LIVING LANDSCAPE 1987-1996

essays by Aidan Dunne and Cóilín Murray

ISBN 978 0946641 772      48 pages (paperback)     22.5x22.5cm    17 illus   artists index

For the tenth and final Living Landscape exhibition at the West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, in 1996, each curator from the previous exhibitions chose one landscape artist, and their works are shown here side by side. The essays document the ten-year history of this important exhibition of Irish landscape art.

EXTRACTS

"Since its inception in 1987 as a national exhibition at the West Cork Arts Centre, Living Landscape has continued to be one of the centre’s most important achievements. That a region often regarded as geographically isolated and remote could originate an annual exhibition so central to the definition of modern landscape art is a tribute to those who, through hard work and vision, made the series happen ... Living Landscape has been a wonderful series of exhibitions for the West Cork Arts Centre, the landscape of west Cork, and the very many people who enjoyed them over the past ten years. It shall be missed!"

— from the foreword by Helen Hoare

"Criticisms frequently levelled against landscape painting, and work that hinges on an interest in landscape in general, are that it is conservative, escapist, and ignores the problems bound up in the representation of landscape; that it is, in the widest sense, non-political. Landscape is seen as an alibi, a means to avoid issues rather than an issue in itself. Yet in Ireland, as everywhere else – and particularly given the advent of environmental politics – landscape is always political. Even the assumption of the right to look at your own landscape is political. And that is what a large number of artists choose to do...
          After a chequered history of love and loathing, and given that it can never just be passively there, that we are still debating its meanings and our responsibilities, nevertheless the achievements of Irish landscape art are a testimony to its durability and relevance. Many of the artists who have exhibited under the auspices of Living Landscape are in the process of not only reclaiming Irish landscape from its own past, but also of revealing to us something that we are in danger of losing, and why that should and does matter."

— from the essay by Aidan Dunne