Liquid Land was a group exhibition curated by Harriet Loffler and Rosanna Greaves at Ruskin Gallery, ARU, Cambridge, in 2018.
The exhibition brought together a group of contemporary artists whose work considers the complexities of landscape and the environment. Incorporating a variety of media from moving image, installation, performance and sculpture, the works explored the material, economic, ecological and cultural agendas at play when we experience and represent a landscape.
Press release:
This exhibition brings together a group of contemporary artists whose work considers the complexities of landscape and the environment. Incorporating a variety of media from moving image, installation, performance and sculpture, the works explore the material, economic, ecological and cultural agendas at play when we experience and represent a landscape.
The starting point for the exhibition was generated via the Debating Nature’s Value Network, an academic research group that explores the implications of the concept of ‘natural capital’, the idea that nature can be conceived of as a form of capital and valued in monetary terms. One example of this is carbon offsetting – the idea that something can be removed from an ecosystem as long as it is replaced by something of equal ‘value’. In a number of the works particular landscapes are constructed from a variety of sources including digital gaming imagery, financial data or images found on the internet. These synthetic and largely unpopulated landscapes become apparitions guided by financially driven imperatives. How a landscape is embodied and the relationship between nature and human activity can be traced in several of the other works suggesting different ways in which to value the land. For instance the impact ancestral memory has on our sense of a place or the direct use of natural materials that speak of past traditions and uses. What connects all of the works in this exhibition is their representation of an atomised or uncertain environment and how this impacts on the personal and the political.
Mathew Cornford & David Cross / Georgie Grace / Rosanna Greaves / Alexandra Hughes / Reece Jones / Sally Stenton and Judy Nakazato / Lotte Scott / Wilf Speller
