Standing Ground

About

During and in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, social disparities – including between those with access to green space and those without – became ever more exaggerated. The context of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 reinvigorated discussion of the ongoing impact of slavery and empire on British culture.

Flooding, heatwaves, polluted rivers have all drawn further attention to the environmental desecration and climate catastrophe facing the planet (but disproportionately impacting the global south). Questions of landscape and belonging figure crucially in all of these developments. How might artists ‘Stand Ground’ in these contexts?

Landscape painting is a particularly freighted artistic genre, deeply connected to ideas of national identity. This is especially the case in Britain, where landscape painting is often regarded as the most significant historical national artistic achievement, and the landscapes of Gainsborough, Constable and Turner are sometimes seen as synonymous with British art altogether. Landscape painting is thus fundamental to narratives of British cultural identity, with the latter also fluid like paint itself. Its slippery and not always controllable quality takes on its own forms on the canvas – echoing humans’ failed attempts to subdue the natural world.

Text abridged from the catalogue essay to the exhibition by Dr Kate Nichols, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Birmingham. The catalogue, funded by the British Art Network, will be launched at the exhibition opening.

To order a copy of the catalogue or for further information about the exhibition, please contact curators r.r.patel@arts.ac.uk and trevor@trevorburgess.co.uk

The painters in Standing Ground span several decades bringing an intergenerational dialogue about landscape painting today. They are Madi Acharya-Baskerville, Said Adrus, Trevor Burgess, Frank Bowling, Jai Chuhan, Jasmir Creed, Kimathi Donkor, Bruno Grad, Grant Foster, Bhajan Hunjan, Azraa Motala and Raksha Patel.