The prints in this exhibition are taken from the Winter series, a sequence of 75 works that extend Opie’s 2012 film of the same title. Depicting an eclectic range of influences – from Google Maps Street View to 17th Century Dutch landscape painting – the series represents a circular walk taken by the artist through the French countryside on a harsh but beautiful winter’s day. Also displayed are Opie’s French Landscape lenticulars, which allow a dynamic experience of the idyllic pastoral landscapes of Western Europe.

Born in London in 1958, Julian Opie studied at Goldsmith’s College of Art from 1979 to 1982 and is one of the UK’s best known contemporary artists, exhibiting widely both nationally and internationally. Initially taking photographs of his subject matter – be it of people, landscape or still lives – he then digitally manipulates the photographs and constructs his images by a process of elimination and distillation. Through his techniques, Opie has developed a concise and reductive formal language which continually pushes the boundaries of ‘traditional’ artistic practice. 

This display at Spring Gardens forms the foundation of a solo presentation of Julian Opie’s work that will tour internationally in 2014. 

Winter, And Other Seasons: Landscapes by Julian Opie is open to the public Monday - Friday, 9am - 6pm at the British Council Head Quarters, 10 Spring Gardens, London, SW1A 2BN. 

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.

  • 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.