Attenborough Arts Centre Presents: Arcadia for All? Rethinking Landscape Painting Now

Arcadia for All? Rethinking Landscape Painting Now
15 September 2023 – 28 January 2024, Gallery 1

Attenborough Arts Centre is proud to announce our upcoming exhibition ‘Arcadia for All? Rethinking Landscape Painting Now’, in which artists challenge our expectations of landscape painting and invite us to think outside the box. This exhibition joins us from The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery at the University of Leeds, where it was curated and displayed from April to July 2023.

‘Arcadia for All’ rethinks landscape painting in the 21st century, examining the climate crisis, a post COVID-19 world, and a post-colonial and capitalist era while raising pertinent questions about who has access to nature, where and how. It acknowledges that people in the UK access and experience landscape now in many different ways, such as walking in parks or on footpaths, working in community gardens and allotments, or looking longingly on our screens at faraway places we may never visit in person.

With over thirty artists participating in the exhibition, the works showcases a broad spectrum of artworks that approach nature from many different directions, expanding the notion of landscape painting in new, unexpected and sometimes radical and playful ways.

“These are paintings which address the urgent issues of our time.  They open difficult questions yet together become a visual feast. The richness of the works both conceptually and visually is astonishing and bringing them into conversation with each other opens up further debate.” – Judith Tucker, Guest Curator.

“This exhibition of inventive paintings creates potent dialogues that engage with ideas and experiences of landscape such as access, encounter, ownership and identity.” – Geraint Evans, Guest Curator.

“At a time of serious ecological crisis when pollution and unsustainable ocean and land use are threatening both ecosystems and human existence, the exhibition Arcadia for All? feels more relevant than ever.” – Laura Claveria, Exhibitions Curator at The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery.

Participating artists include Hurvin Anderson, Andrew Grassie, Lubaina Himid, Matthew Krishanu, Elizabeth Magill and George Shaw. The exhibition celebrates the vitality and variety of contemporary painting in all its materiality and visual richness.