Cornwall

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="667" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2568-1000x667.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-37113" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2568-1000x667.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2568-800x533.jpg 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2568-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2568.jpg 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>



A visit to St Ives never fails to please, especially if you enjoy a side of culture with your Cornish harbour town visit. Before you hit the beach, get a cup of coffee in the roof top café overlooking Porthmeor Beach, and then take a spin around the 10 galleries, where there is always something inspiring. While the permanent collections move around sporadically, two spaces are reserved for hosting more temporary exhibitions.



New for summer 2025 is the first major museum survey of artist Liliane Lijn. Now 85 years old but still working and very much involved in the exhibition and creative process, this is a collaborative exhibition by three galleries: Tate St Ives, Haus der Kunst in Munich and mumok in Vienna. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="667" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2648-1000x667.jpg" alt="Liliane Lijn Arise Alive" class="wp-image-37117" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2648-1000x667.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2648-800x533.jpg 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2648-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2648.jpg 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-who-is-lilian-lijn">Who is Lilian Lijn?</h2>



Liliane Lijn, an American artist who has made London her home for decades was one of the first women artists to create kinetic works. Summing up her work, she told me that she has a desire to “make things that become alive”.



Born in America, she spent several years living in Switzerland as a teenager, speaking Italian, before moving to France aged 19 to study at a Parisian university. This shaped her desire to become an artist and she spent the late 1950s and 1960s in Paris &#8211; encountering surrealism and the concept of the unconscious as an influence. It was in Paris she created her early works, some of which form part of the first room of <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-st-ives/liliane-lijn-arise-alive">Arise Alive</a>; vast skyscapes and works featuring moons, circles and triangles.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-are-the-main-themes-of-the-exhibition">What are the main themes of the exhibition?</h2>



Arise Alive is a carefully curated exhibition exploring three key themes from Lijn&#8217;s career, through her wide-ranging practice that includes sculpture, installation, painting, drawing, collage, video and performance.



Themes include kinetic art – initially through motorisation and optical effects; light and energy – giving visible form to immaterial and invisible forces; and feminism and the body – challenging dominant ideas of the feminine in art and technology.



The works, many of which move, some in unexpected ways, explore her interests in the connections between opposites, and the intersection of art, poetry and science. She combines surrealism, mythology, philosophy, scientific innovation and feminism. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="667" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2562-1000x667.jpg" alt="Liliane Lijn Arise Alive Tate St Ives May 2025 Muddy Stilettos Cornwall" class="wp-image-37115" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2562-1000x667.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2562-800x533.jpg 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2562-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2562.jpg 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>



Lijn appears to have always been curious. In the 1960s, in Athens, she started experimenting with the effects of light and the transfer of energy. Early works investigating polymers and using the space, or void, as a solid mass or volume echo in some way <a href="https://cornwall.muddystilettos.co.uk/arts-culture/muddy-reviews-naum-gabo-tate-st-ives/">Naum Gabo</a>&#8216;s work. 



At the back of the room in two small dark spaces are three compelling installations, two,<a href="https://www.lilianelijn.com/portfolio-item/liquid-reflections-1966-1968/"> Liquid Reflections</a> (1966–8) are hollow acrylic discs filled with water, rotating on a platform, &#8220;using spin and gravity to create a luminous dance of two translucent spheres across its surface&#8221; &#8211; the water gradually condenses so in several weeks time it will be full of droplets. It is mesmerising. As is Denslens just beyond which the viewer becomes part of the work, observing a moving cylinder through an emblematic lens from a precise, individual, viewpoint.



Prisms are another key discovery for Lijn, the first of which she found in a Paris flea market. Fascinated by refraction and the effects when coupled with various other solid forms, a large body of work explores these. Some of the largest prisms atop two works are the kind of prism manufactured for periscopes in tanks (and no longer used now, due to the light reflecting) &#8211; their positioning in this exhibition reflects not just the works themselves but the paintings hung opposite. 



In fact, the sculptures often appear to be in conversation with each other, or with the art works hung nearby. Her works in copper and aluminium continue to fuse literally and figuratively themes of reverting space, of light interference, of the feminine and spiritual.



The moon is another theme that plays consistently; from her earliest works in Paris, to the collages inspired by the moon landing in 1969, she remains fascinated by the lunar body &#8211; with her <a href="https://www.lilianelijn.com/portfolio-item/moonmeme-2012/">latest works, not shown here</a>, focus on the moon, shadows, and feminine lunar cycles.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-is-there-a-connection-to-cornwall">Is there a connection to Cornwall?</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="667" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Prism-Stones-1978-Liliane-Lijn-Tate-St-Ives-Cornwall-1000x667.jpg" alt=" Prism Stones (1978) Liliane Lijn Tate St Ives Cornwall" class="wp-image-37118" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Prism-Stones-1978-Liliane-Lijn-Tate-St-Ives-Cornwall-1000x667.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Prism-Stones-1978-Liliane-Lijn-Tate-St-Ives-Cornwall-800x533.jpg 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Prism-Stones-1978-Liliane-Lijn-Tate-St-Ives-Cornwall-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Prism-Stones-1978-Liliane-Lijn-Tate-St-Ives-Cornwall.jpg 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>



Not as overtly as previous exhibitions, but Lijn’s Prism Stones (1978) do have a Cornish connection. These fuse round stones found on a Cornish beach &#8211; so long ago she couldn&#8217;t remember which one! &#8211; with prisms; it was, she told me, her attempt to create something by merging nature with that made by human technology. These weren&#8217;t the most compelling of her works though, neither moving nor being so visually interesting as the other sculptures and installations nearby, but they did have a quiet simplicity.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-if-you-ve-only-time-for-a-quick-visit-don-t-miss-these">If you’ve only time for a quick visit, don’t miss these</h2>



Head straight for Arise Alive in Gallery 5, what is usually the light-filled but underground new extension of the Tate St Ives, which opened back in 2017. In previous exhibitions, this has been a bright white space but the new rendering for Arise Alive sees both darkened spaces and a new door blocking further light, all the better to see these curious installations.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="667" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2568-1000x667.jpg" alt="White Koans Liliane Lijn Arise Alive" class="wp-image-37113" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2568-1000x667.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2568-800x533.jpg 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2568-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2568.jpg 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>



Not Daleks but white Koans &#8211; so called by Lijn as a pun on the cone form, and the &#8220;paradoxical Zen buddhist riddles used by monks to meditate&#8221; these are derived from the conical mound of ash shapes, the symbol of the White Goddess. Some are covered with letters and symbols, as are other works, looking at her desire &#8216;to see sound.&#8217; These are larger versions of earlier smaller works, like the sculpture which gave its name to the exhibition; Poemcon, Arise Alive (1965), based on a poem by Leonard D. Marshall, a spinning cone interrupts the linearity of the text, allowing the viewer to see words more freely.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="667" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2623-1000x667.jpg" alt="Electric Bride Liliane Lijn Arise Alive Tate St Ives" class="wp-image-37114" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2623-1000x667.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2623-800x533.jpg 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2623-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Liliane-Lijn-Arise-Alive-Tate-St-Ives-May-2025-Muddy-Stilettos-Cornwall-RB-imageIMG_2623.jpg 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>



Also don&#8217;t miss two futuristic female archetypes. First Electric Bride (1989) made from mica, which appears at once soft and fragile but is also hard and tough, along with feathers and aluminium and standing taller than a human. Based on the ancient Sumerian epic of the descent of the goddess Inanna to darkness and return to light, Lijn&#8217;s Electric Bride is imprisoned in a steel cage fused with an electrical current, inspired by a trip to a London substation where currents coursed out of the transformer like arms. Lights flicker and she whispers a poetic sounding text.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="667" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Woman-of-War-1986-Liliane-Lijn-Tate-St-Ives-1000x667.jpg" alt="Woman of War (1986) Liliane Lijn Tate St Ives Cornwall" class="wp-image-37116" style="aspect-ratio:1.4992503748125936;width:640px;height:auto" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Woman-of-War-1986-Liliane-Lijn-Tate-St-Ives-1000x667.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Woman-of-War-1986-Liliane-Lijn-Tate-St-Ives-800x533.jpg 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Woman-of-War-1986-Liliane-Lijn-Tate-St-Ives-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2025/05/Woman-of-War-1986-Liliane-Lijn-Tate-St-Ives.jpg 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>



The second is Woman of War (1986) a sculpture born out of a song recorded by Lijn (which after recording made her harbour thoughts of performing, before abandoning them after a DJ lost the tape in a car theft in Amsterdam, and continuing with art) whose words &#8220;issue a cryptic warning for humanity&#8221;. It was first shown at the Venice Biennale in 1986, and remains a curious and compelling six minute installation. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-muddy-verdict">The Muddy Verdict</h2>



Lijn is a curious fun artist with bold creativity and expression, whose works won&#8217;t fail to get you thinking &#8211; maybe from the scientific experimentation, or the use of motion, reflections, the contrast of archetypes, femininity, being an artist and mother, or just the sheer &#8216;what is going on&#8217; element of surprise. Also don&#8217;t miss her new memoir, Liquid Reflections, published recently exploring her years as a female artist in a cultural and artistic revolution, in Paris, New York, Athens and Venice. 



Good for: As I always say, good for anyone wanting a bit of culture alongside their beach trip, and to expand their knowledge. Liliane Lijn may not be a familiar name to you yet, but there&#8217;s plenty to explore &#8211; from a surface way to pass the time, to exploring deeper questions of feminine constructions, science, myth, art and language.



Not for: Once again, no seascapes here; if you want art work by artists who&#8217;ve lived in St Ives there are plenty in the other Tate St Ives galleries.



The damage: Free to members and locals pass holders (£10 with proof of a TR or PL postcode) or £14



Tate St Ives, Porthmeor Beach, Saint Ives TR26 1TG



<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-st-ives/liliane-lijn-arise-alive">Liliane Lijn: Arise Alive</a> runs from 24 May &#8211; 2 November 2025&nbsp;

First Look: Liliane Lijn: Arise Alive, Tate St Ives, Cornwall

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