Arcadia for All? Rethinking Landscape Painting Now

I feel extremely privileged to be included in this touring show with such a brilliant line up. Many thanks to the curators Judith Tucker, Geraint Evans and to Laura Claveria and all the team at Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery and Attenborough Arts Centre.

Attenborough Arts Centre, University of Leicester, Lancaster Road, Leicester LE1 7HA
15 September 2023 – 28 January 2024

The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Parkinson Building, University of Leeds LS2 9JT
26 April – 29 July 2023

Arcadia for All? Rethinking Landscape Painting Now is a new exhibition raising pertinent questions about who has access to nature, where and how. The exhibition challenges a nostalgic, idyllic and elitist idea of landscape. It embraces and celebrates nature in all its forms, acknowledging that in the 21st century most people in the UK access nature on a regular basis through allotments, community gardens, public parks or even simply through windows and screens.

Arcadia for All? explores the fragility of our environment as a result of human activity. Some of the paintings highlight the pressures that capitalism is imposing on nature or offer alternative systems to live off the land collectively. The show also deals with issues around equity, the colonial legacies of landscape and environmental racism.

Arcadia for All? features a wonderfully broad spectrum of artworks by over thirty artists, including Hurvin Anderson, Andrew Grassie, Lubaina Himid, Matthew Krishanu, Elizabeth Magill and George Shaw. They all approach nature from many different directions, expanding the notion of landscape painting in new, unexpected and sometimes radical and playful ways. Moreover, the exhibition celebrates the vitality and variety of contemporary painting in all its materiality and visual richness.

The exhibition has been guest curated by Dr Judith Tucker, Senior Lecturer at the School of Design, University of Leeds and Geraint Evans, Pathway Leader MA Painting at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London.

List of participating artists:
David Ainley, Hurvin Anderson, Iain Biggs, Louise Bristow, Hannah Brown, Simon Callery, Lara Cobden, Kimathi Donkor, Sam Douglas, Natalie Dowse, Geraint Evans, Mark Fairnington, Andrew Grassie, Dan Hays, Lubaina Himid, Barbara Howey, Matthew Krishanu, Paula MacArthur, Elizabeth Magill, Cara Nahaul, Christopher Orr, Rebecca Partridge, Julian Perry, Narbi Price, Carol Rhodes, Greg Rook, George Shaw, Benet Spencer, Clare Thatcher, Judith Tucker, Phoebe Unwin, Joanna Whittle.