ART / News

AS THE art world prepares to celebrate the opening this summer of the new Tate Gallery at St Ives, a cry for help comes from the Cornish fishing port. Local artists are concerned that a new boat house to be built for the RNLA will obliterate the harbour view which inspired so many of the works of art to be featured in the new gallery. According to the painter Patrick Heron, spokesman for the opposition, the boat house, a neo-classical edifice by Joe Poynton (one of Prince Charles's favourites) which could apparently have been built on a number of alternative sites, will 'destroy the central feature of St Ives. It is the totally visible church, with all four gable ends of its aisles, as it were, sawn off by the sea, standing in a unique relationship with the harbour, which forms the image of St Ives the world knows so well.' Work on the foundations is underway, but anyone willing to champion a last-minute reprieve should contact Edward Leah, The Vicarage, St Ives, Cornwall.

COLLECTORS will soon be able to buy a Henry Moore for 24p, and a Ben Nicholson for 39p. In May the Post Office launches new postage stamps with paintings by four modern British artists: Moore, Nicholson, Stanley Spencer and Edward Bawden.