Two regular visiting tutors on the Visual Arts programmes at West Dean College, Rebecca Partridge and Peter Webster, have exhibitions this month in Cornwall, London and Berlin. Open since 7th December 2013 and due to close on 18th January 2014, Peter Webster's Thirty Paintings at Newlyn Art Gallery is concurrent with a show by fellow Cornwall-based painter and sculptor, Gareth Edwards.

The press release states: "A Planetary Order brings together three artists who, though working in very different media, all explore meta-narratives of time, landscape and systematic abstraction with a combination of sincerity and playfulness. The juxtaposition of painting, sculpture and new media works emphasises the conceptual concerns of the artists who also share a meticulous minimalist aesthetic. The works hover between seriousness and humour, the romantic and the rational, reduction and sublime scale, all within a dialogue which encompasses works made both with highly traditional means and the most current new media technology. The exhibition reflects a growing interest in a return to metaphysical themes, which though sincere, is not without critical distance and awareness of the comical.(...) Along the long wall of the gallery hangs Rebecca Partridge's Notes on The Sea, a series of twelve minimal photorealist paintings calmly depicting fog veiled seascapes as polarities of night and day. In this work the archetypal romantic image enters into a contradiction with itself as it becomes part of a system. Playing with notions of duration, mathematic abstraction, and the possibility of painting a beautiful landscape, Partridge's attempt to rationalize the epitomised romantic landscape is both meditative and absurd."Opening in London on January 8th and running until February 14th, Partridge is also exhibiting in the group show 'Amerika; idea; fantasy; dream; myth; image' (What America means for non-Americans) at Camberwell Space, Camberwell College of Arts, London. Organised by Alasdair Duncan (with Jack Lovell and Mike Merkenschlager), the show includes contributions from Bas Jan Ader, Fiona Banner, Christian Boltanski, Maurizio Cattelan, Douglas Gordon, Richard Hamilton, Martin Kippenberger and Dieter Roth. It explores the different ways in which America is viewed and thought of by non-Americans, and the ways in which these ideas are represented in cultural production.+ + +Also early in 2014, West Dean alumni Eleanor Buffam is involved in a group exhibition, 'Heaven + Hell', showing at Espacio Gallery in East London between January 9th and February 2nd. More information on the poster below: