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Always Greener: Views from the Contemporary Countryside

This exhibition featured the work of eleven contemporary artists from the UK and Europe. The primary research questions were both curatorial and theoretical. How are contemporary artists engaging with the countryside as a subject? How can we think about the countryside in terms other than an aestheticized landscape? Central to the investigation was the process of identifying artists who were working with these themes and how their work would contribute new perspectives on the contemporary countryside and how the conceptual dialogues generated by the works might be mapped. The research methods used were attending and contributing to rural/landscape art symposia and discussions, visiting relevant exhibitions, studio visits, interviews with artists, web based research and textual research.

Cumulatively the works produced a shift from the passive aesthetic register of the landscape, towards a re-imagining of the rural as an active, inhabited and practised realm. They also articulated the countryside as a site of collective cultural imaginings. The exhibition features a number of new works, and works which have not been shown in the UK before. Its non-urban focus and its refusal of a simplistic reading of the countryside through the aesthetics of landscape contributes to the arena of contemporary art.

Shown in a large-scale gallery in London, the exhibition received in the region of 1500 visitors. Contextualising events including a curator’s tour and a midsummer fete enhanced the exhibition experience. A discussion/workshop event led by two of the artists and attended by artists, curators and academics contributed to current debates in this field. The exhibition was featured in the Independent newspaper and has been reviewed by Jessica J. Lee (University of Toronto) in the journal Thinking Nature. A website has been created to document the exhibition and as a forum for writing and discussion on these themes.