic rivers, the River Fowey; tracing her route from the source high up on Bodmin Moor through farmland and wooded valleys across the county to where she meets the sea in the sheltered deep water estuary by Fowey town.
Kurt Jackson
RNLI Cornwall
March 18 - August 29 2023.
In RNLI Cornwall, Jackson - one of the UK’s foremost contemporary landscape artists - celebrates the lifesaving efforts of the RNLI through an ambitious new series of over 75 paintings varying in scale from postcard sized pieces to large canvasses measured in metres that capture the iconic blue and orange lifeboats nestled into Cornish harbours and dotted around our coastlines.
RNLI Cornwall Through the Lens
March 18 - August 29 2023.
With the RNLI set to celebrate 200 years of service, the Jackson Foundation is honoured to host an exhibition exploring the lifesaving charity’s work in Cornwall as seen through the camera’s lens.
These fascinating photographs provide a unique view of the RNLI’s development in Cornwall through the eyes of various photographers including Nigel Millard who is equally comfortable hanging out of a Royal Navy helicopter as he is ploughing through 8-metre waves aboard a lifeboat and Jack Lowe’s stunning photographs on glass.
This exhibition also includes a selection of heritage RNLI collection boxes, from early examples made of wood and tin, right through to familiar interactive boxes that may still be found on the counter of your local pub.
Take a virtual tour via this link...
Kurt Jackson
Helford River
August 27 2022 - February 25 2023.
In this new collection Kurt Jackson revisits the Helford River, her creeks and her tributaries to capture the stunning beauty and incredible biodiversity found there. Along the way, Jackson explores the wildlife and the communities that live in and on this unique watercourse.
Ander Gunn
Seven Decades
August 27 2022 - February 25 2023.
Photographer Ander Gunn has spent a lifetime turning his lens to the world, from working class Londoners framed in the doorway of a public convenience to the brightest lights of the St Ives School. This exhibition of black and white images reflects his output over the last 70 years to offer a sample of both rural and urban subject matter.
Kurt Jackson
Mermaids' Tears
March 19 - August 13 2022.
Mermaids’ Tears charts Kurt Jackson’s campaigning work to address the blight of plastic in the ocean, and draws attention to the resin pellets or nurdles from plastic manufacturing (colloquially known as mermaids’ tears) that pollute the environment.
Sally Baldwin
Fragile Earth
March 19 - August 13 2022.
Fragile Earth by Sally Baldwin is a body of work evoking natural forms such as trees, pods, flowers, insects, sea life and water. The materials used - recycled and handmade paper, silk waste and gauzy cotton scrim - are ghostly, white and ephemeral, suggesting delicate, fragile, vulnerable and finely balanced landscapes.
Kurt Jackson
Clay Country
March 19 - August 13 2022.
For this project, Jackson worked in situ at Littlejohn’s china clay works, observing the workers in the pit as they extracted and transported the china clay in an extraordinary manmade landscape. The dramatic (and sometimes extreme) variations in the weather inspired a diverse range of drawings and paintings, perched on the edge of the pit or down in the depths – including the clay and stone itself in the mix.
Kurt Jackson
Kenidjack: A Cornish Valley
August 28 2021 – February 22 2022.
Kenidjack Valley in West Cornwall is one of those special places spilling over with natural treasures, heritage and dramatic topography.
Kurt Jackson has spent over three years painting it to explore, re-engage and immerse himself through the seasons from top to tail of this extraordinary watercourse, the UK’s ‘almost-most’ westerly valley.
Valley Lives
August 28 2021 - February 26 2022.
The Kenidjack, Tregeseal or Nancherrow Valley has been inhabited for 6,000 years. This has been a place of mining, metalwork and agriculture.
Along the valley there were shops, a Sunday school, places of recreation and manufacture. Some of these have now gone but a thriving community lives on. This collection of images and artefacts aims to tell the story of this valley.
More info to follow...
Kurt Jackson
Wheat From plough to plate
March 19 – August 14 2021
For many years the building that houses the Jackson Foundation was part of Warrens Bakery. It was here that their lorries were serviced, repaired and maintained.
In this exhibition, Kurt Jackson traces the journey of a staple crop – wheat – from ‘field to fork’ in media spanning paint, sculpture, poetry and film.
Robin Hanbury-Tenison OBE
Echoes of a Vanished World
March 19 – August 14 2021
An explorer and a founder of Survival International, Robin Hanbury-Tenison is a natural born storyteller, as such, his images speak directly to us in a voice that is fresh and clear. This exhibition is a collection of his photographs from the 1950’s-1970’s.
There is nothing self-conscious or patronising here. Instead, there is a deep admiration, a sense of wonder, respect and desire to share what he sees with a world that has grown increasingly out of touch with the things that really matter.
Kurt Jackson
The Burn - A Scottish Millstream
March 19 - August 14 2021
In the spring of 2012, Kurt Jackson followed the Kintyre peninsula to its southern end, arriving at a glinting, rushing burn between banks of celandines and kingcups.
He stayed in an ancient water mill that was in perfect working order, but lay silent, frozen in time; every functional cog and wheel unworked for 50 years. Jackson trailed the stream from its loch high on the moor past the mill and down to that dark coast with pencil line and paintbrush stroke, tracing every curve and meander, overhanging tree and washed rock.
Kurt Jackson – A Prehistoric Cornwall
August 29th 2020 – February 2021.
This body of work sees Jackson visit the relics of prehistoric Cornwall and captures the county’s extraordinary range of ancient monuments with a new series of paintings and sculpture. The landscape is full of these monuments, some are obvious and picturesque – a stone circle – while others are incongruous; hidden and overlooked despite their size and historical significance, cut-off and smothered by dual-carriageways, roundabouts and car dealerships.
Art. Music. Activism. Kurt Jackson, Glastonbury and Greenpeace.
March 21 - August 15 2020.
Kurt Jackson has been Artist-in-Residence at the festival for twenty years, raising over £250,000 for the festival charities Oxfam, Greenpeace and WaterAid via sales of his Glastonbury works.
This immersive exhibition looks to share a selection of his work as Artist-in-Residence as well as celebrating the 50th anniversary of both Glastonbury Festival and Greenpeace.
Greenpeace: 50 Years of Making Waves
March 21 – August 15 2020.
From its earliest days, Greenpeace has borne witness to environmental crime, and challenged those who fail to protect our planet. The photos in this exhibition show defining moments in Greenpeace’s history. Greenpeace photos have played a pivotal role in pushing environmental issues high up on the daily news agenda.
In the year marking Greenpeace’s 50th anniversary, we wanted to bring you a selection of these images to show you more about what Greenpeace is, and what Greenpeace does.
Kurt Jackson – Frenchman’s Creek
August 30 2019 – February 22 2020.
In this breathtaking new body of work, leading contemporary artist Kurt Jackson immerses himself – sometimes literally – in a tributary of the Helford River, an area of Atlantic temperate rainforests. A unique landscape of sessile oak woodlands meeting the tide that famously inspired Daphne du Maurier’s 1941 novel Frenchman’s Creek.
Kurt Jackson - Thorn
May 22 - August 17 2019.
Kurt Jackson spent a year studying a single tree through the seasons as an Artist in Residence for The Woodland Trust in partnership with Common Ground.
This body of work was previously shown at The Yorkshire Sculpture Park and will now be exhibited at The Jackson Foundation accompanying Jackson’s other paintings, prints and sculpture engaging with the same subject.
Kurt Jackson - Crab and Lobster
March 30 - April 27; May 22 - August 17 2019.
In the latest of his series of projects focusing on the richness and diversity of the natural world, environmental visual artist Kurt Jackson has chosen to look at crustaceans –particularly crabs and lobsters– an enormously varied group of jointed shelled animals found along our seashores.
In looking at an apparently mundane group of animals Jackson again aims to celebrate their uniqueness; only by acknowledging and appreciating the ordinary as well as the extraordinary can we then realistically respect and conserve this biodiverse world.
Peter Jackson - A Retrospective
March 30 - April 27 2019
This is the first major retrospective of work by the late British artist, Peter Jackson (1930 – 2019).
Jackson was one of the last survivors from that generation of artists that studied at Corsham Court Art College in the 1950s and was taught by a celebrated roll call of Artist Tutors including Peter Lanyon, William Scott, Adrian Heath, Howard Hodgkin and Terry Frost. Their influences remained (as did their friendship) but Jackson always forged his own path.
This exhibition aims to show the variety and diversity of this important artist with pieces representing the last 60 years of his work on canvas, paper and in sculpture.
Kurt Jackson: Scilly
Autumn/Winter 2018-2019
Kurt Jackson’s exhibition explores the quiet wildness of Scilly. The islands have been part of Kurt’s life for over 30 years, and he often visits to lay down his canvases on the wind buffeted shores in an attempt to capture their unique beauty. Perched in the open ocean and battered by the elements, they remain a pristine refuge from the relentless pace of modern life.
From the tufty hillocks where Mediterranean insects and flora coexist with the native species to cottages and flower-filled fields to high tottering dry-stone perforated walls, Kurt peers into the unique habitats which make the archipelago such a rich and remarkable place.
Kurt Jackson: Seacrows
May 26th – August 18th 2018.
A new body of work by Kurt Jackson made over the last few years, whilst looking at and watching the population of shags and Cormorants seen along our coast and rivers.
This series of studies of these extraordinary birds includes paintings, drawings and two large new carborundum prints made with master printmaker, Simon Marsh.
Kurt Jackson – Revisiting Turner’s Tourism
Spring/Summer 2018.
A touring exhibition in which leading contemporary artist Kurt Jackson walks in the footsteps of JMW Turner to visit the location of his iconic images; to track down the exact viewpoint, to see for oneself how it differs or reflects the source material.
Denzil Forrester: From Trench Town to Porthtowan
May 26 – June 23rd 2018.
Career-spanning exhibition of immersive large-scale paintings exploring themes from sewing bags with his mother to the world of London’s dub reggae clubs curated by Peter Doig and Matthew Higgs.
Forrester is the Jackson Foundation’s first Invited Artist, chosen by the Jackson foundation because of the unique nature of their work – it being interesting, honest art that demands an audience.
Kurt Jackson – Cot: A Cornish Valley
Autumn/Winter 2017-2018.
An exciting and ambitious new collection of paintings and sculpture following this small most westerly of valleys in Cornwall, from its source on the exposed Penwith heathlands to the Atlantic coast at Porth Nanven near St Just. Immense canvases to small intimate studies, film, ceramics and sculpture.
For this project the Jackson Foundation partnered with the RSPB and their Cornwall Chough Project and the Camborne School of Mines (University of Exeter) with their insight into the geology of this valley and foreshore.
Kurt Jackson – Bees (and the Odd Wasp) in My Bonnet
Spring/Summer 2017.
A unique presentation of contemporary art and science at the Jackson Foundation.
Acknowledging the dangers faced by British bees, Kurt Jackson has spent the past few years exploring the world of pollinators, producing a collection of pieces that are also informed by his grounding in the sciences and his experience as a beekeeper in Cornwall.
Bees (and the odd wasp) in My Bonnet brings this body of work together and includes both plein air and studio pieces embracing an extensive range of materials and techniques including mixed media, large canvases, print making, sculpture and film.
Kurt Jackson – Obsession: Following the Surfer
Autumn/Winter 2016-2017.
The eagerly awaited new main space of the Jackson Foundation gallery opened in September with the show Kurt Jackson: Obsession – Following The Surfer.
Obsession, a series of paintings, sculpture and ceramics, sees Jackson follow his studio assistant on surfing trips around the Cornish coast. Kurt Jackson’s work has always explored the connection between our environment and us; how we see, feel about and treat the world around us. We may live, work or even just play in the landscape but this link, this way of fitting in and using the world out there, gives us a connection – it molds us and changes us and sometimes in turn may change that world.
Kurt Jackson – Place
Summer 2016.
By inviting 32 contributors, including the writers Robert Macfarlane and Richard Mabey, as well as scientists, poets, and even Michael Eavis (founder of Glastonbury Festival) to write a personal transcript of a place they felt a connection to, Jackson was able to gain an insight into how this eclectic mix of writers and thinkers view the British landscape. This created a unique opportunity for him to shift the location of his work away from the immediately personal, to places, environments and landscapes that generate a sense of attachment in others.
Kurt Jackson – Wildlives
Winter 2015/Spring 2016.
Jackson has chosen to look again at zoology and make a body of work about fauna. Many of the subjects are the day to day animals he comes across – the birds, insects, fish but others have been sought out – looked for – the more unusual species.
This exhibition aims to celebrate the diversity of life around Jackson in his day to day life in Cornwall. The moth on the windowpane, the fish in the pond, the toad in the garden, the bird on the roof.
Kurt Jackson – The Badger Project
Winter 2015/Spring 2016.
To accompany the exhibition Wildlives: Daily Encounters with the Animals of Cornwall, the Jackson Foundation used the upstairs gallery/charity-space to highlight the work of the Zoological Society of London and their community-led badger vaccination initiative here in Penwith; portraying the badgers and their habitat on Jackson’s home turf through a series of drawings, paintings and photographs.
The initiative aims to explore the use of badger vaccination as a promising solution to the spread of bovine TB in badgers. A solution that could prove beneficial for both Penwith’s farmers and our wildlife.
Kurt Jackson – From Here
21 July – 3 October 2015.
The first exhibition at the Jackson Foundation in Kurt’s hometown of St Just, From Here represents the recent results of a very long meditation on the business of belonging.. It runs into the depths of individual identity, family and community and out over the topography of intimate landscapes where familiarity has bred not contempt but contentment – joy in the glory of the down-to-earth and everyday: happiness in home.
Contact:
email: info@kurtjackson.com
telephone: +44 (0)1736 787638
facebook: jacksonfoundation
twitter: @jacksonfgallery
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Opening Hours
(Until November 30th)
Mon: Closed.
Tue: 10am - 1pm, 2pm - 5pm.
Wed: 10am - 1pm, 2pm - 5pm.
Thu: 10am - 1pm, 2pm - 5pm.
Fri: 10am - 1pm, 2pm - 5pm.
Sat: 10am - 1pm, 2pm - 5pm.
Sun: Closed.
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Check here for detailed opening periods.