UNCOMMOM GROUND
New Art from the Landscape, Joint Exhibition 2017
The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), London, UK
Cultural Geographer Hayden Lorimer struggles to locate the meaning of Landscape 'at the intersection between myth, ecology and topography.' Exploring this dilemma further, he states that it can be seen as both 'an amalgam of memory, weather and work' and 'a fusion of authorship, artistry and industry' - it remains impossible to settle on a narrow definition.
Lorimer asserts that as 'living proof of our own permeability', landscape is 'impossible without us'. It is both this instability of definition and an insistence on the primacy of us, as artists, in landscape that Uncommon Ground will celebrate and explore.
Such explorations will be through direct engagement with or quiet reflection on the landscape, using a range of material processes and different methods of observation. all the artists exhibiting in the show indicate their presence in the landscape whilst referencing that landscape in their work.
In laying a few markers within the sweep of Lorimer's fluctuating definitions, Uncommon Ground will bear witness to the reciprocal, critical and often unclarfiable relationship between the artist and the landscape.
