Unqui­et Land­scapes is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Con­tem­po­rary British Paint­ing and York­shire Art­space, curat­ed by Joan­na Whit­tle ( Heavy Water Collective)

“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)

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. Their themes and trans­la­tion of the expe­ri­ence of land­scape being as rel­e­vant now as they were then; seek­ing solace in the nat­ur­al world and the pic­turesque is tem­pered by real­i­ty, mor­tal­i­ty and fragili­ty, as well as hope. The exhi­bi­tion 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.

“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 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.” Joan­na Whittle

The exhi­bi­tion includes work by Heavy Water Col­lec­tive along­side (result­ing from research a Lan­cashire Archives, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cen­tral Lan­cashire archives and Sedg­wick Muse­um of Earth Sci­ences), alongside: 

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 Valik, and Sean Williams.

You can find a Cor­ri­dor 8 review of the exhi­bi­tion, writ­ten by Han­na Dhaimish, here.