This exhibition examines new approaches to the traditional theme of landscape by a younger generation of contemporary artists based in Britain. Work has been selected in a variety of media including sound, text, projections, video as well as photography, painting and sculpture to represent real, imagined or remembered aspects of landscape. The topographic view and pastoral scene have evolved to include urban and fictional environments. Views from an aerial perspective, from a car or train window or focussed in the filmic close-up, re-evaluate the classical interpretations of this subject matter which weighs heavily in the history of British art.

The exhibition is drawn predominantly from works recently acquired for the British Council Collection. The artists included are; Mat Collishaw, Keith Coventry, Tacita Dean, Willie Doherty, Peter Doig, Siobhán Hapaska, Tania Kovats, Rachel Lowe, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Mariele Neudecker, Paul Noble, Julian Opie, Michael Raedecker, David Rayson, David Shrigley, Ross Sinclair, Bob & Roberta Smith, Wolfgang Tillmans and Paul Winstanley.

P>n illustrated catalogue with a text by the film maker Patrick Keiller and notes on the artists by the curator was published to accompany the exhibition, available from Cornerhouse www.cornerhouse.org ISBN 0 86355 448 2

Collection Artist(s)

Glossary

  • Contemporary

    Existing or coming into being at the same period; of today or of the present. The term that designates art being made today.

  • Curator

    A person who creates exhibitions or who is employed to look after and research museum objects.

  • Film

    A transparent, flexible plastic material, usually of cellulose acetate or polyester, on which light-sensitive emulsion is coated, or on which an image can be formed by various transfer processes.

  • Landscape

    Landscape is one of the principle genres of Western art. In early paintings the landscape was a backdrop for the composition, but in the late 17th Century the appreciation of nature for its own sake began with the French and Dutch painters (from whom the term derived). Their treatment of the landscape differed: the French tried to evoke the classical landscape of ancient Greece and Rome in a highly stylised and artificial manner; the Dutch tried to paint the surrounding fields, woods and plains in a more realistic way. As a genre, landscape grew increasing popular, and by the 19th Century had moved away from a classical rendition to a more realistic view of the natural world. Two of the greatest British landscape artists of that time were John Constable and JMW Turner, whose works can be seen in the Tate collection (www.tate.org.uk). There can be no doubt that the evolution of landscape painting played a decisive role in the development of Modernism, culminating in the work of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists . Since then its demise has often been predicted and with the rise of abstraction, landscape painting was thought to have degenerated into an amateur pursuit. However, landscape persisted in some form into high abstraction, and has been a recurrent a theme in most of the significant tendencies of the 20th Century. Now manifest in many media, landscape no longer addresses solely the depiction of topography, but encompasses issues of social, environmental and political concern.

  • Painting

    Work of art made with paint on a surface. Often the surface, also called a support, is a tightly stretched piece of canvas, paper or a wooden panel. Painting involves a wide range of techniques and materials, along with the artist's intellectual concerns effecting the content of a work.

  • Sculpture

    A three-dimensional work of art. Such works may be carved, modelled, constructed, or cast. Sculptures can also be described as assemblage, in the round, relief, and made in a huge variety of media. Contemporary practice also includes live elements, as in Gilbert & George 'Living Sculpture' as well as broadcast work, radio or sound sculpture.

  • Video

    Images recorded on videotape or on optical disc to be viewed on television screens, or projected onto screens. The medium through which these images are recorded and displayed.