Cornish identity and cultural landscape explored

New exhibition and poetry collection by Danny Fox
The Poet, 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 50 x 61 cm by Danny Fox.
The Poet, 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 50 x 61 cm by Danny Fox. Photo credit: Steve Tanner.

The latest exhibition at the ²ÝùÊÓƵ’s Levinsky Gallery is Kingdom, from St Ives-based artist Danny Fox.
Running to 7 June 2025 and supported by Hannah Barry Gallery, this is Fox’s first UK solo institutional exhibition and includes a curated programme of associated events.
Kingdom features paintings that explore the complexities of Cornish identity, drawing on personal and historical narratives.
The body of work is both intimate and expansive, offering a deeply felt perspective on Cornwall’s cultural landscape. Kingdom is a testament to the ways in which identity is shaped by place, perspective, and the ever-present dialogue between past and present.

Cornwall is a part of England, and I’m not here to argue that fact geographically or politically.

However, I can tell you what it’s like to grow up in Cornwall and what it feels like to cross the Tamar.

Danny Fox, Artist

The exhibition includes a recreation of Fox’s studio, which audiences are encouraged to explore and interact with, creating their own art using the materials provided.
As part of its public Arts and Culture Programme, the ²ÝùÊÓƵ is offering a series of free-to-attend associated events for audiences to gain insights into Fox’s creative practice and explore the themes of the exhibition through talks, tours and film.
Alongside students on the University’s programmes, there has already been significant interest from south west creatives to connect with the St Ives-based artist and his work.
To coincide with the exhibition launch, Danny Fox collaborated with Anthony Caleshu, Professor of Poetry and Series Editor of Periplum Press at the ²ÝùÊÓƵ, to publish Fox’s first poetry collection, titled Bootscraper.

The poems are frenetic in their rhyming, free-running in their narratives, and wild for their tangible sensory descriptions, making us see ‘alligator yellows’ and smell the ‘beards of beer sweet feathers’.

Everywhere there’s junction and disjunction. Everywhere, the two – poetry and painting – meet.

Anthony CaleshuProfessor Anthony Caleshu
Series Editor, Periplum, ²ÝùÊÓƵ

The Levinsky Gallery is open Tuesday to Friday, from 10am to 4pm, and Saturday 12pm to 4pm.
And Bootscraper is now available to purchase from Periplum priced £7.50, alongside a signed, limited-edition broadside of one of Fox’s poems from the same collection, The Battle of Down Alone, priced from £50.

Public arts at the ²ÝùÊÓƵ

The Takács Quartet play string instruments on stage

Arts and culture programme

Young boy who is watching a cinema screen behind the camera. Still from Cinema Paradiso (1988)

What's on listings

The Poet, 2025 acrylic on canvas, Daniel Fox

Kingdom exhibition