Wonder Current: Nicholas Hughes and Malcolm Opie

CANAL presents two Cornwall-based artists - and perhaps unlikely friends - for its summer show.

Mainstay and cliche of many a gallery's summer programming, here the Cornish seaside theme is the starting point for an exploration of two strands of art production - the taught and the untaught - and the varying ways in which the work is presented, theorized and received.
Nicholas Hughes is known for his quiet contemplative sea and snowscapes, their luminous delicacy communicating the sublime fragility of life, but also a very non-Romantic commitment to environmentalism - he writes, "it became clear under the unyielding presence of the sky that up there or out in the oceans exist the only remaining true wildernesses..."
Malcolm Opie is a self-taught Cornish-born artist who has been painting his beloved Cornish sea and landscapes in all seasons for the last ten years, his principal expressed influence the paintings of Camille Pissarro.
Hughes was born in Liverpool and gained his MA in Fine Art Photography at the London College of Communication. His work is held in several public collections, including the V&A, The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston) and the Gana Art Center in Seoul. It has been featured in numerous publications, and he has had solo exhibitions at The Photographers' Gallery in London and the Nailya Alexander Gallery in New York. His work has been shown widely at international art fairs, and was featured in The Histories of Photography exhibition at the V&A. After many years in London, he now lives and works in Falmouth.

Opie has lived in Stithians for all of his life, exhibiting in local galleries, and painting quickly in the open air, responding to the changes in the Cornish light. His subject matter is the sea, and the farm cottages, rivers, trees and winding roads of his village. In addition to painting, he spends his time writing songs, flyfishing and growing grapes.
The work of the two artists is presented side by side in the gallery space, each with a different relationship to art history, each carrying a different set of luggage from art and life.