Standing Ground: Re-thinking the painted British Landscape

In 2024 Raksha co-curated Standing Ground - Re-thinking the painted British Landscape at Thames-Side Studio Gallery, London, September 2024. The exhibition showed 12 painters who investigate what the British landscape is today by challenging traditional notions of the rural idyll and English landscape painting and its connection to identity and nationhood.

"Landscape painting is a particularly freighted artistic genre, deeply connected to ideas of national identity. This is especially the case in Britain, where landscape painting is often regarded as the most significant historical national artistic achievement, and the landscapes of Gainsborough, Constable and Turner are sometimes seen as synonymous with British art altogether. Landscape painting is thus fundamental to narratives of British cultural identity, with the latter also fluid like paint itself. Its slippery and not always controllable quality takes on its own forms on the canvas – echoing humans’ failed attempts to subdue the natural world". (Dr Kate Nichols, Standing Ground catalogue essay, 2024).

The exhibiting artists were Madi Acharya-Baskerville, Said Adrus, Bhajan Hunjan, Frank Bowling, Trevor Burgess, Jai Chuhan, Jasmir Creed, Kimathi Donkor, Grant Foster, Bruno Grad, Azraa Motala and Raksha Patel. The exhibition is curated by Raksha Patel and Trevor Burgess.

• https://www.thames-sidestudios.co.uk/new...