The Tragedy of Landscape

The Tragedy of Landscape brings together contemporary artists that re-approach notions of the Romantic Landscape within their practice. The show takes its name from a comment on the work of Caspar David Friedrich by David d’Angers,

"Friedrich! … The only landscape painter so far to succeed in stirring up all the forces of my soul, the painter who has created a new genre: the tragedy of the landscape."

The exhibiting artists share a common interest in the landscape genre and, in their own way, all act to subvert our perceived notions of it. We are invited to look at what lurks behind the idylls that we are presented with and think beyond the anesthetized, beatified view of the natural world; works that appeal to our notions of beauty will often allude to something more sinister when enquired upon further.

Many of the artists work directly with historical paintings and etchings, reworking them into new imagery – further enhancing the fantastical aspect of the original works and play on the fabricated, fictional nature of the original works.

Others use the Romantic Landscape as a motif, a departure point to re-examine our relationship with the natural world. Seeing their 17th / 18th Century counterparts as the first ecological movement and think about how this is updated in a world where the idea of the sublime is as easily related to the onslaught of technology as it is a mountain or waterfall.