About the exhibition

This exhibition, curated by the artist Peter Stiles, explores the Marsland Valley, its heritage and the people who have been inspired by its charms – both in the past and in the present. Marsland Valley, situated in North Devon, has a history of attracting pacifists, artists and individuals who seemed to value the Valley’s isolation from broader society. These people have lived and worked alongside local families who have lived there for generations.

The exhibition features works by artists including the English painter and decorative artist, Dora Carrington. Carrington is remembered in part for her association with the Bloomsbury group and the unconventional, Bohemian way of life which came to define its members. Carrington was largely overlooked as an artist during her lifetime – she rarely exhibited and didn’t sign her work – yet she is now considered a significant contributor to Modern British art.

Other artists featured in the exhibition include the painter Gillian Ayres, who owned a studio in the Valley from which she created the large vibrant canvases that earned her a Turner Prize nomination; her former husband and fellow abstract painter, Henry Mundy; the writer Ronald Duncan who enjoyed success in 1950s with West Ends plays and a TV show based on his newspaper column about the lives of North Devon villagers; the documentary photographer, James Ravilious, whose iconic images of North Devon life feature in the Museum’s own permanent collection; painter and garden photographer Andrew Lawson; animation artist, Petra Freeman; and contemporary sculptor, Briony Lawson, whose work is heavily influenced by the wild North Devon landscape where she was born.

The exhibition also features archive footage of Marsland, shot in the 1930s. The Marsland Valley is now a 500-acre nature reserve owned by the Devon and Cornwall Wildlife Trusts. It was donated to the Trusts in 1964 by Christopher Cadbury, a member of the chocolate dynasty. He purchased the land in the 1950s having spent time convalescing in the Valley following his traumatic experiences of driving an ambulance throughout the Birmingham Blitz. For a relatively small piece of land, the Marsland Valley has an extraordinarily rich history and is one which, as this exhibition hopes to reveal, perhaps deserves wider recognition in the history of British art.

Special Event

On Saturday 24 May, 2-3.30pm, Peter Stiles will be giving an exhibition talk, Marsland Valley: An illustrated talk. It’s free to attend but booking is recommended as places are limited. To register your interest, please e-mail olivia.desborough@northdevon.gov.uk.

About the Curator

Peter Stiles arrived in North Devon after leaving the Slade School of Fine Art in 1980. He has made work mostly based on the North Devon landscape and exhibited locally and nationally including shows at Plymouth Arts Centre, British Academy/London, Gloucestershire and Exeter Universities, Plymouth, Torquay, Barnstaple Museums, Hestercombe and the Black Swan in Frome. He has curated projects including the Vivarium project – focusing on the work of George Eliot and Victorian Marine biology in North Devon, The Samuel Taylor Coleridge Festival, the Art Writers Group residencies and the Keble-Martin festival. In 2023 he was a commissioned artist for The Wild Escape project working with Combe Martin, Lynton and Parracombe schools and Combe Martin and Lyn and Exmoor Museum and has been working for the past 4 years with SPAEDA and the Quantock Landscape partnership on a series of workshops exploring the legacy of Coleridge and Wordsworth.