Mountains

November 9 - December 7, 2006

• Curators

  Joe Madeira

  Martyn Simpson

• Artists

  Gina Chamier

  Robin Doherty

  Bill Porter

  Tom Robertshaw

• 
• Email Print Tweet Share

Mountains have played a major role in art over the centuries; from the mysticism of Hokusai's mount Fuji to the sublime landscape of the romantic wanderer in Caspar David Freidrich's paintings and the epic monochrome monuments of North America's national parks in the photographs of Ansel Adams.

Mountain ranges constitute the borders to many countries and have played key roles in the collective identities and mythologies of many nations. Today large tracts of mountain landscape remain as uninhabitable wilderness and many peaks remain virtually unclimbed and untouched. Perhaps today we are tempted to cultivate a few myths or irrational thoughts of our own. Where once the cartographers of antiquity wrote 'here be dragons' we are invited by CNN to speculate on the unassailable hiding places of al Qaeda or the Taliban.

This exhibition brings together four artists who, through their depiction of mountains, explore our longstanding fascination with these colossal folds in the earth's surface and remind us of why they remain fertile ground for the imagination, memory, the metaphysical and other internal landscapes.