Arcadia for All? Rethinking Landscape Painting Now
15 September 2023 – 28 January 2024, Gallery 1
The exhibition explores the fragility of our environment as a result of human activity. Some of the paintings highlight the pressures that capitalism is imposing on nature or offer alternative systems to live off the land collectively, while the show also deals with issues around equity, the colonial legacies of landscape and environmental racism.
‘Arcadia for All? Rethinking Landscape Painting Now’ is a new exhibition coming to Attenborough Arts Centre from The Stanley & Audery Burton Gallery at the University of Leeds that raises pertinent questions about who has access to nature, where and how. The exhibition challenges a nostalgic, idyllic and elitist idea of landscape. It embraces and celebrates nature in all its forms, acknowledging that in the 21st century most people in the UK access nature on a regular basis through allotments, community gardens, public parks or even simply through windows and screens.
‘Arcadia for All?’ features a wonderfully broad spectrum of artworks by over thirty artists, including Hurvin Anderson, Andrew Grassie, Lubaina Himid, Matthew Krishanu, Elizabeth Magill and George Shaw. They all approach nature from many different directions, expanding the notion of landscape painting in new, unexpected and sometimes radical and playful ways. Moreover, the exhibition celebrates the vitality and variety of contemporary painting in all its materiality and visual richness.
The exhibition has been guest curated by Dr Judith Tucker, Senior Lecturer at the School of Design, University of Leeds and Geraint Evans, Pathway Leader MA Painting at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London.
To view the exhibition catalogue of artwork, click here.
Participating Artists
