Abstract 34 | Autumn 2026

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham | Tate St Ives, 24 October 2026 to 3 May 2027

Tate St Ives will open its much anticipated major retrospective of the work of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham in October. Bringing together over 170 paintings, drawings and rarely seen archival items, this is the largest and most comprehensive survey of her work ever presented. It follows Barns-Graham’s eight-decade career, from early landscapes and studio interiors to the bold colour, rhythmic forms and sweeping gestures of her later work.

For Barns-Graham, landscape was more than something to observe. It was a source of sensation, memory and emotion. Inspired by Scotland, Cornwall and continental Europe, she transformed what she saw and felt into a distinctive visual language exploring inner perception and the external world – what she called ‘looking in / looking out’.

At the heart of the exhibition will be the largest-ever museum presentation of her glacier works. Following a visit to Switzerland’s Grindelwald Glacier in 1949, Barns-Graham translated the experience of ice, light and movement into dynamic compositions that marked a turning point in her work. The exhibition concludes with the vibrant Scorpio paintings of her final decades, which are charged with colour, energy and movement.

Last Chance to See! Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: Nature in Motion | Museum Belvédère, Heereneveen, closes 20 September

The fantastic exhibition Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: Nature in Motion closes on Sun 20 September at Museum Belvédère in Heerenveen. Having been included in the Living the Landscape St Ives focused exhibition at the Museum in 2022, this new exhibition features seventy works from across her long career and offers a unique introduction to one of the leading figures of British modernism – for the first time on the European continent!

With her focus on nature and landscape, Barns-Graham closely aligns with the artists who define Museum Belvédère’s permanent collection. Like Willem van Althuis, Sjoerd de Vries, Jan Snijder, and Robert Zandvliet, she did not aim to depict the landscape as a visual fact, but rather to represent nature as a formative force. During the exhibition, works by these Frisian artists will also be on view in the museum’s concurrent collection presentation, encouraging new dialogues between British and Frisian modernism.

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham | Printed Rhythms | Prints 1992 – 2004 | The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1 to 24 October

This exhibition focuses on Barns-Graham’s late period printmaking. These joyous works show the full extent of her creativity and exuberance; for her printmaking was a liberating experience where she was able to ‘let rip’ (as she put it). The selection is of a range of prints from 1992 to 2004, with a number from those printed posthumously in 2006, principally screenprints but also including one important rare lithograph – Two Circles on Purple from 1992.

A significant point in Barns-Graham printmaking career came with her introduction in 1998 to Carol Robertson and Robert Adam of Graal Press, based in Roslin. Working in close collaboration, an important new way for Willie to work was through applying individual marks on to separate sheets of clear acetate. This allowed her to re-use the acetates in different compositions, freeing her to create multiple images using the same marks. Furthermore, this allowed her to easily produce prints in series, introducing variations by playing with shapes and arrangements and altering colours. Among the series included in the exhibition will be examples from Millennium, Time, Water Dance (Porthmeor), Earth and Playing Games.

Haroon Hayward and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham | Hales London, 5 November to 18 December

Following on from Haroun Hayward’s first solo institutional show, Path through Trees, at Pallant House Gallery, which showcased a new body of work rooted in his experience studying the Sussex landscape, in November at Hales, London, he will be paired in a dynamic dialogue with Barns-Graham. The exhibition will include new work by Hayward alongside works by Barns-Graham dating from the 1950s to one of her final finished works from 2003. Focused on her engagement with landscape and the forces she found in nature, works will range from more traditional views to abstract depictions of these natural energies.

Ghostnet: Open Studio with Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Residency Artist Sadia Pineda Hameed | 25/26 September

During her three month residency with Porthmeor Studios, Sadia Pineda Hameed has been interested in the working and living conditions of Filipino fishermen at Newlyn Harbour; experimenting with net-making and repair in the studio to consider what kinds of knowledge, solidarities and journeys – like lost or abandoned ‘ghost nets’ at sea – are still possible to recover. This Open Studio event is a great opportunity to meet Sadia and see what she has been working during the period of the residency.

Sadia Pineda Hameed’s work explores latent ways to speak about collective and intergenerational trauma through anticolonial strategies of dreaming, telepathy and secrets. Using 16mm film and hi8 video, sculptural installation, text and performance, her work imagines what future tools for resistance, value and communion springing from these strategies might look like – often through the ‘handheld’.

Friday 25th and Saturday 26th September 2026
3pm to 6pm in Studio 9
Porthmeor Studios, St Ives, TR26 1NG

A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things Blu-ray/DVD Release | Coming Soon

Mark Cousins’s award-winning documentary, A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things, will soon be available to own on Blu-ray/DVD. We’ve been working with Mark and the distributors behind the scenes to create some exclusive extras and inserts for the release including: four additional short films by Mark and Trust staff on Barns-Graham in Spain, making the documentary, Like A Huge Scotland, and recent archive finds, as well as art cards and a poster. Keep an eye out for a further announcement!

New edition of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: a studio life by Lynne Green | Now available

In June we released a new revised edition of Lynne Green’s major monograph Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: a studio life. Published by Lund Humphries, it coincides with two important Barns-Graham exhibitions: her first solo exhibition outside the UK at Museum Belvedere, Heerenveen and a major retrospective at Tate St Ives. Twenty-five years after it was first published, this reprint features improved colour illustrations and a new preface by the author.

The new edition is available to buy directly from our online shop for £35 (plus P&P)

Annual Trust Book Sale | Saturday 21 November | 11:00-15:00

Join us at 77 Brunswick St for a sale of Barns-Graham books and catalogues, vintage publications, posters, and cards. We’ll be offering significant reductions on some of the stock available exclusively for those shopping in person with us on the day.

Plus NEW! Copies of A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things directed by Mark Cousins will be available to buy on Blu-ray/DVD, with exclusive extras and inserts.

Refreshments will be provided!

Latest Blogs

Through the Looking-Glass: Tracing Barns-Graham’s Multiplicity
Mattea Gernentz shares her experience of contacting and visiting archives in Scotland, London and Cornwall to fill gaps in our knowledge of Barns-Graham’s exhibiting history and learning to expect the unexpected.

Fabulous & Fantastic: Barns-Graham in the USA
In 1965, Barns-Graham spent 3 weeks travelling across the USA with the Contemporary Art Society, visiting public and private collections. Aglaïa Rozental has catalogued and researched archive material from the trip and presents a comprehensive overview of Barns-Graham’s itinerary and experiences.

Where to See Willie | Our quarterly exhibition round-up

Barns-Graham is wonderfully represented by two works from the Pallant House Gallery Collection, a drawing St Ives, 1955 and Snow at Wharfedale II,1957 in their current exhibition British Landscapes: A Sense of Place, open until 1 November.

Running alongside British Landscapes: A Sense of Place is Haroun Hayward’s first solo institutional show, Path through Trees, showcasing a new body of work rooted in his experience studying the Sussex landscape.  This series of new works was particularly inspired by post-war British art by artists such as Edward Burra, Ceri Richards, Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham.

Following on at Pallant House Gallery is an exhibition about the work and influence of painter Alfred Wallis. We are delighted to be lending Barns-Graham’s Island Sheds St Ives II, 1940 (above). Also included is a work by Wallis previously owned by Barns-Graham. Opens 21 November.

The Heong Gallery‘s anniversary exhibition, Ten Good Years, looks back and builds upon the Gallery’s inaugeral exhibition on the collection of Sir Alan Bowness. We are delighted that a small gouache by Barns-Graham, Greek 1960, given by the artist to Bowness, has been selected for the show and is being shown in public for the first time in over 65 years. Closes 11 October.

Featuring two Barns-Graham works, the touring exhibition, Making Her Mark, continues at Penlee House Gallery & Museum in Penzance until 27 September 2026 before travelling to Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum in the new year.

Earth Matters continues at Inverleith House at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh until 1 November. Two gouaches from the Trust’s collection, including September Orkney, 1985-6, are on display alongside 30 other artists.

Works can usually be found on display in galleries such as Falmouth Art Gallery, Leeds Art Gallery, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, Tate St Ives, Penwith Gallery, St Ives and Pier Arts Centre, Stromness. We’d recommend checking ahead as some of the works usually on display will be on loan to the retrospective at Tate St Ives.