“The land will entrance us and in the end bury us, with impartiality. If it seems to have great beauty, that is because of what we are, not because of what it is… The unquiet country is you.”
- Christopher Neve, Unquiet Landscape : places and ideas in twentieth-century English painting (1990)
Unquiet Landscapes is an exhibition that takes us on a journey into landscapes that are both real and imagined, psychological and metaphorical, opening up a terrain that reflects our relationship with the landscape today. The exhibition showcases 38 artists, continuing a series at YAS celebrating contemporary painting in Britain.
Christopher Neve’s influential book Unquiet Landscape provides the starting point for a conversation between artists working with landscape today, and those featured in Neve’s text, many of whom had experienced the trauma of war. The ideas in the book are as relevant now as they were then; seeking solace in the natural world and the picturesque is tempered by reality, by thoughts of mortality and fragility, as well as hope.
Curator and painter Joanna Whittle says of the exhibition:
“It represents an endeavour not only to explore this continuing dialogue between painting and the landscape; how it inhabits us and our reflections of the world in uncertain and wounded times; but also to expand this dialogue between CBP (Contemporary British Painting) and the wider discourse of painting and other artforms. The works included represent this wild and roaming landscape always changing and yet always somehow unquietly familiar in our minds.”
Unquiet Landscapes is a collaboration between YAS and Contemporary British Painting, curated by painter Joanna Whittle, and features over 50 works by:
Susan Absolon, David Ainley, Jonathan Alibone, Iain Andrews, Amanda Ansell, Richard Bartle, Emma Bennett, Simon Carter, Graham Crowley, Angelina May Davis, Al Daw, Natalie Dowse, Thomas D Fowler, Sarah Grant, Heavy Water, Barbara Howey, Linda Ingham, Lisa Ivory, Christopher Jarrett, Anita Lloyd, Paula MacArthur, Nicholas Middleton, Christopher Neve, Paul Newman, David Orme, Mandy Payne, Julian Perry, Georgia Peskett, Chantal Powell, Narbi Price, James Quin, Conor Rogers, George Shaw, Judith Tucker, Simon Tupper, Jan Valick, Joanna Whittle, and Sean Williams.
The majority of artworks are for sale.
