WE HAVE all seen the bright side of St Ives, the clarity of light that has drawn artists to the area over the years, but now it is time to experience the darker, mystical side of West Cornwall, writes Colin Gregory.

Martin Clark, curator of the Tate St Ives, describes the new exhibition – entitled The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art – as the most challenging and ambitious exhibition the gallery has ever staged.

With Damien Hirst's little unicorn in formaldehyde, The Child's Dream with its horn and hooves of plated gold, there to greet you in the entrance gallery before you even make your way up the stairs to the exhibitions above, it is certainly both entertaining and challenging.

The walls of some of the galleries have been darkened, the huge atrium window which usually looks out onto a sunny and wave splashed Porthmeor Beach has been covered in dark film, and the scene is set for an exploration of the brooding menace of the landscape which surrounds us.

The new exhibition takes its title from the book by St Ives artist Sven Berlin, which had to be withdrawn within weeks of its release in 1962 after libel writs from other furious artists who recognised unflattering references to themselves.

The exhibition represents the brooding nature of the moors of Penwith and the rest of Britain and the influence of the people who live around them.

Berlin called Penwith a terrible landscape where the paramours of evil walk on the bare hills, so the exhibition explores the influences of folklore, mysticism, mythology and the occult and "the dark malignant energy which comes out of the moors" on the development of art in Britain.

Martin Clark, who was helped by writer and critic Michael Bracewell and artist Alun Rowlands, said they had focused on works from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day.

"When St Ives is mentioned, people talk about the warmth, the beaches and the sunshine. But there is also the primitive landscape of the moors close by, so the starting point of this show was to look at how that landscape affected the work of the art colony here."

The exhibition is arranged as a series of chapters, with each room having a title and a theme.

There are so many highlights, from Berlin's own sculpture Owl in flight to the large work to those by Graham Sutherland, Richard Dadd, John Piper, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore....

John Russell's fantastic backlit digital print on vinyl, like the cover of a progressive rock album cover, fills the end wall of gallery five.

There are subjects like Autumn at Stourhead, the Four Queens find Lancelot Sleeping and the fascinating Hikers, of 1936, where the artist depicts four young women consulting their map in a sunlit scene, but with the shadow of them being lost.

The coup of having Hirst's Unicorn, which would cost millions if it was on the market, will prove the crowd puller, but the whole exhibition is ambitious and thought-provoking.

The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art

is at Tate St Ives until January 10.

The gallery is open daily from 10am to 5.20pm until October 31, until 4.20pm from November 1.

For more details visit www.tate.org.uk